Growing Up

THE BIG STORY SUNDAY, JULY 15, 2018 |

magicvalley.com

| SECTION E

Now

CLARENCE E. BISBEE PHOTO

Then

Eastern ho soils, artificially filling the Gravity irrigation drenched Ida reach of water wells.

Snake Plain Aquifer to within

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS Technology has increased the efficiency of irrigation system s, as seen in this July 4 photo of low-emissi on nozzles on a pivot east of Twin Falls.

How did we get here?

A solid foundation and diversification

M

MYCHEL MATTHEWS | mmatthews@magicvalley.com

ost of the emigrants who traveled the Oregon Trail in 1859 walked right past Idaho. A year before permanent settlers laid roots here and decades before there was a Twin Falls, several hundred thousand people settled in the West Today, the booming town of Twin Falls is home to nearly 50,000 residents, serving as the economic base to some 200,000 people in the eight counties of south-central Idaho — a startling number considering the near absence of naturally appearing water in this desert. In the 2020 U.S. Census, Twin Falls is set to officially hit 50,000 people, defining it as an urbanized area. What does that mean for a place that’s defined itself as rugged and rural, and how did we get here? President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862 — a year before Idaho became a territory — to encourage Western settlement. STORY CONTINUES ON PAGE E3

Irrigation is more efficient today than in the past, reducing water consumption, as seen July 4 east of Twin Falls.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

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Growing

UP

Magic Valley’s vision for the future

Editor’s Note: This Big Story package is the first installment in a 10-part series on growth in the Magic Valley.

As the region continues to grow, we wonder: What will the Magic Valley look like in the years to come? Using other cities in the West as a guide — Bend, Ore., Flagstaff, Ariz. and Idaho Falls, to name a few — we’ll explore how the Magic Valley plans to handle its rapid population growth.

E2 | Sunday, July 15, 2018

BIG STORY

Times-News

CLARENCE E. BISBEE PHOTO‌

CLARENCE E. BISBEE PHOTO‌

Hay is stacked on the Mark Bennett ranch along Orchard Drive south of Twin Falls The first Hansen Bridge was the highest suspension bridge in the world when it was built in 1919. The bridge was replaced with the today’s Hansen Bridge in 1966. in this early Clarence E. Bisbee photo.

THE MAGIC VALLEY OF

YESTERYEAR

Internees at the Minidoka Internment Camp worked the fields during World War II.

CLARENCE E. BISBEE PHOTO‌

Amalgamated Sugar Co. is seen south of Twin Falls in this early Clarence E. Bisbee photo.

CLARENCE E. BISBEE PHOTO‌

The Winona Stock Farm is seen in this early Clarence E. Bisbee photo.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Want to talk about this story or the full series on growth in the Magic Valley? Reporter Mychel Matthews, Enterprise Editor Alex Valentine and Publisher Kevin Kampman will be at Twin Beans in downtown Twin Falls Tuesday from 10 a.m. to noon. Let’s chat.

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BIG STORY

TIMES-NEWS

SUNDAY, JULY 15, 2018 |

Growth across the valley

100,000

(101.6%)

The Magic Valley is growing across the board. While Twin Falls County outpaces the other seven south-central Idaho counties, every county has experienced some population growth in the past few decades. Most counties saw a small population dip in the early 1990s, but trajectories for each county has headed in the same direction since then.

85,000

70,000

E3

(xx%)

Twin Falls County

Percent change from 1970 to 2017

55,000 (38.5%)

40,000 (127.7%)

(277.5%)

25,000

Cassia County

Jerome County

Blaine County

20,000 (30.4%) Minidoka County

15,000 (72.9%) Gooding County

10,000 (72.8%) Lincoln County

5,000

In the next decade, a few hardy souls began to stake claims in south-central Idaho. Cattlemen brought in herds to graze the hills and others moved into the Snake River Canyon in search of gold.

Others made their livings ferrying miners across the Snake River or selling provisions to travelers.

Homesteaders settled in the South Hills and at the mouths of Rock Creek and Dry Creek, where they raised livestock and farmed.

Tiny communities formed at Albion and Rock Creek — both on the Oregon Trail. Other communities such as Almo, Elba, Marion and Oakley formed in massive Cassia County, covering all of south-central Idaho south of the Snake River.

Still, the only sign of population in what would later become Twin Falls was a stage stop — two miles downstream from modern-day Rock Creek Park — called the Desert Station.

By the end of the 19th century, most of the inhabitable land in the West had been claimed. But desert land in Wyoming, Nevada and Idaho remained undeveloped.

The U.S. government understood it would take a special effort to attract settlers to such lands that could barely provide a drink of water, let alone raise a crop.

Wyoming Sen. Joseph Carey sponsored the Desert Land Act of 1894, better known as the Carey Act, as a way for private companies to create townsites and largescale irrigation systems to disperse semi-arid federal lands to settlers.

In short, the land act put south-central Idaho’s progress on fast forward. The Magic Valley’s numerous canal systems eventually made Idaho a crown jewel of the Carey Act project.

The project was heavily promoted throughout the East and Midwest and brought more than 5,000 settlers to Twin Falls just after the turn of the 20th century.

Growth was steady through the early decades, but the population of Twin Falls jumped significantly in the 1940s and 50s before stalling in the second half of the century.

But the valley is now in another boom time. As Twin Falls’ population approaches 50,000 and the overall population of south-central Idaho creeps toward 200,000, it’s worth taking a stop back to wonder: How did we get here?

2017

2016

2015

Lee Enterprises graphic

Now

Then

CLARENCE E. BISBEE PHOTO

Twin Falls is shown three miles upstream from Shoshone Falls on the Snake River in this early Clarence E. Bisbee photo.

uncle to goldfields in the Wood River Valley. Ira Burton Perrine was a small but ambitious man who quickly realized his physical stature limited his ability as a miner, early Twin Falls publisher H.J. Kingsbury wrote in “Bucking the Tide.”

Perrine traded his mining claim for a herd of dairy cows and went to work selling milk to other miners.

While searching for land to keep his cows for the winter, he pushed his herd south and found early pioneer Charles Walgamott, who operated a ferry and tent hotel at Shoshone Falls in the Snake River Canyon. Walgamott introduced Perrine to two crystal-clear blue lakes three miles downstream.

Perrine claimed the canyon for his own and built an agricultural paradise. He operated a ferry across the river at his Blue Lakes Ranch, ran stagecoaches from the Shoshone train depot to Shoshone Falls, and sold his fruit and produce all over the valley.

On many trips to the Cassia County seat of Albion, Perrine would stop at the Cedars, some 25 miles upstream from his ranch.

The Cedars was a popular rest stop for emigrants on the Oregon Trail; it was the last time they would see the Snake River before it plunges into the 500-foot-deep canyon.

While sitting at his campfire at the Cedars one evening, Perrine envisioned a diversion dam there — where the river was still at ground level. He could see irrigation water I.B. Perrine flowing into canals on both sides of In the early 1880s, a young man the river to hundreds of thousands from Indiana followed his aunt and of acres of farmland in the desert,

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Twin Falls was reduced to a single waterfall after Idaho Power Co. installed a hydropower plant at the southernmost cataracts, seen July 4 on the Snake River north of Kimberly.

Walgamott wrote in his book “Six enue and Shoshone Street — sevDecades Back.” eral miles south of Perrine’s Blue Lakes Ranch.

