Bonner Officials Are At It Again Commissioners To Ax Building Department Again
Two Bonner County commissioners plan to give the boot to the building department and its employees for a second time, but this time, they want to do it legally.
Last week, a judge said Commissioners Larry Allen and Bud Mueller broke the law when they voted to abolish the department, fire its eight employees and rid the county of building codes.
They failed to properly notify the public about the plan to dump the department at a January meeting, the judge said.
Commissioners put out an agenda Wednesday that makes it very clear what they plan to do at today’s 10:15 meeting. The agenda calls for repeal of the county building codes, abolition of the building department and termination of employees.
“It looks like they want to go back and do it again according to Idaho law,” said Commissioner Dale Van Stone, who opposed the first vote and still is against eliminating the department.
The biggest problem, he said, is the public is being left out of the debate about whether there should be a department and codes.
At the meeting today, commissioners are not required to hear any public testimony before voting to ax the office and employees. During the January meeting, about 100 people turned out, most of them to oppose the commissioners’ radical plan. Only two members of the audience were allowed to speak before commissioners cast their votes.
“My main objection still stands,” Van Stone said. “This should be done in an open public format and we should hear from both sides on the issue. The public has been left out altogether on this, whether they were for it or against it.”
Because a judge ruled the first vote to abolish the department is void, it left a four-month gap when building permits should have been required along with home inspections. The county was charging residents only a $10 fee for a building location permit and issued 300-plus of those permits in the four months. Whether those permits are valid now is in question. The county suspended issuing the permits after the judge’s ruling.
The county is mired in legal questions because of the commissioners’ illegal meeting and at least three lawsuits were filed against the county because of Mueller and Allen’s vote. The county now could be forced to pay thousands of dollars in attorney fees, back pay and damages to former employees who filed an $8.8 million lawsuit against the commissioners.
“Depending on how this is dealt with (at the meeting) it might spawn more legal questions and more lawsuits. I really don’t know how this is going to shake out,” Van Stone said. “There was definitely a better way this all could have been done.”
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