Washington County Planning & Zoning

Regular P & Z Commission Meeting April 15,2025

COMMISSION MEMBERS:

Eric Johnson John Jensen

Jeri Soulier Katie Rollins Debbie Warren Karen Wright Donovan Galligar Seth Mattews Ron Jaeger

AD MININISTRATION:                          Bonnie Brent-Dowell, P & Z Administrator

SECRETARY:                                              Cindy Womack-Steele, P & Z Administrative Assistant Visitors: Chris Christopherson

MEETING CALLED TO ORDER;

The April 15, 2025, regular meeting of the Washington County Planning and Zoning Commission, held at the Washington County Courthouse, Board of County Commissioners’s meeting room in Weiser, Idaho was called to order at 7:02 p.m. by Chairman Ron Jaeger.

The following proceedings took place:

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE:

Led by Commission Chairman Ron Jaeger.

ROLL CALL:
Katie Rollins Absent	Jeri Soulier X Debbie Warren X	John Jensen X
Eric Johnson X   Seth Matthews X	Donovan Galligar X Karen Wright X	Ron Jaeger X
APPROVAL OF MINUTES:

The minutes from the March 18, 2025 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting were approved as sent.

HEARINGS & DISCUSSION:

Findings of Fact for the Jeri & George Soulier Special Use:

Chairman Ron Jaeger asked for any discussion on the presented Findings of Fact on the Soulier Special Use. Hearing none, Chairman Jaeger stated he would entertain a motion on these Findings of Fact.

Commission member, Debbie Warren, made a motion to approve the Findings of Fact on the Soulier Special Use.

Commission member, Eric Johnson, seconded the motion.

ROLL CALL VOTE:

Karen Wright, yea John Jensen, yea Eric Johnson, yea, Donovan Galligar, yea

Debbie Warren, yea Seth Matthews, new member, not present for hearings so not voting. Motion passed unanimously.

Findings of Fact on Bruce Winegar Variance:

Chairman Ron Jaeger asked for any discussion on the presented Findings of Fact on the Winegar Variance. Hearing none, Chairman Ron Jaeger stated he would entertain a motion on these Findings of Fact.

Commission member, John Jensen made a motion to approve the Findings of Fact for the Winegar Variance. Commission member, Donovan Galligar seconded the motion.

RQLL CALL VOTE:

Jeri Soulier, yea Karen Wright, yea John Jensen, yea Eric Johnson, yea Donovan Galligar, yea Debbie Warren, yea

Seth Matthews, new member, not present for hearings, so not voting. Motion passed unanimously.

DISCUSSION:

Regarding completing the Findings of Fact on the same night as the hearing to not have a delay in the hearing decision process for Land Use applicants and discussion on Executive Session:

Chairman Ron Jaeger said he was going through old records of his and found the bylaws for the planning and zoning. I thought I had them here with me, but I don’t have them tonight. Next month is when we have elections so I will try and get that to Bonnie. I am sure people would want to look at it and get it updated. It does say we are supposed to look at it every year. I think everybody forgot we even had something like that. It does say, the Chairman just votes to break a tie, so we are actually operating correctly at the moment.

Jeri asked, my husband and I were slightly harmed by having the delay between the hearing and this night and then waiting for it to go to the commissioners. I am wondering what we can do to make it go smoother and be done the same night, the Findings of Fact the same night when they are written up?

Ron answered, so when we met with True, you said you would look in to it and then let us know. Can you enlighten us on that?

True spoke and said, generally speaking, if you guys want to stay here later, they have to be written off and you have to have something to vote on. It would need to be put on the agenda; you are going to do that and then you would have to complete them before you could vote on them.

Jeri replied, so I like law, can you refer me to where that is? True responded, so, it is going to be in the Open Meeting stuff, as far as making good Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.

Jeri stated she didn’t know how other counties are doing it and asked True, is this something that you think is important, or has been neglected? True responded, so, individually for people to write up their own Findings of Fact is not traditionally how this is done. Generally speaking, it is consolidated and done by your P & Z Administrator in most counties and then she takes some time to go back and listen to the minutes and make sure that they reflect what you guys said. There is nothing that says you guys can’t write your own, but they need to be consolidated into specific Findings of Fact. Otherwise, each one of you provides a different Finding of Fact, which one is going to vote on as the correct one.

