City Hall takes in updates on major projects

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

The Sandpoint City Council heard a number of updates on ongoing, big-ticket projects at its regular March 19 meeting, queuing up a busy season going into April and beyond.

Among the items discussed by councilors, the mayor and staff included the reconstruction of the downtown parking lot, the new parking management plan, the status of the wastewater treatment plant, the City Beach lifeguard program, state legislation related to concealed carry firearms that would affect the Festival at Sandpoint and potential plans for expanding the Bonner County Historical Society museum at Lakeview Park.

Talk related to parking featured throughout the meeting, with Councilor Kyle Schreiber reporting that the Urban Forestry Commission had recommended that a number of trees be preserved at the city-owned parking lot between Oak and Church streets.

“You might remember there were six spots for trees on the design that staff presented to council, and balancing the desire to preserve trees and also move forward with the project,” he said, later adding, “The recommendation is to preserve the two existing trees at the north end of each parking row, plus the grove of aspen or grove of cedar at the south end of the eastern row, as well as a maple tree midway in that row.”

Photo by Ben Olson.

Meanwhile, new trees would be added to the south end and middle section of the western row of parking stalls.

The time is fast approaching for work to commence on reconstructing the lot, as Mayor Jeremy Grimm noted that the project is currently out to bid and will be advertised for two weeks. Construction is scheduled to begin in April with completion in the first week of May.

Grimm said businesses in the area had been notified of the coming disruption to parking and potential traffic impacts, while City Hall has worked with the Police Department to temporarily lift enforcement for three- and four-hour on-street parking in several areas downtown.

“We’ll be making on-street parking available to employees and users who have been displaced by the construction activity,” Grimm said. “We will basically make on-street parking in a couple zones free so that people can still park downtown during this construction, but there obviously will be some inconvenience for those weeks.”

Planning and Community Development Director Jason Welker later offered an update on the city’s parking survey, which launched March 7 and will run through the rest of the month. As of March 19, Welker reported that more than 1,000 responses had come in, though only about 40% were from city residents. 

In one takeaway from the responses so far, Welker said more than 200 mentioned the need for a downtown parking garage.

“And just to remind you, one of the reasons for considering paid parking is that we need to demonstrate that there’s a revenue source to fund ongoing maintenance and eventual construction of a parking garage,” he said. “I don’t know if those folks also think a parking garage would be free, but certainly you need a funding source to build a parking garage.”

Finally, Welker provided the latest update on the parking management plan, which now envisions city resident passholders getting six hours of parking at City Beach. The initial plan called for two hours, and was later amended to four hours.

“That’s really the No. 1 thing we’ve learned through this engagement, is people are concerned and anxious about how city residents might be excluded from their public waterfront,” he said. “[M]ost people say six hours is a day at the beach. So we’re now proposing that a city resident parking pass just includes all the time city residents would need for a day at the beach.”

Other changes to the current draft plan include eliminating the four-hour street parking limit “to better provide downtown employees with places to park that doesn’t require them to leave their place of employment every three hours to avoid getting a ticket,” Welker said. 

“That would free up about 186 parking spaces downtown, increasing the availability of all-day street parking by 65% over what is currently available in downtown Sandpoint,” he added.

Wastewater treatment plant

Near the beginning of the meeting, Grimm noted that a representative from Gov. Brad Little’s office was in attendance, and that officials with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality had been in town to perform a tour and audit of the city’s wastewater treatment plant following two incidents of non-compliance over the past month.

Specifically, DEQ visited the site after a pump failure at the plant on Feb. 24 led to a period of overflow, followed by a separate release of E.coli into the river above allowable limits as the result of heavy rain on snow.

“We’ve made clear that the wastewater treatment plant is a growing and imminent concern for the city,” Grimm said.

