Opinion: Our Last Chance to Remember the Prairie
Daniel Finley argues for the preservation of the prairie via the Kootenai County open spaces bond on the ballot for the Nov. 7, 2023 election
Written by Daniel Finley. He is a Hauser City Council member and a founding member of Kootenai Strong.
“Buy Land. God isn’t making more of it.”
As conservatives, we’ve become deeply aware these last few years of how little the local, state and federal government care about what we think. That’s why, honestly, it is so refreshing that the county has listened to the people and come up with a plan to preserve at least a few patches of prairie within it.
It’s certainly a lot more effort than the City of Post Falls put in. For almost a decade, I’ve worried and fretted that sprawling developments would swallow the Rathdrum Prairie completely. And when I brought it up in 2019 at a Post Falls City Council meeting, Mayor Jacobson dismissed me with, “It’s too late to save the Prairie,” and said developers had already marked out every inch of it.
He was dismissive. But he wasn’t wrong.
“Show me an incentive, and I’ll show you an outcome”
Why is the prairie destined to disappear? It’s simple: our current system provides financial incentives to swallow it and gives the county NO tools to protect it.
I was shocked to find this out, but when county land is annexed into cities, the county has NO say in the transaction — only the developer and the city do. And the “Coeur 4” cities will always annex more land because they need to broaden their tax base to pay for infrastructure and lower taxes.
The necessary result of that system is that our Prairie will disappear. The Open Spaces bond is the only tool the county can use to beat developers and cities to the punch and preserve pockets of our prairie in perpetuity.
Open Spaces: Preserving Beauty, Protecting Our Water, and Slowing Traffic
So what does the Open Spaces Bond actually do? It’s pretty simple:
Bond money can ONLY go to open spaces for parks in the county and for recreational amenities.
Land purchased for open spaces CANNOT be developed in the future.
Open Space on the Rathdrum Prairie is the focus.
It’s not just about the natural beauty of the area. Purchasing land above our aquifer protects it from contamination and prevents high-density developments from clogging up roads in certain areas.
Overall, the idea is to protect certain parts of the Prairie from disappearing under a sea of California and Washington transplants. It ensures that some part of the prairie will be left to our children forever and gives the county a tool to keep Kootenai County a wonderful place to live.
A Good Steward
In considering the bond, it’s important to appreciate just how well-run our county parks department already is from a financial point of view.
To appreciate that, you need to meet Nick Snyder, the head of the Kootenai County Parks and Waterways department, who wrote the Open Spaces bond. I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting him as a Hauser City Council member and can say that he’s one of the few people to truly embrace being a public servant.
He runs his department off of a shoe-string budget, servicing dozens of boat launches and parks from Farragut to Chatcolet on just a $400k budget. That’s for personnel and equipment to cover 52,000 sq feet of docks at 25 locations and the Hayden spillway.
His department is prolific at writing grants because it’s a way to avoid spending taxpayer dollars (and because his department is so good at writing grants, the $50 million bond is likely to become a whole lot more).
One of his next ideas for the park in Hauser is to get Washingtonians to pay their fair share of the maintenance costs while keeping access free for locals. That’s exactly what our public servants should be doing — taking the burden off locals and finding creative ways to raise funds besides taxes.
Show me your pocketbook and I’ll show you your priorities
Nick relies on grants and creative fundraising because, in truth, there is virtually NO public money for parks or open spaces. We say we value the beauty in this area – but our pocketbook would say otherwise.
Only 0.58% of all property taxes are used on our parks, just half of one percent. A drop in the bucket is all we give to allow residents to enjoy the land. Keep in mind that Kootenai County itself already has an extremely low tax rate of just 0.2279% per $100,000 as of 2020, which is 17% lower than the state average of all 44 counties.
Using those numbers, passing the bond is estimated to take the rate only to 0.236%, still well below the state average. And county taxes are likely to keep decreasing (to see which taxes you pay and where you money goes, use this nifty tool from the county).
The upshot is: if your property is worth $480,475 (the median home value in the county), you’d pay only $28.44 more a year. Half a tank of gas in Biden’s America. A nice night out in Trump’s. That’s all it takes to help preserve the memory of our prairie for generations to come.
If You’re In the Burning Building — Jump
Some are worried that, beyond all those facts, details are sparse. But it’s impossible to really know what will go into a piece of land until you see the property. Each one should be treated differently, and it would be irresponsible to plan without the property.
This system, of course, doesn’t guarantee success, but no system does. But what is guaranteed is that an Open Spaces bond is a system that can succeed where our current system is destined to fail. I’ll take the non-zero percent chance of success over the 0% chance any day. If you’re in a burning building and there’s a team below to catch you, jump! Not because success is guaranteed but because failure is guaranteed if you don’t.
The fact is this is our last, best chance to preserve some part of the Prairie. It’s the only way to get ahead of developers. Could a private system be better? Maybe, but not if there’s no land to buy. Besides, passing an Open Spaces bond now doesn’t preclude a private system in the future.
Keep Kootenai Great - Vote YES on Open Spaces
Land is valuable not only because of its financial value. It’s valuable because it shapes us and is part of who we are. Great Americans like Teddy Roosevelt understood that land and beauty have intrinsic value to society that ought to be preserved.
“Buy land because God isn’t making more of it.” That applies to the county, too.
If we want to be good stewards of the land we’ve been given, if we protect and preserve it for generations to come, then vote YES on the Open Spaces bond.
Daniel Finley
Hauser, Idaho
The Hayden Citizen - Opinions
Op-Eds do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at The Hayden Citizen. Any resident of the City of Hayden or Kootenai County is welcome to submit an opinion to haydencitizen at protonmail dot com.
Election information for Nov. 7, 2023
View information about the Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023 election on the Kootenai County elections website. The site offers sample ballots so you can look up your ballot before you vote.
Below is an image of the open spaces bond from a sample ballot.
