Kuna schedules an open meeting on LID

Kuna City Council members will hold a special meeting at 6 p.m. next Tuesday, Jan. 26, at City Hall to meet with landowners participating in the local improvement district.
The purpose of the meeting is “to go over numbers,” according to council member Jeff Lang. The council scheduled the meeting after an hour-and-a-half executive session Tuesday night to discuss “potential litigation.”
Ostensibly, next Tuesday’s meeting is supposed to make up for the deliberations and decision-making that went on during two previous executive sessions last month, after which council members announced that they were going to reduce the LID’s assessment by a couple million bucks and have city ratepayers pick up the difference.
Although council said the meeting is for LID members, the repercussions are huge for every city taxpayer. The general public is invited and encouraged to attend. Let’s hope the council doesn’t go into executive session.

Kuna City Council has a new council president. Find out who it is in this week's Kuna Melba News.

Kuna Melba News makes some changes with the New Year

The New Year, for me, has always been a time of thoughtful reflection on the past year and careful consideration of the coming year and the future in general. I’m totally into making New Year’s resolutions and have always felt that the changing of the calendar is as good a time as any for making changes.
Of course, it seems as though we are constantly changing the Kuna Melba News. The newspaper has changed dramatically over the past three years since Nicola and I purchased it in 2006. Most of those changes have been subtle in the moment, almost unnoticeable at the time. We’ve changed the front-page promos several times, we’ve added specialty pages, a calendar, weather, puzzles, color, we even changed the headline font back in 2007 without fanfare. It has all added up, though, to make the Kuna Melba News almost unrecognizable from what it was in 2006.
The coming year will be no different in our desire to change and grow and get better. We picked the New Year to begin some changes immediately.

You can read all about what those changes are and see them for yourself in this week's Kuna Melba News.

City of Kuna continues to practice secrecy in government

Kuna City Council members have now spent nearly $4 million of taxpayer money behind closed doors.
You might recall that in April, council members went into an executive session for two hours and came out of the session to announce that they had decided to purchase 107 acres of land for $1 million.
Most recently, council members met in executive session twice, once for two hours on Tuesday, Dec. 8, then again for another hour on Tuesday, Dec. 29, to discuss possible solutions to the $27.4 million bill for the new wastewater treatment plant that was supposed to be funded by the local improvement district. Council members came out of the Dec. 29 executive session to announce that they had decided to have the city (i.e., you and me, the taxpayers) pick up $2.8 million of the cost of the final bill.
The very first state law pertaining to open meetings states, “The people of the state of Idaho in creating the instruments of government that serve them, do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies so created. Therefore, the legislature finds and declares that it is the policy of this state that the formation of public policy is public business and shall not be conducted in secret.” (Idaho Code 67-2340.)
City Council members clearly formed public policy in secret.

You can read much more of this opinion in my Editor's Notebook in this week's Kuna Melba News.

Are e-readers the future of newspapers?

This year for Christmas, I bought Nicola a Nook, an electronic book reader from Barnes & Noble. It’s similar to its more popular counterpart, the Kindle, made famous by Oprah. It allows you to download books electronically and read them on a book-like computer screen.
I suppose it may seem odd to have a newspaper editor extol the virtues of such a device, but really, I’m completely on board, and I think these e-readers offer a glimpse of the future of newspapers.
First of all, these e-readers cut down on the cost of publishing. A typical e-book costs around $10, as opposed to $26 or more in a store. Of course, you eliminate the production costs — no paper, no book factory, no covers, no binding or glue. Then you eliminate delivery costs — no trucks, no fuel costs to take the book from the factory to the bookstore in Boise. Then you eliminate the overhead of the stores — the salespeople, the utilities, the rent, etc. Gosh, when you think of it, when you get rid of all those costs, you’d think a book would be practically free.
Now, I say these e-readers offer a glimpse of the future of newspapers. There are a couple of major differences between books and newspapers that keep e-readers unfeasible for the time for newspaper use.

You can read more about my take on e-readers and the future of newspapers in this week's Kuna Melba News.

Kuna City Council members offer some relief to LID landowners

Kuna City Council members voted Tuesday night to ease the financial burden to the landowners participating in the local improvement district that’s funding the wastewater treatment plant.
Acknowledging that the new facility is oversized beyond service to the 2,700 acres of land in the LID, council members agreed to drop the price attributed to the LID and agreed to have the city pick up the remaining cost.
“We’ve discussed a balanced approach that helps the LID owners but also, unfortunately, puts a little bit of the burden on the city and a burden on the community,” council member Lisa Bachman said. “But given the way things have turned out, we didn’t have much choice.”
Based on preliminary assessment notices sent out in October, LID landowners are on the hook for about $27.4 million in construction costs for the sewer plant, which is in operation now near the southeast corner of Lake Hazel and Ten Mile roads.
Based on that assessment, a sewer connection costs $3,205.18. A landowner with 35 acres in the LID, for example, has a benefit of 105 sewer connections and an assessment of $336,543.90.
Under the new scenario approved Tuesday night, though, LID landowners are on the hook for only $25.3 million in construction costs. With that price tag, the 8,353 sewer connections promised in the LID would cost $3,028 each. So, for example, the landowner with 35 acres in the LID, would now be on the hook for $317,940.
The city also agreed to remove two pieces of property from the assessment roll totaling 253 sewer connections, dropping the total number of sewer connections to 8,100.
In the end, the city would need to make up the difference owed to the banks, which totals $2.8 million.
A revenue bond or judicial confirmation are two of the options for the city to come up with the money, Kuna Mayor Scott Dowdy said after the meeting Tuesday night.

