BOCC backs out of railroad property purchase

WALLACE –– Earlier this week, the Shoshone Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) made the decision to not purchase a 49-acre parcel of land from the Union Pacific Railroad (UPR). 

The property, located to the west of Spunstrand Inc., had been discussed as the proposed site of a new jail and public safety building for the past four years – but additional information from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency effectively made the commissioners’ mind up for them. 

According to Dan Martinsen, with the county’s planning department, the verbal opinion provided to the county by the EPA indicated that a jail would likely violate the terms of the current environmental covenant as it pertains to residential use on the property. 

As part of the Bunker Hill Superfund cleanup, several miles of property adjacent to the former railroad were remediated to some degree as the railroad was converted into the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes bike trail – the property in question wasn’t remediated for residential use.

There are steps the county could’ve taken to petition the EPA if they had decided that they wanted to utilize the property, however, that would require quite a bit of work on the county’s end – significantly increasing the amount of money they would need to spend in order to accomplish the goal of building of a jail. 

The original decision to pursue the property had been made by the previous board of commissioners and had spanned several years before the current board was elected. 

According to the EPA, they were never contacted by the county during the initial purchase process to get clarification on the specifics of that environmental covenant. 

There was also a discussion about the funds for the purchase of the property. 

The previous board had engineered the sale of county property in Smelterville to Maverik Inc. for $2.1 million, and the funds from that sale would be used to purchase the new property. However, $1.7 million of that was used by the county in order to pass their 2023/24 budget, so the county may not have the funds available to complete the sale as planned. 

Shoshone County Sheriff Holly Lindsey was given the opportunity to weigh in on the situation since the public safety building and jail are under her jurisdiction. 

“We have to stop looking at the jail like it’s going to be a money maker,” Lindsey said. 

As crime rates have spiked, the jail has been at capacity or even over full for much of the past few months, which led to the facility failing its annual certification inspection. But she also believes that a new, bigger facility may not be the answer for the county – especially because she is struggling to properly staff the current building. 

As it stands now, the current jail is in need of millions of dollars worth of upgrades – but they would need to pass a bond in order to make that happen. 

In 2019, the county attempted to pass a bond election to build a new $22 million state-of-the-art jail facility, that bond initiative failed resoundingly as it failed to secure even a simple majority of the votes.