Forums, Fair Housing, and More

We’re less than 30 days out from the primary election, but there’s no slowing down at City Hall. This week, the city heard reports on housing and police, and considered updated polices for water and public records. Check out the details below!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. We’re less than 30 days out from the Primary Election in May, and you can definitely feel the energy ramping up. This past Tuesday, the Moscow Chamber of Commerce hosted a candidate forum for those candidates running in this year’s state-level primary at the Kenworthy Theater here in Moscow. This was the first forum of the year that I had a chance to attend, and I gotta say, I had a great time.

There were a total of nine candidates in attendance: Cindy Agidius, Bryce Blankenship, Lori McCann, Kathy Dawes, Ken Williams, Trish Carter-Goodhart, Richard Gayler, Ryan Augusta, and Robin Weldy. Paul Kimmel, playing the host of the event, asked questions pertaining to the past year’s state legislative session, as well as about issues that the state of Idaho is likely to face in the future. Budget cuts, school spending, affordable housing, legislative styles, and other topics were all on the table.

Candidates Dan Foreman and Colton Bennett were unable to attend this particular forum, but I would not be surprised to see more of them at future events between now and the primary election. And of course, if you want to find out more information about any of the candidates, each of them should have a website or social media page that you can check out.

We’ve got other events from this week we should talk about. Let’s take a look at the Moscow City Council meeting.

Following the mayor’s proclamation for Earth Day, there was an item which was removed from the consent agenda, a slate of items that is usually voted on as a block due to being routine and non-controversial in nature. This item, an authorization of payment for a Tier II Demolition Landfill Partial Cell Closure, was voted on separately to allow councilor Scott Sumner to recuse himself from the vote due to a conflict of interest.

The public comment period was a bit more lively than usual. First up, John Slagboom talked about coming budgetary decisions, and asked the council to emphasize fiscal responsibility when it came to their capital projects. Up next, Casey Bolt of Sojourner’s Alliance, and Nils Peterson of the Hills and Rivers Housing Trust both separately encouraged the council to pursue affordable housing, including through the creation of a housing authority, and through imitating the efforts of the city of Pullman’s programs.

Back to Earth Day, Mayor Lewis next posed for photos with this year’s Earth Day Award recipients. Erin Geslani, Wassankari Construction, and the Palouse Prairie Charter School all received awards for their work on various environmental projects and activities throughout the city.

Having finished with Earth Day, the council turned their focus back to housing. Eija Sumner, the wife of councilor Scott Sumner, and the chair of the Fair and Affordable Housing Commission, presented a report on the commission’s past year of activities. One main item of focus was the commission’s recommendation that the city of Moscow create a housing authority, and this item is still in discussion. The commission also has a number of fair housing training events coming up over the next few weeks.

 Next up, another annual report, this time from the Moscow Police Department. Chief Anthony Dahlinger talked about the different events the police have participated in over the last year, as well as an update on staffing, crime statistics, and livesaving awards. The police department fielded 11,199 calls this past year, and Dahlinger was pleased to report a slight reduction to the city’s crime rate. 

The chief also talked about the impact that the closure of the Latah County jail has had on the city police. The need to cover arrest transports to Nez Perce County has resulted in the creation of an on-call system. City police who would formerly be off-duty are now placed on-call at certain times in order to assist in the event of an arrest. Since the closure of the jail, the department has spent an average of $5,500 on transport each month.

Chief Dahlinger further mentioned that the city’s K9 unit won second place in the Idaho Police K9 Conference. He talked about the sharp increase this past year in seizures of meth and fentanyl, and also mentioned that the city collected $167,080 this past year in parking fines. He concluded by fielding questions from the council, including further questions about the jail closure impact from Scott and Sandra, and about potential ICE presence in Moscow from Bryce.

Enough about reports, let’s talk about action items! Kelli Cooper of city staff presented on the first item of the night, which consisted of updates to the city’s water conservation plan. Moscow relies on the Palouse Basin Aquifer for water, and the city has instituted water conservation efforts due to declining aquifer levels throughout the years.

The conservation program consists of a number of rebates, conservation devices, policies, and public education, with the most recent addition being rebates for irrigation. As Kelli explained, this new set of updates included increases to existing rebates, and updated language in the Wisescape guidebooks. These updates were approved unanimously by the Moscow City Council.

Mia Bautista, the city attorney, presented on the last item of the meeting, which was a two-parter. First, Idaho Code requires that city standards comply with the state’s Public Records Act. This year, there were some changes at the state level, and that means that the city needed to incorporate those changes into their code. Those changes include some language and definition changes, as well as the removal of a two-year retention requirement, and replacing it with retention in compliance with separately written retention resolutions (which can be for varying lengths of time).

That last change is important, as it allowed the city to consider the second part of this item. This was a resolution containing changes to the retention schedule for certain media recordings that the city produces, including police body cams and security camera footage from city buildings. These changes were being made to help alleviate storage costs which the city has been accumulating.

For body cam footage, the city was looking at a retention period of 14-200 days depending on if the footage had any value as evidence in a court case or not, which is similar to Latah County’s policy. Similar changes were made for media recordings on city buildings as well as ALPR data. When it came to voting on the subject, councilor Evan Holmes opted to split the item into two votes, as he felt that voting on each part of the item separately would be a more clear action. Regardless, the council approved the whole thing unanimously.

That’s all I got for this week. We’re sure to have more on the primaries as the election draws closer, but don’t forget to check out the candidates yourself, and don’t forget to vote. As always, we’ll have the relevant links posted with this video, and if you have any questions, please reach out. I’m Aiden Anderson with the Moscow Minutes. We’ll see you next time!