You can read more of this story in this week's Kuna Melba News.

Freezing temps mean backyard ice rink

You couldn’t catch me complaining about our recent cold snap. Growing up in Upstate New York, I saw no shortage of below freezing temperatures during the winter. For those of you who do not know this, Upstate New York — the real Upstate New York, as in 5 hours away from New York City — is actually a province of Canada. As such, it was against the law to not play ice hockey.
The combination of freezing temps and the requirement of playing ice hockey led my dad one year to build an ice rink in our back yard.
The thought of a backyard ice rink has never left my imagination. And so it has come to pass this year that I have devised my own backyard ice rink. My son Luke, 7, and I had a blast all last week skating on the rink and slapping the puck around.

You can read the rest of this in this week's Kuna Melba News.

What do the people have to say about the Edward Jones building in Kuna?

It’s been almost exactly 75 years since the small white-brick building on the corner of Kuna’s Main Street and Avenue D has housed the Kuna State Bank, which closed up shop on Nov. 30, 1934.
But a requirement to repaint the “KUNA STATE BANK” letters on the outside of the building has sparked an interesting debate about whether the city of Kuna is taking historic preservation too far.
It’s one thing to require the building’s owner, Harry Knox, to restore the look of the outside of the building as much as possible to those days when people were driving Model T cars and Herbert Hoover was doing a good job as president. It is another thing to require the building’s signage to advertise a business that fell victim to The Great Depression.
So we put it to the people, with a Kuna Melba News online-only poll last week.

Find out the results in my Editor's Notebook in this week's Kuna Melba News.

Congratulations to Rich Cardoza and Doug Hoiland on Kuna City Council

We can now officially congratulate Doug Hoiland and Rich Cardoza, who were both confirmed as the top two vote-getters for two seats on the Kuna City Council after a recount last week.
A local businessman who runs an insurance agency on Main Street, Rich won re-election to a second four-year term. He has shown himself to be a contrarian voice on the council, voting against the streetlight fee, voting against annexations and seeking a closer review of the police budget. I think that’s what helped him get re-elected. Many residents, rightly, want to make sure there are some checks and balances on the council and that not everyone is simply rubber-stamping proposals placed before them.
I will offer that up as a suggestion and recommendation to newcomer Doug Hoiland. I put it to you, Doug, to make sure that you question decisions and proposals that are placed before you and hold them in skeptical regard. I ask you to remember that the city attorneys, the city engineer, the planning director, treasurer, etc., all work for the city residents and that you are our representation to them.

What's the next step for the Kuna Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Committee?

Work on the Kuna Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Committee continues full throttle.
A couple of weeks ago, the Kuna Melba News asked its online readers in our weekly poll what you felt the committee’s top priority should be.
We offered the choices of improving downtown Main Street, attracting new commercial development, attracting industrial manufacturers, marketing existing businesses and planning and organizing special community events.
With 56 percent of the vote, attracting new commercial development was the top vote-getter, followed by improving Main Street (14.6 percent), marketing existing businesses (12.2 percent) and attracting industrial manufacturers (9.8 percent). That message is pretty clear. But that doesn’t mean we’re only going to do one thing at the exclusion of all else.
When I think of the types of commercial ventures to attract to Kuna, I have some ideas of businesses that I think would do well here and that local residents want, such as a dry cleaner, a bowling alley, a movie theater and a skateboard/bike shop.
As always, I’d love to hear what you think. What businesses would you like to see in Kuna? What have I left out? What do you think would be successful? What business would you patronize? What kind of a manufacturer would you like to see in Kuna? Send me a letter: PO Box 373, Kuna ID 83634, or send me an email: kunamelbanews@aol.com. Or simply post an opinion to this blog.

There is more of this column in my Editor's Notebook in this week's Kuna Melba News.

Kuna LID protest hearings turn up some (scary) revelations

Kuna City Council members are expected to make a ruling or rulings in the next couple of weeks regarding the protest hearings held last week about the local improvement district that is funding the $27 million wastewater treatment plant.
City staff members are putting together their evaluations of the individual protests as well as the larger, overarching legal issues surrounding the LID itself. Primarily, that analysis is of a legal nature but also involves technical considerations of certain specific properties and their encumbrances from the LID. It appears that City Council might make a ruling at its regular meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 15, but nothing has been scheduled yet.
One of the biggest shocks of last week's protest hearings, for me, came when one landowner said he needed more information from the city in order to make a business decision about what to pay or even whether to pay. He cited a clause in the city’s assessment notice that reads, “the city may increase any assessment or assessments up to twenty percent (20%) of the original amount thereof without giving further notice and without holding a new hearing.”
He drew blank stares from council members Lisa Bachman and Jeff Lang, who apparently had no idea what he was talking about.
Yikes. Either they didn’t get a copy of the six-paragraph assessment notice or they didn’t read it closely, or they didn’t read it the two times it ran in the Kuna Melba News, even though the notice is signed, “By order of the City Council.”
It’s scary that the decision makers aren’t paying very close attention to the biggest issue facing the city in probably decades.
They’d better start paying attention, because I can guarantee you everyone else is paying close attention — especially the banks’ lawyers who attended last week’s hearings.

You can read more of this editorial in this week's Kuna Melba News.