County planner under a cloud resigns

A Kootenai County planner who erred by signing off on her own development resigned Friday.

Both Planner Sandy Young, who had worked for the county since 1997, and County Commission Chairman Rick Currie said the resignation had nothing to do with the permit mistake in which Young was reprimanded and the county changed its policy to prevent similar conflicts of interest.

Planning Director Scott Clark, in a voice-mail message, confirmed that Young’s last day at the $46,200-a-year job will be Sept. 21. He was unavailable for further comment.

In a written statement, Young said she had been planning to leave the county for months.

“This has been my plan since the beginning of the year,” she wrote. “I agreed to wait until a director was hired. Scott and I discussed my plans when he first came on board.”

Clark became planning director in April.

Currie said Young had been “reprimanded” after it was discovered that in July 2006 a planner supervised by Young signed the site-disturbance permit for Young’s housing development off Greensferry Road. He also said Young resigned as a respected employee in good standing.

Previously the commissioner only said that Young erred but wouldn’t confirm whether she had been reprimanded. In a previous interview, Young said she was never disciplined and that the commission never talked to her about a conflict of interest.

In August, the county issued a stop-work order on Young’s Greenridge project after neighbors and members of a local watchdog group alleged that Young was getting special treatment as a county employee.

The county hired a private engineering firm to independently review the development. The report concluded that an engineer hadn’t reviewed the road construction and that recent rain had caused runoff and other erosion problems. That’s why the county issued the stop-work order.

“That’s somewhat old news,” Currie said. “She did the county a great job.”

Currie said he didn’t know if Young plans to become a private planning consultant along with her husband, Gary Young, the former Post Falls Community Development director who recently opened his own business.

Sandy Young was seen last week at a public hearing with Bayview developer Bob Holland. Holland said Wednesday that he “absolutely has not” hired Young and that he didn’t know she had officially resigned from the county.