East River Spur dispute continues

PRIEST RIVER — An elderly couple who managed to escape Communism in former Yugoslavia have found themselves prisoners in their North Idaho home, according to a former Bonner County commissioner.

Todd Sudick helped broker an agreement with the Idaho Department of Lands in 2016 in which the county agreed to maintain East River Spur Road and replace a deteriorating bridge across the North Fork of East River. The easement was meant to preserve access to the home of Boris and Rachel Vrbeta.

The current board of commissioners, however, unsuccessfully tried to terminate the easement on grounds that the county would be expending “substantial sums” of public funds for the private benefit of one couple.

“The county is now of the position that it is not in the best interest to continue maintenance of the easement area,” commissioners Glen Bailey, Dan McDonald and Jeff Connolly said in a June 13, 2017, letter to the Idaho Department of Lands.

The state declined the request, partly because it would provoke litigation if access to private property was severed, county records show. The county then abandoned East River Spur Road as a public right of way, which effectively sealed the Vrbetas in their own home, Sudick said.

“They cannot get out of their property and EMS and fire (personnel) can’t get in,” said Sudick, who calls the situation “untenable.”

Particularly galling, Sudick points out, is that the Vrbetas escaped a repressive regime only to become prisoners in their retirement home.

“Here they are in their retirement and they can’t get out of the house,” said Sudick.

The Vrbetas filed a claim seeking unspecified damages around the time the county was trying to extricate itself from the easement, county records indicate.

But Commissioner Dan McDonald said the imprisonment is self-imposed because the county has been waiting since last October to get the couple to sign on to an agreement which would see the county plow the road so it can be accessed from an existing state forest route. The county also agreed to replace the bridge, McDonald said.

“We worked in good faith to put this thing to bed,” said McDonald.

McDonald said the couple has not indicated why they won’t sign the agreement, but suspects it’s because once the bridge is replaced, the Vrbetas would be responsible for maintaining their access from that point on.

Sudick contends the road the Vrbetas have been using has been a county route since 1934, although McDonald said the county has discovered it actually belongs to the state.

“We found the deed. It was deeded to the state of Idaho,” said McDonald.

Also in dispute are the existence of alternate routes the Vrbetas can use to ingress and egress their property. McDonald said there are at least two alternate forest roads the couple can use, but Sudick contends the available routes are impassible due to Kelly humps, earthen barriers installed to prohibit motorized access.

It’s also unclear why the access discrepancy didn’t surface on title reports when the Vrbetas purchased their land.

The county is putting approximately $60,000 on the table to replace the bridge and plow a link to the state forest road. However, the maintenance would have been an even bigger leach on taxpayer dollars, according to McDonald. It would have also created a precedent that other landowners could use to resolve their shaky access issues.

“It’s a deal that never should have been done,” McDonald said of the 2016 easement.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.