BOCC denies land vacation

WALLACE — The Shoshone Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) denied a petition last Thursday to vacate a portion of land near Potlatch Road, in the Herrick area of south Shoshone County.

The section of land that was being requested for abandonment by the county is roughly 100 feet and is directly between the road and another portion of allegedly owned land on the corner of the mouth of Big Creek and the St. Joe River.

The denial was the second time that the BOCC had denied the petition, but the petitioners, Tri-State Consulting Engineers representing Buell Bros. Inc., were granted a rehearing on the basis that their initial petition was handled unfairly.

According to Susan Weeks, the legal council representing the petitioners, her clients weren’t afforded procedural due process as it concerns a decision by the BOCC late last year to deny the first attempt petition. According to a new petition filed in early December 2021, Weeks claimed that Shoshone County Planning and Zoning provided the BOCC a staff report supporting the denial of the petition — this same report was sent to the petitioner less than 16 hours before a hearing on Oct. 14, 2021, where it was denied.

According to Idaho code, following the denial of a petition, the petitioner has 28 days from the denial to re-petition the board for a new hearing.

According to the board, due to the alleged procedural miscues during the initial petition, the BOCC would rehear the petition and allow for all of the evidence involved be heard — including allowing for appropriate time for any rebuttals that may arise.

“In going through this, there is enough evidence in my opinion to redo the hearing,” BOCC chairman Mike Fitzgerald told the News-Press. “Aso in my experience, as we finished the hearing it turns out that there is a lot of moving parts and pieces that happen around this parcel, so it’s not just a standalone issue and I think it warrants a new hearing so new evidence can be introduced and we can make a more holistic decision with respect to the issue at hand plus some decision that may lead toward making the area more usable for everybody.”

The section of land in question lies adjacent to the mouth of Big Creek as it flows into the St. Joe River.

The Buell’s own the property to directly east of the creek mouth, but have claimed the sliver of land on the west side of the creek through the process of accretion and the use of a quitclaim deed.

When it comes to real estate, accretion is a process where the surface of the land grows due to the recession of a body of water on land that had at one point been covered by it.

A quitclaim deed in the state of Idaho is a legal document that conveys a property from a grantor (the person selling the property) to the grantee (the person purchasing or receiving the property).

This deed is without any form of guarantee that the grantor has the legal authority to sell or transfer the property or that the property has a clean title.

Usually, this form of transfer is used in informal agreements such as those between family members or arrangements made during the process of a divorce.

The sliver of property on the west bank that they now claim to own has a section of county right-of-way next to it that includes a ramp from the road down to the area of land below that was constructed and maintained by Shoshone County for the purposes of filling up water trucks for dust control in the area.

This area of land at the bottom of the ramp is also a popular recreation spot for people using the St. Joe River for boating, floating, and even fishing — and with the alleged quitclaim ownership, the Buell Bros. are looking to stop the general public from accessing it.

According to the Shoshone County Assessor’s GIS Map, the section of property with the alleged quitclaim deed on it doesn’t have any sort of boundary lines, parcel numbers, or even the name of an owner on it.

After hearing roughly two hours of testimony, both from Weeks and other members Tri-State Consulting Engineers in favor of the petition, as well as the vociferous majority of attendees who were against the petition, the board all agreed that the county stood to gain nothing approving the petition and denied it for a second time.