Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Yeah, but she played in the band until there was a nighty-one.

Gary, we're starting. Okay. Call this meeting to order the Planning and Zoning Workshop for July 23rd, 2026 at 9.31 p.m. Roll call. Bateson, Foster, Harwood, Slater, Summer, Commissioner, and Bowles are present. Commissioner James is absent. Community Development staff in attendance is Community Development Director Mike Beharie, Planning Manager Ben Tarbutton, Administrative Secretary Jocelyn Henning, Administrative Manager Reba Brittness, and Deputy Director of Operations Craig Davidson. Also in attendance online is Aaron Qualls from SCJ Alliance. So we'll go to changes to the agenda. Are there any changes? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to approval of the June 25th, 2026 public hearing and workshop minutes. Are there any changes to those minutes? Okay, hearing none, I have a motion to approve the workshop minutes as written. I move. And second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Okay, I don't think we have any other business to attend to, so we'll go straight to the workshop. Up first is Aaron for the comprehensive plan update.

We can see you.

Hold on Aaron, we can't hear you very well.

Can you give us a sound check Aaron?

Sound check.

Can you just give us a sound level?

Okay, how about now?

Yeah, these are not going to do it. Well, let's try a different set of speakers here, Erin, real quick. Okay.

Let's see.

all right let's try that all right let's try a little testing testing yes yeah that works go ahead aaron okay well very good i just want to give a quick update on the uh final survey results i'll share um I just have a kind of key findings couple of slides to show you and we can dive in more. I'm assuming everybody received the summary document.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

And Aaron, if you want to go ahead and share your screen, I think you have the ability to do so. So just go ahead and there you go.

Okay. Here, we'll just kind of bring this up. So these are our total responses and responses over time. We did pretty good, almost 2,000 respondents. Some fully submitted, but they still captured results. Some completely submitted. And so pretty good numbers from the survey. That said, we also asked who responded, and most were from Um, most were from in the county's jurisdiction, uh, about two thirds, most vast majority of property owners, 94%, and most were older and without children. Um, so that's, that's a bit of a gap. And I think that, you know, probably is most important when we look, uh, as we work through the parks and waterways, uh, plan, uh, and consider that, um, uh, you know, when we look at, uh, parks improvements. But key takeaways for managing growth, and this probably doesn't come as a big surprise, and it's not too different from what we heard before. Transportation and loss of open space and farmland, some of the key issues. There seems to be, among those who responded, a willingness to get ahead in planning documents to make sure that growth is managed appropriately. whether it means ensuring that costs are taking into consideration for new infrastructure or standards in place for infrastructure to support new growth and zoning and development regulations to encourage or even require the preservation of open space where appropriate. And then I'll give you a brief overview of parks and waterways. No big surprise, many folks thought that it was fundamental to the county's identity and a strong desire to protect natural resources, including working lands, which kind of bleeds into open spaces. A lot of support among those who responded for hiking trails and multi-use pathways. I just sent to print a map that we're gonna be providing at the future engagement events here at Worley and Harrison, which we're preparing for, a map that shows potential, sorry, existing trails and pathways where gaps are and where there might be potentials to dramatically expand trails and pathways throughout the county. And I can bring that up and give you guys a preview of that if you're interested in seeing it. Some areas were identified as being overcrowded, mostly around the cities, we think, which some are county maintained. And certainly a lot of input on waterways, too, which is a big part of what the Parks and Waterways Department does. This is a board here. I kind of skipped over it real quick. kind of an overall summary that we're taking to the next round of events, and that will be Worley and Harrison this weekend. So that's kind of a summary. I can dive into, I can bring up the more detailed results and answer any questions about that, assuming you've all had a chance to look at it. just find that and bring it up here. Were there any areas of the survey or the feedback we've received thus far that anyone has any questions about or would like to dive in deeper about?

Seeing as how the responses were skewed older, is there any way that we can, moving forward, get, approach, get to people, you know, younger families with kids so we can get some feedback from them? Is that a possibility? Is it too late? Are there any ideas of how to do that?

Yeah, we did, and Ben, correct me if I'm wrong, I think we did hand out flyers at certain popular destinations for families and also some recreation areas. We haven't crafted a you know, youth survey or a survey specific to families. Sometimes school districts can be allies for that. We'd have to kind of recraft a different survey, you know, if it was specific to the youth and ensure that it was, ensure that the school district would be willing to. Those are a couple of ideas.

Do you think that would be worthwhile? Or is the feedback we have already sufficient?

Well, it certainly is for a lot of areas regarding the, I mean, I would say a lot of, it's useful for considering the broader comp plan issues around growth, housing, land use. But for parks and recreation, I would say, yeah, there was a youth voice lacking. And one of the big questions is, well, should there be things like playgrounds, things more tailored to youth activities? And are there gaps there? And that's more on the parks plan side. But I'd say that might be worth some targeted outreach. decided on how or if to do that with the budget we have in consideration of the timeline that we're trying to stick to. But it's something we can explore further with Nick and Mike and Ben.

Mike and Ben, what do you think? What are your thoughts on this?

I think it's definitely important to get the youth involved in trying to get their input. I know we have the two activities planned coming up for this weekend. We are going to be out at the fair for nine days, so we're going to try to capture a lot of the youth there. We're having a booth there from August 21st through the 30th. Ben and his team will be out there rotating in and out, working our booth, trying to gather input from everybody there. And we could possibly reach out to a school district, several, and maybe we could get a teacher or a class to maybe participate in a survey as an assignment. Possibly.

Well, I'm thinking more like the parents of, you know, adults, but younger.

Families.

Families, yeah, when their kids are still at home and school and all of that. That's the only thing that kind of, I think this is just such excellent work. But it was the only thing, it just seems so skewed to my demographic, and I'm glad they had my voice heard. You know, certainly. But, you know, we're also here responsible to

know make everybody happy if at all possible and so it just seemed like that was i'd like to hear from them yeah we did send out all these notifications to all demographics and usually the people that respond are in this age group right because we have the time to do it yeah everybody they're too important things they're busy yeah they're busy with other activities and they're like this doesn't and we don't get that much participation from that age group.

But the fair.

I think the fair is going to be a great opportunity for us to capture that. We had one test bed at Spirit Lake, and we got a pretty good response, and a lot of integrated concerns were given by younger age groups and things like that.

So I think these community projects that SCJ and Mike have been planning, that's going to net some really positive results for those targeted groups that you're concerned with.

On your parkways that you have, When I go buy those, probably 75% to 90% of the cars are all out of state. I mean, so I'm serious. They are. And so they're coming over, and they're probably not filling this out. I mean, they're not looking at this, I don't think. But they're hitting the campgrounds and stuff. I can do Mineral Ridge and all that stuff. They're all Washington, Oregon plates.

That actually brings up a topic is like, OK, well, we're doing this for us um they're using it but i mean this is so is that you know in the county taxpayers right yeah that's why you pull us things like they look at enhanced views for out of state yeah visitors it's like the boat doctor you go down there and watch some plates i've heard so many complaints about that People are so frustrated. They're living here and paying their taxes, and they can't get a spot.

I know people from here that drive up to Sandpoint and go to Ponderay because they can't even get on the lake here. They can't find a place to park. They can't find a place to dock their boat or to unload their boat.

Can you hear us, Aaron, or not?

Yes, you're a little muffled, but I can hear, and what I'm hearing is kind of confirming what we've heard in the survey results. Certain boat launches are a bit impactful, and I brought up this map to show where some, primarily from the survey responses, areas where we may consider improvements. This is the map that I just got. I was just on the phone with Nick before this meeting, and who gave the nod of approval to go ahead and start presenting this. But it identifies some areas such as Lake where the north end potential boat launch that was getting a lot of pressure in Hayden Lake. And then potentially on the west side somewhere on Lake Coeur d'Alene, another potential boat launch site not you know neither one has a specific location um designated uh yet but that's that's kind of where we're at based on the server results and what we want to present and maybe get some feedback on um and then other like park amenities uh while along here is hauser lake uh the the uh park there that's actually owned by fish and wildlife but maintained by the county um so we'll take some interlocal agreements for improvements there but um at first the first thought was potentially sports courts which we did not hear a lot of um demand for in the survey uh but you know, still potential upgrade playground is also, is something that we may consider concepting for in the next, as we get, you know, more detailed in the planning process. I think what's most significant is the demand for trails and pathway extensions. So we took a holistic view of all the existing trails, including the Trail of Gore Lanes, AS WELL AS THE CENTENNIAL TRAIL AND LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO CONNECT WITH THOSE AND ALSO TO CONNECT PLACES. SO THERE'S A FEW NEW POTENTIAL TRAIL PROPOSALS AND I KNOW THERE'S BEEN SOME HISTORY AND WORK DONE ON SOME OF THESE BUT A POTENTIAL TRAIL EXPANSION ALL THE WAY UP TO SPIRIT LAKE AND ALL THE WAY OVER TO BAYVIEW AND THEN FROM POSTBALLS OVER TO HAYDEN LAKE WHERE You know, we've heard some boat launch pressure, and there's some trail connectivity here, and we take a partnership with the city of Hayden, of course, and that also connects with the existing Centennial Trail up north on Highway 95. And then the most ambitious one was from Harrison all the way connecting to the trail of the Coeur d'Alene's, and then potentially up to the Centennial Trail as well, all along this edge. But it's certainly not designed, just a potential idea for a new connection. But again, very ambitious.

This is Terry. Has anything been thought about maybe checking in just with the other agencies as far as access to the chain lakes area and all that? Because I know that when the lake was busy and we used to water ski, we'd go up to one of the chain lakes and water ski because we didn't have to put up with the traffic on Coeur d'Alene Lake. And of course, those other agencies, the Forest Service and the got some facilities up that way but i don't know if we want to integrate that into into anything for for kootenai county at least to identify them maybe in the plan but i mean you know there are other agency responsibilities so you may not want to bother with that but uh right but they're well they're certainly right what their big drive now of course is to is to clean up those areas from the contaminated sediments so that they're they're safe for people to use you know like rainy hill and some of those, you know, Rose Lake Boat Ramp and that one there. I tested that one time. I had 6,000 park per million lead in the sediment right there. You know, a level zero. So I just wonder, you know.

