Construction, Grants, and the Moscow Human Rights Commission

While the Moscow City Council fielded construction costs, grant opportunities, and commission requests this week, the county commissioners continued to work on their budget. Let’s check out the details!

Read the full transcript of the video below:

How’s it going y’all? Aiden Anderson here with the Moscow Minutes. As the summer heat rises, so does the number of things to do when it comes to local government. Let’s take a look at this past week’s activities.

To start things off, the Moscow City Council heard an annual report from the Human Rights commission presented by commission members Nick Smiley and Jana Argersinger. They reviewed the commission’s past year of activities, including the Better Together Dinner and Martin Luther King and Juneteenth celebrations, and also discussed the future possibility of the city’s participation in the Rural Welcoming Initiative. The council also discussed elements of the planned city commission budget  cuts going into FY2027 as well as details of upcoming Human Rights events, such as the food drive, pride fest, and social justice forum.

You might have heard already about Moscow getting a new Les Schwab location just north of the Best Western here in town. This next item had to do with that project. As Bob Buvel explained, city staff needs council approval to spend about $206,000 from the water capital fund in order to abandon and reroute around an old water main on the property in question.

The water main is made of asbestos cement and is nearing the end of its usable life. The developer on the property has already begun work on new construction, which makes dealing with the older water main more urgent. City staff will work with the developer to ensure that the water main is dealt with appropriately, but it will likely remain in the ground one way or another. The council dealt with questions regarding maintaining awareness of the abandoned main in future city plans before approving the request unanimously.

Bill Belknap of city staff presented the next item, which was a resolution on accepting grant funding for the Pullman-Moscow Airport Improvement Program. Bill explained that the airport has already applied for grant funding in the maximum amount of about $437,000, for new runway and taxiway markings and procuring firefighting and rescue equipment for use with aircraft.

Typically when grants are awarded, the city council needs to vote on whether or not to accept the funding during a regular meeting, but because of the competitive nature of the grant, city staff need a quick turnaround time. Thus, the action on the table was to request preauthorization from the council, so that city staff could accept the grant funding without an additional meeting. The city council approved this preauthorization unanimously.

Lastly, the council reset a grant deadline. As Bill Belknap explained, the council previously applied for and received money from an Idaho Water Resource Board Regional Water Sustainability Grant. That grant has been used to fund the study looking at the feasibility of the Clearwater River diversion option for an alternative water supply for the city.

The grant had a 12 month deadline that has since passed, but the city has not yet spent all the money contained in the grant. Thus, city staff was looking to continue the terms of the grant in order for the city to continue to get reimbursed from the remaining grant funds of $76,000 or so. This too was approved unanimously by the Moscow City Council.

Now briefly, a word on Latah County. The commissioners held their regular monthly meeting with the department heads and elected officials this past week. Highlights from that meeting include preparations for possible wildfires as the weather heats up, and a new head of IT. The main thing I’d like to focus on, however, is the yearly budget prep.

One way the county differs from the city of Moscow is the number of budget workshops they hold. While Moscow generally holds a single massive public budget workshop, the county’s tend to be shorter and more interspersed throughout the weeks. This provides more opportunities for public attendance if the public is so interested. And if you care how your tax dollars are spent, you should be interested in these workshops.

That’s all I got for you this week. As regards the county budget itself, the documents are slowly being made available to the public, and we will let you know when we get a chance to look at them. 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!