Rathdrum mayor praises strong city

RATHDRUM — Mayor Vic Holmes listed his city's accomplishments from 2022 and shared planned projects for Rathdrum to a crowd of more than 100 Thursday at the Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church.

“The state of the city is financially stable and is a vibrant community,” Holmes said.

The Rathdrum Chamber of Commerce organized the luncheon and invited the mayor to speak, alongside Lakeland Joint School District Superintendent Lisa Arnold, Idaho Transportation Department engineering manager Marv Fenn, Northern Lakes Fire District Chief Pat Riley and Idaho Department of Labor economist Sam Wolkenhauer.

Each speaker painted a picture of the city through their lens in the community, and provided a glimpse into plans for the future of Rathdrum.

Mayor Holmes jumped right into the major topics on residents’ minds, beginning with concerns about growth.

Demand for housing is shifting. The demand for single-family homes is dropping, Holmes said, and for the first time in a long time, demand for townhomes and apartments is increasing.

Some new housing projects in 2022 included apartment complexes at Lancaster Avenue and Meyer Road, Highway 41 and Lancaster and Brookshire South apartments. Developers and builders are expected to continue to favor multi-family with housing demand at peak levels and prices high.

But while growth is pushing housing prices up, there's a silver lining to what that can bring to the economy, Wolkenhauer said.

Job growth is strong and there are roughly four open positions for each unemployed person seeking to fill them.

“We’ve exhausted all the labor in the state,” he said.

Housing availability can draw working aged people in to fill jobs in a strong economy.

In 2010, there were six workers per retiree, and this year it’s just 3.4 workers per retiree.

“It’s very hard to fill positions right now,” Wolkenhauer continued. “There’s an abundance of job opportunities right now in Idaho.”

Demand in the job market will be encouraging for high school and college-aged students entering the workforce and looking for opportunities, and that opportunity can continue to draw business into the region.

Inflation is still a problem, even though the rate is dropping, and people in Rathdrum can still feel the sting of rising prices with slow wage growth, Wolkenhauer said.

“When inflation is coming down, that just means that prices aren’t rising as quickly as they were,” he added.

With booming growth on the horizon, and projections that the population could double by 2040, there are multiple projects in planning to adapt to growth and build infrastructure.

Sometime in the future, Rathdrum City Hall will move across the street from KTEC, leaving the Parks and Recreation Department behind in the current building. The city hasn’t fully funded the construction project to build that facility, but it continues to plan the project and will invite bids and designs soon, Holmes said.

The Idaho Transportation Department has major plans for improving roadways to keep people safe and improve traffic. The interchange at Highway 41 and Interstate 90 should be completed by 2025, Fenn said.

There’s also a plan to expand I-90 to four lanes on each side from Highway 41 to U.S. 95, improving flow and reducing congestion, but most importantly increasing safety.

That project is a top priority at the state level for roads, and could cost roughly $1 billion to complete.

Another exciting prospect in planning would add an overpass at Pleasantview, where trains block the road for six hours a day, Fenn said, and adding an overpass would bypass those delays.

A new fire station is also in planning for the Northern Lakes Fire District. The new station would allow the district to have backup fire coverage between downtown Rathdrum and Hayden, improving safety and emergency response time in the city.

“We spend 20% of available hours out of the year with no one to cover,” Riley said.

The new station would allow the district to expand to keep up with growth and answer the more than 6,600 emergency calls received each year.

Rathdrum will make these improvements while maintaining low tax levy rates, Holmes said. The city staff are proud they’ve only had one tax increase in the last eight years totaling less than 2%.

Projects continue to be funded through savings, maintaining low levy rates and also grants from the state or federal government. Rathdrum has received more than $3.6 million in grants since the City Council opted to hire a grant writer.

Other funding for projects includes impact fees paid by growth and development.

Some projects the city has already completed include a traffic light at Highway 53 and Meyer Road and a disc golf course on Rathdrum Mountain, where students created the course from start to finish.

“We’ve found that things last a lot longer when the kids get to take ownership,” Holmes said.

Vandalism goes down when the students lead projects. They tend to protect the community spaces they create, Holmes said.