Jeri asked, so where are you seeing this done? What other counties? True responded, pretty much any other county that does Findings of Fact, their secretary writes them up and then they vote on them at the next meeting. Just like they approve their minutes and that sort of thing. Jeri asked, do they do this in Payette County? Ron asked, the process cannot go forward until they are approved, right? True responded, correct.

Jeri stated, so we have been doing this incorrectly then. True replied, I am not saying that I am saying it would be better if you had Findings of Fact that are consolidated. If you guys want to stay late and do them you can, but I don’t think you are going to want to do them individually because you are going to have people that vote nay, so which one are you going to be voting on? Jeri asked True, so your experience in Adams County and that was going on before you. True answered yes. Jeri asked again, so that’s how they have always done it in Adams County. True responded, well, I don’t know if that’s how they have always done it. But that’s, yeah.

Ron stated, so, I can see, like this Finding that we approved, the bulk of it is , the staff report from before, that cites all of our codes and things and then it has basically the minutes of the hearing and then the only parts we would have to add to that, and I don’t know how quickly you get the minutes, I mean if we were trying to do this the same night, I see that being the hardest part because I see the part we would have would just be, I picture it as just a few lines of this is why it doesn’t meet the code section such and such and that part should be done fairly quickly. Donovan said, isn’t it just what we say and then we vote on it. Ron said, if we want to

do it that way we have to make sure that motion includes all the Finding of Fact and nothing else. True spoke up and said, you’re Findings of Fact need to reflect what you guys discussed, what your questions were and what you guys basically agreed on. And that is what you are voting on tonight. Yes, this is what I heard, this is what we decided. This is the basis and law that we decided on. It’s actually called Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law so you are supposed to be putting the facts in those things. It shouldn’t necessarily be pre­ written. And your minutes don’t have to be part of it. That could be separate. Generally speaking it takes someone some time to write those up correctly so they reflect what you guys actually said and the findings that you guys actually made and in theory your motions would be pretty close to what those Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law were.

Debbie Warren asked True if he could tell her where in open meeting code it is found? True responded, “I couldn’t tell you tonight, but I could certainly do some additional looking for you, if you would like.” Deb replied, “ I was just looking through the Open Meeting Law and couldn’t find it.

Jeri then says, I go open this and it is beautifully done and it says he said this and she said that and it is like the report we get, and if it is decided, to do it this way or it is decided to do it that way, so Reasoned Decisions, how do go about asking the concerns we have and you close the hearing and we go back and make a motion that says, I make a motion that we send a favorable decision to the commissioners because of 501631 all in favor and they type that, would that work? No one must report the narrative, is that correct? True responded, No, but you, for a record, so look, what you guys do is subject to review by a court and to lawsuits so we need to have you guys have discussion that is appropriate to for the facts and how it applies to the law and actually put things on the record that show how you got to the decision you made. If you just showed up and listened

to the person and then you said, “I make a motion that we pass this”. That would not be a good record to defend later. Jeri replied, that’s not what I said. True replied, right. Jeri said, we close the hearing, we talk, and so someone makes a motion for, blah, blah, blah, that’s all right there on the recording, on public record for anybody that wants to hear it, but we make a quick clear code call out, this is why because it’s here, all in favor of 4 & 5, isn’t that sufficient? True replied, generally speaking motions, and I am not saying you couldn’t make one, I am simply saying, generally speaking Conclusions of Law and Findings of Fact are required something more than what you are going to put into a motion. Which is generally why they take some preparation. If you guys have a full night already of applications hearings it sometimes makes it very difficult to fit it all in. If you only have one that you got through in a half an hour, you could sit around for half and hour while Bonnie typed it up, I think it is absolutely doable. Jeri replied, well I am looking for a

