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Clerk defends ambulance‑district accounting, board hears corrections and apology
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Summary
Bonner County clerk addressed public concerns about the ambulance district's finances, denied commingling of funds, described separate tax IDs and accounts for EMS, and recounted previous ARPA support; a commissioner later apologized to the clerk's office for unfounded public comments.
During the public‑meeting portion of Tuesday’s Bonner County Board of Commissioners session, the county clerk spent a detailed period responding to statements made at a recent ambulance‑district meeting and to public criticism.
The clerk said assertions that the ambulance district had been targeted for elimination were incorrect and called attention to a potential conflict of interest he had raised about property being transferred to the ambulance district. He denied that the county had commingled EMS funds with county funds, saying EMS has a separate tax ID, a separate checking account, and that monthly transfers to EMS were done via board resolutions. “EMS payroll was never commingled with County funds,” the clerk said.
The clerk also explained that department heads and EMS leadership have had access to the county’s financial system (Munis) since its implementation in 2017 and recounted prior board actions, including a June 2024 resolution approving $1.5 million in ARPA funds to help EMS through a projected shortfall. He described audits and earlier external reviews that did not find fraud and said requests for repeated external audits were damaging to staff reputation.
A commissioner who sits on the ambulance district board later offered an apology to the clerk’s office for public comments made during the ambulance-district discussion, calling those remarks “mostly unfounded” and praising the clerk and auditing staff’s work.
No formal action was taken; the board treated the item as a discussion. The clerk and commissioners said they would follow up with legal staff to answer remaining questions about personnel matters and severance, as requested by a remote commenter.