Milner Dam The Twin Falls city limits were Others had seen the same vi- defined by Blue Lakes Boulevard to sion, but the task was considered the east, North Road (later called a monumental folly by those before Addison Avenue), Washington Street to the west, and Rock Perrine.

The Carey Act provided the Creek to the south and southwest. tools to accomplish such a feat, For several years until canal wabut Perrine had difficulty finding ter made its way to the new town, investors. Even his best friend, drinking water was hauled by the Shoshone Journal editor Bob Mc- barrelful in wagons from Rock Collum, told him it was a crazy Creek to homes and businesses. proposition.

Milner Dam first diverted irri“If you are damn fool enough gation water to several hundred to think you can dam that water thousand acres of newly broken back, I.B., you go ahead and do it ground on the south side of the but I want nothing to do with it,” Snake River in March 1905. When McCollum said, as recalled in Wal- canal water finally arrived in Twin gamott’s book.

Falls, household plumbing frePerrine initially filed on the quently became clogged with small rights to 3,000 cubic feet per sec- fish from the river.

The Oregon Short Line railroad ond of water entering the Snake River Canyon at the Cedars. He established service through the crossed the country gathering sup- area, connecting new towns along port for his project — capitalists, the south side of the river. Burley, engineers and a steel magnate.

Murtaugh, Hansen, Kimberly, Filer Familiar names such as Kim- and Buhl all came to be shortly afberly, Hollister, Filer, Bickel, Mil- ter Twin Falls. ner, Murtaugh and Buhl jumped on Soon, the population base of the county shifted to the west, board Perrine’s vision. and Twin Falls County was carved from Cassia County in 1907.

Twin Falls, a new town While the Twin Falls Land As the irrigation project grew, and Water Co. built Milner Dam, Perrine relinquished much of his Murtaugh Lake and the south- control. But he continued to stay side canal system, the Twin Falls busy by turning his attention to Townsite Co. and the Twin Falls hydropower. With Harry HollisInvestment Co. developed the ter’s money, Perrine built a power Twin Falls townsite and surround- plant at Shoshone Falls, which started producing electricity in ing farmland.

In 1904, surveyor John E. Hayes 1907. set a stake at the center of a school Twin Falls quickly flourished. section — at what is now Main Av- Streets were paved in 1910. And

soon towns in the former desert looked like any other early 20th-century towns. But one obstacle still blocked Twin Falls from the rest of the world: a world-famous canyon.

The Canyon

The Snake River runs from east to west through the Magic Valley, a slight hindrance for the east and west ends of the valley, but a 500-foot-deep obstacle dividing Twin Falls and Jerome counties.

For decades, ferries carried passengers, livestock, wagons and automobiles from one side of the river to the other. The Shoshone Falls Ferry, Blue Lakes Ferry, Auger Falls Ferry and Clark’s Ferry were the only ways to cross the river in its canyon until I.B. Perrine built, in about 1910, a small toll bridge on the Blue Lakes Grade. The bridge can still be seen today between the Blue Lakes Country Club and Canyon Springs Golf Course.

The second significant bridge was the 1916 Murtaugh Bridge downstream from Milner Dam. The bridge was replaced in 1983.

The first rim-to-rim bridge was built in 1919, connecting Twin Falls and Jerome counties north of Hansen. The Hansen Bridge — once touted as the highest suspension bridge in the world — was suspended 325 feet above the river by giant cables strung from two towers, one at each end of the bridge.

The bridge was replaced in 1966.

A second rim-to-rim bridge, the Twin Falls-Jerome Inter-

STORY CONTINUES ON PAGE E4

Now

Then

CLARENCE E. BISBEE PHOTO M 1

2014

2012

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

2013

2011

2010

2009

2007

2008

2005

2006

2004

2002

2003

2001

2000

1998

1999

1997

1995

1996

1993

1994

1991

1992

1990

1988

1989

1987

1986

1985

1984

1983

1981

1982

1979

1980

1977

1978

1976

1975

1974

1972

1973

1971

0

1970

(52.8%) Camas County

The Hotel Perrine at Main Avenue and Shoshone Street is shown in this early Clarence E. Bisbee photo, looking southeast.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

The center of Twin Falls is shown July 4 at Main Avenue and Shoshone Street.

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| SUNDAY, JULY 15, 2018

Then

TIMES-NEWS

Now

CLARENCE E. BISBEE PHOTO

I.B. Perrine’s electric rail cars carried students to Twin Falls High School next to the Twin Falls County Courthouse from 1913 to 1916. Eventually the railroad was extended all the way to the canyon rim above Shoshone Falls. county Bridge, was built in 1927 north of Twin Falls. Traffic could cross the bridge for free from the Jerome County side, but paid a toll to cross from the Twin Falls County side. The Idaho Highway Department, a predecessor of the Idaho Department of Transportation, purchased the bridge a decade later and changed the name of the bridge to the I.B. Perrine Memorial Bridge after Perrine’s death in 1943.

The third rim-to-rim bridge was built in 1976 to replace the Perrine Bridge just upstream from the original. The two bridges stood side by side for a short time before the old bridge was dismantled.

Today, the bridge is a staple of the Magic Valley, showing up on city and county buildings and commerce of all kinds. It also represents thrill-seekers who travel to the Magic Valley, as the Perrine Bridge is the only place in the world where BASE jumping is allowed without a permit.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO

Hundreds of kids get on school buses May 22, 2017, at Kimberly Elementary School.

Then

Now

CLARENCE E. BISBEE PHOTO

The Twin Falls-Jerome Intercounty Bridge nears completion in 1927. The bridge was replaced in 1976 with the second I.B. Perrine Memorial Bridge.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Visitors take photos of the Snake River Canyon near the I.B. Perrine Bridge on July 4 in Twin Falls.

Coming of age

While the rest of the nation experienced the Roaring Twenties, south-central Idaho experienced what local newspapers called a “trough of depression.” The Magic Valley had barely begun to recover when the stock market crashed in 1929.

The 1930s were the “years that shook the world, bounced it around, left it dazed and jumbled…,” the Times-News wrote in 1940.

“What is there to do in the 1940s? Plenty. The biggest problem of the world in general is to find a new kind of peace — a peace that will outlast the powerlust of selfish men. Whatever America can contribute toward such a peace, it should offer unhesitatingly. There will be plenty to do in the next 10 years. We had better roll up our sleeves and get going before time slips away.”

As Idaho celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1940, Twin Falls had reached a population of 13,000.

Reality set in as the Idaho Evening Times reported an alarming number of traffic deaths in the county during 1939 — 14 — twice the number as 1938.

“Leading all other counties in the state in the number of deaths from traffic accidents, Twin Falls County has established a record of which no one can be proud,” The Times wrote on New Year’s Day, 1940.

Nearly two years later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Soon, stories from the front lines would dominate the newspapers.

Driven by wartime hysteria, the U.S. government rounded up 13,000 people of Japanese descent and “relocated” them from their homes on the West Coast to a desolate internment camp north of Eden. While able-bodied local men fought in World War II, men from the Hunt Camp — and German and Italian soldiers from a prisoner-of-war camp near Paul — stepped in and worked the fields, keeping afloat the Magic Valley’s agricultural economy.

Twin Falls had a surge of building permits in 1948, as large department stores — Sears, C.C. Anderson and Falk’s Department Store came to town.

