OK I’m going to give the bullet points about the Optional Forms of Government meeting because there was a lot going on and the whole thing was crazy. I highly recommend watching the entire 3-hour YouTube video or see my TikTok updates here:
ACTION
Email the prosecutor’s office via form to ask them to make an official decision about the legality of Kristen Wing participating in the Kootenai County study commission when she does not live within the county.
Be ready for a special meeting since Wednesday’s meeting will most likely be cancelled.
Updates from the Meeting
Questions were immediately raised about the legality of Kristen Wing participating any further as she no longer lives in Kootenai County. She “participated” on the phone throughout the call.
Brian Cleary wants the Clerk’s office to investigate Kristen Wing’s residency and refer to prosecutor’s office before they can continue with Kristen Wing.
Chair Dave Botting’s argument to allow Kristen to continue is that no new information is going to be added tonight. The special meeting was only there to add the old comments into the record.
Botting says statute says the person is on the commission up to 30 days after final report is recorded. However, I’m having difficulties finding the part that states that the person doesn’t have to live in the county for any length of time and still vote. Please let me know if you find it. Final bylaws here.
Botting said he got the verbal opinion of a prosecuting attorney.
A little bit later, Botting walked back that statement when it came out that his verbal “opinion” was something that the prosecuting attorney REFUSED to write down and put it into record.
Quick note: I have filed a request to the prosecutor’s office to make an official decision on the status of Kristen Wing’s capability of being on this board. I advise you do the same.
They’re going through the comments one by one and there’s a lot of hypotheticals added to the reasons WHY they recommend a change in government. Botting, in previous meetings, made the group remove all hypotheticals from the reasons why they SHOULDN’T change the government. But I guess leaving them in for why they should was ok. Tamara Bateson was having none of that.
Surprise surprise, new comments were added into the record and will be added to the report.
Huge discussion around why can’t the current commissioners hire a manager to do the job instead of changing the entire form of government. Brian Cleary wants clear delineation between what the commissioners has authority to do now vs. what they/commission manager has authority to do later.
Nanci Plouffe mentioned that any email that came in to the County Commissioners, forwarded to the study commission, was deleted and the study commission would have to do a public records request to find them. Seriously. They deleted all the emails.
Botting is trying to ram through these new parts of the report and have them ready by a meeting this Wednesday at 5:30pm.
Notes about this Wednesday meeting:
The Wednesday meeting was an agenda item on the special meeting agenda.
It was not listed on the Kootenai County website calendar until just recently.
The meeting is not posted on the cork board on the county building wall.
No agenda has been posted which is supposed to have at least 48 hours in advance.
Regular meeting statute says that the meeting has to be posted 5 business days in advance and the agenda has to be posted at least 48 hours in advance. Which neither happened. I don’t believe this meeting will take place on Wednesday but be prepared for a special meeting to pop up soon.
The above is the gist of the meeting but I highly recommend you check out the 3 hour video (embedded below) and watch Botting be the rudest person in Kootenai County recent history (besides Shari Williams but she’s not the chair of a public study commission THANK GOD.)
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