Forest Service Updates, PILT Money and Budget Work
On Monday, July 29th, the Adams County Commissioners met for their last meeting of the month. To start off the morning, the commissioners had a discussion about the Legion Hall with Ron Roser. Roser said the Legion Post would like to donate the air conditioner to the County. The next issue was the water. The sprinklers are all on the well. They were using a hose on the city water for dry spots, but they are going to change that so they run off the well now so the water bill isn’t so high. They were going to give some money to the county for the water use, but the Legion is wondering if they can instead purchase a new stove for the hall to replace the old one, which isn’t working. The Legion tries to pick a project in the community each year to give back. Next year they are thinking about making a brick patio around the gazebo at the park. “The Veterans Peace Park is a sacred place to honor our fallen heroes,” said Roser, “We will not falter in our duty to see that this is carried on.”
The commissioners asked Roser about some of the conflicts they had heard about the park. They also discussed changes to the rental agreement for the Park and Legion Hall and raising fees and cleaning deposits a little. County Clerk, Sherry Ward, said there are several other departments that need to increase fees and they should do them all together so they aren’t putting them out piecemeal. She mentioned liquor licenses, for example, haven’t been updated since 1950.
The Forest Service is going to be moving into the Fairgrounds and Exhibit Hall later in the day to set up a fire camp. They will not be using the park this year.
Meredith Fisher, with Planning and Zoning, said they received the variance application for the rockpit, so they will receive updates on that as it goes along. She also gave the commissioners copies of the Legacy Ranch amendment to the escrow account agreement, which Prosecutor Boyd had approved of, so the commissioner signed it.
Steve Shelton, with Solid waste, had a quote for the rock truck and excavators with operators which Commissioner Iveson thought was very reasonable. The CAT is coming today so they are going to push this month and get done as fast as they can. They hauled one load of tires out, there is one left. Commissioner Daren Ward said he met with Republic Services last Friday about recycling. They are putting in bids for the city of McCall and were interested in working out a deal with Adams County to use the landfill as a transfer site for that. Ward told them to put their proposal to pen and paper so they could look over it.
Commissioner Joe Iveson told Adam Balderson, with Road and Bridge, that there is actually an excess of funds in the Road and Bridge budget that is specifically marked for Road and Bridge. It is possible there is enough for the new shop that they bid out previously, or they could talk about new equipment. He thought they needed to talk through and use the money wisely because they might not always have it available. Iveson asked for a list of equipment that they might be needing and Balderson said he would get that to him.
Next several representatives from the Forest Service arrived for their monthly update. Also present were representatives from the offices of Senator Crapo, Senator Risch, and Congressman Fulcher. New Meadows District Ranger, Dana Harris, said that there are currently no fires on the New Meadows district. They have had several complaints about speed and dust on Price Valley Road and she has spoken with all their people to keep the speeds down especially along the parts with houses, but the speed limit is 35 there and it seems very fast.
The commissioners asked about commercial firewood permits. Jeff Jones, Council and Weiser District Ranger, said that anyone who has bought a timbers sale can get a commercial firewood permit within the sale. There is a sequence for removing the green wood vs. fuel wood so that it is not mixed, because there are different prices. Commissioner Iveson said he has had complaints from firewood cutters saying they are only decking tops and the larger stuff is being left out of units. Jones said they have to meet coarse woody debris requirements, which requires a mix of small and larger materials. The larger materials break down more slowly over time. Commissioner Iveson asked if the Clearwater National Forest doesn’t require firewood permits? Jones said different forests have different requirements. It was mentioned that there is no charge for permits on the Clearwater which started during Covid because there was no one to staff the permits. Iveson asked why require a firewood permit if there is a benefit to getting the dead trees out? Commissioner Viki Purdy thought that sounded like a good idea and it was one less thing for them to do. Jones said permits are only $5 a cord, that’s not a big deal, and the Forest Service still has to track forest products. Dana Harris said she would look into what the Clearwater is doing. Jones said that Commercial firewood permits are $10 a cord and there is no limit. Commissioner Purdy said they had the comment that there were loads of logs going off the forest that were not being paid for. Jones said they were loads of firewood, not logs. They were people filling the back of their trucks at timber sales.
“And that’s illegal, why?” Purdy asked.
