Examiner Agonized On Decision Railroad’S Proposal Was No Easy Matter

One day, Jean DeBarbieris had her mind made up.

She’d bless the depot Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway wants to build near Rathdrum.

The next day, DeBarbieris was just as sure. Thumbs down on the depot.

DeBarbieris was handpicked by local officials to serve as Kootenai County’s hearing examiner on a controversial plan to build a railroad depot above the aquifer. She recently spent six weeks sorting through mounds of testimony from both sides.

She changed her mind daily - before eventually recommending that Kootenai County reject the depot plan.

“I knew the ramifications would be far-reaching,” she said last week from her Jackson, Miss., home. “I don’t take that lightly.”

Before she opened public hearings on the depot last November, DeBarbieris walked the depot site near Rathdrum.

She wanted a look at the windswept 300-acre parcel where the railroad hopes to build its depot. Beneath her feet flowed the aquifer that provides drinking water to 400,000 residents of Spokane and Kootenai counties.

“I didn’t go there with any preconceived ideas,” DeBarbieris said. “I just wanted to have the image in my head.”

Following three days of public hearings, DeBarbieris took testimony from both sides and traveled home to Mississippi, where she’s lived for about six months.

Based on clear public sentiment that the depot posed an unacceptable risk to public health, DeBarbieris said, she made the only decision she could. Last Monday, she recommended county commissioners reject the depot. They’ll decide Wednesday whether to accept that recommendation.

“There was nothing capricious or cavalier about this decision,” she said. “I did what was in the best interest of the people who live and work there.”

An abiding faith in the democratic process has framed DeBarbieris’ time as a public servant, according to people who know her.

She recites a favorite quotation from Abraham Lincoln from memory: “I have faith in the people. The danger is in their being misled. Let them know the truth and the country is safe.”

DeBarbieris lived in Kootenai County for nearly 20 years. Of that time, she spent 10 years as a county hearing examiner.

She honed her love of democracy through 18 years as a planner for the city of Coeur d’Alene, her former supervisor said.

DeBarbieris was fair, creative and unique in her time as a city planner, said Dave Yadon, Coeur d’Alene city planner.

“She understood this community,” Yadon said. “I think she was an excellent choice for them to use as a hearing examiner.”

On the first night of the November public hearings on the depot, hundreds of people stood in unison to be sworn in before testifying. Right hands raised, they presented the kind of spectacle that brings out the “rabid American” in DeBarbieris.

“I’m one of those people who cry when `The Star Spangled Banner’ is played,” she said. “I don’t know where that love of country came from, but it’s very deep.”

The hearing examiner peppered the three-day hearings with jokes, but also praised participants for taking the time to attend.

She was “awed, not only by the conduct, which was exemplary, but also by the dedication, sincerity and professionalism of each and every person who was involved in the public hearing process,” DeBarbieris told county planning director Cheri Howell, in a Dec. 29 letter.

DeBarbieris moved to the Inland Northwest in 1975 from her New Orleans home to pursue a career as an architect. She has a degree from Tulane University.

As a child, DeBarbieris built dollhouses out of cardboard. Reading books that described houses, she’d draw floor plans to match. But the world of architecture left her cold. So in 1981, she took the job with Coeur d’Alene’s planning office.

DeBarbieris moved down South earlier this year, to be with her husband of a year, Skip Owen. The two run a company that advises agricultural businesses on ways to boost local processing of Mississippi-grown crops, lately medicinals.

Some folks don’t like the fact that she doesn’t live in Kootenai County.

Rathdrum Fire Chief Wayne Nowacki wasn’t happy with DeBarbieris’ decision on the BNSF depot. He also didn’t feel that the hearing examiner was entitled to it.

“What difference does it make to her?” Nowacki said.

His fire district, meanwhile, stands to gain a $200,000 fire engine if the depot gets built, according to promises from the railroad.

“The railroad’s going to be pretty generous to us, as far as I’m concerned,” Nowacki said. “That saves us $25,000 a year. On a small budget, that’s substantial.”

The Burlington Northern also faults the report.

By asking the commissioners to turn down any development without a no-risk guarantee, DeBarbieris throws a chill over all future development, charges a letter signed by BNSF’s Kelly Duryea, and sent to depot backers.

Her recommendation “raises concerns not only for the railroad, but also for all property owners, developers, business owners and every resident of Kootenai County,” Duryea states.

Others, including one of the Kootenai County commissioners making the final local decision on the depot, praised DeBarbieris.

Living outside the area helped her, said Kootenai County Commissioner Ron Rankin. “She … is out of the range of either side,” Rankin said. “She doesn’t have a job to lose or one to gain.”

DeBarbieris hopes to move back to North Idaho to start a church, after finishing a two-year training program for ministers offered by the Unity Church.

Meanwhile, the stack of file folders, hydrology reports and form letters still sits in a room in DeBarbieris’ home.

“Even now I haven’t been able to let go of the stack of documents,” she said, ruefully.

“I probably will burn it, eventually.”

Staff writer Tom Clouse contributed to this report.