way to do that because this really doesn’t make sense to me as a citizen and hopefully the last time as an applicant you have to wait and then wait for the commissioners it just seems. Donovan interjected, it is a long wait to begin with. Jeri replied, it is, it’s huge, it’s silly. Donovan added, and to have had to waited an extra month, I couldn’t have gotten anything poured before it snowed, if I had to wait an extra month. Jeri went on to say she was looking through the Findings of Fact and I think it is something I would like to strive for. To say we would go late doesn’t really affect me in my adult life, and we have, Ron and I, have had a 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning in our past. Ron interjected, when trying to do a rezone if it’s not in our impact we have to first have a change of plan and then we have to have the rezone and then we want to show from our comp plan this is where we want to do these things we would have to do that for everyone and we are always looking for things to save us a month or two but I think there are ways we can figure out how to write things or we have to have either training or critique or whatever of what we have done and how it can be done better. Jeri added, it used to be Mr. Herrington or Mr. Mason did the training all over the state so Mr. Herrington is qualified to train us along those lines. True asked, trained them on what? Jeri said, “on your training in Adams County that you trained them and you had said you were going to train us. So, I would love to have you present some ideas or give us some ideas on how we can fast track this so we can get this to go as it should. For those that have gone through this it is really a financial burden to have the extra wait to have someone type it up. Is there some way we could, True interjected and said, I would be happy to look into that. Jeri replied, that would be awesome.

Ron asked, so training on the Open Meeting Law? Jeri stated, “yes, absolutely”. Ron asked, “do we want to do that in a special meeting or what?”

Donovan said so if it’s slow that would be a good time to do some training. Administrator Bonnie said we are not getting a lot of land use applications right now. Donovan replied, “Mr. Chair, I would suggest that maybe when it gets down to the time limit when Bonnie knows what we have, if we have only one short application then maybe she can look at it and say this would be a good night for training and add it to the agenda.

Chairman Ron then asked the commission and True, are you guys okay with doing the two hearings like we did tonight and do a critique on them and see if we could do anything better or how we could have done anything different, and done it the same night? Are you guys okay with that? Jeri asked, “that’s what you are proposing, a critique of things we have already done?” Ron stated, that is me, he is not. I think we need an example.

True stated, “Mr. Chair, I would just maybe suggest that when it gets down to the time limit and when Bonnie knows what we have, if you have a busy night then obviously, we wouldn’t want to add a bunch of training. But, if we only have one short application maybe, because we have a deadline, a cutoff, that maybe she could look at it and say this would be a good night for training and add it to the agenda on a night that is slow.

Jeri said I have another question, and I am going to be full of them, if we are on the record why would it be bad to critique us on the record? True replied, because I am your county attorney and it’s the same reason that we don’t give you legal advice on the record is because the public can hear it, potentially anybody that wanted to come back and say your own attorney pointed out the reasons you did this incorrectly. We would essentially be handing them a lawsuit. Jeri responded, it’s historical, anybody can pick it apart. So, it’s not at the time you will be giving us the wrong direction. True replied, “it’s much worse to have your own county attorney tell you on record how you broke the law or didn’t follow it.

Eric Johnson stated, “ yeah, but if you tell us something in executive session, we can repeat it in the open meeting.” True replied, “You can but then you lose privilege at that point.” Eric asked, “What do you mean?”

True explained, “so when you have attorney/client privilege it means in executive session that that is a private session where you can ask questions and what advise you are given does not leave that session. You can come out and make decisions based on what legal advice but in executive session you do not do any sort of debating towards the answer. It is simply about the law; it is a chance to ask the attorney questions.” Eric responded saying, what I am saying we can quote what you told us because that’s how we make our decision. True replied, I suppose you could to a certain extent. Eric replied, no, you can. Tell me what prevents us. I don’t understand this. True said I am not sure what you don’t understand. You don’t understand privilege?