“Because they haven’t purchased the firewood,” said Jeff Jones.
Commissioner Purdy still thought they should be doing whatever they could to make it easier for people to take more timber and material off the forest.
They then switched gears to talk about the fire situation. Jeff Jones said there were several strikes from the lightning storm that came through Wednesday night. They squashed the Rock Creek Fire on the Weiser District right away. Council District has Oxbow, Limepoint, and Wolf Creek. Two more small ones, Bessie and Little Bear, have been stopped or contained. A complex incident management team is coming to take over Oxbow and Limepoint, which merged last night and will now just be called Limepoint. Together they have burned around 10,000 acres now. No structures have been lost. They are setting up a fire camp at the fairgrounds here.
There are area closures on federal lands in the area. They are concentrating on pushing the fire in directions where there is less value at risk. They are in contact with Idaho Power and they are hardening wooden structures. They are concentrating on not putting Idaho Power equipment into jeopardy. Unfortunately, there were very few resources to put on the fires when they were small because resources were already committed in California and Oregon, leaving them very little to work with for these.
A lot of the smoke a couple days ago was all from California and it was higher. The smoke down lower was more local fires. There is still higher elevation stuff but there is more influence from local fires now too. As much as everyone hates the smoke, the fires are not growing as much in it. “If we’re choking smoke the fire’s choking smoke too,” said Jones. His speculation is as the fires get put out teams will be reassigned, so hopefully they will get more resources coming in soon.
The Wolf Creek fire is about 800 acres and has burned up through Little Weiser drainage to the headwaters, but hasn’t had southerly progression. It hit in a patch of subalpine fir which is their nastiest fuel other than grass. That team is in Cascade and will take the fire Wednesday morning. There are closures in effect by Little Weiser. Sheriff Ryan Zollman asked for closure maps which Jones said he will get to him as soon as they are finished. There is a slight chance of lightning coming in tonight or tomorrow.
For Fall, they do have plans to do Fall burning on the face of the Fort Hall area. The plan is around 1000 acres. Dana Harris said their new helicopter was fighting fire basically as soon as they landed so they didn’t have time for an open house.
After the Forest Service left, Sheriff Ryan Zollman said there had been a slight miscommunication about evacuation notices but it is straightened out now. Zollman or Chris Green are the only people that make the call for evacuation notices, although they are advised by the Forest Service. He said they have been awesome about dedicating resources to the back side of Cuprum and protecting the community. “They have done a great job for what they had to work with,” said Zollman.
There are some new dispatchers who selected an extra zone for evacuation notices so some people were upset by a midnight call to evacuate that was not for them. He has been training the new people on the system to reduce such incidents, but said it was better to get it to too many people then not enough. There are currently 20 State inmates and 5 county. Due to fires last week they didn’t do any transport.
After this, the representatives from the senator’s and congressman’s office made a few comments. Sydney Sterling, with Senator Risch, said they are working on internet safety issues currently, and will be publishing a report today on the Biden/Harris administrations on China aggression. Dirk Mendive, with Congressman Fulcher, said there have been a lot of disagreements on the Farm Bill and how they wanted to move forward. The likelihood is there will not be a new Farm Bill passed prior to September 9th. They came out to this meeting to hear about the firewood issues and as an outreach program, and to remind the commissioners to reach out if there are grants they need a letter of support for. Commissioner Iveson said that PILT is a big problem for counties like ours. They rely on that money for their budget and they don’t get very much. Mendive said they did pass an appropriations bill to fully fund PILT, but it is a harder and harder sell to make because people don’t understand it and wonder why all this money is going to Western counties. Sheriff Zollman said the effect that the public lands have on our emergency services is significant. They have no compensation for providing emergency services to the Forest. Same for EMS. Our county is extremely large, over 60 percent is public land. The population of our county is roughly 4,500, but can easily double that on hunting weekends. He often will have to drive hours into the Forest to deal with a problem and leave the rest of the county virtually unprotected. Commissioner Purdy said that in her opinion the Forest Service has become the biggest welfare recipient. Mendive said If congress doesn’t want to fund its obligation then they need to give it back to the local entities to manage.