Yeah, no, that's a good thought. And, yeah, I mean, certainly interagency agreements is not a new concept for managing parks and waterways in Kootenai County and trails. Uh, so that is something to explore. I want to stay in an earlier version. We did look for an opportunity, maybe a black lane from maybe a potential more open space or, you know, based on survey responses of just finding a quiet place away as you just kind of articulated, um, is, is also, uh, shown here necessarily I think I cautioned about it because I wasn't sure the contamination level you know while we were putting this together and something I know Ben you're familiar with I think you have that pretty well Matt and Mike you know I know that you look at that when anybody looks to develop out in that area well I think but yeah I think the thing about it is if you folks don't

and you wanted to look into developing an area like that, I think the folks with the Superfund project would emphasize that area, and that's what they're doing now. It's 18,000 acres of contaminated wetlands, the whole lower basin is, but they're concentrating on where you have a lot of activity for developed human activity, not dispersed human activity.

Anything else for Aaron?

No, I was just going to maybe add on to that. This weekend, we've got an event in Harrison that we're going to be participating in. And so that would be an opportunity for us to hear of interests, not only from a different demographic, hopefully, too, but just specifically, like geographically within that area where they may want to see some other areas of trails or public spaces.

Harrison is a different county, right? No. Harrison is a different county.

Now, we did clean up the beaches of Harrison, but then we've had to monitor them because of the continued contamination coming down the main river, you know, in high water. So you get recontamination. But there was a big push, you know, so many years ago to clean all the beaches up of Harrison, no matter who owned them or operated them or whatever.

So up until this point, you have done activities in Worley and Spirit Lake?

Just Spirit Lake. We haven't done Worley yet. Worley is also this weekend.

OK. And then are you planning on going to the other incorporated areas? Are you trying to hit all of them? Or are you spot checking ones that you think are maybe a little more?

We try to focus on areas that are more of the county. rather than focusing on just within the city and getting voices from the cities. Okay. Again, while those are cities, of course, but hopefully gather some different voices when they have a community event, they're more likely kind of to participate in that community event. And so we're hoping to get more voices, more from the unincorporated areas. But yeah, we've checked with some different cities, looked at some of the different community events that they have, and these seem to be kind of geographically ideal. So that's kind of why we focused on those.

And especially like over the month of July, you know, Rapturn, Post Falls, Hayden, Coeur d'Alene, they have their, you know, Fourth of July parades, their Rapturn days, their Post Falls days, where there's a lot of people coming out for the parades and activities within those, you know, their cities, right? But, you know, not just city people go to those. So I didn't know if you were trying to get to any of those.

You know, we're looking at the fair as part of that, too. And so we were. hopefully focusing on those as some key events. But certainly, we could certainly look at those other days. I don't know. They're mostly in July. They're almost all in July.

Eight days is the last one, and it's also this weekend.

Yeah, so we were trying to kind of like, how do we make all of this work? Yeah. There are certain weekends that seem to be popular with people.

Any other questions, Aaron? Go ahead, Aaron, or Mike.

I was wondering if you could bring up the survey question, the PDF, and go over the growth and land use priority questions, if you had a few minutes for that.

Yes.

Certainly. I think it starts at question three. Right.

Starting with question three, or? Four, five. Five people. And question four, about experiencing the most strain from population growth. Yeah, four and five would be great, yeah. And priorities for planning for growth. I do have charts for this. I didn't get them in a PowerPoint, though. I mean, graphs. But we can provide that, you know, in the plan where we can pull them up and show you. But this tells you the raw numbers. So most people concerned about transportation and farmland as the biggest strains from growth here. And then followed by housing. and then water quality and supply. And then preserving working lands was pretty far in the lead for the top priority for planning and addressing growth. And as you saw from the map that I had up earlier, the open space preference for preservation was primarily within the prairie, which may align with aquifer protection goals and policies and sensitive aquifer recharge areas. So we're kind of looking at that in tandem. And then second, of course, protecting water quality and quantity. So we're getting some clear direction on what to prioritize for the goals and policies. And, you know, we've started with the aquifer And maybe we can come back to that if time allows. And then strong support for making sure that new development pays its fair share of infrastructure and service costs. And the types of policies that this may lead to could be fees for new development, but also standards to ensure that you know, resulting parcels are serviceable through your subdivision short plat ordinances.

So in looking at these, when I was analyzing these responses, there seems to be a real tension, and I'm wondering if I'm reading them right, that when you sort of amalgamate all of it, it seems that the bulk of the folks in the county want it to be small townish rural open space farmland those types of things good water quality and so forth on the other hand what's also high on the list is the need for housing and you know building affordable housing and we've heard that theme for a long time and it's so my if i'm reading this right it seems to me the challenge is to find a way to navigate those two, because they could be in conflict, right? Because one way to make affordable housing is pay for everything like they did when I was a little boy in the Santa Clara Valley. I grew up in Santa Clara. It's now called Silicon Valley. When I was a little boy, it was cherry orchards and plum orchards. It was the prune capital of the world. I was known as a prune picker among my cousins because I came from there. I go back now. I don't recognize it. It's wall-to-wall cement. I think a lot of people have escaped that and come here. Maybe I'm overstating this, but I kind of don't think so. I think I think that's a real challenge. And I don't think it's impossible. I mean, I used to live in France, because I'm French, my mom said I'm first generation. And there's many areas there where they have villages and towns that have really dense housing that is affordable, but they keep the open spaces open. And so, I mean, not to pick cultures against each other, but You know, in the U.S., we kind of just have this notion of expansion, expansion, expansion, build, build, build. Well, I think we're experiencing, probably a lot of communities are experiencing, is that you're running out of resource to consume, and now you have to manage the resource and figure out how to do it. And I really do think, maybe I'm seeing it through the lens of being alive right now, but I really do think we're, particularly in this county, For the long time I've been here, I've seen it kind of coming to a crescendo. And I think we're getting to that right now. I really do. And that's partly why I volunteered to do this work here. Because I think it's really important to navigate that. And I think we can. I think we can have affordable housing and available housing and so forth. And at the same time, preserve open spaces. So anyway, I don't know that I'm contributing much here. But that's sort of where I'm coming from. And I'd like to know from you if you think I'm wrong. if I should look at it differently.

And what you're describing is kind of longstanding good planning practice, not that it has always been practiced that way. And you've also described one of the very purposes of the Local Land Use Planning Act in Idaho, which is to essentially direct growth and density into cities, which is where more infrastructure and services are readily available and where more affordable housing may be more appropriate. And so there's priorities of cities for economic development and fiscal resiliency, and there's priorities of counties for preservation of open lands and working lands, and they do not necessarily have to be in conflict. Um, sometimes, uh, conflicts arise, uh, through that, but it's, uh, there's, you know, certainly, um, you know, cities allowing more opportunity for growth and development. We've seen that recently through the legislature with, uh, for example, the, the ADU bill and the, uh, starter home subdivision and another bill that makes it easier to build, you know, more multifamily additional staircases. So there's certainly a direction by the legislature to provide more opportunities for more infill development within cities to handle population growth, which I don't think competes at all with the goals of what we've heard so far from Cooney County residents to preserve, you know, some measure of open space in the county. And from a kind of urban design perspective, it can better clearly define a place where, you know, if you remember one of the previous analysis we did with GIS showing, you know, what could happen at some point is that the entire urban area of Kootenai County could just become all connected as it has in places like California. I've seen some change in, you know, planning and implementation standards and zoning.

I don't know if this, hopefully this is relevant. I have a son who is helping a community with this very issue of how to have denser housing without disturbing the open spaces. And, you know, there's those creative things that they're doing. One of them was in this particular community, you can only have one house on a lot of a given size, and they changed the ordinances to allow for a, they call it a grandparent's home, you know, a certain size home that you can put in the backyard. They even have these little tiny ones now. I see them pop up on my newsfeeds, you know, kind of funny. But, and then also changing the requirements for the number of vehicles that are uh parking spots that you need in conjunction with increasing public transit to get people to use public transit more than you know eating up parking beating up ground with parking lots um and and i i just wonder you know if there's things we can do here creatively to sort of address the the the the problem of you know building consuming the open areas. I mean, down with me, I'm at Fighting Creek area on South Bay Road. And boy, during the COVID, I mean, it was like a land rush down there. People were coming down. I mean, I got a farm and, you know, the land was worth about $5,000 an acre. You know, now if you're going to buy a 20-acre parcel, it's, you know, $500,000 or more. You can't farm with those prices. You know, it's chasing all the farmers out. And then the farmers get chased out, or they sell out. And why not? Because they can make a lot of money. And that created that whole brouhaha that we had down there. It's a classy problem that arises from this development in conflict with the open spaces. So anyway.

I think where the conflict literally rises between property rights and preservation efforts, either through zoning or incentives. Not necessarily much incentives, but if a future land use map and implementing zoning sought to preserve and prevent smaller lot subdivisions in areas deemed more appropriate for preserving um, you know, working lines and open space, uh, it's, it would have a, you know, may have significant financial impacts on certain property owners.

Well, that's the classic clash between where individual rights collide with each other and collective rights. I'm going to talk about this before, you know, we have a community, you know, just looking at it purely through an economic lens, you know, A lot of money comes into this county because of the open spaces, because of the beauty of it. I was just talking to a guy back in, I don't know where it was, Toledo or someplace. When he heard where I live, he's like, oh, gosh, I love that place. I've been there. And so while you can look through the narrow lens that the property rights of an individual to sell their property, subdivide it, make more money, and the developer who can make more money developing it, I think we're getting to a point where that narrow analysis has to be broadened. You have to look at the effect on the entire community, water quality, all these things that we've been talking about. And what we do in this committee and ultimately what the county does is they do draw up bright lines and they do affect people's rights. for the collective good or for the individual good. I mean, they have to draw those lines. So I just see that as a challenge to take on. It's the reality.

Well, one of the things we've done in the lower basin, there's a lot of, years ago, they diked off the creeks and they diked off the river and they farmed it. And if you folks have The landowner still owns the land, but they get paid a pretty healthy price for it. They're in the process right now of converting two of the 500 acres and 750 acres into clean wetlands for the migratory waterfall because we're killing the geese and the swans off down there because they're getting into the contaminated sediments. They've done a number of those things. I was just wondering if the same type of process could be used to set aside some of the open areas, say even on the prairie, you know, by purchasing an easement rather than you just buying the property outright. But I don't know if the values have gone so high. I mean, I paid $42,000 for the lot that my house sits on in 1995. Those lots are selling for almost $400,000. organizations, they come and make presentations at my four counties' meetings. And they are in the process, especially over in Spokane County, they're buying up some of those types of conservation easements over there. I think it's a great idea.