Eric replied, no, if you say something in executive session we can repeat that at the open meeting because that is how we come to our decisions. Ron interjected, the point is if he talks to us in executive session he can talk to us on those things. The whole point with privilege is the courts can’t make you say what he said, but, if you voluntarily give it up I believe that is okay. True replied, so let’s just do a hypothetical, let’s say have an application in front of you for a huge factory that wants to come in to Washington County and you hear the application in here and you go, man, we are not sure what code really says about this. We are not sure what we should do. They’re big, they’ve got a lot of money. You want legal advice on what it says we are we to do here. What do we have to let them do, can we put stipulations on them, can we say we will allow you to do this but only if you don’t pollute the air. You can go into executive session and ask the legal questions. You can’t come in and say, my opinion is I don’t want this in my county. That’s not allowed in executive session. That would be an open meeting violation because you are debating towards an end or towards a vote. It’s not an opportunity for you guys to not be seen by the public discussing or debating. It is an opportunity to actually ask the attorney questions about the legalities, the law, the statutes, what liability looks like, in those certain situations. And certainly, you can help base you decisions on that but it’s not based on the facts of the situation. My job is not to tell you how to vote, or how to make you decisions. In fact, my job is to tell you, you have a number of options here. In fact you could come out with stipulations that the code allows you to do this, there is case law that says this, the Supreme Court has said this, If you decide to do this, here are the Findings of Fact that I need to make sure that you guys put on the record so that if this company sues us it is clear that you guys had a specific, that you discussed it, that you talked about it and that you made a decision based on public safety, based on these factors. Or if you decide to go a different direction and you want to do this, here is the Findings of Fact that I need you guys to make, here is the law that is applicable, those sorts of things. My job is not to tell you what to do in executive session. I don’t care what you do, it is not my job, you

guys are the ones that make those decisions. My job is to make sure that your decisions have a legally sound basis and that you’re making them on something that is actually applicable to the law, or the Supreme Court, or whatever the case law is.

Jeri asked, “So, imminently likely litigation means a lawsuit is highly probable approaching certainty in the near future. And when you say anything can be litigated, it’s a litigious time, it’s a litigious society, and that’s how I hear you covering all of that. With that point of view. True replied, this section of code has been litigated. Jeri asked, “what section is that”? True stated, “the section you are talking about, going in to executive session where you get to talk to your legal counsel for litigation that is imminently likely, like you just talked about, it has been litigated and it has been determined by the courts that essentially anything that you could be sued over you can ask for legal advice on it. Jeri asked True, “and who decided that? Is that the Supreme Court?” True responded, “I am happy to look for an exact court case for you. But it is how it is done across the state as far as executive sessions. It is how it’s done with county commissioners. It is how every executive session that occurs in the state is based on when it comes to legal counsel. Jeri responded, “That is not my experience and of course you are an attorney, and I am not but I have been around a little bit and I don’t see that that is true. And I don’t question your knowledge or your advice but it doesn’t set with what I know and so I am very uncomfortable having a Open Meeting Law and having someone here to say, okay, I want you guys to decide on my neighbor’s application for a meat market or whatever. It’s in a Ag zone and so we talk about it and then and say duh, duh,duh, duh, these are the same people who want to know what we decided, what we heard and what we did consider and what we missed. It gives them a chance to for an appeal and to take that option away I am really uncomfortable with this. And I have been doing this for years and years and years. True responded, you are not allowed in executive session to debate the facts of the situation. Jeri replied with, I am saying I am uncomfortable going in to executive session to talk about something in front of us. I am very uncomfortable with that. Ron spoke up and said what he is saying if we go into executive session the only thing we can say is, if we want to deny it, what do we have to prove and we do have the county code and the ability to research but not everyone is going to research everything when we are trying to get this done in a real timely manner, but we can also ask if we want to approve it, what do we have to have in our motion, what do we have to have in our facts. But we can’t discuss things that the public would want to know. And then we go out and make those discussions and decisions and we can cite those codes and those laws and cases that support it. Jeri responded, so, if we do it that way, we talk, we sit down, they’re excused, we turn the recorder off and we say, to do a negative on this what do we need based on this. And True would say it is based on code 5-7-4-S, okay, we open the doors and everyone comes back in, so what’s the difference in them hearing it and us coming our and saying it is based on this. Do you see what I am saying, I don’t get it. Do you understand Mr. Pearce.

