Candidates propose solutions to challenge of growing population

Like almost everyone else in Bonner County, the two Republican candidates for the District 3 commissioner’s position believe that growth is the region’s most pressing issue.

Incumbent Karl Dye and challenger Lewis Rich agree that the next county commissioner must have firm ideas about how to manage the needs of current residents – and those who’d like to move in. But the Sandpoint men, who face each other in the May 23 primary election, differ on how they’d do that. The winner will take on independent candidate Wayne Stotts for the seat.

Dye, 38, a former marketing director for Sandpoint’s Litehouse Foods, said his first term has taught him that fighting growth is futile, that the role of county government in a new era is to guide and encourage appropriate expansion.

“We get a very, very vocal minority that seems to be anti-government,” he said. “They want things to stop changing. They don’t want the growth, nobody wants their assessed value to go up, property taxes are a hot issue.”

The key, Dye said, is to manage the growth. He favors a cap on property value increases and a change in exemptions that will spread the tax burden over more types of properties.

At the same time, Dye wants to encourage planned growth by wooing economic development opportunities through changes such as a new light-industrial zoning category and creation of developmental corridors to bring businesses to the region.

One of the most pressing issues in a second term would be to continue work on reforming land-use laws, Dye said.

“With the growth that we’re experiencing, we have a huge bottleneck in subdivisions,” he said. “It takes a lot longer to get through the process than it did two years ago,” he said.

He’d like to streamline that process, perhaps allowing developers access to a “fast-track” plan that would speed their proposals through the system.

“If you pay a little bit more money, it’s more of a staff review rather than staff having to do the work,” he said.

He said Rich, his challenger, is more interested in looking back than forward.

“I think my challenger’s main platform position is he wants to take the county back to where it used to be. I don’t have a time machine, and I can’t make people move away,” he said. “The reason I got involved was to be a good, positive part of that change as we try to manage the growth, not stop the growth.”

Rich, who has lived in Bonner County for 26 years, said he believes that managing growth includes plans to make those who benefit pay their share.

“Every time we get large developments, it costs me more to live here,” said Rich, who believes developers should bear the costs of improvements.

Rich, a volunteer firefighter, also believes that current county commissioners conduct too much of their business out of public sight.

“I’m dissatisfied with current county government,” he said. “I don’t feel that they’re user-friendly.”

He believes voters should have the chance to weigh in on every important issue, including, for instance, recent formation of an emergency services district.

“If voters can’t vote on it, I think that’s wrong,” he said. “I believe that with the government in general, far too many things are getting done without the public.”

If he were elected, Rich said, he would ask that county meetings be scheduled at times more convenient for public input.

“Their regular business meetings are held at 1 p.m. in the afternoon,” he said. “I think they should be held after 6 p.m. You have a hearing at 1:45 in the afternoon because you don’t want people in there making waves.”

Rich said Dye lacks the tenure to direct the county’s growth.

“He’s only been here since 2002,” said Rich. “I don’t know how we can make judgments about Bonner County if you haven’t lived here that long.”