I mean, the county can run. It's a great idea. I didn't even doubt it, because I worked with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation on an easement up north of Sandpoint. And boy, they got money. And they'll pay for it. If you have good, I haven't even thought about my place of, My kids aren't gonna inherit the farm and come back I might just try to do that because we have a ton of elk and and and their their habitats being eaten up by the developments going in around us I Think if the county targeted Organization, but I think that'd be great, you know to be able to choose where we think we should have this right and then target organizations if it's wetlands, you know, I Ducks Unlimited, you know, Elk, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

It depends on where you're at, too, though, because like on the prairie, one of those foundations, most of those foundations aren't going to do anything because they don't have any game or anything or any forest. So, you know, but like up north where you were talking about helping out where they're in the woods and they've got game and stuff, they jump on those. But then again, it's also on the property owner. They don't have kids anymore. They're all grown up and they don't want to farm. they're looking at all these dollars these developers will give them or put it in the easement some people are still putting them into an easement like that but if you're looking at all that money i mean you can't really blame them you hate to see them do it but you can't blame them for it no they can't farm it but but if you you know the county can still encourage folks uh to to if there's county land that we could put into an easement

but encourage folks in some way to do that. I mean, that's kind of the creative thinking. I'm thinking, you know, find ways that's a win-win for everybody. I'm thinking on the prairie, you know, pheasants forever. There used to be a lot of pheasants out in the prairie. I haven't had a pheasant on my place for five or six years now.

Yeah. Whale, but no pheasants anymore. You used to have them all the time. Yeah.

Question. A question that I have is, what is the commission or planning process How are we envisioning open space and working land? Is open space and working lands like the traditional development with a whole big neighborhood with lots of homes on it on small lots, and then the open space is a park here or a school or something there? And I get it, working lands would be farming and ag type of stuff, but the question that I'm having here is, are we considering that kind of traditional suburban model that we're seeing in the prairie, I think right now, as far as development goes, or are we actually seeing more of like, especially with regard to the conversation about parks and rec, or conservation pieces, where there would be these really, really large tracts of land that would be reserved for no development, but then just surrounded by either suburban development or higher density development. What are we actually seeing? what open space and working lands actually means and what we think it actually looks like in the future.

Aaron, you want to start off with that one? And then we'll go into question 10, because question 10 kind of shows what the county's looking at as far as lot sizes. What are the people saying, what are the lot sizes we want in the unincorporated areas? And our comp plan is going to be based on the unincorporated areas. The cities are going to do these high-density neighborhoods with these pocket parts and stuff like that. In the county, we are well in separate systems on large lots. We don't have these subdivisions that you're talking about. They're all in the city with city sewer and water. OK, so a lot of this comp plan, the majority of it, is going to be based on these larger lots and what the people want for in the unincorporated areas. Do we want to keep it large lots? Do we want smaller lots? We also have an opportunity for conservation subdivisions, which is part of that rural cluster developments, which is on question 10. And Eric could go a little bit more into detail on that. But that takes into account the overall density and the overall size of the lot instead of putting houses they take all that density and they put it in one little area and the remainder is left in open space. So that cluster-type rural conservation subdivisions would be something that the county would be looking at more of than these subdivisions with the concrete streets, sidewalks, and sewer and water services. So, okay.

Is that like a village-type concept where you have... The conservation subdivision? Yeah, that you have sort of like a village here, a village there, and open space.

I don't know if it would necessarily be a village, but you would... CLUSTER THE DENSITY IN A CERTAIN LOCATION IN THE PROPERTY AND THE REMAINDER WOULD REMAIN IN OPEN SPACE. AND THAT WOULD BE PART OF THE PLATTING PROCESS AND IT WOULD SAY THIS IS AN OPEN SPACE, TRACK DAY IS AN OPEN SPACE, RESERVE FOR OPEN SPACE. THE LOTS WOULD BE ALLOWED TO BE SMALLER IN THOSE CONSERVATION SUBDIVISIONS.

ISN'T THAT WHERE POST FALLS AND WRAP THEM AND EVERYBODY, THEY'RE INCORPORATING AND GOING I mean, they're taking away all the stuff that we're doing. They just annex them in, and then they do what they want.

They have their comprehensive plans, and their plans dictate, you know, this will be subdivisions, and they go on into the county, and they project out what they want to annex in.

They've got them on water regulations already, but yet they just keep building them.

So I don't know how that could be stopped in a county perspective. With regard to open space that's set aside either in a cluster type development with the conservation open space piece, would that conservation area be open to the public? Or is it still considered private property under control?

That could be both ways. It depends on what the PED and what the conservation subject is. It could be limited just to that subdivision, or it could be open to the public, and that would go through the planning process, the public hearing process. Aaron's got a great map of what a conservation subject is. Can you go over that for us, Aaron? What's that? Can you go over those images for us?

yeah this i just googled this there's lots of examples if you just google it but this is a pretty good one so you can see what a typical subdivision would look like right um large lot subdivision and then a clustered one same amount of units um but with a preservation aspect to it. Now, I've seen some counties where there's a density bonus to this, right? So there's a real incentive to do it. And the way that open space can happen, as Mike said, can be in a variety of ways. It can be owned by a homeowner association here. It can be transferred to a community land trust, so it's open to everybody. It could just become public. You know, always the question is, well, who's on the hook to maintain the open space, right? It's part of these subdivisions, and that's just kind of like one of the, you know, important details to consider. Now, there are lots of benefits. You know, certainly the community benefit of preserving open space and scenic vistas, et cetera, and habitat. There are also, I think, can be fire mitigation benefits as well, if designed appropriately. And yeah, so there's lots of information about these. And I know that Kootenai County does have that. And my understanding, Ben and Mike, is there's not been a whole lot of folks that have taken advantage of it. That might be something to to look at or turn the knobs on to better incentivize.

Yeah, I think that the, yes, we do have a conservation design subdivision provision in our code, but the incentives are not there. They don't offset the market. No, they don't. I mean, we used to have what Aaron was talking about, a bonus density, which essentially grabbed or gave them availability for more lots than what the just standard ratio of minimum lot size would allow. That's been removed, and it's probably been, I don't know, 10, 15 years since we've removed that. So if there isn't an incentive for somebody to have a conservation design, because most people, they're going to look at conservation design only for the areas which are really undevelopable anyways. And so they're like, well, we don't want to put a road through this steep slope, so we'll call it a conservation design. But the problem is that it's there aren't any organizations because right now we are looking at just conservation organizations is what the code says. No conservation organization wants that kind of a area. And so there's just no interest. There's no incentive. And so people typically just do not propose conservation design. So I think that is one thing that we should be doing as we start to develop some of our land use codes is to create more incentive for conservation designs that we have what maybe a little bit the option of the image on the right and then it makes it palatable for developers. What kind of sense? Tax or what else? Bonus density. So you get more lots if you do a conservation design. in the traditional one lot per five acres, or one dwelling unit per five acres, instead of that ratio, you get whatever extra bonus densities for how much land you're conserving.

But one of the keys to this thing is, and you've been touching on it, is that the government, whichever government it is, has got to be willing to come up with enough funding whether or not you can get, I mean, in some cases, these conservation easements I'm talking about, you get like you say, save the whales, or somebody comes forward and agrees and all that that you know that's going to those are going to be maintained but you know Idaho Fish and Game and and you know government agencies or some kind but you got to be willing to come forward with the funding to maintain them and you got to be willing to tax the people to come up with the funds to maintain them so it all of these things are pretty tough issues my question is like on the conservation subdivision we've got on the right there on those well I've got a couple questions first all that open space

Does the county lose taxes on that? And also, if you're in that sub, that cluster like that, are they required to put in a sewer project? Are they on, like, with water and sewer all the time?

Good questions. Go ahead, Ben. I was going to say, I don't know enough about the tax base, whether or not, how that would affect the taxes. That would be more of an assessor's question. Maybe somebody else has some input on that. But with regards to the infrastructure, when you start clustering development like that, it is very possible that that's going to require some kind of water system or sewer system, which can be challenging. Most, part of the reason we see a lot of these five acre developments is because it's really easy to divide that kind of, have a subdivision with that kind of proposal. People have your own septic, your own well, we'll build the road for you, but otherwise you're on your own. And that's pretty easy to divide and sell out. So it definitely takes a little bit more forethought and investment for.

Yeah, I mean, five acre pieces, but if you get that small cluster one,

some kind of community well and community septic system for all these to use. And that is kind of expensive and challenging to do, and where do you locate that?

So then you're saying it's more economic generally for the developer just to do the five acres along the way? Build the roads, set them off. Then the cluster. Yeah. So you'd have to offset that economic disincentive.

And that's where the bonus lots arguably would probably balance that out. Is there an example? If I may.

Sorry. Oh, no. I was just going to just try to piggyback off of the tax question. And it depends. It's always the answer, right? But if it's a community land trust, they still pay taxes. I think it might be a reduced depending on the covenants in place. If it's owned by, for example, a homeowner association, they would still pay taxes. Of course, you know, without improvements on that parcel, the taxes would be less. Certainly the improvements on the individual lots within the clustered area, they, you know, would be more with the improvements. The other thing to consider is the other side of the coin revenue gain is the service costs. And if you look at the conservation, if you look at the typical subdivision on the left, look at how many roads, how much more roadway that is to maintain versus the one on the right. And that's always an important consideration for different, you know, land use and development patterns is what are the taxpayers inheriting to maintain in perpetuity? How much roadway, how much pipe in certain, not so much in the county, but in cities, for example, water and sewer lines, as long as roadways to maintain versus a different type of development pattern.