True replied, yes, so let me give you an example. If you guys ask for legal advice, you say what is the law on this, how did the courts rule, what has happened in situations where you have denied a big factory from coming in. Like, let’s say, we don’t want to have a big factory come in to Washington county. We know they are going to sue us if you say no, so it’s important that you make a really good record. If I tell you on the record all of the requirements that you need to make in order to protect the county and then you don’t listen and you don’t follow the advice that I give you, we just made a record for the opposing party that is going to sue us and it is very clear that you didn’t follow it. Jeri stated, at the Planning and Zoning recommendation though. We have never been sued. True replied, well here is the deal. You guys are volunteers and maybe nobody has ever explained this to you but each and every one of you can be sued individually. You can be held liable, the county can be sued, based on the decisions you make and the findings that you make. Jeri stated, “you said that, and it scared a lot of the people sitting here.” True said, “well it’s true.” Jeri said, “That’s true and it has never happened in this county. True responded, “well, just because it hasn’t happened in this county before doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. It has happened in many other counties in the State of Idaho. Jeri stated, “give me one, I would love to research that.” Ron said, “even though we are just an advisory, if we made glaring mistakes, they are not going to just look at what the county commissioners have done, it will come down through the whole process. Correct?” True stated, “yes”. Jeri asked Ron, how many times have you heard applicants say, give me a yes or I am going to sue you? Ron stated, “well, several”. Jeri stated, “me too. We have been told that so, that would be imminently likely.” Ron said, “I can think on one that was very possible. It can happen in this county, and we have had lawsuits.

Donovan spoke and said, “Why not chill for a little bit and use our attorney when we need help and to our advantage. The stuff we dealt with a month ago was simple stuff, both were just easy. But if we do get something in here that is more difficult that we need some legal advice on then we could go on to executive session and we will have it. But like he said if he comes out and says, these are the reasons we can be sued if we don’t approve this and he says it in an open meeting and then we go ahead and go against it, we have told the opposing team what they need to sue us. Jeri responded, yes that would be foolish. Donovan continued, so at that point if he is saying something and it is in an open meeting, we have to go with his advice. If it is a closed, executive session we still have the option of going against it. Jeri asked, so in a closed session he says this and I said I don’t like it and we come out, there is no record of him advising us and we can go a different direction. That just seems so foreign to me. When an attorney advises us, they better, by God, know what

they are saying. And so, I don’t ever remember telling an attorney to go fly. Donovan responded, but his job is not down here to tell us how to vote. But if he tells us in an open meeting that if you vote no on this you are going to get sued, then we should all vote yes. And he is, he is telling us to vote yes on it.

True interjected, Mr. Chair, just to be clear, if my goal was to control you, I would do nothing but give you advice on the open record. Because any time you didn’t follow it you would open yourselves up to liability and it would be an absolute control measure on my part. That’s why I don’t give the commissioner’s advice on the open record either. If I start giving the commissioner’s legal advice or your legal advice then you know that I am trying to control. So that’s not the goal here, my job is not to tell you how to make these decisions.

My job is to simply advise you on the law and that should not be done in open sessions. That’s why an executive session exists any more than if you were being charged criminally and having a public meeting with your attorney where you talk about the pros and cons of your case, it’s called attorney/client privileged, his emails, your emails are not open to the prosecution or the other side. Same thing in a civil, you don’t want to show the weakness in your case or whatever it is that you’ve got. So, privilege is a big deal, and you guys can break it, you can come out of executive session and talk about it and if you do then you lose privilege. So it’s not illegal for you to talk about what happens in executive session you just simply lose privilege, it opens you up to liability.

Donovan said yes, I think we use it to our advantage and for advice. At the last meeting we didn’t need it, I didn’t think. They were simple.

Ron said too that, this training wouldn’t have to be in executive session? If we do this training we are talking about, that doesn’t have to be done in executive session, right?

True responded, no. Ron went on to say, so, I think as we get some training and stuff and we look at some of this stuff, that we may see a need. You know we were talking past attorneys; we may see the need to ask questions once in a while and it might make more sense to us.

Donovan asked, are we in agreement that it would be beneficial to not have this month delay. Because I think we should find a way to vote on the Findings of Fact, I don’t know how to do it, but waiting an extra month is ridiculous. Jeri interjected, and if you don’t have a quorum then you have another dilemma.

Ron added, I think, and you can correct me if I am wrong, but we are all on the same page there. But we need to do what we can to figure out how to do it.