After decades of flood irrigation in the Magic Valley and in the Upper Snake River Basin, the Eastern Snake River Aquifer had artificially filled to within reach of water wells. By the end of the 1940s, Twin Falls County’s tax valuation reached nearly $35 million due to an enormous increase in farmland irrigated by groundwater.

Across the Magic Valley, irrigated lands went from 202,000 acres in the Twin Falls tract to more than 600,000 acres.

CLARENCE E. BISBEE

The Shoshone Falls Ferry is seen in this Clarence E. Bisbee photo. appear as farms grew in the 1950s and 1960s. And as farms grew, so did the towns. The 1940s saw the fastest growth of any decade in Twin Falls history, as the population jumped nearly 50 percent during the decade.

Over in Mini-Cassia, Rupert was crossed off the “small town” list when mail carriers no longer knew by memory where all the residents lived, wrote the TimesNews in 1950.

In 1956, Idaho Frozen Foods opened in Kimberly, joining longtime businesses Amalgamated Sugar Co. and Independent Meat Co. Rogers Brothers Seed Co. and Gallatin Valley Seed Co. brought the seed-bean industry to the Magic Valley, where the dry weather — and the absence of disease pathogens — were perfect for growing seed stock. Also in the ‘50s, the trout industry helped to stabilize the agricultural economy.

Plans to build an interstate through Idaho eventually created a population shift as traffic moved faster across the state. Big towns became larger and little towns became smaller.

In Twin Falls, residential population shifted from downtown to north and east of town in the mid1950s through the ‘60s. Some fought such expansion, including the Lynwood Shopping Center and other business centers.

1960-1980

A big push to rezone and annex followed as the city attempted to grow its population to 25,000 for the 1960 census. That milestone would bring in more state revenue from liquor and highway funds.

“It’s encouraging to note that the commissioners and city manager Joe Latimore are making plans to annex as many new areas as possible in the hope of bringing the Twin Falls population to 25,000,” the Times-News editorial 1950s board wrote in 1959, pleading with Sagebrush that hadn’t been resident living on the outskirts of cleared during the initial growth town to cooperate with the annexof the Magic Valley started to dis- ation efforts “for the good of all.”

But the 1960 census revealed a population of barely 20,000. Disappointed city leaders then took a more active role in community planning, resulting in municipal water and sewer improvements.

In late 1964, voters in Twin Falls County approved a junior college district, which would eventually lead to the College of Southern Idaho.

Several older buildings such as the Hotel Perrine were torn down.

Urban renewal took over development downtown Twin Falls, and Main Avenue was given a new face to make the old look new again.

Wages increased significantly from 1965 to 1972, CSI professor Jim Gentry wrote in his book, “In the Middle and on the Edge — The Twin Falls Region of Idaho.” Manufacturing picked up in the 1970s. Numerous factories opened in both Twin Falls and Jerome, including a Tupperware plant, Longview Fibre cardboard factory and Kellwood, a manufacturer of pantyhose. In addition, automobile dealerships and fastfood outlets opened on Blue Lakes Boulevard North.

1980s

Beginning in 1980, the Magic Valley experienced a “sour economy,” Gentry wrote. High fuel costs drove up operating costs, while commodity prices and property values fell. By early 1983, the Magic Valley’s unemployment rate was at an all-time high. Residents seemed to be leaving in droves. A sandwich-board sign on Addison Avenue West read, “Last one out of Twin Falls, please turn off the lights,” said former KMVT general manager Lee Wagner.

To jumpstart its regional economy, Magic Valley leaders turned to diversification.

Jim Herrett, owner of Acme Manufacturing, explained in 1986 how he had “reshaped” his business during the sluggish economy to focus efforts away from making complicated machinery and toward fabricating parts — things that made up most of their sales.

“Farmers aren’t spending any

money on products they don’t absolutely have to have,” Herrett told the Times-News. “We’re being successful at it. We’re a smaller company, downsized from what we were, but we’re hoping we’re working smarter and in the right area” by diversifying out of some agricultural areas.

Dairies

In the 1990s, California dairymen moved into the area, bringing in more jobs but creating much controversy. Some say the dairymen came to Idaho to escape California’s prohibitive zoning and environmental regulations; others say the high price of land pushed dairies out of the state. Either way, new waves of dairy cows entered the valley. Twin Falls County commissioners placed a moratorium on new large dairies until the wrinkles could be ironed out.

Dairies dramatically changed the Magic Valley’s landscape over the next few decades. Large dairies bought out many small farms to raise corn and alfalfa and to dispose of the large amounts of manure generated by the cows.

Only about a hundred small, family-operated dairies — those with less than 200 cows — now exist in Idaho. Nearly half of the 470 dairies in the state house more than 1,000 cows each, according to Idaho Dairymen’s Association’s website.

A whopping 73 percent of the dairy cows in Idaho now reside in the Magic Valley. That’s 422,000 dairy cows.

Idaho’s dairy industry supported nearly 40,000 jobs in 2015, according to the IDA: 8,100 workers in dairies, 3,100 in dairy processing, and 27,600 in supporting businesses.

These supporting businesses, food processors such as Glanbia, Jerome Cheese and Chobani, are what brought wealth to the Magic Valley, said Twin Falls City Manager Travis Rothweiler. As the agriculture base switched from producing a raw product, such as milk, to a value-added product, such as whey protein, the valley’s

economy has become more stable.

“Whether it be milk or potatoes, the more times (a commodity) can rotate through the community, the more jobs, wealth and opportunity are created,” Rothweiler said.

While the rest of the nation was experiencing the Great Recession of the late 200s, the Magic Valley experienced more of a slump than a recession. Reduced numbers of building permits, high unemployment, and delinquent water bills and property tax bills are common indicators of a faltering economy, he said.

“We certainly saw those during the recession to an extent,” said Twin Falls Mayor Shawn Barigar, “but because of our diversity, our highs and lows are balanced more than an economy that relies on only one sector.”

Barigar, as president and CEO of the Twin Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, was part of the team that brought the Greek yogurt giant Chobani to town.

“Chobani presented an opportunity to support the dairy production, to strengthen the food-processing sector, and innovation for the future,” he said. “Chobani gave us a positive outlook for the future, a chance to grow.”

Agriculture has always been the cornerstone of our economy, he said, and, over recent years, the food-science sector has grown tremendously by finding ways to produce more food more economically.

What would Perrine do?

I.B. Perrine, guided by a seemingly impossible vision, transformed the desert into a flourishing “magic” valley. He saw his dream come true during his lifetime, but could he have ever imagined where the Magic Valley is today?

There’s a common saying in municipal economics: If a town isn’t growing, it’s dying. But with the limited availability of water, the Magic Valley also must keep an eye on the aquifer to assure the region’s growth does not outpace its resources.

In an unprecedented agreement to restore the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, surface-water users and groundwater pumpers in 2015 secured the future of the aquifer that supports life in south-central Idaho. Groundwater users agreed to reduce their consumptive water use by 13 percent and the state of Idaho agreed to fund aquifer recharge.

Plenty has changed in the Magic Valley since President Lincoln’s 1862 Homestead Act. The arid desert can now sustain life. The small farming communities — especially Twin Falls — have blossomed into large towns and small cities. And the region’s economy, which experienced plenty of ups and downs over the past century, has been bolstered and diversified.