One of the challenges, too, that we've heard from developers is that it's extremely long process for public water systems to get approved through the state. And so it's just easier for them to just not even deal with it because they go through a two-year process, still working through the process, and it's really expensive to develop your own public water system. They would rather just build the roads and not have to worry about

approval from the states and they build the roads we just went over the road thing here a couple sessions ago when they build those subdivisions do those roads all have to be to the standards that we talked about earlier as far as the fire and so they've got to be up to the width and everything like that well yeah the roads themselves eat up more land yeah pave over more land but what i'm hearing is we have all these disincentives to do the development on the right

So it's just not going to happen unless we figure out how to incentivize people. And in fairness to land rights and all that, you're always better with a carrot than a stick. If you can give people incentives, developers incentives, to do a project that's better for the community, That's great, but how do we do that? Like the process getting a community well, it sounds like it's difficult with the city. Can the county influence that at all? Or with the state, can the county influence the state to process

A permit to drill a well isn't all that time-consuming, but he was talking about public drinking water systems and the design of that and everything. And I manage a public drinking water system on a subdivision on the prairie. And I'm a licensed professional engineer, and I manage it, and I have to meet all the state EPA and federal requirements for a public drinking water system. So you've got to have a... The HOA has to have an organization of some kind with experts to run the thing. after they sell so many properties, they'll turn the drinking water system over to the HOA. And that's the way the process is. And of course, everything else out there is on septic tanks and grain flows, but that's a public, and there's a number of public drinking water systems on the Raston Prairie, and some private firms have purchased, bought those now. There's one that's got over 300 connections out there now. trying to manage their own systems. But I think the thing about all this is we're going to have to get tough making some regulations and rules so that we can make some of these things happen. Because if we just let it go, like you say, there's no incentive to do anything other than just carve it all up. But are we going to have the gumption to put together regulations like that that start to squeeze a little bit on the private landowner versus the public needs. I don't know if we're going to be able to do that.

If we don't, it's going to happen the way it's going to happen. I mean, development's going to happen. The question is, do you want to have some control and influence or just let it happen? And I think up to now, it's been more just let it happen.

We've had these policies and this zoning since 73 and 78, and nothing's changed, really, since that time. Right. And so what made sense in the 70s doesn't make sense today.

A classic example I keep bringing up is the minor subdivision ordinance that allows, developed to aggregate minor subdivisions into a major subdivision and skirt the subdivision laws. They're violating the law. I mean, it's pretty clear to me. I've analyzed it. I've analyzed it from a legal standpoint. But nobody calls them on it. And we don't change that ordinance and I've been a voice over and over to say we've got it We've got to either get rid of it or really revamp it. So it's used for what it should be used for You know, you know for the small family or whatever a family situation not a developers coming in and aggregating Minor subdivisions into a major subdivision that doesn't meet the standards without notice and hearing with neighbors and all that There's a due process issue, and there's also practical issues, the road size, the sewer maintenance, all that stuff. But we don't do anything about it.

That's the problem. And we need to. Where it goes into establishing levels of service and things like that, you get the metrics, and once you get the comp plan, you can drill down to those levels. To your point about the serial minor subdivisions, you're exactly correct. I know Aaron's got a limited time. He's got to leave at 2.30. So I was wondering if you could go over question 10.

If I may, Madam Chair, Mike, and Ben, I have these maps up here, and I do have to jump off. I was going to leave you with one thought. We can dive into this later. The conversation, what land trust would be interested, or how could this... you know, be viable either, you know, preserving the open space or a, you know, conservation area somehow. The map on the left is the final survey results for preserving open space. The map on the right is one that we created in partnership with the Land Trust and the Opera for Protection District. And maybe something to kind of look at as we go down the road of future land use and potential, you know, new zoning regulations. is to look at where there might be the most alignment. So we know where the recently mapped sensitive aquifer recharge areas are. That's these black squiggles here. We know where the local land trust, in the Northwest Land Trust anyway, would be interested in entertaining some conservation easements. And then over on the left, we're hearing what the, respondents to our survey are asking for, for preservation. If there are areas that align all these three things, you have a pretty good solid foundation for establishing policy and regulations. That's what we look for is, you know, based on data, based on input, you know, what makes the most sense going forward. We have to leave with that and jump off and look forward to continuing conversation and movement as we start to dive into, you know, the real meat of the plan. And come out and see us.

Thank you, Aaron.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Ben, I have a quick question. So for the, you said you're 30 in the code for the cluster developments? Yes. What is the lot size?

It is, let me pull it up for you. I think it's 14,000 square feet. Yeah, I don't remember off the top of my head.

Let me find it for you, though. 43,560 square feet. Old surveyor.

And while Ben's looking at that, I will just kind of go over number 10 for you. what what the people are saying on the survey most housing types are most appropriate for the unincorporated role areas so almost 60 percent said they want to see large lots five to ten five to ten acres and then the other 55 percent wanted 10 acres or greater wow so there's a huge amount of those lot sizes maybe opposite a whole cluster idea they're not wanting the smaller

lot sizes than wanting larger lot sizes.

And that was kind of the part of my question about what does the open space actually look like or the lower density. Does it look like what apparently what the respondents want are 5 to 10 acre residential lots and 10 plus acre farms. And it appears that that's what the market also wants because it's not And honestly, people move to North Idaho not, you know, from wherever it is they come from. They want to live on five to 10 acres. Or, you know, that's the, that's why people, that's why people.

But as the cities, you know, gobble these areas, they're not building those five and 10 acres. They're not the cities.

But if you're looking to not live in the city, you're probably more predisposed to want to live on five to 10 plus acres. I agree with that.

for about three or four years and they can't manage it.

Because it's not easy. And then they sell and then somebody buys it at the new market price.

So, you know, it's just... See, I don't think you can draw those conclusions from those responses because they weren't given the opportunity to consider what we just saw. You know, someone who says, I want to see five acre parcels could be thinking, you know, yeah, that's better than one acre parcels. So I'm going to say five because I want more open space.

to ask any question to them um you know it almost showing the picture and say would you rather be five acre parcels more than ten or a cluster with open space 35% one of these world cluster developments so if you look down on the third fourth one down yeah so that was high up there as well but I think a visual I guess okay

So that 82 50, that's a typical city, um, normal single family lot size, correct?

Yeah. That's about a fifth of an acre. Yeah. So essentially you're mimicking a city.

is mimicking like a city development yeah and they're putting everything in one little area when they get dalton the dalton acre thing how'd they how'd they come up with that any idea because i mean they've got that's one of the highest tax bases Are they hooked to sewer and water, Ben, do you know? No, I think they are.

They have a community, don't they?

Yes, but I think they're on their own sewers. Community water, but community water. Possibly. I mean, like, they don't want no sidewalks. They don't want, you know. Right. They've been going through that.

And it's also one of the most attractive and desirable neighborhoods. Yes. So, you know, people will pay a premium to live there.

Yeah, right.

Well, I'm thinking, too, of Big Sky. I ride my bike out there. And those are all, what, five-inch? Five-inch. Right. And that does give you a sense, even though it's not open space, it's owned property, but it does give you a sense of open space. It doesn't feel so crowded in. So that's another thought, too, that... Well, part of that, you've got a bike path going right through the middle of it.

You know, you've got the gas pipeline.

Yeah.

Right, I don't do that, though. I ride around.

But, I mean, even on the five-acre plots in my subdivision, and I've been the HOA president for 21 years and the water system manager for 21 years, but a lot of those five-acre properties, people are running horses on them. It feels open. And on the 10-acre properties I've got, It's an interesting area because they went ahead and put in a public drinking water system for 140 or 58, well it's a quarter, 160 acre subdivision. And normally, like you say, everybody's just drilling their own wells. thing you're talking about because if you can't find I'm having a terrible time trying to palm it off on somebody I'm 80 years old I want to get rid of it I don't want to have the responsibility anymore and trying to get somebody else that's a member of that homeowners association of the 25 properties to take over I've convinced them they need to hire a professional outfit company to manage the water system get somebody to be present at the HOA is very difficult.

I think you're going to be in a predicament like Post Falls is doing right now with their, they've got two or three different HOAs that are default. They're broke, yeah. Yeah, they have to pay their bills. And they're going after, trying to figure out how to go after them now for back, you know.

Are there any examples of local cluster communities within the county? Or maybe in North Idaho or any examples that, you know, we could probably find some examples.

I'm not aware of any in the county, but I think we can find some in the region. Maybe it's in Idaho, maybe Washington.

I can't think of any, but if you wanted some kind of an example, it's just an example of maybe when, when it went in, um, how, you know, how it, how it went, how it's going, how it appears it would be going in the future. it was maybe someplace in Idaho.

I can show you an example of a subdivision.

It's starting to sound to me like the cluster idea is really a pie in the sky idea that can never happen unless you can figure out the, start with the infrastructure, the water, probably sewer's gonna be next. And unless the county finds a way to, I'm just gonna make it up. So the county takes over the water, maintaining the water system of a cluster development. So it takes that out of the hands of, and the burden of the homeowners, I don't know. But it sounds like that's a non-starter. If you can't figure that out, I mean, you describe it every other meeting. You talk about the difficulty, you know, trying to meet the high standards and all. I mean, out with us, you know, we just drill a well and we get water, you know? Well, yeah, and I think most people are coming in.

Did you buy one for me? Don't want to be an HOA. I would be an HOA for nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's the thing.

People moved to North Idaho because they had an HOA where they came from.

I'm right in the middle of that. It's not a clean idea because I'll tell you, like where I'm at, behind us, I have a couple of lots that are on a farm that are in a cluster, just what you're talking about. They're 20 acre parcels, but they could be five. And the problem is, you know, they have a private road. and we've got a ton of snow out there. And there's no way they're going to get out in the winter unless they have someone maintaining that road. And so it's kind of funny what you bring up because I'm watching them all just collide now because you have the HOA folks that say we've got to have a road maintenance agreement, we've got to have an HOA, otherwise we're not going to be able to get out in the winter and the roads deteriorating. And then you have the other ones, just like you're saying, come from California or whatever and say I don't want anything to do with an HOA and I don't want to have to pay for anything, but I want to use the road. It's a tough situation. In the end of the day, the road's got to be maintained, right?

We had a friend who lived up in Harrison, similar thing, and he's like, you know what, I'll just do it myself. So he took it upon himself just to plow the roads so everybody could get out so they wouldn't have an HOA, so they wouldn't have an issue. So unless you have a good Samaritan like that.

I plow a half-mile road by myself. Once in a while, one of the neighbors will come out.

I enjoy doing it, though.

See, I don't like that idea because I'm the guy in the classroom.

You know, one of the things, tossing about all this business of five-acre and ten-acre properties, and then on the other hand, we talk about trying to provide economical housing for our younger generations. You know what a 10 acre lot in my subdivision is about $700,000. Five acres right in front of me.

Just a lot. Two five acre parcels in front of me, well three, and another one across the road. But isn't that the purpose? All sold over for $500,000 a piece.

