Shoshone County examining leased properties

WALLACE –– The Shoshone Board of County Commissioners held a workshop on Wednesday morning to discuss ideas for the county’s leasable properties.

The formal workshop allows for ideas to be suggested and deliberated, and even receive input and questions from others in attendance – while still maintaining open meeting laws. 

Shoshone County Planning and Zoning administrator Dan Martinsen was also in attendance for the meeting, due to his expansive knowledge of the various county-owned properties and how they are allowed to be utilized. 

Commissioners Dave Dose and Jeff Zimmerman discussed their desire to put together a comprehensive list of the county-owned properties, and then create a well-defined system to categorize them. 

Dose suggested that the county explore the categories of seasonal/recreational, commercial, long-term use, and then properties that they can and wish to sell. 

Through defining these, the county would also determine the system in which they issue the leases for them. 

Currently, the recreational properties are seasonal rentals that are leased through a competitive auction process. 

Many of these properties are in popular areas, including the North Fork of the Couer d’Alene River. 

The reason they are leased annually instead of being sold as prime real estate is that they are legally prohibited from selling them. 

According to Martinsen, this is due to an agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which turned over several different properties to Shoshone County that were designated regulatory floodways. These properties must stay in the county's possession with strict rules and regulations for how they are used and what can be placed on them. 

However, from late May to October, they make for excellent locations to park a camper. 

The county also owns properties in places zoned strictly commercial, and they can lease these properties but are also open to selling them. 

Recently, the board approved a one-year lease on a county-owned commercial property in Smelterville – A property that they had never leased before, and one that they are still hopeful that they could sell in the future. 

“I think the complaint is ‘how come you’re letting there be competitive bidding for the recreational properties, but not the others,” Dose said. “On the commercial side, we’ve just been leasing to the first person that comes along and wants to use the property – Well, nobody’s ever wanted it. So, maybe we could come up with some definitions that say ‘This is why this piece gets leased for 12 months,’ or ‘Why this one is leased for two years.” 

This is just another place where Shoshone County and the BOCC are hoping that they can generate income for the county, which is still investigating a budget shortfall from last summer that forced them to slash their budgets and supplement with one-time funds to pass their annual budget. 

Once they have this list of properties in place, as well as categorized the BOCC plans to hold their auction for the recreational properties. 

Dose and Zimmerman were in agreement that they would like to have this auction completed before the end of April and that the 2024 leases on the recreational properties would run from May 1 through October 31.