After this, the commissioners took a quick lunch break , and then returned to hear a presentation from Idaho Power representatives Angelique Rood and Brady Kinney regarding wildfire mitigation and PSPS. They have been more concerned about wildfire mitigation because of worse wildfire activity in their service area and due to more residents in the wildland/urban interface. They have an above normal fire potential outlook for this year in July and August. Because of this, they are developing new plans to mitigate and manage risk and improve the resiliency of the grid. There are some notable changes for 2024, including reviewed and revised wildfire risk zones, enrolling customers in text alerts, and piloting system setting changes. Their core mitigation activities include increased inspections, enhanced vegetation management, distribution hardening, situational awareness tools, and segmentation, which allows them to selectively cut off power to sections when there is a problem without affecting the rest of the grid. They have different zones and assess risk twice daily in those zones based on fire conditions. The power grid has very intelligent sensing equipment today. During the highest risk days they will set the sensors to be very sensitive so they shut off power very quickly and get eyes on the spot very quickly. There are two modes: Reclose off and fast/instantaneous trip. They can have the system deenergized within a millisecond, but adjust the settings as necessary due to fire weather potential. This is a pilot program.
While they have had a plan for PSPS (Public Safety Power Shutoff) for the last few years, last week was the first time they had to use it. They notified customers in over 30 zones that they may see conditions requiring a PSPS, and did have some customers in the Boise Foothills that were de-energized for several hours. Rood said she hates calling it a PSPS because of the negative connotations with that term. “It would be very rare that we use these tools,” she said. Sometimes there are customers that may be deenergized that are not in the wildfire risk zone because they feed a wildfire risk zone, they will be updating more of the lines to fix these problems over the next few years. She stressed that the average Idaho Power customer is without power for less than 3 hours a year. Should conditions require a PSPS, they will send out notifications 1-2 days in advance and will also notify customers 1-4 hours prior. They are still figuring out the system but are erring on the side of over communication right now.
They will also be thinking about emergency resource centers or bringing in generators for critical infrastructure during prolonged outages. They have pre established patrol points to place people on to check the lines quickly and efficiently during an event, and will be using drones, helicopters, and linemen. The power will return incrementally in parts as they go through the patrol lines, so the people at the end of the lines will be without power the longest. She said there were definitely some errors last week and things they need to improve on. It took about six hours for them to restore power to the places they deenergized. They look at critical infrastructure first and will always prioritize those. Overall, the commissioners seemed satisfied with the answers provided.
Then the commissioners went into a short executive session and came out to discuss the IT budget and final budget discussions. After going over the IT budget with IT Director Casey Hunt, they managed to shave off around $70,000 from the budget. The commissioners also told Hunt they want to remove the remote portion of the job and would like to see her in the office 100% of the time. Commissioner Iveson said they were under the impression that would already be happening when they decided to make her a full time employee with benefits.
Then they started a discussion on the rest of the budget. Clerk Sherry Ward rechecked a bunch of numbers and had an updated projected amount. Iveson said it was their goal to match the PILT funds but put a small amount away. Commissioner Daren Ward said he was still thinking it was fundamentally wrong to have the Sheriff making less than some of his employees, and he would like to see his wage raised above what his other highest earning employees make. Iveson said he agreed, but at the same time they told Zollman they didn’t want to do that, and Zollman insisted at the time. Clerk Sherry Ward said how do we get back to a manageable position here if we keep giving increases? Commissioner Purdy told them to do what they wanted, but she was not going to support it. It didn’t work out the way it was supposed to work out when they asked for those raises.
Commissioner Ward said in his mind when they are talking about PILT, Payment In Lieu of Taxes, they don’t tell people that they are going to save money in that. Every year they try not to get to that bottom line, they use it to get the budget to be right, but don’t spend it unless we need it. Clerk Sherry Ward said it depends on the year and they sometimes need that for cash flow. Commissioner Iveson mentioned they can’t get used to using too much of the PILT and increase their budget by that much, because PILT goes down if Secure Rural Schools (SRS) goes up, but they can only use that for certain things and if the budget is too high and they can only use SRS for roads and such then they are in trouble. Iveson is also concerned that they may take PILT away someday. The representatives from the senator’s office said it only passed by three votes this year. Most of the counties in Idaho are relying on PILT monies.
The final proposed budget will be published in the paper in the next couple of weeks for the public to review.