You know the purpose to me more, that's what the cities provide. Yeah, right. Is that you don't have to, especially in the county and from what we're seeing in here, the county is more of where you get to at maybe at that age when you can afford and you can have that piece of property you can have that parcel and you can do those things you know early 20s just getting married that's not well for maybe a lot of people maybe for some it is that that's not even an option right and for jobs and that they need to be closer to the city so from a housing perspective of what the county should or shouldn't do The cities, I think, are more, it's incumbent upon them to provide that type of housing, maybe that density, to allow for those people to have their jobs, have that access. They may have to have a public transportation. And then as they grow, hopefully are wise in their spending and budgeting and living that you get to that. And when we were first married, we were in this teeny tiny little hovel, right? That's all you had. And we had to drive actually 30 minutes one way just to get to work. And there was no public transportation. And then we got closer and then we got in and then we started coming back out again as we got. And that seems to be a normal progression with most people so that I am a little hesitant with the whole like affordable housing in that we have to do this, we have to do this. The county may not have to do that. That's not the responsibility of the county. That's the responsibility of the city.

If you want your freedom, your rights and stuff, I mean, I saved to work my butt off so that I could buy my 10 acres and build it. And it wasn't easy. I worked lots and lots of overtime to do it. but i've got all the other guys i'm working with they're putting their money in this and that and they're going apart i put money in my land that was everything to me was my life i agree 100 with everything you said except my problem here is that cities

have an uncontrolled desire to incorporate county land.

It is a huge problem.

Yeah, that's the problem I'm thinking about.

Well, if you can't handle that, that's a legislative issue. So we have to work with our legislators in order to do something in order to have the county still have some skin in that game.

Exactly. Because if we just allow them to gobble the whole thing up, there won't be any need for This organization, because it'll all be towns.

And the cities are side by side. They're side by side with state line. They're right in the, you know, everything. It's all one big city.

And cities don't, I mean, developers get the land, they have property rights, and then they annex. They ask the city, can we be annexed? And they come forward with a proposal, and then they ask the city, can I be annexed? And they do a review and say, is there adequate sewers? Is there adequate water? Can we serve with fire and everything else? So then they have a public hearing on that, and then that's when it is approved. And the county has nothing? So they could deny it. I guess the county could show up at these hearings and say, don't do it. But I don't know if we're politically in. Right. Right. To be honest. Except for the AOIs.

That seems to be the only, you know, issue there. And now that's somewhat back into the hands of the county. But that's only just been a recent development. So, and even then, they still have that ability, right? If it's contiguous, they can just keep going.

Right. As part of annexation, they have to do two and three. So if they annex the property, they have to push the sewer and water to the end of it so it's ready for the next one. The next one. So part of that annexation, that piece.

That makes it be contiguous, keep going and keep going.

At least we're controlling the sewer effluent that way. Whereas I'm concerned that we'll develop these, the cities will incorporate areas and make them all septic tank and drain fields on 14,000 square foot lots. Yeah, I think it's 8,250 actually. 8,250.

Yeah, but you look at the old towns and small towns, and that's what they've got. Sewers, and some of them aren't very good sewers.

Ben, you found one? A cluster?

Yeah, this is a subdivision that was approved in 05. It's off of Greens Ferry, south of the river. And it's called Bella Ridge. There, again, there's a range of different lot sizes here, but they have this larger conservation tract at the end of it. I think this one was more for topography reasons as to why that was considered to be conserved. So anyways, I'm not sure at the time whether or not they were able to get bonus density here, but that is one that came to mind. So I can certainly forward some information on that one if you're interested. But I think what it said on the plat, oops, is that they have individual septics, but then they're served by a public water system, Green Prairie Water.

It's an independent taxing district, the Greens Prairie Water. And they have allowed, right? Sorry. The Greens Prairie then has to allow them to come into their taxing district. So North Kootenai Water right now is not granting any.

yeah they would do it at the time of platting so we would make sure that they have the will the ability to serve the subdivision before it's approved otherwise we're not going to approve it um but yeah i mean greensbury has problems now and they don't really allow for any more connections yeah most of them don't yeah sorry so when they do those conservation areas once they do that that's tied up they can't do anything with that property other than Yeah, so yeah, so this one is it says here this lot is specifically encumbered by the grant of development rights and conservation easement So I don't know what's in the easement just by looking at the plot and you know the actual document to see But I think it's I'm not sure I'm just concerned with the intent of 20 years 20 years down the road somebody come in try to buy that piece and chop it up pretty pretty solid deal yeah and that would be part of our standards because if they're getting benefit from having the conservation design because there are lots that are less than five acres out here then we would make it a requirement that they can't further subdivide um without maybe potentially potentially looking at the zone change or something but you mentioned that that was uh possibly

topography that, so it's not even usable building space?

It's probably so steep. Like, hey, let's put the houses down here and get the density.

So is that really even a conservation area at that point? Because if it's not even...

Yeah, exactly. Hiking trail.

Maybe, maybe not. You know, it seems a little bit almost to the point of, yeah, it's a serial subdivision.

And if it's not accessible, is it actually open space or, you know, to be even considered within that discussion about recreation?

Our discussion has a perfect example where I used to live on the Wasatch Front in Utah. There, the towns just kept growing. There's three or four counties there, and of course Salt Lake's half a million people with Sandy and all that. But the mountains go up on the east side of those communities to over 10,000 feet. And the last subdivision I was in there was city lots, I mean pretty good sized ones. and gobbled up. The county didn't have any say in any of that anymore. It was gone. And my house was at 5,300 feet above sea level because I had a 10,000 foot mountain right behind the house.

Not on that. It's National Forest System land.

But that's the only thing that stopped them. And then they built clear off of the Great Salt Lake and they couldn't go any further that way either because it would flood them every once in a while. CITY CLEAR TO PROVO IS ALL ONE CITY NOW.

IT'S AN HOUR AND A HALF WE DRIVE IT NOT TOO LONG AGO. IT DOESN'T STOP. IT'S AN HOUR AND A HALF OF 80 MILES AN HOUR.

BUT YOU DON'T SEE ANY DIRTY CARS BECAUSE IT'S ALL PAINTMENT. WHEN I WAS DOWN THERE IN OCTOBER, I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT. THERE WASN'T A DIRTY CAR ANYWHERE.

THERE WAS NO DIRT.

I KNOW. IT'S ALL PAINTMENT. THE GUY WHO WAS DRIVING WITH IT WAS LIKE, THERE ARE NO DIRTY CARS HERE. LOOK AT IT.

Well, I lived there twice. I was stationed there twice, one for 10 years and one for three years. It's all in one city for, like you say, what, almost 100 miles. I think you're darn close to 60 miles.

Oh, no, yeah, well over.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think, you know, if we're looking at trying to preserve open space and preserve working lands, then incorporating a mix of higher lot sizes, minimum lot sizes, and also making some better specifications for what conservation design looks like. This is what a conservation lot needs to include. You have to have a range of different, perhaps, slopes or whatever. It can't be all in excess of 35% or whatever that is really undevelopable anyways, or perhaps maybe not all that worth considering.

There should be a right-of-way, a trail easement out there for people, and maybe some kind of amenities for the people to use.

Yeah, I mean, it's going to be harder, I guess, if you're going to open that up for public use, for people to be interested in that, because, again, I think what we're hearing is that, you know, I want my kind of slice of heaven, and so if I'm going to get a two-acre lot out here, which is great, but I want to have the ability to have a 70-acre open space area that I can recreate and hike on, ride horses, or whatever it is. I still want to have me and my community, and I don't necessarily want the general public there.

Well, even if it's open only to the subdivision. Yeah. The people in subdivision should have the right to go there, even if the rest of the public doesn't. They can call it.

They're not parks.

I don't know what you call them there, but they're like, well, maybe they're kind of like parks, but where the county owns the land and has large open areas for people who want to, like four-wheel, you can get it out here, you can get high stores back right over here. You know, if the county had a way to set aside land, you could have more open land for public use.

When we do that, we just create more employees and taxpayers to take care of it. That's right. You're going to increase the tax base.

I mean, yeah. The other thing I wanted to point out, I mean, But look at the answer to number five. The top priority is preserving working lands, agriculture, timber, ranch lands. Realistically, you're not gonna do that if you continue to allow five and 10 acre parcels. I know down my way, I'm hanging on. A lot of the farmers are just bailing. The incentive to sell is so great. And then once the, There's a sale even of a 20-acre parcel, a 30-acre parcel. You can't farm 20-acre parcels. I hang around my place and I get permission by my neighbors, but I'm going to stop because it's just too complicated. And so if you're really going to have farm and ranch lands, you've got to find a way to incentivize folks to keep their 70, 80, 100-acre parcel.

to retain agricultural activities in Kootenai County, to be honest with you, other than just having a horse or two or something like that. But actually farming and irrigating to grow anything, you might have a truck garden or something like that, you know, a couple acres.

Well, Latak County, I don't know the extent of it, you may know, but Latak County has some pretty strict rules that's maintaining farmland outside the city limits.

personal property sold fast over that like you say the farmers want to sell the land i mean yeah right i think down in latah they have real restrictions that don't allow that and and don't allow these even five ten acre parcels in certain areas but what he's talking about now this is exactly what the tribe's trying to do now they're trying to set their limits so they can't sell them all off and chop it all up yeah

That's a real tension here. People want farmland. You've got to find a way to incentivize people to farmland. Otherwise, you're just not going to have it.

So this was a good discussion about lot sizes, and it's going to be very important in the future. I'm good. I appreciate the discussion, guys. But I don't know. And property rights.

That's also going to be very important. Craig and I have to excuse ourselves. We have another meeting.

All right. Well, did we, anything else on the comp plan or do we want to go ahead and go into service mining? Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen. Does anybody have a cough drop?

So are we moving on to service mining?

Is that where I'm going with that? Sure. All right.

All right. Ben, did you want to?

Yeah. Well, this is kind of revisiting the surface mining code amendments. It's just, again, a proposal the staff has been working on, taking into consideration what we've heard in our last public hearing on May. And with the different mine operators, as some of the different agencies. So I'm not sure if you guys have had the opportunity to read and ask questions or have questions prepared. Really, it has meant more of an introduction of it to you. And I know that what we have talked about doing is eventually coming back in another workshop, but including mine operators To be part of that this again was meant to be more like here's what we've got so far so that you guys have an opportunity to kind of maybe Read it through and formulate some of your thoughts before we have the the mine operators present but So I guess that's just kind of what staff has been looking at at this point. I think one of the main The main One of the main concerns or issues that was brought up and that has been reviewed by our legal counsel is when or to what mines these standards can apply to, whether they can be retroactively applied to existing mines or if they need to be applied to new mines going forward. And the conclusion of that is that the standards need to apply to new mines moving forward rather than retroactively applying to existing mines. And so I know that that's not what the Aquifer Protection District is wanting to hear. They were wanting it to apply to existing mines because there are a lot of existing mines over the Rathbun Prairie Aquifer. And based on our legal counsel's advice is that those are gonna be kind of a non-conforming situation And we really don't have the ability to apply standards upon them.

