BOCC visits site amid complaint
Commissioner Mike Fitzgerald addresses the same group that included fellow commissioners Jay Huber and John Hansen, as well as representatives from Shoshone County Planning and Zoning and Public Works concerning complaints that were level against the county by local resident Minde Beehner.
Photo by JOSH McDONALD
BURKE — The Shoshone Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) conducted a walkthrough of several properties on Wednesday afternoon that were recently listed in a complaint from a local resident.
The complainant, Minde Beehner, listed out several spots along OT near the Tomsche Avenue corridor that she believes are encroachments onto various county right-of-ways.
In an email sent to Shoshone County Prosecutor Keisha Oxendine, Beehner mentioned that her complaint was filed to the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office (dated April 15, 2021) and that was similar in nature to a complaint that she had filed with Shoshone County Planning and Zoning in October 2019, but with some additional items.
Things like trees, fences, spigots, basketball hoops and utility poles were all among the listed offenders — even going as far as to list some things on her own property that could be subject to the BOCC’s decision making process in the matter.
Beehner alleged in her email to Oxendine that the BOCC has been able to rectify the issues for some time but simply hadn’t.
“Many of these complaints should have and could have been addressed in the past 18 months while the BOCC spent over ($)12k on ‘surveying’ costs in this area and ended up with maps and a legal description,” Beehner wrote. “The county has the information to say that items I have brought up are encroachments, yet practically nothing has been done.”
Wednesday’s walkthrough allowed the BOCC to see the spots that Beehner claimed were encroachments in her complaint, but they now have to decide how to go about responding to it.
According to BOCC Chairman Mike Fitzgerald, the three things they will consider in their decision making process are, do the issues cause a problem for the roadway and its function as a roadway, does it cause a safety issue, or is it hampering any sort of development in the area.
Fitzgerald also pointed out that the county does try to rectify these types of issues whenever they are working on various infrastructure projects in the area in question.
He also acknowledged that Beehner’s complaint has merit in the sense that most if not all of the issues listed out are in fact encroachments, but also that with the exception of a few of them, a lot of them are happenstance and part of the natural progression of neighborhoods in older, more rural areas.
“What happens is that when properties are plotted 100 years ago and people build on them when the exact property lines aren’t clearly known, sometimes things get built on the property line that end up in the public right-of-way,” Fitzgerald said. “As we can see, as that neighborhood grew — a number of things ended up in the public right-of-way, some of which are privately owned and some of which are perfectly fine. The question here is, what is the county going to do about it? Typically these things aren’t addressed until you have a large improvement project that goes through or until it violates one of those three questions. So the way we look at it is, have the encroachments occurred? Yes. Are they a problem? That’s hard to tell.”
Beehner believes that the situation should be handled in the same manner as some other situations that BOCC has addressed in recent years and is frustrated by what she perceives as a lack of required action between them and the people who utilized the affected area.
“Is the county going to sit around (it has been years) until the county has to pay to get encroachments off of Tomsche Ave(nue), Brookside Ave(nue) and others?” Beehner wrote. “I don't believe this is a very good display of fiduciary responsibility! I would like to know how long a taxpayer should be expected to wait to see county ordinances and states codes enforced? It appears to just matter who is asking. The process last fall in Pinecreek didn't seem to take long and the guy up Moon Gulch was given 30 days to remove a gate.
It was also noted by the county that in those previous cases, the encroachments were full blockages of county roads, which is a stark contrast to the items listed in Beehner’s complaint.
The BOCC will continue to review the situation, as well as discuss all of their requirements and options with both their legal team, as well as P&Z and Public Works before they make any sort of decision.