County weighs $150,000 DMV remodel and broader facilities plan as staff safety and retention concerns mount

The Bonner County sheriff’s office presented plans to remodel the county’s driver’s license office, asking for an estimated $150,000 to reconfigure the workspace, add a third service station and improve staff safety. The sheriff’s office said employees have faced aggressive customer behavior and cramped, insecure work areas; the proposed remodel would remove a non‑loadbearing wall, reorient countertops to better monitor testing areas and create a secure door between staff and public spaces.

A sheriff’s office representative described recent incidents where employees were yelled at, threatened and that staff had pressed an emergency alarm; the speaker said a longtime clerk “said, ‘I don't know if I can work here anymore’” and argued physical changes were needed for staff safety and retention. The remodel was framed as an operational need that could accommodate growth if the state increases DMV responsibilities in the future.

Several commissioners urged a broader facilities review before making a major investment. One commissioner suggested exploring whether dispatch, DMV at the mall, and other county functions could be reorganized across existing county buildings to create a more efficient, public‑facing footprint with better parking and growth capacity; that commissioner said she wanted the assessor, engineer and sheriff to participate in a county footprint study. Another commissioner argued the proposed remodel would address immediate safety and operational problems and could last 10–15 years.

Board members did not authorize the remodel during the workshop. Instead they recommended pausing the specific appropriation and scheduling a wider discussion of county facility use and long‑term plans, while acknowledging a near‑term need to keep frontline staff safe and to address high turnover in the driver's license division.

Staff said the remodel would likely require temporarily relocating the driver’s license operation during construction and that fees collected at the office (which the sheriff’s office said can total thousands of dollars in a day) support the office’s operations. Commissioners asked staff to consider parking impacts, the cost of moving dispatch or DMV functions, and whether those alternatives could produce a longer‑term solution that avoided piecemeal investments.

Speakers who raised the facility‑wide planning option asked that the board schedule a public discussion about the county footprint and potential reorganization during an upcoming Tuesday meeting, to give the community and departments visibility into long‑range options.