But you're going to do a takings problem, right? Yeah. You could maybe do it, but you have to pay for it.

Yeah. I think Pat's probably, and he's not available for us, but I think if he were here, he would probably agree and say we're losing battle if that's something that we're looking at.

What about when their permit is up and to get it renewed? with renewed permit then apply?

Yeah, so there's two different things that we're talking about here. There are those that are outright zoned mining. And I can pull up the zoning map just so that you kind of have an idea of what we're talking about. But so we have a difference in properties that are zoned mining and those that are approved through a conditional use permit for restricted surface mining. And those, so we're talking about two different things. Restricted surface mines are conditional use permit. They're good for five year periods. For those situations, yes. When they need to renew, assuming that they want to continue their mining operations, there is a renewal process. The standards can apply for the renewal of a new permit. So those are the only circumstances in which an existing mine may be subject to those new standards when they have to apply for a new permit. But for those that are zoned mining already... That's a buy-right. It's a buy-right use, and therefore those standards wouldn't be able to be applied. So these purple zones, if you can kind of see it, these are mining zones. So if I zoom in kind of in those areas, you'll see that's kind of one of those.

Help me on that, though. When you rezone, it's not a taking, right?

Yeah. You know, that's more of a, so a conditional use permit is an outside of land use approval. Right. So I don't know how, if I could really address the point clearly. And so I don't, I think there is a difference there given that it's in some ways rezoning by allowing a specific use, but I don't know if it fully is. Yeah.

It's a question for Pat. But the takings role generally doesn't apply to zoning, that you can rezone it? No.

I've been thinking about this. Of course, I'm an old man, I'm not going to be around much longer, but I'd love to go after one of these outfits under CIRCLA if they contaminate the aquifer. I'd just love to nail their ass to the wall, boy. Because I've used CIRCLA to knock people out like Exxon Mobil and And some of the largest corporations in the world have got hundreds of millions of dollars in settlement claims against them. want this to happen to these folks I want them to operate we need their material we need to build roads and I'm an engineer but my god just it's like it's like playing a Russian roulette with two bullets in the gun you know it really is it doesn't make a whole lot of sense now I'm glad that if they're going to reapply that it would apply but I see you've only got 20 feet in here too and yeah you know we talked at length about in case they had a spill well these guys aren't they And then that puts a whole completely different scenario of testing and requirements into effect. It has to be chlorinated.

establish that the mine that you see from the freeway in Spokane, they've penetrated. They're down into the aquifer.

And they're still operating. But nobody's gone after them. Well, they're also in Spokane. Well, do you think that if they had, as a result of them having current operations into the aquifer, and they were contaminating the water, don't you think that they

somebody would have done something well i don't know that they're contaminating the water what i'm saying is is that it changes the the whole approach to managing the drinking water system i would suspect that if somebody really raised heck with epa region 10 that every single drinking water well downstream from the central premix pit would now be required to chlorinate dollar water now the state of washington has it i mean they're pretty crazy with some of the regulations they may already be requiring every one of their drinking water systems in the state of Washington to chlorinate their water so that doesn't make any difference but in Idaho we don't we haven't done that we've said if you've got good clean raw water you don't have to chlorinate it but if you chlorinate the water you go from one test a month for a chlorinated system. That's the first requirement. You have to test the chlorine residual. That's what that test is for. So it's the idea that now, and in Idaho, we've got, I mean, the EQ and everything has been real responsible. We've worked up against the face of the federal government requirements and said we're gonna meet the minimum requirements so that we maintain primacy over the drinking water programs in Idaho. And in some states like California, Washington, and Oregon, they've added all kinds of requirements to their drinking water system requirements, way beyond what the federal government

did we get this 20 feet from it used to be 50 right it was 50. how did you get to 20. um kind of a hybrid of some of the different comments that we received if you'll recall one of the mining operators was represented by legal counsel and based on the information provided by the opera protection district the number of 50 feet didn't really have any good sound evidence as to why it was 50 feet. It just seemed like, you know, it seemed reasonable was probably the best explanation.

You know, I was there at that meeting and it seemed like they did have good scientific backing for this.

Yeah, I think what they were basing it on was some pretty large-scale spills. And I think the case for the mining operator saying, we're never going to have quantities of petroleum products in our pits.

And so it doesn't make- But again, we're not talking about spills necessarily.

the whole great big huge i know how they operate they don't have 50 000 gallons of something down in the bottom of the pit you know that would it's it's this other business of of having to accidentally chlorinate all the drinking water because you've got a groundwater source influenced by surface water so you're saying it's a spill they came from a spill standpoint versus an exposure standpoint Well, it's from looking at it from a spill standpoint versus looking at it from how the government will look at the fact that if you get so close to the aquifer, will it now be considered an aquifer influenced by surface water? And that's up to some government official someplace.

Well, is 20 feet enough for that?

Yeah, see, and I don't... They'd say that that's arbitrary and capricious.

But you're talking about two different things here. You're talking about the potential for a spill. I'm sympathetic to that, although I do remember the statements from the miners saying, we don't have, you know, we might have a leak in our tractor or something, and it's a minor thing, and, you know, we store most of our fuel up top anyway. You know, that kind of thing. That makes sense. They do. But in terms of not being arbitrary and capricious, you know, if there's some scientific data that would determine what's intrusion in the groundwater. That's a separate issue that you're bringing up. Yeah, that's a whole separate issue. There's got to be some data out there on what, given the type of ground. I mean, this is very porous ground. I remember one of our experts came in and testified, asked him how fast the spill issue, how fast the The reaction time was and everything, and I was stunned by it.

Very fast.

It was like, you've got to be right on it, otherwise it goes right into the aquifer.

Because of the geological nature of it. Yeah.

It was like, I don't know, like a foot every 10 seconds or something. It's like, holy heck.

The whole thing is a very hard thing to quantify from an engineering and scientific standpoint. area you're digging in out on the Rathrum Prairie, for instance, is different because of the Lake Missoula thing, you know, that washed all that stuff out there.

Coming back to those different, I mean, where they come together, it seems to me, is the spill is a one-time intrusion into the aquifer. The intrusion issue seems to me like a Chinese water torture issue, that it's over time, surface water and surface contaminants are continually going in, right? Um, so I, it'd be interesting to have data on, on what the issue is.

Groundwater influenced by surface water. They're not talking about a spill of a chemical. They're talking about coliform bacteria. They're talking about giardia and things of that nature, biological contaminations from a surface material.

Well, and then the question is, how many feet do you need because of this type of stuff? Because let's face it, surface water interfaces with groundwater, that's how it gets there. It has to percolate down.

I mean, I can give you an example. one bit of heavy metals in any of the water that was really close from the wells in Coeur d'Alene and Postwold. You would have thought that the contaminated water in the river and the lake would be getting in there, but it wasn't. And it wasn't all that far away. So I was very pleased, of course. So the contamination stays on the shorelines and all that. of the Coeur d'Alene River and Coeur d'Alene Lake, and it came out pretty darn good. I mean, so good that we're not gonna send out any kind of warnings to people for swimming and all that kind of stuff. So the ground does filter it, but how much? How much ground do you need?

Isn't that what the hydrologist is supposed to figure out? I mean, we're gonna require

Yeah, it's...

The testing would have to be done on each site.

Yeah.

On each new site. Each new site. Yeah.

So based on each site, each test he does, he should be in one probably determine the depth. You know, you've got to stay away. Yeah, if I recall, the logic of that was you have different soils and different... Exact location, so... And I don't have a problem with the hydraulic, you know, somebody who knows what they're doing, talking about it and stuff, and... COMING UP WITH THAT THING, I DO HAVE A PROBLEM WITH IT. I THINK 20 FEET IS NOT NEAR ENOUGH, MYSELF, BECAUSE I WANT TO KEEP THE AQUIFER CLEAR. BUT THE OTHER THING IS, WHY WOULD WE GIVE THE POSSIBLY GRANTED VARIANCE GO DEEPER? I DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT. we have that would let them go deeper than 20 feet from the aquifer.

I think the idea is that, again, it's a process to be considered by the Board of County Commissioners if they're demonstrating that there's some kind of hardship that they have as to why they can't observe this. Again, it's an option for people to consider. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be approved. But if it's there, that gives them the right to try. Sure, but any standard like this is subject to a variance request, regardless of whether we say it or not.

No, I think that was originally thought of because it was 50 feet. Yeah. And there was an option, well, maybe 50 feet in this particular situation is too much. Let's give them a little variance at 20 feet. I agree with you. It just doesn't sound like enough.

Where we got, sorry to chime in real quick, but where 20 feet came from, is consistent with Spokane County.

And they're the ones that have the problem.

And so, well, I mean, those pits were established before they have these standards here.

My problem with it is I'm just not hearing any scientific data to back up anything.

Right, exactly.

I'm super uncomfortable. Because I can guarantee you, because of the work I do, if there's a contamination, And someone comes to me and says, my property now is worth nothing because the aquifer is contaminated. I'm going to go out and hire an expert. I'm going to hire a hydrologist. And believe me, they are going to have opinions that this was improper or it was proper or whatever. But they're going to have opinions. They're out there. We just need to engage someone that knows what they're doing.

We've tried, unfortunately, on numerous attempts to try and get some information from Spokane County. I can't even tell you how many calls we've put out to them, emails, and they never return. How do they get to that number? Where did you get to that number? That would be helpful for us to kind of build from.

Well, I don't think they want to let you know what their information says.

It may be outdated. It may not be applicable to this area. With two clicks of my mouse, I can go to a website or a platform I subscribe to And I can find you a hydrologist. I can find you a top-notch hydrologist. I hire only the best experts. I can find you one. The county just needs to engage somebody.

Yeah, the Aquifer Protection District has reached out to some hydrologists to get maybe some feedback on what seems to be more appropriate. So perhaps some scientific data from a hydrogeologist to say, this is why we think this particular number is reasonable.

Well, what I'm suggesting is, maybe I'm off base, but I think this is such an important critical issue that affects so many people. The county ought to pummel up the money, hire someone to go to specific sites and analyze them, because what you're dealing with is taking livelihoods away if you don't get the number right, or damaging people's property, or worse case scenario, causing cancer and other problems in people's bodies. I think it's worth the money to have a hydrologist or a hydrologist out there do a scientific study. I do it all the time in my work. I do this all the time.

