Gravel Pits and Budget Concerns

On Monday, July 22, the Adams County Commissioners met for their second meeting of the month. Meredith Fisher, with Planning and Zoning, said that Shore Lodge Whitetail was proposing an amendment to the escrow agreement. The prosecuting attorney has already looked it over and said it was okay, but she’s not sure if it’s a good idea, the commissioners need to look over it, as well, and it doesn’t need to be decided on at today’s meeting. A property owner near Council Greens will be asking for a variance to power and a variance to fencing the whole acreage. There has been no response on the email from Brundage yet. The commissioners were wondering what is the metric for deciding if they have a functioning fire department or not. Fisher said one good metric is insurance.

They haven’t received the letter from the proposed rockpit in Indian Valley yet. The applicant was denied a conditional use permit because there are homes within the one mile radius. Fisher told the applicant they have the option to appeal or to submit a request for a variance if there is something unique about the property that makes it impossible to comply with the ordinance (which she didn’t think would apply). The other thing Fisher mentioned was that maybe it was time to take a look at the ordinance, which did not go into place until 2006, and told them they should write a proposal if they want it looked at. The applicant decided to apply for a variance, anyway, and possibly make a proposal as well. If they decide to do that, it becomes a county wide discussion. Commissioner Joe Iveson asked a county resident, who was present at the meeting, for his opinion on the ordinance, since he lived in close proximity to an older gravel pit. The resident said that there are different types of blasting and requirements. Some of them do not damage surrounding homes the same way, and he would encourage the commissioners to look into that. Some ways are slower to expand and are more expensive, but don’t do the jolt and shock wave. The shock waves can affect wells one to two miles away, and the rockpit near them has had an effect on one of their stock waters. He said that gravel pits provide a necessary commodity, and they don’t want to see them all shut down, but there need to be protections to safeguard surrounding homes. He also said when they had an appraisal done, their property was devalued $150,000 due to their proximity to the rockpit. Commissioner Viki Purdy thought if there was a better way to do it then this was something they should definitely look into. Fisher asked if blasting was necessary for a rockpit or if there ways to do without it? They answered that it was possible with the right equipment, but that would probably not be cost effective. Commissioner Iveson thought it didn’t look very promising on this particular gravel pit, though, because he thought there was still going to be a distance required, and even if they reduced it, it would probably be over one-quarter mile, which is where the nearest house is from the current proposal.

Next, Steve Shelton, with Solid Waste, and Adam Balderson, with Road and Bridge, arrived. Commissioner Iveson asked if they got the rock haulers. Balderson said that for one rock truck, he got a quote for $13,000 a month. He talked to someone else who just bought one and is giving them a quote, too. County Clerk Sherry Ward said they didn’t have the money. Commissioner Iveson said that wasn’t bad, and proceeded to try to convince her. He said he went out to the landfill last week, and they have a lot of material to move, and it’s way more than he even imagined until he set eyes on it, and their little dump trucks are chipping away at it, but they are going to tear up their dump trucks and spend more money on the CAT they are renting because it is moving so slow. He thinks they need to contract a rock hauler and get this done now. Shelton and Balderson thought it would take them two weeks to a month to finish it all. Iveson said if they can get it done fast enough then they can line it sooner. He is worried if they drag their feet, it will end up costing a lot more in the long run. Sherry Ward  said to put together a budget and said there might be something in the LAT fund. Shelton said the well is looking at around the 15th of September. They found a bunch of sand which will save money, but they might need to buy more. Shelton said he knows they don’t want to hire anyone else, but he and Balderson could definitely use a floater guy that went between the two departments as needed. Commissioner Daren Ward also mentioned the mag chloride on Goodrich looks amazing, and they need to start looking into it on more roads. He thought they may have put more on this year than they usually do. Then the commissioners started brainstorming gravel roads that had a lot of traffic in case they could do those in the future. Ward said that Goodrich is honestly better than many of the paved roads. Clerk Ward said she didn’t budget any revenue from Valley County. Shelton said he talked to them in March and said they could start bringing a truckload a week, but never heard back. Commissioner Ward decided to send one of the Valley County commissioners a message and inquire.

​ While working on pay rates last year, Sherry Ward noticed a small math error and went back to see where it was. In 2019, when they did a pay rate increase for two Road and Bridge employees, they did it wrong, and the rate has been off by $0.05 for five years. If they go back and fix the error, there would be about $509 in back pay owed for one employee and $448 for the other. Some other people have small differences, as well, where they were off by $0.02. Sherry Ward said they need to go back and fix everyone, even if it’s a small amount, and back pay them any of the difference and the commissioners immediately agreed.

​ Sheriff Ryan Zollman had two new officers to introduce to the commissioners, Travis Rodgers and Nick Arent. They both swore their oath of office in front of the Board of Commissioners. There are 20 state inmates and four county. Unfortunately, the air conditioning is not working again this morning. Zollman has made inquiries already, and the company in New Meadows is coming in the afternoon to look at it.

Carol Walsh, emergency management coordinator for Adams County, came next and said she has finished the Community Wildfire Protection Plan as part of the All Hazard Mitigation. She said they are getting close to the total on the Good Neighbor Authority on the fuels reduction grant. The Western States Grant through IDL won’t really be usable until next year. Some of it is going to Meadow Creek. One logger is hoping to get help from the grant for logging slash cleanup. Walsh was sympathetic but thought that since it was taxpayer money it didn’t make sense to use the money to clean up logging slash piles as opposed to protecting homes.

