Reader fears moratorium will increase numbers of lawsuits

Editor:

 The Washington County Commissioners have put the citizens of our county on a course which I fear will result in one or more lawsuits which may bankrupt the county. This has happened in other Idaho counties, and their taxpayers ended up footing the bills for years afterwards.

 This troubling development started earlier this year when True Pearce became our Prosecuting Attorney. While I have never met True, it seems he has a big problem: he can actually read and understand our county code. Furthermore, he doesn’t seem to understand that “the way we do business” in Washington County is to interpret the county code any which way it suits the whims of the big landowners and our own little deep state.

 On May 19 four “concerned citizens” (including one who owns tens of thousands of acres in Washington County) proposed imposing a moratorium on the issuance of building permits on agricultural ground. Incredibly it seems another of the concerned citizen’s family is selling “20 acre ranch lots with building sites” in Washington County for the remarkable sum of $445,000! By far the most talking was done by Ron Jaeger (who just happens to be the chairman of the planning and zoning commission). His lengthy proposal, which he said was drafted by an attorney he failed to name, was to justify issuing the moratorium as an emergency. 

 The justification of declaring an emergency to cover up decades of buffoonery by our commissioners and P&Z administrators is ridiculous. This is where we as a county are going to get hung out to dry in lawsuits which now seem inevitable. 

 Two of our three commissioners voted to impose the moratorium anyway. Hang onto your wallets folks, because our commissioners have dumped us into a heap of financial trouble which our insurance policy will not cover.

David Smith

Midvale, Idaho