The scientific study, what are you suggesting, I guess? What would the study be? Going to each individual site and testing their test wells?

I'm no hydrologist, but I suspect, just knowing how experts in the entire aquifer is, what's the geographic scope, okay? And then they're going to tell you what they think they need to do in terms of tests. And they have to run five or 10 tests in these various areas or whatever. And then they would come up with an opinion as to, you'll probably get some ancillary opinions too, but what is the appropriate distance for the mining? And prepare yourself. Because it could be they say no appropriate distance. They shouldn't be mining over this. I mean, you may hear that. Or they may say, no, it's totally appropriate. I mean, we shouldn't be ostriches with our heads in the sand and not want to know the truth. We should really get someone who's an expert at this.

We need to at least do a preliminary study.

What's that? We need to at least do a preliminary study. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And on that, each site's going to be different.

Well, that's an issue you would give to the expert of, okay, you know, our, so I'm just going to make it up. So you have this geographical area. expert comes in and says, OK, it's going to cost $20,000 for me to do this project. I'm going to go take these samples from all these different areas to understand what the geology is. Because you have certain geological areas. You can map it. I mean, there's maps of this stuff. What's gravel? What's clay? All that. And then they're going to give you opinions. And the opinion may be, five feet is fine here. no feet is fine over here, 20 feet is okay over there, whatever it is, you're going to be going into it with your eyes open and probably with a much better statue than just shooting in the dark. I really do think this is a really important issue.

With a sensitive resource aquifer designation, is there anything in that that talks about the potential for excavating whether you like it or not, like we did the St. Joe 50 years ago. But anyway, the point is, you know, I don't know how they, when they finally said it was a sensitive resource aquifer, some official at EPA just said, well, that's what it's going to be, you know, or whether they actually did some kind of an analysis or something. I don't know.

Yeah, another uncomfort level I have with this is we're trying to make decisions based upon the their mind telling us, you don't have to worry about this, you don't have to worry about that. We have the aquifer folks, which God love them, I'm glad they're there protecting the aquifer, but they've got a bias. I mean, I feel like we're in a position of a judge in a complex case that has major ramifications, and what the judge does is they go hire their own expert. They get a neutral. And I think that's what the county ought to do here. I really do. The more I look at this aquifer thing, it keeps raising its head. And not only with this issue, But I think it would be wise to engage a top-notch hydrologist or company that does these kinds of studies. And for the county, maybe to apply it here, but there may be other areas where it's going to apply because it's such an important issue. And on both sides, I'm sympathetic to the guys who want to mine. They want to make a living. And if we're restricting them and hurting them economically for no reason because of an arbitrary rule, I think that's wrong. And the reverse is wrong, too.

I just feel like we're sharing the diet again and again. is less than somebody just arbitrary saying this is an aquifer now influenced by surface water. That's a political or a good feeling declaration. It won't probably have anything much to do with any science at all. It would just be some official someplace in probably a democratic administration just making that declaration.

Yeah, I certainly sympathize with your point. And I think that's kind of where we came with a hybrid of saying, look, is there a baseline that we can have? And 20 feet seemed to be consistent with what Spokane County has, trying to get some more information from them. And then also hearing from this body, too, at the hearing, saying, yeah, it shouldn't be. in any case drop below 20 feet is what I recall hearing.

Yeah, one did say that.

And so that's kind of where it started, but with the allowance of people doing some kind of hydrogeological analysis themselves. So making an on-site, site-specific analysis saying, here's a geologist, I get it, there may be some bias there, given that the mine operator is making, that's essentially their contractor or employee, So there may be some bias there, but to get some kind of data on that site specifically saying this is why we think we can go to this depth and whether or not this needs to be approved or we have a third party review that to confirm.

If we have to have a band-aid or something, okay. But again, I'm going to stand by my ground on this one. I do believe this is such an important issue to soccer for. That if it hasn't been done yet, and apparently it hasn't, we should have someone who's an expert in this, who's a neutral, working for the county to figure this out for the citizens. Because I just see a whole host of problems. Not only are you going to have... Let's say the rule is not protective enough of the aquifer. And there's some big, bad company that goes out there and follows the rule, but pollutes the aquifer. They're not going to be civilly liable. You know, they get sued. They're going to hold this up that the county created and say, look, I was within the bounds of the law. I'm okay. You can't nail me for that.

Well, they still have, I mean, there are other regulations, though, that apply to just these, like, we've got federal requirements, state requirements that they're still liable to.

Maybe, maybe not. It depends. But, well, to put it, to state it in sort of a pointed way, I feel like it's, It's negligent statutory construction because we really don't have scientific basis for what we're doing. Yes, Spokane had it, but I think it would be good for the county to hire a neutral to analyze the aquifer issue, and it's going to keep coming up in different ways, and it would be good to have an expert to go to. What would it take to actually implement that idea?

Well, I know that, like I said, the Aquifer Protection District is working on the idea of hiring a consultant to do some analysis. What exactly that includes, I'm not exactly sure. But they are exploring that idea.

Why can't we get together with them and go together and hire a hydrologist?

You know, somebody get... Yeah, the Aquifer Protection District has a budget. They have discussed, again, putting aside some money. I think they got an estimate from a hydrogeologist. And so I think they're strongly considering getting some data from them.

Well, it's a fiscal issue, Ben. Maybe the county and them and the interested parties that are, you know, and maybe everybody should pungle up some money and put it in the kitty and get someone who knows what they're doing. I mean, not get a neutral party that way, but... What I'm feeling is like there's resistance because of the fiscal problem. Maybe time is an issue too, but where are you going to get the money to hire this person?

I just think it's too important. Do you know whether or not the county could enter into an agreement with those folks under the... Idaho has a statute where various agencies in the state can get together and do things together. There's an actual statute like that. And I did that with the Basin Commission. I'd get together with Fish and Game, or I'd get together with DEQ or something, and we'd put our funds together and do some things. But I don't know whether a county in this other organization could do it under state regulation. I don't know. Because you'd have to check into that, see if there could be some kind of a cooperative agreement that follows those state of Idaho regulations and stuff, if you wanted to try to make the MOU or some kind of a memorandum of agreement

Well, the county must have projects similar to this where they go out and have to fund them. I mean, how do you get the funds?

Do you go to the... Yeah, the funds are provided. The Aquifer Protection District is an advisory board of the county. And so the county commissioners have...

So they're funded by the county, right? Is that what you're saying? I'm sorry. Yeah.

Okay. So we're already funding them, is what you're saying? Yes. And so maybe we could find other sources of funding. I mean... Maybe they're not biased, but I kind of get the feeling sometimes maybe they're biased. I don't know. What do you think?

Everybody's biased. We have ethics training sessions for all of our engineers every year to keep them from being biased.

Everybody has a bias, right?

I'll just say what I feel. I appreciate what they're saying. I really do value their input. But I feel sometimes maybe they're overly focused. Maybe, I don't know, that they could be biased. Maybe I'm wrong. But again, I think you need the most neutral expert you can get to do an analysis.

Yeah. No, I agree with you. I don't think there's anything wrong with having more data and specific data to the question at hand. So I think it's a good idea. I think we should do that. I think the Optimal Protection District is considering that. How close are they to doing that? You know, I missed the last meeting that we had, which was last week. So I'm thinking, again, they have the estimate. I think they're just kind of weighing out whether or not they're going to pull the trigger and make the decision to appropriate those. Yeah, I can reach out to the aquifer protection district and say, hey, you know, our planning commission is interested in this data. They would encourage you to do something.

Just push the switch. We're not trying to take anything away from the mining companies, but we also want to protect them, you know, let them do what they do to the best they can, but we've still got to protect the aquifers.

anything else i think the 20-foot thing is about the only thing that i had i had a real problem with it just actually it gives me the willies Yeah, your point about getting a variance even for that, yeah. I have some problems with that too. See, again, your expert's going to tell you.

Don't do that. Again, your expert may say 20 feet is, you know, you shouldn't have mining. I mean, we don't know the rest of these questions. That's what's troubling me. I mean, you're concerned if an expert told you that it's reasonable to have a variance up to 10 feet. in this situation, in these situations, you would be less concerned, right? I would be a little less.

It shows your bias, but that's okay. Well, my bias is all for the aquifer. I live over the aquifer. Sure, yeah, yeah.

20 feet's not very far away. Yeah, I mean, what you're really saying isn't a bias. It's a scientific concern that the impact of entry That weighs into the factor. You only have a 10% risk of getting cancer, but if you're that 10%, it's pretty catastrophic, right? So you're going to do your tests, you're going to check yourself out and all that. Same thing here. The potential damage is so high that you become less and less intolerant of risking it. And again, I think that's one of the factors an expert looks at, not just one or two

talk to somebody and we're talking about millions of dollars increase in operating costs for drinking water systems downstream from an aquifer that's now influenced by surface water.

Well, like I say, you've got to be prepared to hear what you don't want to hear. Maybe we can't have mining in this area. I don't know, but I think we should get the truth, the data, and maybe I don't want to get into dangerous territory here, but what's ironic in this day and age is we think we're data-driven, but political influence from whichever side your people are on tends to override the data. And I'm a believer that you've got to stick to the data. You've got to stick to the science and not be influenced by agendas or political pattern. You've just got to follow the data. And here we don't have it.

Right now there's nothing.

For the non-compliant ones, the already existing ones.

And they're not non-compliant. They're existing. They're existing.

And this would not affect them at all. So what would happen if they actually break that barrier? Because there's no requirements right now on the books, correct?

Correct.

So if they go all the way to the aquifer.

They're subject to state and federal requirements.

upstream then what I foresee is is maybe a declaration like I've talked about and then every single water system downstream consumer

So the ones that are by right, those are still treated differently, correct? Than what we're actually doing the surface mining or how, what is the difference?

Yeah, so the standards would apply to only new mines that are established in the mining zone as of whenever this code is implemented. Or restricted surface mines that are approved through a CEP. And that's either an establishment of a new mine or So there's a separation here with all of the mines that are currently in place that are under the mining zone. It doesn't matter what we're talking about changing. Those are still not going to be applied to those existing mines. So they're still going to only be held to the state and federal requirements. So I just wanted to make sure that was clear.

One question. So right now, before we get something done with this,

Sorry, say that again?