Now, as south-central Idaho approaches two population thresholds — 50,000 residents in Twin Falls and 200,000 residents in the eight-county region — a new major question has arisen: Where do we go from here?

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TIMES-NEWS

THE BIG STORY

SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2018 |

SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2018 |

magicvalley.com

|

SECTION E

THE BIG STORY

Inmates walk the yard during recreation time July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls.

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

Twin Falls jail in

‘CRISIS,’

but is local growth to blame?

GRETEL KAUFFMAN Gkauffman@magicvalley.com

A

s Twin Falls expands as a regional hub, the jail and prosecutor’s desk are overflowing with felons and felony cases.

The county prosecuting attorney’s office is on track to deal with an estimated 900 felony cases this year, nearly double what the office saw 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, the Twin Falls jail population is exploding, in what Sheriff Tom Carter describes as a “crisis.” The 224-bed jail has housed as many as 270 inmates at a time over the past year; on July 18, the facility held 253, with 42 others scattered around to other jails across the state.

Some of the increase in felony cases and jail population is due to regional growth and the uptick in passers-through that comes with it. But that may not tell the whole story. Some county officials also point to the broader issue of prison overcrowding throughout the state as a contributing factor.

“Everything’s coming to a head right now,” said jail administrator Capt. Doug Hughes.

“There’s a lot of dynamics to it that are creating the problem.”

Growth in Twin Falls County — and the state of Idaho as a whole — doesn’t show signs of slowing anytime soon. As the population continues to increase, crowding in local and statewide jails and prisons will become an even more urgent issue.

Jail crowding is a relatively new problem in Twin Falls County.

In 2016, the jail held a steady population of about 180 people, with a high of roughly 200. That

Growing

UP

Magic Valley’s vision for the future

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

Detention Deputy Kevin Coggins, center, performs a pat-down of an incoming inmate as arresting officer Justin Clark observes July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls. number started to climb toward the end of last summer.

The exact reason why is difficult to pinpoint, though Hughes and other county officials have some suggestions.

The spike in felony cases isn’t helping, they say: More than 80 percent of Twin Falls inmates today are felons, who typically must stay at the jail longer and are held under a higher bond. In

2015, the average length of time an inmate stayed at the jail was 12 days. Today, the average stay is 24 days.

In the past, specialty courts — which offer alternative sentencing options for nonviolent drug addicts, veterans, and others — have been effective in keeping the jail population in check. But with a skyrocketing number of felony cases and limited space available, these programs are no longer enough to keep the jail under capacity.

County prosecutor Grant Loebs has seen a consistent rise in the number of felony cases

MORE INSIDE: Safety agencies strive for collaboration, E2 | Small police departments manage growth, E3 | Costs of incarceration, B4

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Please see JAIL, PageE3

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TIMES-NEWS

SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2018 |

E2

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

Fire chief Les Kenworthy talks about safety concerns when firefighters have to drop what they’re doing in the kitchen in order to go on a call July 12 in Twin Falls. When alarms come on many stations have automatic shut-offs on kitchen appliances.

As the Magic Valley grows, public safety agencies strive for

COLLABORATION GRETEL KAUFFMAN

Gkauffman@magicvalley.com

TWIN FALLS — Public safety agencies in the Magic Valley are relying more heavily on a valuable tool: each other.

The Twin Falls Fire Department, Police Department, and Sheriff ’s Office are putting a new emphasis on inter-agency collaboration, city officials say.

It’s largely a development born of necessity. Twin Falls is an increasingly popular destination for visitors from around the south-central Idaho region and elsewhere.

But the city itself isn’t actually growing that quickly: The average rate of population growth in recent years has been just under 2 percent, a much lower rate than the city saw a decade ago.

The heads of these agencies say they don’t have the intention — or the resources — to hire new staff en masse anytime soon. Instead, to deal with the natural uptick in calls that comes with population growth, they’re making the most Firefighter suits in Twin Falls have to be air dried because they don’t have the right kind of dryer at their stations. of what they have by finding new ways to work with their neighbors.

Brian Pike, former police chief and current deputy city manager for public safety in Twin Falls, sees the shift as a departure from the ideology of rugged individualism that has characterized south-central Idaho — and policing here — in the past.

“That sense of independence is a part of our Idaho heritage, and I don’t think we’re ever going to lose that,” Pike said. “But we’ve also been willing to realize that no one is able to make it on their own.”

Fire

M 1

The Twin Falls Fire Department hasn’t increased its staff count since the 1970s. That hasn’t presented a major problem until recently, Chief Les Kenworthy said, because the growth of the city hasn’t had a significant effect on the number of calls the department receives.

Two years ago, however, the department added EMS to their services — and saw their calls skyrocket.

Before adding EMS, TFFD received about 1,900 calls per year.

In 2017, the first full year that EMS services were in effect, the department received nearly 5,500 calls, city spokesman Josh Palmer said. About 3,800 of those calls were EMS-related.

EMS, combined with other specialized services that the department began offering in recent decades, means that the 39 firefighters in Twin Falls today are going through more extensive training — and shouldering a heavier workload overall — than the 39 firefighters in Twin Falls 40

Fire chief Les Kenworthy discusses the needs of the department July 12 in Twin Falls. years ago.

“We’re struggling, to be honest,” Kenworthy said. “We need more staffing. So far we’re doing okay, but it’s tough. It’s a big workload.”

Complicating the matter is the city’s position as a regional hub of a rural area. Because the Twin Falls Fire Department is the only fully-staffed, full-time department for miles around, it offers certain kinds of specialized expertise that nearby cities don’t have.

The department does hope to expand its personnel and resources over the next few years, Kenworthy said. He’s applied for a federal grant to hire five more employees, and a recent study suggested that it might be in the department’s best interest to build an additional fire station in the northeast part of town in the coming years – a development that would also require additional staffing.

A new Ram 5500 sits outside of station 2 July 12 in Twin Falls. The station doesn’t have the space to fit some of their fleet inside.

But Kenworthy, who joined the department as chief in March, is also bringing a new focus on collaboration with other departments in the region, including Buhl, Filer, Jerome, Rock Creek, Salmon Tract, and Castleford.

Working together doesn’t just benefit the smaller departments, he emphasized. It also helps out Twin Falls.

Already, the strategy has paid off: Three fires simultaneously popped up around the city on July 4, and the department didn’t have the manpower to handle on its own. They called for backup, which swiftly arrived to lend a hand.

“Because of our growth... working more regional is kind of the way of the future,” Kenworthy said. “The idea of a regional approach to things and how we

can help each other works both ways and makes all the sense in the world.”

Policing

Despite some uptick in calls for service, the Twin Falls Sheriff ’s Office doesn’t have plans to hire a lot of new deputies anytime soon, Sheriff Tom Carter said. In the first six months of 2018, the office received about 2,400 more calls than it did in the first six months of 2015.

The office is working on a grant to hire two more patrolmen. But the workload facing deputies isn’t Carter’s top priority right now.

Instead, he said, his focus is on addressing crowding in the county jail, a situation that Carter describes as a “crisis.” The 224-bed facility held 248 inmates on July 13, with about 50 others housed in

other jails across the state.

“The patrol deputies can keep up with the call level,” Carter said.

“As long as we can answer calls, I’m not going to go to the taxpayers and ask for more money for more personnel.”

The Twin Falls Police Department, like the fire department, has seen an increase in calls for service in recent years. The department received 58,655 calls in 2017, about a 7 percent increase from the previous year.