Walsh said their program has exploded. They are just finishing up Circle C. They are going into West Pine, Meadow Creek, Whitney Ranch, Packer Johns, and Camp Stover areas. The contracting is going through Northwest Management. They are overwhelmed with people who want to do this project. She put in for another Western States Grant for next year. Walsh wanted the commissioners’ input about a firewood grant that would maybe be $7000 dollars, and she wanted to know if she should put in for it. Commissioners Iveson said the money would be great, but they are having a problem with Mahon being able to get out the right size logs that can run through the processor. For the grant, she has to explain the firewood program and how they do it. The way she would write it out is they pay for firewood and the processing was free. The commissioners started brainstorming ideas about firewood for the community and ways they could get it.

​ Before breaking for lunch, the commissioners appointed New Meadows City Mayor Julie Good to the Stibnite Foundation board to represent Adams County. She is already on the board representing the city of New Meadows. After lunch, Mayor Julie Good arrived to talk about the Transit Line between New Meadows and McCall. She said there are currently eight trips a day, going Monday through Friday and had 226 people riding last month. They would like to expand the route to include Council, and she would like the county to start to think about contributing. They have to come up with $111,000 as their share of the match, and she is trying to raise contributions from as many sources as she can. She still has about $50,000 to raise. The commissioners were hesitant to offer any monetary support. Commissioner Viki Purdy said, “Well, just to let you know, we are $800,000 in the hole. So that’s what we’re doing today, is trying to cut.” Commissioner Iveson also said he really was going to need her to sell him on it because he wasn’t a big fan of public transportation and the cost. Julie Good listed some of the reasons this was important to the community, including improved safety, especially in the winter, reduced traffic, and saving residents on gas. About 60% of the people they are seeing are elderly, and many of them don’t want to drive and often can’t find people to drive them. Commissioner Darren Ward said, “I do see a definite need for it,” even though he said he would probably never use it himself.

​ Next, Julie Good gave the commissioners an update on the childcare center in New Meadows. They have found a general contractor to finish transitioning the old recycle center into a new childcare center, and they will be opening it in phases. The first part will be done by October, and by February they should have the childcare center fully operational. “I wanted you guys to know because this is a good thing for Adams County; this is an excellent thing for Adams County,” she said. After the childcare center, they will be turning the other half of the building into a youth center which will also have space for after-school programs.

​ After this, the commissioners and Clerk Sherry Ward started to talk about the budget. Currently, they are at a deficit of around $800,000. About half of this could come from PILT monies, Clerk Ward explained. Commissioner Viki Purdy described PILT, or Payment in Lieu of Taxes, distastefully, as welfare from the federal government. Even with this they still had to cut around $400,000. Commissioner Iveson was very concerned about balancing the budget because he thinks there is a real concern about running out of money part way through the year in one of the following years, and he does not want to bankrupt the county, so they started to discuss where they could make cuts. The most obvious place, unfortunately, was the 3% raise for county employees. No one was happy about discussing it. Iveson, especially, was struggling, and kept saying, “These are my friends!” But they did discuss it, and also discussed just doing a 1.5% or 1% raise, instead, or just not giving raises. The commissioners also had a problem with the fact that there were employees in the sheriff’s department that were making more than the sheriff. Fundamentally, they didn’t think that was right. They all had issues with not being able to give the 3% raises, but as commissioner Iveson said, “I have a problem with the money not being there too.” In the end they decided to still do the merit raises but keep out the 3% across-the-board raise for now.

Then they discussed uncertainties about the prosecutor department and whether the new person would be doing the contracts with the City of Council and New Meadows. They decided they could not be certain of that, and they shouldn’t budget for it, but Iveson thought they might actually save money contracting out the prosecutor position until someone actually shows up to take the position. Sherry Ward said she wished everyone would be aware of the increase in insurance and how much they pay in insurance for everyone. She then remembered that she had an appropriation for a reserve fund for current expenses, and she could cut that down and was about to shave off around $50,000. They started to brainstorm other places to cut, including the Fair Board and Legion Hall. The commissioners said the Fair Board was going to have to start getting more people to donate. They discussed some things within different department budgets that they thought could be reduced or eliminated, but decided first to ask each department to reduce their budgets by $3,000 and see what they came up with themselves. Sherry Ward also had some reserves budgeted in for mid year wage increases or errors which the commissioners asked her to reduce. She did, but said, “This is going to be a scary budget for me, I don’t have any assurances in here.” Commissioner Iveson wondered if other counties were in the same hole as they were. Commissioner Ward said he talked to several in East Idaho and, from what he heard, they were, at least, for the sheriff’s departments. Iveson said he hates not to donate something to the bus because they are part of the community and pay taxes, but they don’t have any money. They had some ideas for eliminating part-time positions and combining a few positions. At the end of the day, they still had around $200,000 they needed to reduce the budget, but decided to look over things more carefully during the week and discuss it again next week. “If we don’t balance this budget,” said Commissioner Iveson, “we are in trouble in five years, we are in trouble.”