If somebody comes in and starts a new mine, gets approved to put it in a new mine, they're under the, as long as this is not in effect, they're under the old rules.

Whatever our standards are.

Can we do what Spokane's doing with their data center and put a moratorium on it until we get something in place?

I mean, it's always a possibility whether or not the board would entertain that idea. This is

Should we try to get as good of one approved as we can right now as a placeholder and then work on it some more? Or if we get the placeholder, will everybody just forget about it until we have a problem?

I think to Lee's point, you put something in now that we don't have any potential legal justification for putting ourselves into a high bill. If we do the moratorium, and usually it's only like a year, that could actually give us the time to do the study, get the data, and then come back later and then decide, okay, here's the information that we received, and then go from there.

so maybe i would i like the idea of the moratorium better than that gives us some time to get the facts that we need yeah one thing about a moratorium you've got two types that it would affect it'd be the brand new one and the reauthorization we'd have to kind of consider that because if someone And then you put a moratorium on them getting a new permit, well, then their business goes out of business. You see what I'm saying? We'd have to kind of deal with that, too, a little bit, I think. Moratorium on a brand new one, no problem.

Well, and hopefully we'll move quickly on this, because this is so important.

Well, the moratorium to that point then is on the new stuff, and you'd have to let us know if this is viable or not, but somebody going through the renewal process, they could hire their own hydrologist, having a hard time do their own study and have that be able to come back and then they could either get that permit through that process. So then to that point, then they're not out of business until our study's done. They can still go, but it's just like an extra step, which was already in here anyway. But we would just be putting that on anyone existing who needs a renewal. Would that work, Ben?

Well, it sounds to me like we're kind of backed into a corner where we have to pass something until we get expert data. We don't have to. Well, have to in the sense that if we don't pass anything, there's going to be no regulation. They can lay as deep as they want.

And this is only for new mines that we're talking about. No, we don't.

But when you say new mines, do you mean the renewal process too? Yes, I do. The renewal process. So that's what I'm saying. I think we're back in the corner because to the point over here that if you don't allow them to renew, they go out of business, right?

Yeah, I think, you know, if we're looking at to establish, there's two different things, right? A conditional use permit for a restricted surface mine and then the mining zone. To establish a new mine in the mining zone, you need to have a mining zone. And so right now, the mining zone is what it is unless they go through the application process to establish a mining zone. Now that's going to take quite a bit of time, because I mean, we're gonna be aware of the application and so on. There isn't a lot of interest, I would say, for mining zone application, rezone applications. So we don't see a lot of those. We see more applications for conditional use permits for restricted surface mines, because they're a little bit easier, they're a little bit more obscure in different parts of the county, and they're not necessarily looking for a mining zone particularly, but just doing some kind of smaller mining operation. But those are typically outside of the aquifer boundaries. And so I don't know the numbers, but I don't know how many conditional use permits we have over the aquifer. It's probably very few. So I think we're talking about a low probability of either renewals of CUPs or establishing a new zone change.

Would you be comfortable if we put a moratorium on for whatever, you know, How long is it going to take the aquifer people to get a hydrologist on board? And are they going to do it? You say they're considering it.

I don't know. They won't be able to come to the current data they can analyze, you know, how much data we already have, you know, on stuff.

We can recommend a moratorium, but it's going to be up to the commissioners in the long run, correct? Yes. I think we ought to go with a moratorium for a year and at least get started. Like you said, there's not a whole bunch of people. It only takes one.

Well, what you do is perfect. do is say you know move to the or have a if we can do it a moratorium for a year or until a hydrologist renders opinions and answers these questions for us and maybe that put a little pressure on whoever's got to make that decision i mean i'm really uncomfortable deciding what we're thinking about yeah i mean this is a huge issue yeah that's what it is on the data centers right for a year

It wasn't that one until we could get more data and move forward on that one. So it's not uncommon to do something like that.

Do what now?

The moratoriums are not uncommon. We had one on the data center, and then that came before us. And obviously, we have another thing to go over that, too.

Well, with Ben saying it, it's probably not going to affect the miners if we do a year moratorium, right? You're saying it's probably not going to be a big deal?

Well, yeah. I mean, mining zone people, they're This would only affect new conditional use permits or renewals of existing conditional use permits. And so there are not many of those over the aquifer.

See, when I weigh your words there, not many of those against, how many people do we have in the aquifer? You know, I don't know, thousands or so? I don't know. How many? You know, it really weighs on that.

Hundreds of thousands.

Yeah, that's where I like the idea, because you really got to protect them. I mean, we're kind of between rock and hard spot. I don't want to hurt the miners, but we need data. We need information. At least I feel strongly about that.

I agree. So at this point, do you think it's even worth including the mining operators in this discussion and having a workshop with the Planning Commission, or do you feel like we should get more data first We know where they're coming from they were pretty clear The hearing

You know, I agree with a lot of this. I appreciate you say what a lot of the information that they came forward I remember I think it was the attorney that said well the you know This is a natural resource too, and it needs to be protected which on a certain level. That's correct But you know how much concrete can you ingest and live kind of good things like we have to have water Right if we don't have the water Yeah, taxes are an issue in the sense that if we're mitigating this so much that it increases our cost in concrete and development and infrastructure. I think if you were to weigh it against the people, would they want to have water or they're going to, you know, which one? Well, they're going to go with the water. The water is to me a higher priority than the concrete or the sand or whatever it is in there. Yes. it does it has a value we need to incorporate that into our decision making but you know if it we still have the water but you'll have to pay a horrendous cost to treat it that's so you have it both ways then you're either going to have increase in taxes for infrastructure or cost and building and things like that or you're going to have it if they just have no standards you're going to pay it out the nose in water treatment so how do we balance you know so what do we need to do do we need to make a motion to for a moratorium or what do we need to do

Well, let me, I guess, at this point, let's just put a pause on that part of it. I'll follow up and see what the right avenues would be if that is something that we wanted to move forward on. And then we could come back in our next workshop to further discuss that. I'll work communicating with the Aqua Protection District to see... Yeah, that's important.

Yeah, and I mean, how do we put... Yeah, we really need to get that done and I don't want them sitting there. Oh great a moratorium That's great. Have a moratorium and then they sit back and they don't get somebody on board We don't have to look with any money. Yeah You know, I think my question is how we put pressure on them to Get this done for the time to get an expert on board to advise us.

Yeah Well, I mean just gonna start with the conversation. So let me reach out to them and Say the Planning Commission is interested in this. What's it gonna take to do it? And then we'll go from there and I can follow up with you guys afterwards. And when you come back to us, could you come up with a draft language for moratorium? Um, we can, we'll try something like that. Yeah. Just so we're moving at least in that direction. We'll know when you're talking to them.

Well, and on some level, even moving forward, we come back and we get this data in here was the responsibility that they would have to hire their own. And if this gets taken care of, then actually they would not. Because here's the standard set forth by this study. This is what you have to comply with. So it's actually somewhat helping them, mitigating their costs that individually they're not helping with.

They could come back and say each

Variance like you did in the in the material out there.

I mean, I mean That's the whole point to what Lee's saying is we get that and we get that variance information Because if we have a standard and it's based on the data To his point also of the bias they hire their own like oh, absolutely not We can actually you know, we want a variance because we can go through this because our study showed this that's why it's kind of like you're gonna have conflicting studies and

based upon the bias you know guarantee you have that when you have litigation right if we don't solve these problems and if we solve this problem you have a lot less litigation and that's why I think you get that expert and then I think we all should think about what questions do you ask the expert what I just I don't know a lot it's not only the feet you know it's like how many feet In what areas? Because again, there's different geological compositions. And there's a lot of other questions about the aquifer we're going to have along the way. But those are some of the threshold ones to pass something like this.

So it probably would make sense then, in the event the Aquifer Protection District has identified a person Maybe we include them in this format, too, so that you guys have the opportunity to prepare and ask some questions of that individual to get a sense as to what the study would look like, what data would come as a result, and whether that would be adequate for you guys.

If you say it would be appropriate, Ben, I would be happy to volunteer my time to identify experts. I'm sure they're doing the same thing, but the more you get, the better. Sure. Because I do that all the time, and I set up interviews with them. I do it on Zoom, and everybody can ask some questions.

Yeah, if you have some names that you would like to pass on, I could relay that.

Okay, I'll find some. I'll get some. I'll get two or three at least.

Yeah, and maybe back to your point of a draft moratorium, all run by staff, But likely, what I probably would want to do is either just mention this to the board before we even prepare a draft of moratorium. Say, this is something that you're even interested in entertaining. If the board's not interested in entertaining it, then I don't know if they're going to put much money on it. But yeah.

So you'll talk to the BOCC to even see if that's and then assuming it goes, because if it's no, it's no, then we know we're back to this, and we'll go from there. If it's yes, then the potential is having a workshop with PUD and getting multiple hydrologists, or at least have a pool to choose from.

I've been managing that drinking water system for 20 years and I know what the ramifications of all this can really be. And you live on the island. I've been managing that drinking water system for 20 years and I know what'll happen if we screw that thing up.

Well, yeah, it's approaching 4 o'clock.

data center proposals on legion as well um maybe we could table that and come back to it i'll leave that up to your guys decision whatever i'm good does that work for everybody yeah table the data center next time and so i um i pretty much heard from everybody except for commissioner voles for august and september uh mr james you're only available for one date is that correct in august The CSN, it means you think you're only available on... The 3rd. Yes, but you're not available on the 3rd.

Well, I have someone that has more authority over me than anybody else.

if you can go check with that and then i'll work with staff um pretty much we're looking at at least one if not two are gone on all the dates so we'll just have to pick whatever whatever i think has the most people and go from there does that work all right i think i'm pretty good yeah if you need to know the dates just let me know and i'll give them back to you it's pretty it's not every Thursday, there's only three of them in each month.

Give me September's again.

September's is 3rd, 17th, and 24th. And August 13th is pretty much out because we already have multiple people who can't do that anyway.

So what was the other date in August?

20th or 27th. But we pretty much have. And you're out on those dates. So we're looking at, at this point, September 3rd.

September 3rd.

Yeah, not having anything in August. At this point, unless there's something that comes up that we need to deal with.

So September 3rd?

Well, we're finding it. We're going to verify between these two, which ones they are or not. So unless there's anything... that comes up from staff i didn't catch whether or not the 10th was an option just to let you know both director but harry and i will be out of the office at that date so yeah i'm not available either okay that's what yeah okay um all right so then with any announcements anything else then without objection uh we will adjourn at 348. thanks