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Council asks staff to prioritize policy review on water service outside city boundaries
Summary
Staff briefed the council on long-running questions about Sandpoint's practice of serving water beyond its municipal limits, legacy resolutions and a 2022 system study. Council directed staff to prioritize policy review, produce legal/engineering options and pursue intergovernmental agreements to resolve ownership and funding responsibilities.
The council directed staff to prioritize a comprehensive review of policies and intergovernmental arrangements related to water service outside Sandpoint city limits.
Staff summarized a complicated history of resolutions adopted in 2008 and 2011 that established a process for "will-serve" requests from properties outside the city. A 2022 system study identified stress and fire-flow capacity issues on portions of the distribution system beyond the city boundary and raised ownership and replacement-cost questions.
"Those intergovernmental agreements were never entered," staff said, noting emergency IGAs drafted in 2022 had not been presented to neighboring jurisdictions. Staff outlined options including negotiating IGAs with adjacent jurisdictions, clarifying who owns and will maintain remote infrastructure, and possibly pursuing annexation or a regional utility model.
Councilors expressed varying appetites for prioritizing this work. Several members called for a 1-to-3-year program of work: review the resolutions, circulate the prior legal analysis to council, identify engineering and financing gaps, and return with action items and target dates. Staff warned the work could require reallocating scarce utility and legal resources and suggested an executive-session workshop to cover legal risks.
No final policy change was adopted. Staff was asked to circulate existing resolutions and legal analyses and present a prioritized action plan and timetable for council consideration.
