Below is another Letter posted to the St. Maries Gazette-Record, published 4/15/26:
Well, it looks like we will be getting two new county commissioners. The commissioners run the rural areas of the county, but the city folk get to vote for them too, which means that they outvote the country folk in every election.
Country folk are tired of the inspectors from Kootenai County, et al, where rural values are not represented. We can’t build or improve our properties unless we do it their way: their way being the UN approved Green New Deal mania of California-style regulators that are crawling all over Boise and Coeur d Alene these days.
I say fire them all.
When contractors from Washington State tell us that our inspectors are too strict and unrealistic, that should tell you something. Washington is California-lite.
I hope our wanna-be commissioners are listening. Do they really want us to be harassed by outsiders who just want to “teach us a lesson or two?”
Surely we have some home-grown talent that could be our inspectors. If not, import them from Idaho County or some other rural area. Paying their extra travel costs to inspect each project would be more than compensated by streamlining unnecessary code enforcement. Many improvement projects are never attempted because local folks just don’t want to deal with stupid bureaucrats.
Benewah County is full of do-it-yourself pioneers. Let’s treasure and exploit that resource.
James Stivers
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