Stories in this Regional News Roundup are excerpted from weekly newspapers from around the region. This is part two, with part one having appeared in Saturday’s Tribune.
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Meeting the growing push — both nationally and statewide — for more electric vehicle charging stations, proposed projects in Grangeville and Kamiah in north central Idaho were recently awarded $425,000 for development and construction.
Overall, 12 recipients across the state of Idaho were awarded Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) Program funds from the Office of Energy and Mineral Resources (OEMR) and the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).
The funds will be used to deploy publicly available electric vehicle (EV) charging equipment along Idaho’s major highways and freeways, creating a greater network of charging services for the public.
DEQ and OEMR have managed the EVSE Program since 2017 with funding from the Volkswagen Settlement. The program was designed to provide cost-share funds or reimbursements for direct current fast charger equipment, commonly called charging stations or charging docks. The program provided a total of $2.6 million in funds and ended in July 2022.
Private business Cloninger’s Inc. was awarded $217,379 for its Grangeville project (proposed to be located at 415 Main Street) and $207,683 for its Kamiah project (for 508 Third Street). According to Michael Brown, DEQ’s environmental resources discipline lead, three charging pedestals are proposed at each location, which typically have two ports each.
“They have two years to complete the project,” Brown said, which is a soft timeline. “If they are in the midst of completing a project and they run into project delays and need an extension, we accommodate those requests.”
— David Rauzi, editor, Idaho County Free Press, (Grangeville), Wednesday
Trustees commit $4M
McCall-Donnelly School District Trustees voted Monday to set aside $4 million to build staff housing on district-owned land on Stibnite Street across from McCall-Donnelly High School.
The district selected Pivot North Architecture, of Boise, to design the housing development. The firm was chosen after interviews Aug. 24 with five of seven competitors that submitted qualifications for the project.
“This is the most important step that we can take to move toward providing housing for staff,” Trustee Jeremy Griffin said.
The district owns about nine acres of land south of the high school on Stibnite Street and Mission Street to the west of a city pathway.
“This comes down to how to recruit and retain staff in order to keep our district exceptional,” Board Chairperson Laurie Erekson said.
“People have to be able to afford to live here. And this is one way that we’re trying to do that,” Erekson said.
The $4 million would be spent on phase one of the development, which would include design and construction of houses for district staff, as well as infrastructure like electrical, sewer and water hookups, M-D Superintendent Eric Pingrey told trustees on Monday.
Funds for the housing will come from the district’s general fund reserve, which currently has about $3.9 million plus the district’s capital construction fund and federal funds, Pingrey said.
The number of homes to be built in phase one was not decided Monday and would depend on guidance from Pivot North, Pingrey said.
Still to be determined was the cost of renting the homes and a method to determine which staff would live there, but district employees would be able to rent the units for below current market rates, he said.
The intention is to build multi-unit residences so that there is more capacity for staff.
“The design of the project will be guided by our architects to ensure the homes share a mountain community feel,” Pingrey said.
— Drew Dodson, The Star News (McCall), Thursday
