Report details proposed jail impact fees

COEUR d’ALENE — A study prepared for Kootenai County details proposed impact fees meant to support the jail.

The suggested jail impact fees would be assessed on all new development within Kootenai County, both incorporated and unincorporated.

The fees, which will be collected at the time of building permits and remitted to the county, would be $551 per dwelling unit for residential units and 24 cents per square foot for nonresidential uses, according to a draft report of the study.

Commissioner Bruce Mattare said Tuesday that he’s in communication with legal counsel for the city of Rathdrum, where officials previously said the connection between population growth and the need for jail beds is unclear.

“I tend to agree with (Rathdrum city attorney Emily Smith’s) insight on how these impact fees may have been calculated and how we really want to make sure they really can hold up to scrutiny, because if we’re going to go through the process only for them not to meet a legal standard and have it just completely come apart, it’s a waste of everyone’s time,” Mattare said.

Kootenai County hired Boise-based firm Galena Consulting to calculate impact fees for the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, as well as the jail and parks and waterways.

The county later shelved proposed fees for the sheriff’s office and parks and waterways, but area mayors have expressed willingness to discuss impact fees to support the jail because all cities utilize it.

Idaho law requires the county to implement the capital improvement plan methodology to calculate impact fees. The county can implement fees of any amount not to exceed the fees as calculated by that approach.

The Kootenai County jail has enough beds for 451 people, though it has been consistently overcrowded for the past two years, according to the sheriff’s office. The average daily inmate population represents about 0.2% of the county population.

To determine the jail space needed to meet the demand of future growth, Galena Consulting projected the ratio of the number of beds needed for the current population onto projected future growth.

The study assumed 0.2% of any increase in population would be added to the number of incarcerated people in the future and arrived at 116 as the number of needed beds.

The number of beds is then multiplied by the square footage necessary per incarcerated person. This includes dormitories, medical facilities, dining facilities and more.

Kootenai County commissioners voted unanimously in October to set aside $9 million to fund the completion of two unfinished dormitory pods at the jail, which would add 108 beds to the facility. This space is intended to resolve the existing space deficiency and cannot be funded with impact fees.

Galena Consulting estimates the need for another two dormitory pods by 2031, when the county’s population is expected to increase by more than 57,000 people and create a demand for an additional 120 beds. The county will also need to provide about 10,000 square feet for expanded administration, kitchen, medical and storage facilities, the report said.

Because these expansions are growth-related, the report said, they can be funded through impact fees.

Impact fee studies for jails have been completed in Ada, Elmore and Payette counties, according to Galena Consulting, but fees have only been adopted in Elmore County, which has a population of about 29,400 people. The same beds-per-population methodology was used in these impact fee studies.

A public hearing on jail impact fees is expected to be scheduled for mid-January 2024.