TFPD has added four new officers since 2016, bringing the total up to 77, but doesn’t anticipate dramatically expanding its workforce in the coming years, Chief Craig Kingsbury said.

Instead, Kingsbury said, the department is asking how it can “police a little bit smarter.”

“What we’re trying to do now as we look forward to what’s next: we want to make sure we’re utilizing our resources in the proper way,” Kingsbury said. “How are we allocating our officers? How are we allocating our personnel?

And is that the best way to serve our community?”

Exploring ways to increase the department’s efficiency includes experimenting with various setups and strategies for policing, such as different patrol shifts. It also means looking for opportunities to collaborate with the sheriff ’s office and other agencies.

A new special investigations unit is the result of an interagency partnership between the Twin Falls Police Department and Sheriff ’s Office. The seven-detective unit targets repeat violent offenders throughout Twin Falls County, such as people who illegally own firearms or those who are involved in organized criminal or gang activity.

Twin Falls City Manager Travis Rothweiler described the collaborative nature of the special investigations unit as a more effective way to police the area.

“We recognize that there is a migratory trend, and if we can work crime where crime is occurring, we’ll have greater success than just trying to fortify our own borders,” Rothweiler said. “That does not work in the area of policing.”

That hasn’t always been the mindset in the Twin Falls Police Department, noted Pike, who served as police chief from 2011 to 2014 after 17 years with the department.

“When I started here as a police officer, we were, as a law enforcement agency, an island…and I think that was probably true of the city in and of itself,” Pike said. “If you went back 20 years ago, it was a mentality. If you fast forward to today, we’ve realized that we’re a regional player.”

BIG STORY

Times-News

Sunday, July 22, 2018 |

E3

Small police departments make available resources work GRETEL KAUFFMAN

Gkauffman@magicvalley.com

TWIN FALLS COUNTY — As the population of Twin Falls County rises, small police departments surrounding the city of Twin Falls say they’re making do with the resources they have — for now.

Growing towns like Kimberly and Jerome have seen a slight, but not dramatic, uptick in workload in recent years. It’s not enough to warrant an immediate hiring spree or addition of specialized units, the police chiefs in those towns say.

But if the region continues to grow at the same rate, they note, expansion will likely be necessary several years down the road.

“We’ll absolutely have to make changes in the next few years, if for no other reason than as the communities grow there will be a natural increase in the workload,” said Jerome Police Chief Dan Hall. “It may not be leaps and bounds...but who knows what’s going to happen.”

Jerome hasn’t seen a significant increase in criminal activity as the population has grown over the past decade — in fact, the arrest rate has gone down significantly since 2008. The city’s arrest rate

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Filer Police logo Monday, aug. 7, 2017, in Filer. was 8,932 per 100,000 people a decade ago. In 2016, the most recent year available, the arrest rate was 2,439 per 100,000 people.

The department added two new officers between 2011 and 2012, but hasn’t expanded since then.

If Jerome keeps growing as expected, however, its police may need to make some adjustments, Hall said.

That would likely mean adding more officers, and possibly additional services as well. Currently, Hall said, Jerome offers a “very basic level of policing,” with 19

full-time officers and four reserve officers.

Going forward, he speculated, the department may look into adding specialized units, such as a dedicated traffic unit or officers who deal specifically with drug crimes. The department also doesn’t have a victim witness coordinator to work with victims and their families, Hall noted.

“I think that even though we’re holding our own, this is something that we’re definitely going to have to monitor and plan for,” Hall said of the population growth. “It’s definitely going to change how things are in our area — not just for law enforcement, but for everyone.”

Police in the rapidly growing community of Kimberly have seen some increase in caseload and calls for service in recent years, Kimberly-Hansen Police Chief Jeff Perry said.

“We haven’t seen it where it’s gotten out of control, but our numbers have gone up,” Perry said.

The department dealt with a total of 179 offenses in 2016, nearly double the number of offenses in 2008. That increase would appear to be largely a natural consequence of population

growth: the proportion of arrests per 100,000 residents only went up slightly during that time, from 4,013 to 4,429.

Some of the major crimes committed in Kimberly and Hansen recently, such as burglaries and home invasions, have been committed by people passing through town on the interstate, Perry noted.

The department currently has eight officers, including Perry, and one administrative staff member. It’s grown by one officer since Perry joined the department in 2013.

“Dealing with our growth has been challenging,” Perry said.

“But we just don’t have the resources to add additional officers at this time.”

He anticipates that in the next decade, both personnel and infrastructure will become an issue: the building that houses the police department was remodeled in 2012 and, according to Perry, “wasn’t built for growth.”

“We’re really going to have to start thinking outside the box 10 years from now,” he said. “We’ve already outgrown our building as it is.”

The population of Filer has been slowly but steadily rising

over the past several decades. Between 2006 and 2016, the town added about 650 new residents.

Since 2010, it’s added about 200 residents.

But over that time, its small police force has shrunk, Chief Jeff Troumbley said. Last year, the department downsized by one person due to budgeting issues, bringing the total number of officers from six to five.

The loss of one person is “significant” in such a small agency, Troumbley noted.

“At times it can be difficult,” he said.

But the department hasn’t seen a noticeable increase in service requests and calls in the past couple years, and surrounding agencies have lent a hand when needed, Troumbley said. There were 32 offenses reported there in 2016, almost twice as many as in 2008 — but the rate of arrests in proportion to the population didn’t go up significantly.

If the rate of growth continues, Filer Police – like many smaller police departments in the Magic Valley – may need to expand five or 10 years down the road. But for now, Troumbley said, “we’re holding our own with what we have.”

Jail From E1

filed by office over the past decade. But that number went up dramatically – roughly 20 percent – between 2016 and 2017.

In 2008, the prosecutor’s office filed 475 felony cases. This year, they’re on track to file roughly 900 cases, said county prosecutor Grant Loebs — nearly a 100 percent increase from a decade ago.

Across Idaho, prisons and jails are stuffed to the brim. As state leaders send hundreds of inmates out of state and consider spending $500 million on prison expansions, some state leaders have discussed declaring a “criminal justice crisis.”

And with a lack of room in state prisons, Hughes said some state inmates have had to stay at the county jail longer. Some have remained in the Twin Falls facility as long as 90 days after they were sentenced.

Loebs also sees statewide prison crowding as a source of his office’s case overload. Because of crowding, he said, some convicted felons are spending less time in prison than they would have otherwise. Many of the cases his office files are against repeat offenders — people already on probation or parole.

The convergence of factors — a crowded jail, filled with higher-level offenders than its construction originally intended — has created an “agitated” atmosphere for both inmates and jail staff, Hughes said.

“Something needs to be done.

We can’t just keep operating the

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PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

a temporary bed sits on the floor July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls. The jail is currently overcrowded and unable to provide bunks to every inmate. way we are,” Hughes said. “Jail’s Looming above the overcrowda bad enough place.” ing issue is the possibility of building a new, larger jail in Twin Overcrowding Falls County. But questions of With more felony filings comes when, where, and what that would a need for more resources across look like remain unanswered. the judicial system. The proseThe Twin Falls County Comcutor’s office has requested three mission hopes the public will help new employee positions this year: come up with some answers. The a felony attorney, a support staff board recently accepted applicamember and an additional victim tions for a citizen’s committee to witness coordinator. discuss expansion of the judicial The public defender’s office complex, which includes the jail, also requested two additional staff courtrooms, and space for other members — one attorney and one legal offices and services. support staff — after receiving two The committee will have nine new employees last year, commis- members, ideally with three from sioners said. each of the three districts in Twin “As this office goes, the court Falls County. It will also have five system goes, the jail goes, the need ad hoc members, including reprefor judges, the need for public de- sentatives from the county’s legal fenders, prosecutors, probation team, the sheriff’s office, and the officers…all of that just expands,” court system. Together, they will explore needs, costs and funding Loebs said.