John Jensen said, “I have been on the city planning and zoning for a long time. We do it similar, but different. We have a meeting, say you have it on the third Tuesday or Monday, you write up a report and it has the Findings of Facts and conclusions, and you send it in to the city clerk and they take care of it from there. It is all based on codes and zones and stuff. That is the last we see of it. We don’t vote on it later. Ours are done individually and then it goes to the council so that they use to their advantage as far as making a decision. We don’t have a vote on the Findings of fact at all. That’s a personal thing, you write it according to what you believe per code, and you turn it in. There is no vote after that.

Ron, that’s kind of the way, I guess they had us start doing that, but the problem being there, if we are not unanimous, we have got conflicting Finding of Fact and we need the Finding of Fact to represent the decision we as a group make.

John J. asked, why do we have to be unanimous? There should be no need for unaninimouty. If you don’t believe it’s right. Ron interjected; I understand that. If you don’t believe that it is right you need to have an opinion that is just the planning and zoning, not each of our personal opinions. John said maybe a 7-1 or 6-2

vote factor going in but the two people have the right to disagree if they so feel. So, it’s still a victory for the factory going in but the two that don’t think it is right didn’t vote in favor of it but it still passed. Why do we have to approve? Okay, we bring it to a meeting and we have to approve it, but there’s still two people that were going against it in the first place. So how does that work? So they have to vote approve when they didn’t approve in the first place? Ron answered, no. John asked, then why. Ron interjected again, no, that’s the whole deal, my thought is if you didn’t vote to send a favorable recommendation then you wouldn’t go with the whole group so you would vote against that motion too.

Debbie Warren spoke and said, if you are approving the document, you are only voting on the document. You are not approving or disapproving of the factory. You would say this document is correct as it is the fact that we discussed, the facts of the zoning and the facts should be in there that you disagree according to a code or whatever. You are voting on the document, not on whether you agree on the finding.

Ron added, maybe we need to stop and wait for this training. But you wouldn’t include the negative because once again you are just letting out to the opposition. It’s not just the, I mean, some people the reason they vote against is because they don’t think, the person that voted the other way saw as the fact the same way and they are gonna say that’s not a fact, that’s false or whatever that’s why I say you wouldn’t, that would be my problem there.

Donovan added, if we are going to use some examples, we should use some where we did have a difference of opinion because some of the things we do are unanimous and it might be more beneficial to use some of the ones where there were nay sayers.

Ron said and yeah there again we will leave it up to our trainer and we will go from there.

Jeri asked, so I didn’t know this about the city, and I don’t know who advises them. I am looking back and what is the purpose of planning and zoning commissions: It’s to obtain public input and promote public understanding. It’s to receive information, it’s to make recommendations . We don’t make decisions, Let’s say we have a full house, and we have nine people here and an application, maybe one from last month and someone said, he shouldn’t have a farm, he is not a farmer, and I say no because he is an electrical engineer. So, we each write our thing, and this goes to the commissioners, and they are reading nine, volunteer, crazy people, that sit and listen sometimes for hours and it’s what we heard and what we said and the points we, so I don’t know why that wouldn’t be more valuable.

Ron said, “We could go over and over this. It could go on all night. Ron asked, “Are you all okay with having some training? Most answered yes. Ron added, so we will try to fit that in at the end of one of our meetings. Jeri said, “True, I have one more question. If you are to advise us, and if we are in private or public and Donovan says He doesn’t buy this because George is not a farmer and that doesn’t define farming or ranching, whatever your reason is, based on code, and you answer that and we are in private or we are in public, which you are giving us the answer and we are weighing it and making decisions on it, 1 don’t understand why it changes or why it would be different in the public. Because, you are not saying, “Donovan, you are going to vote this way,” we are asking a question, and you are giving us an answer, and we weigh it and we consider it

and we work with that. So, I don’t understand. Ron interjected, we have already had the example of that so let’s, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

ADJOURNMENT:

Commission member, John Jensen, made a motion to adjourn the meeting. Commission member, Eric Johnson, seconded the motion.

Unanimously approved. Meeting adjourned at 7:46 p.m.

Minutes submitted by: Cindy Womack-Steele