Here’s what else went down at the Nov. 19 council meeting

While the NDO issue dominated, plenty else happened — or will happen soon — at City Hall

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

The agenda for the emotionally charged, marathon Nov. 19 meeting of the Sandpoint City Council underwent some rearranging prior to taking testimony and deliberation on the item that drew an overflow crowd to the chambers — the amendment of Sandpoint’s non-discrimination ordinance.

An estimated 80 people spoke during three hours of public comment — with many more filling the seats inside, as well as reaching capacity in the City Hall waiting areas and spilling into the parking lot. More than 130 people also attended the meeting via Zoom.

Ultimately, the council voted 4-3 in a series of tie votes broken by Mayor Jeremy Grimm to amend the longstanding ordinance to remove local definitions of protected classes — including reference in City Code to gender expression and identity as, “A gender related identity, appearance, expression or behavior of an individual regardless of a person’s assigned sex at birth.”

The move came following allegations that a transgender woman used the locker room at the Litehouse YMCA, though no policies or crimes were committed and the “incident” was first reported in a Facebook post that gained widespread local traction.

In addition, the new ordinance eliminates the Human Relations Review Board and local complaint process, incorporates federal and Idaho civil rights law “directly by reference” and clarifies that “individuals retain full rights to pursue complaints through state and federal agencies and the courts.”

While that agenda item dominated the night, the council was also scheduled to take up several other matters, including: 

• A decision on the final plat of the University Park subdivision Phase 3;

• Whether to establish an Idaho Community Development Block Grant redevelopment area for Phase 3b of the long-running downtown revitalization project;

• A proposed resolution on a contract agreement with Big Sky ID Corporation for work on the Bridge Street sidewalk and retaining wall construction project; 

• A request to award a professional services agreement for Phase 3b of downtown revitalization;

• An update on Cedar Street reconstruction from Lincoln Avenue to Division Avenue;

• Proposed amendments to the city’s ordinance regulating open containers on public property.

In addition, Council President Deb Ruehle moved at the top of the meeting to add a discussion of the city administrator position to the agenda, — an item that she said had been proposed on Nov. 17, but which was not included.

“I do not feel it’s an emergency, but I do feel like it is an item that needs to be put out into the public,” Ruehle said.

Councilors Joel Aispuro, Justin Dick, Pam Duquette and Kyle Schreiber voted in favor of adding the item to the agenda following the action taken on the non-discrimination ordinance, while Councilor Rick Howarth voted “no.”

Before that, Schreiber made a motion to remove the item on the University Park final plat from the consent calendar, saying, “The mayor has personally profited from the University Park land development and therefore it’s inappropriate for him to sit at the dais and ask us to approve it — especially as a batch approval with mundane items like meeting minutes and payables.”

Publicly available documents show that Grimm worked with developers of University Park — or University Place, as it has been called in the past — as a consultant through his private firm Whiskey Rock Planning + Consulting. 

That item will now be placed on the regular business agenda for the Wednesday, Dec. 3 meeting.

Ruehle then moved to push the NDO action item to the end of the meeting, opening the way for a series of votes to table the remaining items to the Dec. 3 meeting — other than the establishment of an ICDBG redevelopment area and the item to approve expansion of the Bridge Street sidewalk, which is a longstanding project to bring the sidewalk from six feet to 12 feet in width, which would be accomplished by constructing a retaining wall that would align the walkway with the property line at the corner of Bridge Street and First Avenue.

The project would cost just shy of $400,000 — with most of the funding coming from Bridge Street LLC, which has been planning a condo development on the site for years — while the city would cover the remainder from its sidewalk fund.

Though long in the works, Schreiber took issue with the bid amount, which he said came in over budget, and called for reconsideration of the project. 

“We can get a wider sidewalk by moving the curb into the street without building a $300,000 retaining wall,” he said. “And it’s likely that we could have been able to include that contract with other downtown revitalization work.”

Councilors voted 5-1 to approve the sidewalk contract. 

Howarth was the lone dissenting “no” vote on each motion to table various items; but, with the rest of the agenda out of the way — and following consideration of the non-discrimination ordinance — councilors took up the discussion on the city administrator position.

“The reason I’m bringing this forward is in reflection of the email that this council received from the mayor on June 12, 2025, where he explains to us because of family responsibility and maintaining his business here in the community, that he would only be able to give us a very little amount of his time,” Ruehle said, adding that Idaho Code does not require the mayor to be in attendance for any set amount of time.

“So to make the argument simply to pay the mayor more — I don’t believe is a great argument,” she said. “So that’s why we are back to the city administrator question.”

At the June 25 council meeting, Ruehle read aloud the text of an email that Grimm sent to city officials June 12 stating that, upon taking office in 2024, he promised to “reconsider the city administrator role and restore executive authority to the department heads while serving as a hands-on mayor overseeing essential functions including our water and sewer utilities.” 

However, he added, “that commitment has come at a steep price. … I’ve reached a point where continuing at this level is no longer feasible. Supporting children through college means my family’s financial future is at risk unless I reclaim more time for Whiskey Rock Planning + Consulting. It’s increasingly hard to reconcile my dedication to the job as mayor with what I’m actually paid.”

He then informed the council that, as of July 1, he would work part-time “while still remaining accessible for key city initiatives.”

At the time, Grimm said he anticipated being available Wednesdays at City Hall and for emergencies or related special meetings.

The mayor’s position carries a salary of about $24,000 per year. Meanwhile, the city administrator job — which was held by Jennifer Stapleton from 2015 until her resignation in December 2023, about six months before the council voted to eliminate the role — had a budget of $335,099 in Fiscal Year 2024, with $220,951 in salaries and wages and $71,798 in benefits. 

By contrast, the mayor’s office in the FY’24 budget totaled $169,547, with $22,350 in salaries and $18,575 in benefits.

In June, Grimm argued that mayors in Idaho communities smaller than Sandpoint earn between $85,000 and $87,000 a year. 

“I’m not suggesting that you consider a 200% increase; however, I would ask you to consider a more realistic level of compensation for the position,” he wrote in the June 12 email.

Grimm, as well as Duquette and Schreiber — and, to a more ambivalent extent, Ruehle — all ran for their current terms in office in support for removing the city administrator position based on general dissatisfaction with the direction of city decisions and what had been described as centralized control by an unelected official, running roughshod over both council and mayor, as well as staff.

“I am well aware that the community was not happy previously, but I’d like to state that if this were to move forward, there would be significant guardrails,” Ruehle said on Nov. 19. “There would be lots of discussion in the checks and balances area, so that if we were to move in this direction it would not take a similar direction as it had before.”

Following her opening statements, Ruehle moved to table further discussion until the Dec. 3 meeting, to which councilors unanimously agreed.

The Sandpoint City Council meets every other Wednesday of the month at 5:30 p.m. in Council Chambers at City Hall (1123 Lake St.). To attend remotely, go to sandpointidaho.gov/calendar, click on the desired meeting and follow instructions to access the Zoom stream. City Hall meetings are recorded and posted to the city’s YouTube channel.