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

Two inmates watch television from inside their cell block July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls. mechanisms for a new judicial complex.

County officials close to the problem largely agree that the biggest question is not whether the jail needs to expand. It’s when and how.

If approved this year, a new facility could be built within the

next three years or so. It’s estimated that construction of the new complex would cost $200 per square foot for the courts section and $400 per square foot for the jail, not including other infrastructure or equipment.

Please see JAIL, PageE4

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

Inmates pass the time within their cell block July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls.

BIG STORY

Times-News

Sunday, July 22, 2018 |

E4

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

a temporary bed has been added to a cell to allow a third inmate to sleep their July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls.

Jail From E3

Costs

A county report released last summer projected that a total of 65,000 gross square feet of courthouse space and 79,178 gross square feet of jail space will be necessary to accommodate the growing population of Twin Falls over the next 30 years. And even those numbers may be low estimates, said Commissioner Don Hall.

The current judicial building, which includes six courtrooms and other offices, is 25,298 gross square feet, and the jail is 27,000 gross square feet — meaning that, even if the county decides to add on to the existing buildings rather than constructing entirely new ones, both will need significant additions.

A new judicial complex would require asking the public for a bond, as the money in the county reserves wouldn’t be enough to cover the entire project.

If voters reject the bond, the county will need to get creative in finding beds for inmates in the short-term. Right now, jail officials are exploring the possibility of buying temporary forms of housing to supplement the existing jail space until the county comes up with the funds for a new or larger facility.

Adding a layer of urgency to the matter is the high cost of housing inmates out of the county. There are about 50 Twin Falls inmates in jails around the state on any given day.

The county budgeted roughly $100,000 this year for the cost of housing excess inmates in other counties — an expense that includes the cost of transporting the inmates, sometimes hundreds of miles, as well as fees paid to the other counties. Carter estimates that the actual yearly cost will end up being closer to $1 million.

“The only answer to this dilemma is we’re going to have to expand our jail,” Carter said. “If we don’t expand, we’re going to run up right past the expansion costs

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

a set of handcuffs sit attachec to a phone in the entryway July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls.

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

an inmate reads a book from the library July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls. for housing outside the county.”

Carter said Twin Falls inmates have been housed as far away as Nez Perce County. Those long trips can require additional employee time, gas money, and overtime pay — plus the estimated $50 to $75 per day that counties charge for each bed.

The county also has a contract to lease 25 beds at the Jerome County Jail, an arrangement that costs Twin Falls upwards of $500,000 a year.

These housing costs, Twin Falls commissioners say, are perhaps the most significant and immediate issue that’s come out of the jail crowding situation.

As Commissioner Terry Kramer put it: “The out-of-county is really a killer.”

The choice, then, may be between building an expensive new facility now, or waiting 10 years and paying additional costs to house inmates in the meantime.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to pay one way or the other,” Hall said. “We’re either going to pay by expanding our facilities and having a better, more conducive environment to do business...or

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

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Summit Food Service director Christina anderson talks about the challenges of meeting all of the inmates dietary restrictions July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls.

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

detention deputy Josh Pehrson talks to an inmate in receiving July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls. we’re going to pay money to house them somewhere else outside our community.”

Commissioner Jack Johnson, who is spearheading the commissioners’ exploration of jail and courthouse expansion, put it more directly.

“If we’re going to drop a million a year on housing, it would be very nice to invest that in our community instead of other communities,” Johnson said.

If the county does decide to build a new facility sooner rather than later, it won’t be an immedi-

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

doors leading to numerous cell blocks line the hallway July 13 at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls.

ate solution. A new jail and courthouse would take at least two to three years to build, and would require significant planning before construction.

The county report estimated that, to sufficiently accommodate the growing inmate population over the next 30 years, a new jail would need up to 400 beds.

But Hughes and the commissioners now fear those numbers may be outdated.

“You look at the population and how things have grown around Twin Falls and I don’t think we’ve put into perspective exactly how much is this going to increase over the next couple years,” Hughes said. “We can take current information and the past couple years of information, but we can’t project where this is going to lead or where the tidal wave is going to stop.”

In the meantime, options are limited for keeping the number of inmates down, Hughes said, especially as the high percentage of felons in the facility poses difficult questions about who can and should be released to free up space.

“As that population goes, you’ve really got to weigh: can you cut somebody loose on a felony and still offer a safe side to the community?” Hughes said. “And the argument is probably not. So we’re kind of in between a rock and a hard place.”

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

an inmate talks on the phone July 13at the Twin Falls County Jail in Twin Falls.

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magicvalley.com

| SECTION E

Twin Falls’ founders set up the region for generations to come

Third in a 10-part series PAT SUTPHIN

psutphin@magicvalley.com

T

Twin Falls’ top water usage accounts, 2017 User

Gallons

ConAgra/LambWeston

852.1 million

Chobani Idaho, Inc.*

302.1 million

Glanbia Food, Inc.*

90.9 million

Independent Meat Co.

69.3 million

Chobani Idaho, Inc.

57.5 million

Lazy J Ranch

45.7 million

Glanbia Food, Inc.

45.7 million

Skylane Park

31.5 million

Glanbia Food, Inc.

31.1 million

St. Luke’s Health System

28.2 million

*Chobani Idaho, Inc., and Glanbia Food, Inc., have several accounts through which the companies use water.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

PREPARED FOR GROWTH

WIN FALLS — Despite living in the High Desert, Magic Valley residents are rarely forced to consider their water usage.

Conservation is a constant point of emphasis, of course, and for good reason. But the region has sufficient water to go around, at least for the time being. For that, they can thank the Magic Valley’s founders.

In a state where water rights are “first in time, first in line,” having a 100-year-old water right can be the difference between thriving and simply surviving. According to the Idaho Department of Water Resources, Twin Falls owns water rights that date back to October 11, 1900. That puts the city 14 years before Pocatello’s first water right and 27 years before Idaho Falls.

“Our forefathers here were brilliant when they bought all the water rights,” said Drew Foster, senior water supply technician for the city of Twin Falls.

All of the region’s drinking water comes in the form of groundwater pumped from wells. But our access to surface water is what set up Twin Falls for the growth it’s experiencing today. Having the right to use surface water – instead of just groundwater – allows the city to save millions of gallons of potable water each day.

The city’s relationship with Twin Falls Canal Company puts it in a steady position to handle growth.

Jeff Malina, a senior water supply technician with the city of Twin Falls, said the city owns the largest portion of shares in the canal company.

“Back in the ‘40s and ‘50s we used canal water and filtered it for city drinking water,” Malina said. “That was such a costly process that they went to drilled wells, but we kept our shares of the canal company water.”

Today, surface water is used in the city’s pressurized irrigation system to water lawns.

