Rathdrum Council Agrees With Developer City Staff Suggestions On Project Overruled

A local developer got what he wanted from the City Council on Tuesday night, although it came after he’d been scolded for possibly breaking public meetings law.

Larry Clark, along with his wife, Helen Clark, and his brother-in-law Warren Olson, is developing Park Wood Plaza at state Highway 53 and Meyer Road. A Super 1 Foods grocery store will be the centerpiece of the development. Clark has said the project will cost $6 million.

In April, Clark asked the council to overrule some decisions the city staff had made regarding his development.

For one, he wanted permission to cut across Meyer Road when he laid a sewer line instead of having to bore underneath the road as staffers had recommended. He pointed out that other people farther south on the road had to cut across the road because the soil was too rocky.

Councilman Brian Steele said that was why he voted to allow it.

Public Works Director Bob Lloyd objected.

“Every time you cut pavement, there’s a bump of some kind in the road,” he told the council at the April meeting. “The road is much better off with boring.”

Councilman Mark Worthen said he didn’t like the idea of cutting the road, but he added that if that was the trade-off for the benefits that a big commercial development would bring Rathdrum, he would accept it.

Clark also asked to put in another driveway onto north-south Westwood Street, which runs through Park Wood Plaza. The driveway would be north of Park Wood Drive, which runs east-west through the development.

Lloyd said he would need a site plan for the lot and that he would need to know what kind of business would go there before determining where it would be appropriate to allow a driveway. That’s the normal procedure, Lloyd said Wednesday.

Before the council members voted in the April meeting, Mayor Tawnda Bromley, who votes only to break a tie, asked if they wanted to follow staff recommendations, “which is why we hired them,” or go with Clark’s requests.

Council members Worthen and Steele voted in favor of granting Clark’s requests; Councilman Chuck Holt voted against it.

Steele said he thought Clark’s requests were reasonable. If someone with a trailer needed to come into that lot, they’d need the driveway, he said.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, there was confusion over exactly what had been approved on the driveway. Lloyd said he thought Clark could have the driveway he wanted on Westwood, but thought he had to provide a site plan first.

Clark said he thought the council had allowed him to not provide the site plan just yet but still have the driveway.

Clark called three of the council members and the mayor before Tuesday’s meeting about the driveway, the council members and mayor said.

The fourth council member, Joe Hassell, has declared a conflict of interest every time Park Wood Plaza comes up because he’s an engineer on the project.

Clark’s phone calls may have violated public meeting law, Bromley said. The public meeting law requires that all government business, with few exceptions, be conducted in public.

“The reason you have an open meeting law is so that you have a chance for everybody in the audience to hear the information and make their decision,” City Attorney Rollie Watson said.

“I find it totally unbelievable that a citizen who has done what I’ve done for this town can’t call up his City Council members and talk,” Clark said.

Clark served several years on the city’s planning and zoning commission. When he told the council he hadn’t realized his phone calls would violate the law, Bromley told him: “Of anybody in this town I expect to know that, I expect you to know that.”

Both Lloyd and Larry Comer, the city engineer, told the council it’s too early to determine where to put a driveway on the lot in question.

“Our recommendation would be for this whole issue to be deferred until specific site plans can be provided,” Comer said, adding that a traffic study would be needed, too. “You’re being asked to make a decision without adequate facts.”

Clark said the city owed it to him to work with him on his project. “The city, as all cities, owes something to the developer,” he said.

“We owe our citizens to do it correctly,” Bromley replied.

Holt, who talked to Clark on the phone and also visited with him at the site of Park Wood Plaza, said he may have violated public meeting law and abstained when the council voted on whether to allow Clark’s driveway.

“Are we going to trust our staff to make these decisions or not?” Bromley asked before the final vote. “They’re the experts.”

“You never like to override staff, but that is anyone’s privilege to come and ask council to get decisions overturned,” Steele said.

Worthen and Steele voted in favor of allowing Clark his driveway south of Highway 53.

“I don’t mind if he calls me, but what we’re trying to avoid is the old fashioned, good ol’ boys network,” Worthen said, adding that he didn’t think he was influenced by the phone call. “I just want to be careful that I’m not influenced to make a decision when everyone hasn’t had a chance to have input.”