Hearing on 520-acre Rathdrum annex request Thursday
RATHDRUM — The Rathdrum Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on the city's largest annexation request in recent history on Thursday at 6 p.m. at City Hall.
The 520 total acres are on the west side of Greensferry Road both north and south of Wyoming Avenue.
The city owns 320 of the acres between Hayden Avenue and Wyoming. Beyond Green, Inc., and developer Philip Wirth own the remaining 205. Both of the sites are undeveloped and under separate farming leases.
"No developments are currently planned," City Administrator Leon Duce said, referring to both properties.
Duce said leaders believe it's important to secure the city's property as a tax base for the city so that is why the annexation was initiated.
About 480 of the total acreage in the annexation request is proposed to be zoned industrial, while 40 is proposed to be residential to provide a buffer to the rural zoned property to the east.
Duce said the city is considering selling its acreage in the future to the city of Post Falls as a future land application site to dispose treated wastewater. The funding would be applied to the city's future campus along Lancaster Road.
The city already has secured 30 acres along Lancaster for the city campus site that would combine its departments into one location. Design work for that project has not started.
Post Falls already owns 618 acres on the prairie for future land application. As standards of disposing wastewater to the Spokane River tighten, land application is expected to become the preferred discharge method.
The Beyond Green site was previously approved for annexation in 2007, but the annexation was not subsequently filed in a timely manner and therefore didn't occur.
Beyond Green's recent purchase of its 205 acres is separate from the 115 acres it owns nearby at the southeast corner of Lancaster and Greensferry roads near the power plant that was annexed into the city last year.
A public hearing before the planning board was originally slated for Feb. 20, but that was postponed because the legal notice in The Press contained a location error that the city made.
The planning commission will make a recommendation on the annexation request for the city council to consider during another public hearing.
A copy of the annexation proposal is available at City Hall. Questions can be directed to City Planner Cary Siess at cary@rathdrum.org or 208-687-2700, ext. 117.