“We’re probably ahead of the curve on any other city in the state with our pressurized irrigation system,” Malina said.

The water used for pressurized irrigation is dirty water that is unfit for consumption.

It’s surface water drawn from Please see WATER, Page E2

PAT SUTPHIN PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

Water makes its way through the Sodium Hypochlorite Generation System July 9 at a Hypochlorite station in Twin Falls. The system shocks water with 34 amps of electricity to cause the water to release a hydrogen ion, changing its composition from salt water to sodium hypochlorite. Senior Water Supply Technician Jeff Malina said the city can chlorinate between 0.20 to 4.0 ppm. Twin Falls chlorinates at 0.35 ppms to clean the water.

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Senior Water Supply Technician Jeff Malina takes a water sample from a faucet July 9 at the Harrison Booster Station in Twin Falls. Malina said the DEQ and EPA require random water checks based on population size. Throughout the month, Malina and his crew sample 54 different sites within Twin Falls. Malina said if a test fails, it can usually be traced back to the technician who took the sample. ‘A little bit of dust or dirt in the jar will fail that sample,’ he says.

E2 |

THE BIG STORY

SUNDAY, JULY 29, 2018

TIMES-NEWS

PAT SUTPHIN PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

Water runs through the pump station July 9 at the Harrison Booster Station in Twin Falls. Jeff Malina, senior water supply technician for the city of Twin Falls, said 70 to 80 percent of the city water is pumped from the Blue Lakes wells. ‘We can pump 24,000 gallons a minute from that facility,’ he said.

Water From E1

canals and rivers, and cannot be used in homes. Domestic water, however, is potable groundwater pumped from wells for people to drink, cook and bathe.

“We’re saving ourselves probably 8-10 million gallons a day,” said Water Superintendent Robert Bohling. Unlike cities such as Pocatello and Idaho Falls, Twin Falls’ pre-existing infrastructure and relationship with the canal company allow the city to use a resource that others don’t have.

“They watch the water run by,” Foster said.

Twin Falls uses about 25 million gallons of potable water a day in the summer. Pocatello Water Superintendent Justin Armstrong said his city, whose population is roughly the same size as Twin Falls, uses 32 million gallons a day in the summertime. In the winter, both cities use about 8 million to 10 million gallons a day.

Pocatello does not have a pressurized irrigation system, so all of the water used in the city is potable groundwater.

The summertime difference can mostly be attributed to Pocatello’s lack of a pressurized irrigation system that supplies surface water.

“Some of our peak days actually Twin Falls Water Superintendent Robert Bohling discusses water conservation June 26 at his office in Twin Falls. ‘Water is life,’ Bohling said. ‘It made exceeded 37 million gallons a day, this valley happen.’ Bohling said the city needs to focus more efforts on xeriscaping and water reduction. ‘A lot of places are going to xeriscaping to be and that was when the population able to sustain.’ was smaller,” Armstrong said. For Pocatello, Armstrong believes the Idaho Falls faces a different set Without meters, their water use vation tool,” Richards said. The spring 2017 and spring 2018. of challenges. The city, with a is significantly higher.

“It’s like a glass,” Bohling said. future lies in conservation. city is now retrofitting non-resiA tiered rate structure pro- population of roughly 62,000, In 2013, when the population dential users with meters. “We’re “If you keep putting straws in it, vides citizens with incentives to doesn’t have a way of tracking was 4,000 fewer residents than it starting with the largest users pretty soon the inflow can’t hanconserve water, as it gets more their groundwater consumption. is today, Idaho Falls used an aver- and working our way down from dle the outflow, and that is a huge expensive the more you use, and “What would have been great age of 43.6 million gallons a day in there.” concern. There’s no doubt in my new water meters are being in- is an installation of meters back the summer and 11.4 million galWith aquifers across the state mind that (recharge efforts) have stalled that can track up to a quar- when the city was founded,” Wa- lons in the winter. According to on the decline, most cities are to happen or we will dry the aquiter-gallon per minute. ter Superintendent David Rich- the Water Facility Plan, research looking at conservation as the fers up,” Bohling said. estimates a 30 percent reduction key for sustainability. But there “Every drop is being accounted ards said.

When it comes to conservation, for,” Armstrong said. “To preserve According to a Water Facility in daily use and 40 percent reduc- is reason for optimism: The State everyone has a part to play. Joe our resources and actually know Plan the city published in 2015, tion in peak day demand of water Water Board said in mid-July that Russell, owner of Rocket Express what you’re utilizing, it is vital to the total cost predictions for in- when metered. the Eastern Snake Plane Aquifer Car Wash in Twin Falls, installed meter.” stalling meters throughout the “There’s no doubt that water enjoyed its largest year-overPlease see WATER, Page E4 Fifty miles up Interstate 15, city will exceed $166 million. meters would be the best conser- year increase in 80 years between

WATER WAYS: Growing the

Magic Valley

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The results of a water test are charted July 13 at Magic Valley Labs in Twin Falls. Owner Shelly Kolar says the city is proactive with their testing. ‘The city of Twin Falls exceeds the amount they are required to do on a monthly basis with their bacteria testing,’ she said.

Samples sit in an incubator in the chemistry lab July 13 at Magic Valley Labs in Twin Falls.

Owner Shelly Kolar said results for microbiology tests come back within 24 hours, but other tests can take anywhere from three days to three weeks to complete.

TIMES-NEWS

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SUNDAY, JULY 29, 2018 |

E3

A water sample is taken July 9 at the Harrison Booster Station in Twin Falls. The city samples 54 different sites throughout the month. The number of required water samples changes based on population size.

WATER WAYS: Growing the

Magic Valley PAT SUTPHIN PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

General Manager Justin Russell sprays down a car before it enters the car wash July 17 at Rocket Express Carwash in Twin Falls.

Owner Joe Russell says the business uses 30 gallons of water per car and reclaims 80 percent of the water that they use. ‘Our water use is about 25 percent of the average water use of people washing their cars at home,’ Joe Russell says.

5 TIPS FOR CONSERVING CITY WATER

1

Plant more trees in your yard.

“Bluegrass grows really well in shade.

If you have more trees and shaded areas, it takes a lot less water.”

—Drew Foster, Twin Falls senior water supply technician

2

Avoid peak water hours.

“Watering during the day will save water and help the city.”

—Jeff Malina, Twin Falls senior water supply technician

3

Convert to xeriscaping or desertscaping. “There’s 15 million gallons a day that we’re putting on the grass.”

—Jeff Malina

4

Buy conservation shower heads, take shorter showers and don’t continuously run the water when washing dishes by hand. “It’s the little things that count.”

—Drew Foster

5

Keep your pressurized irrigation filters clean to ensure your sprinkler system works properly.

“Groundwater is not an infinite source.

We need to save that groundwater for drinking.”

—Robert Bohling, Twin Falls water superintendent.

A car exits the car wash July 17 at Rocket Express Carwash in Twin Falls.

Rocket Express uses solar energy and a water reclamation system to reduce their carbon footprint. ‘It doesn’t make economic sense today to do what we’re doing with the solar power, but it will over time,’ said owner Joe Russell.

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Fourth in a six-part series

E4 | Sunday, July 29, 2018

THE BIG STORY

Times-News

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

A car goes through the car wash July 17 at Rocket Express Carwash in Twin Falls. Owner Joe Russell said his business uses both solar power energy and renewable water. ‘We’ve tried to step things up in the car wash industry,’ he said.

