He’s had his fill, neighbor says

POST FALLS – A two-year dispute between a Post Falls property owner and city officials over a neighboring development appears to be getting more acrimonious.

Jim Guindon has grown increasingly critical of city planning and engineering staff work regarding a planned development adjacent to his home. The property, on the southeast corner of Poleline Avenue and Greensferry Road, was once used as a dump for construction and other debris, and Guindon contends that material has not been adequately removed, making the fill on the land unsuitable for homes.

City and state officials, however, say that enough has been done to remediate the portion of the site scheduled to be developed this year. Fill will also be cleaned and replaced in other areas before they are developed at a later time.

Officials with the Idaho Board of Professional Engineers and Professional Land Surveyors were critical of the city of Post Falls for not keeping adequate records on the project, but said that the developer’s engineer had adequately tracked all the geotechnical work.

Guindon has been documenting the work since spring 2006. He contends that while some debris has been removed, other debris has simply been pushed from one part of the property to another. That included pipes, asphalt, concrete and other miscellaneous junk.

“You’ve got engineers. You’ve got ordinances and nobody does anything,” Guindon said.

Guindon said the bad fill was covered with clean fill. “It’s like taking 15 chocolate cakes and putting frosting on it. It looks real good, but one of the cakes is rotten,” he said.

Bad fill won’t settle properly and could cause structural problems in any houses built on top of it, he explained.

“No one is denying there was unsuitable material in there,” said Post Falls Assistant Engineer Rob Palus. “But the state looked at all the records and said there was proper oversight to make sure the bad fill was removed.”

Guindon’s continuing accusations have taken a toll on property owner John Brewster, who bought the land from former owner Randy Cox and now plans this summer to grade a portion of the property, build a retaining wall and pave.

“I’m not going to get into past baloney,” Brewster said. “All I can tell you is that it’s all been taken care of.”

Brewster said when he took on the project he wasn’t aware of how much animosity had built between Cox and Guindon.

Cox doesn’t have much to say about it all at this point other than that he did what was necessary on the site.

“He’s just a disgruntled old person,” Cox said of Guindon.

But Guindon said things like the retaining wall were supposed to be taken care of two years ago. He won’t rest until it’s done.

Meanwhile Brewster said he’s trying to move forward with the 18 homes he plans to build on the site.

“They will be well-built,” he said. “It’s not in me to build junk.”