Commissioners to revisit road vacation

SPIRIT LAKE — Neighbors on Hidden Valley Road in Spirit Lake are seeking a road vacation of a public right of way, citing concerns about nuisance, trespass, and other complaints.

The petition for the road vacation (VS0001-22) was first heard Oct. 26, but due to a lack of comment by the Idaho Department of Lands, whose property touches the dedicated roadway, the commissioners chose to continue the meeting until Nov. 9.

The road, which residents petitioned the county to take over in 1915, has not been maintained by the county, the residents claim in their request for the road vacation of over half of a mile of the road. The last thousand or so feet appear to have never been maintained and is more of a “skid trail,” one of the neighbors, Bill Hertzberg, said.

Daniel Strauss, a representative of Spirit Valley LLC, which sought to vacate the road above his parcel, contracted Whiskey Rock Planning and Consulting to file on his behalf. Strauss and his neighbors said that the road has seen a major increase in traffic as areas to the south have seen increasing “urbanization.”

Due to population growth and the popularity of off road vehicles, residents of Hidden Valley Road have endured “frequent trespass, loitering, vandalism and deposition of trash on their property,” the application narrative said. The residents claim they have been verbally assaulted and threatened by trespassers.

Strauss, who spoke at the first meeting in October, said non-residents often use Hidden Valley Road to enter Zenith Road, a private right of way. Some years back, Strauss said he collaborated with the IDL and installed a gate in 2015 to prevent trespass and timber theft. The gate was vandalized and then stolen. There was even a death on his property a few years ago, he said.

Hertzberg, who has lived on Hidden Valley Road for 30 years, said he owns 130 acres in the area. Not only do he and his family bring a garbage bag to pick up trash, every time they go out, he said items are dumped throughout the area. Among those items are a dozen car batteries and about 30 tires that were dumped into a creek upstream of his property.

Most alarming, however, he said were a series of incidents including his office window being broken and some of his belongings stolen, forcing him to call law enforcement several times.

“The police thought someone was trying to cultivate marijuana up in the hills behind my house. We never got to the bottom of it,” Hertzberg said.

In their request, neighbors in the area said the situation “has become intolerable”, and all agree that vacation of the right of way and installation of a gate below their property “will bring them relief,” the application narrative said.

However, the county’s Road and Bridge Department disagreed, saying a road vacation is not the right move.

“All of the traffic that the applicants identify as a nuisance currently have legal public road access to this public land, and eliminating that access would not be in the interest of the public,” department officials said.

Planning Department officials agreed with the Road and Bridge assessment that, while a nuisance, that traffic has a legal right to be on Hidden Valley Road.

Neighbors said Idaho Code allows for vacation of a public road if it is abandoned, has not been maintained at least three out of the last 15 years, or if retaining the road “for use by the public is not in the public interest.”

However, Idaho Code prohibits that vacation of a roadway if a right of way is the only means to access federal or state-owned land.

Whiskey Jack’s Jeremy Grimm said that the roadway qualifies for vacation because reducing the need for police involvement in the area would be in the public interest. Grimm also presented an IDL map, which shows Hidden Valley Road ending near their proposed vacation point. In addition, he said an IDL map shows U.S. Forest Road 2550 as providing access to the IDL land.

If the vacation is approved, Grimm said the neighbors will put in a 60-foot radius turnaround, about 2.5 miles away from FSR 2550.

“The bottom line is that the public does not use Hidden Valley Road to access the state land to the west of Mr. Thompson’s property. They use it to go onto Zenith and Glad [two private roads] to trespass,” Strauss said.

Commissioner Jeff Connolly, however, was concerned about the lack of involvement of IDL, since they would be affected landowners.

“My biggest question is, did you reach out to IDL because it sounds like in the past they’ve been like ‘we don’t want this access anyway.’ That would’ve absolutely made this thing just swoosh,” Commissioner Connolly said.

“If IDL wrote a letter in the file that said ‘we have no interest in this access’ I would’ve been like let’s go.”

Grimm said that if that is a sticking point for the commissioners, then he would need a continuance of the hearing to obtain such a letter from IDL.