North Idaho mayors to gather at Innovation Den

Next week’s confab of area leaders will allow Coeur d’Alene Mayor Steve Widmyer to showcase one of the City’s forward-thinking locales: He’s hosting the North Idaho Mayors’ Coalition at the Innovation Den.

“It’s a great economic tool for our community,” Widmyer said, “that allows creative people to expand their business ideas in a collaborative environment.”

The semiannual event, which meets each spring and fall, serves as a roundtable for mayors to discuss the challenges facing their towns, the best practices for pressing issues and ways to stimulate local initiatives. The Innovation Den, Coeur d’Alene’s collaborative thinkspace that rents offices to entrepreneurs, follows in big footsteps; the May 2019 Coalition meeting at North Idaho College’s Parker Technical Education Center was a big success.

“It’s a great opportunity for the mayors to get together and share information about what’s going on in their respective cities,” Widmyer said,” [and] talk about challenges that we are facing.”

The Nov. 5 event will begin with a tour of the Innovation Den before Jerry Mason, attorney for the Association of Idaho Cities, gives the mayors a legislative update. He’ll lead a discussion about past legislative issues and how they’ll affect North Idaho towns and cities.

First up on Mason’s agenda is revenue-sharing.

“The small communities not growing in North Idaho and around the state face some revenue realities,” Mason said. “Some of the larger cities like Coeur d’Alene get funding from tax revenues, but if you’re a small town and you’re not growing, the revenue basket won’t look quite as full. Keeping those communities informed — and keeping the bigger cities informed, so they know what smaller towns are dealing with — is always a key part to these coalition meetings.”

Mason said North Idaho’s growth often disproportionally affects smaller towns that otherwise dodged a population surge, and not always for the better.

Revenue-sharing in Idaho often amounts to a noteworthy portion of a budget. Between April and June, for example, cities split a $15.5 million kitty from a fund that distributes sales tax revenue. With 5% of Idaho’s market value and just over 4% of its population, Coeur d’Alene saw the fourth-highest slice of the pie in the state, receiving $717,284. Post Falls received $436,724 in quarterly revenue, Hayden $208,430, Rathdrum $99,844.

Revenue-sharing won’t be the only topic on the table for Mason. The mechanisms that maintain growth also will be up for discussion.

“At this point, a lot of the topics will be holdovers from the last legislative session,” he said. “We’re going to talk about revenue-sharing, but we’re also going to talk about the annexation process and how growth is handled. There are some things we’ll get to discuss.”

A representative from the Idaho Department of Commerce will speak about Idaho businesses before the mayors sit for a roundtable luncheon. The discussion will cover tips, tricks and techniques in a closed-door brainstorming setting to help mayors build stronger communities.

“It’s always a great opportunity to hear how the different towns are working to address some of their issues,” Mason said. “I get to listen to their challenges, and I get to hear how they’re problem-solving. It’s always a great experience.”