Rural Development Roundup discuss improvements to local communities

OSBURN — Prominent community members gathered Tuesday afternoon at the Shoshone County Fire District No. 1 to take part in a “Rural Development Roundup.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development Idaho recently launched the roundup to engage with rural areas to learn and understand the community’s issues, concerns and goals, and consider ways that rural development can support the community’s needs.

USDA Idaho State Director Rudy Soto explained to the group that, “we want to learn about the opportunities and challenges that you are facing here with hopes that we can figure out how to support you more.”

The community room was filled with members of the Silver Valley Chamber of Commerce, Silver Valley Economic Development Corporation, as well as representation from school districts, local business owners, property owners, and many more working for different municipalities.

“We are here to listen to what you have to say about the community, the area and what particular challenges this area might be facing,” said USDA Community Program Specialist Howard Lunderstadt.

Some key issues that were discussed at the roundtable event were housing, internet, and access to and updating the infrastructure already in place.

Lack of housing, rentals or the high price of available rentals were discussed, as well as issues specific to the towns.

Different towns in the Silver Valley have their specific struggles, but one concern on everyone’s mind is the lack of affordable housing.

Lisa Millard, clerk/treasurer for the city of Osburn, was passionate when she explained how dire the situation was concerning housing for one of the Silver Valley’s larger bedroom communities.

“We don’t have a lot of buildable property in Osburn,” Millard said. “We are pretty much built out, and don’t have room to build. For us, we have a lack of rentals available.”

Because of the lack of rentals, Osburn is beginning to see citizens living in campers on properties and hooking up to city services.

“We have a lot of people who have pieces of property, and they want to bring campers, and allow people to live in those campers,” Millard said. “We operate on the local city sewer, and the sewer district and campers are hooking up to city services without us knowing.”

Osburn does have a small RV Park that is almost always fully booked.

“The city does have some land that could potentially be used for a new RV park, but then you look at the infrastructure and you have to ask the question if that’s something the city wants to look into,” Millard said.

Surrounding towns in the area struggle with lack of housing in a different way, with many houses being bought and turned into short-term rentals like AirBnbs, or VRBO’s, which are often rented by tourists visiting the area temporarily.

Another challenge that those in the Silver Valley community struggle with is access to updated infrastructure.

Jon Groth, an employee at the Water and Sewer District in Kingston, spoke about issues that have been prevalent in his line of work.

“Every winter we will get a call from someone who is running a lot of heaters, which makes their electrical service burn up, which is an emergency. You have to get a new panel in there to get it fixed. The materials alone could be a couple thousand dollars,” Groth said. “And these people just aren’t able to pay that."

Groth explained that with older homes, there can often be expensive issues with sewer lines as well.

Millard said those in her community also face the challenges of paying when an unexpected homeowner expense occurs.

“We see this happen, when someone buys a new home and then later finds out that their sewer line is about to collapse,” she said. “And I don’t know of anything out there to help people like that.”

The third hot topic of discussion was broadband internet and its accessibility to those living in rural areas. Colleen Rosson, Shoshone County grants administrator, explained the issue that this area faces in regard to broadband.

“What I’m seeing a lot with broadband funding, is that a lot of the Federal funding, in fact most of the funding, is going to fiber specific internet. But as you can see, our county is not ideal for putting that in,” Rosson said. “Right now we are putting together a rapid design to go out and show what is working, and not working and then design the infrastructure alongside with that.”

Rosson went on to explain that there are members of the Silver Valley community who live in rural areas of around 20 to 30 people who have no access to cellphone service, or internet access, because of the lack of funding or willingness to build for an area with that small of a population. This also affects local schools, as students living in the more remote areas of the Silver Valley do not have access to internet or cellphone service.

These are not issues that can be quickly fixed, as they take time, money and resources. Different grants and programs were discussed, provided by USDA to ensure that more of Idaho’s eligible rural areas, entities and residents increase their use of the available programs. For questions about the available programs the USDA provides, you can call Rudy Soto at 208-378-5601 or Howard Lunderstadt at 208-209-4367.

For more information on USDA Rural Development, visit https://www.rd.usda.gov/id