Public Works Director Holly Ellis later gave a fuller report on the DEQ audit, telling the council that she and WWTP Supervisor Deven Hull met with the state agency earlier on March 19. The cause of the pump failure appears to have been due to a sensor fault that affected the control system, causing the unexpected shutdown of the pumps.

“[A]n ‘upset’ is the DEQ official language, so there’s more to come once we finalize our investigation and document our corrective steps,” Ellis said. “We’ll have a formal response back to DEQ on our fixes and of course the public and notifying them on all the ins and outs of what happened.”

City Hall announced March 24 that the malfunction led to between 300 and 500 gallons of “partially treated effluent” flowing for a brief period into the plant’s parking lot and into the chlorine contact chamber. The overflow incident occurred between about 6:26 a.m. and 7:05 a.m.

“This has never happened in my 17 years of operating the plant,” Hull stated in a news release. “Our team acted fast, and we’re taking every step to prevent it from happening again.”

At the same time, the city is moving along on schedule with its preliminary engineering report for the planned wastewater treatment plant replacement project, with a draft plan expected in April. In addition, the city is preparing to kick off its environmental permitting process for the plant, as well as taking steps toward putting a bond measure on the November ballot to secure local funding.

The city sent a letter of intent to the DEQ’s State Revolving Loan Fund in January seeking as much as $130 million in state support for the multi-year project.

However, as city officials have been told in the past by consultants, the competition for those dollars is fierce. Ellis reported to the council that DEQ ranks Sandpoint’s application 60th on its list for permit review, which is “pretty low,” adding that City Hall plans to work with DEQ to establish what the permitting requirements will be in order to raise the project’s standing with the agency.

“We might be able to push that to the top so we have less unknowns when the project does get here and we’re constructing,” Ellis said. 

Lifeguards, House Bill 376 and museum expansion

While the city has been working for more than a year to staff City Beach with summertime lifeguards, Welker reported that those efforts have yet to produce results. City Hall raised the hourly wage from $14 to $16 and has been advertising the positions in local papers, but, “as of this afternoon [March 19], I don’t think we’ve actually received any applicants.”

Councilor Pam Duquette asked whether lifeguard pay could be increased even further, noting that her granddaughter is making $18.50 an hour at Taco Bell.

“Something’s wrong. I mean, the lifeguards have responsibility,” she said.

Grimm said that there has been discussion about incrementally increasing that wage scale to find a level that might trigger more applicants.

During Central Services Director Cheryl Hughes’ presentation, Grimm asked whether the city had a status update on H.B. 376, which would guarantee the right to carry concealed firearms on property “that is normally and habitually open to the public,” regardless of whether it is being leased by a private individual, organization or other group.

If approved, the bill would reverse previous court rulings that held private entities can determine their own policies — including prohibiting weapons — on leased public property. The issue was especially important to the Festival at Sandpoint, whose no-weapons policy was challenged in 2019, leading to a yearslong legal battle that ultimately went to the Idaho Supreme Court.

Festival organizers have repeated that if weapons are allowed at publicly owned War Memorial Field during the two weeks that the event leases the property from the city for its summer concert series, it will struggle to secure insurance and artists will refuse to sign performance contracts.

“I just want to emphasize that impacts to the Festival could severely impact our revenue,” Grimm said. “The Festival provides a significant amount of revenue for the operation and maintenance of that facility [War Memorial Field], and any potential impacts to their operation may require us to have to adjust our planning for the year.”

H.B. 376 passed the House on March 13, with Rep. Mark Sauter, R-Sandpoint, as one of only two Republicans in opposition. As of press time, the legislation had been referred to the Senate State Affairs Committee.

Finally, Councilor Joel Aispuro reported that the monthly Parks and Recreation Commission meeting featured a proposal by the Bonner County Historical Society to expand its Lakeview Park museum to accommodate more storage and community space.

“They asked that the commission make a motion recommending to council that they be given permission to proceed with the more detailed development concept including stakeholder meetings,” he said. “The proposed museum expansion plan will be added to the April agenda.”