Water From E2

water reclamation systems in all of his carwash locations. The system reclaims 80 percent of the water used.

With each car requiring 30 gallons of water and Rocket Express serving thousands of cars a month, water reclamation systems can make a significant difference.

Rocket Express also uses solar energy with their car washes.

Russell admits that the solar energy doesn’t make economic sense yet, but it will over time.

“Energy costs and water costs will continue to rise,” Russell said. “I believe businesses that are being responsible and making these improvements will be the best businesses in the future.”

Larger companies such as Chobani are evaluating their conservation efforts. Michael Gonda, senior vice-president of corporate affairs, said the real focus over the past few years is how they can conserve and preserve what resources they have.

“When you take a topic like water, it is emotional because it is so vital,” Gonda said. Within the last five years Chobani has installed a reverse osmosis filtration system in the Twin Falls plant. The system extracts water from whey, a byproduct of yogurt, that can be reused within the facility.

“Whether you are in a plentiful or scarce environment, you have a responsibility to do everything within your power to take seriously the role of conservation,” Gonda said. To do that well, Gonda believes companies need to invest in the technology available.

As companies find creative ways to conserve, water usage in several cities is on the decline – a positive sign for the state’s longterm outlook. Research from a growth study in Pocatello shows that 10-year water consumption

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

Lab Technician Sarah Hoy vacuum seals a sample sheet July 13 at Magic Valley Labs in Twin Falls. Owner Shelly Kolar said E. coli and coliform are the main concerns with drinking water. ‘For microbiology testing, we probably test about 6,000 samples a year,’ she said.

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

M 1

averages have decreased from 5.3 billion gallons a year to 4.8 billion gallons.

Statistics for Twin Falls show the same results. “Even though Twin Falls is growing, our potable water usage is trending downward,” Bohling said.

Without water meters, it’s difficult to tell if Idaho Falls is reducing their water consumption, but the city is taking the initiative in addressing their problems and finding conservation solutions for the future.

“What we’ve done well currently is cleaning up our own act,” Richards said.

In addition to metering, Idaho Falls is considering converting green spaces such as parks and cemeteries onto surface irrigation water. They’re also exploring new ways to make their existing water rights more efficient.

“For the city of Idaho Falls, it begins and end with water rights,” Richards said. “There’s a lot of tools in the toolbox and we have to make sure we are willing and capable of using all of them.”

Even in Twin Falls, more can be done to conserve. Xeriscaping or desert-scaping are becoming more popular methods to reduce water usage on lawns.

Bohling also recommends a re-evaluation of our current rate structure to encourage people to use less.

“When you look at other cities comparable to us...their water rates are the opposite,” he said.

“The more you use, the higher it gets.” Twin Falls currently offers discounts at different stages, making the water cheaper the more you use.

With countless court battles and a statewide adjudication process to catalog and confirm current water rights, the vitality of water is clear. The resource is a precious commodity that is becoming scarcer throughout the state, and people are willing to fight for their share.

“Water is the new gold,” Bohling said.

DREW NASH TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO‌

Potable water runs through pipes July 9 at the Harrison Booster Station in Twin Falls. Potable Marc Abjean, a senior vice president with Chobani, gives a partial tour of the plant’s reverse osmosis filtration system in 2014. Michael Gonda, senior vice-president of corporate water is water pulled from a well that is treated and used in homes. Unlike pressurized affairs, says utilizing conservation technology like the reverse osmosis system is crucial for irrigation water, potable water is safe to drink. Drew Foster, senior water supply technician for the city of Twin Falls, said preserving our potable water is the key to sustainability. ‘In the companies looking to be economically and environmentally sound. ‘When you look at it, it’s a bunch of pipes, but when you see the impact it has it’s pretty extraordinary,’ Gonda said last 20 years, we’ve added over 20 pressurized irrigation skids,’ he says. ‘That’s one of the during a July 24 interview at Chobani. steps we’re taking to save our potable water.’

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magicvalley.com

|

SECTION E

Construction is underway July 12 at Kimberly Elementary School.

‘TREMENDOUS GROWTH’ Magic Valley schools are coping with an influx of students and planning for the future

Story by JULIE WOOTTON-GREENER | jwootton@magicvalley.com

Enrollment growth in Magic Valley schools The bigger school districts in The Magic Valley are growing rapidly, but the biggest enrollment change has happened in Kimberly, a smaller school district than Twin Falls, Jerome or Cassia County.

10,000

(11.2%) 2012-13

2013-14 2014-15

2015-16

2016-17

2017-18

8,000

(10.5%)

6,000

(3.9%)

4,000

(PERCENT INCREASE OVER FIVE YEARS) (14.7%)

2,000

0

Twin Falls

Cassia County

Jerome

Kimberly

DATA: Fourth Friday in September each year

DATA: Third Tuesday in September each year

DATA: Last day of school each year

DATA: Last day of school each year Lee Enterprises graphic

PHOTOS BY DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Students attend class July 2 at Jerome High School.

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T

WIN FALLS — When a school district has fewer than 2,000 students, gaining several hundred within six years is a big deal.

That’s the case at Kimberly School District, where enrollment has increased 15 percent since 2013.

“Since the 2011-12 school year, we’ve had some years of some tremendous growth,” Superintendent Luke Schroeder said.

Voters passed a $14 million bond in May 2016 to address growth and alleviate overcrowding. The bulk of the money was used to build the town’s second elementary campus — Stricker Elementary School — which opens this fall. A major remodel is also underway at the existing Kimberly Elementary School campus.

But as one overcrowding problem is addressed, another arises. Kimberly Middle School and Kimberly High School are now becoming overcrowded too, Schroeder said. “We’re probably three to five years out from even considering asking voters for another bond to build something to accommodate that growth.”

The district plans to bring a group back together this school year to update a 25-year master building plan, based on enrollment and market values.

The district — which had 1,935 students last school year — has mapped out enrollment projections based on a 2 percent annual growth rate. But estimating how many more students will arrive in the district on the first day of school is still a guessing game.

Plus it’s extremely challenging for the Kimberly School District to build new facilities, Schroeder said.

Compared with other school districts that have similar enrollments, such as Buhl and Filer, Kimberly has roughly $100 million less in market value, he said. And the school district’s boundaries are small — only about four miles wide.

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THE BIG STORY

E2 | Sunday, August 5, 2018

Times-News

“We’re probably three to five years out from even considering asking voters for another bond to build something to accommodate that growth.”

Luke Schroeder, Kimberly superintendent

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS‌

Work is being done outside of Kimberly Elementary School July 12.

Growth

a problem, but it’s a good problem to have. I’d much rather be dealing with growth than a declining enrollment.”

Beth Stanger has lived in the district for nine years. When her oldest daughter — now in middle school — started kindergarten at Kimberly Elementary School, there were 650 children at the school.

Last school year, there were about 1,000.

“We’ve been here through the little growth — the 1 or 2 percent growth — but we were also here when they hit the 5 or 6 percent growth,” said Stanger, who has two children in the school system and is president of Kimberly’s Parent Teacher Student Organization.

Schools have done a good job pushing to keep student-toteacher ratios low and hiring paraprofessionals to help out classroom teachers, she said. “I didn’t feel like the kids’ education was affected.”

Large school districts tend to be better equipped than smaller ones to handle growth. In big districts, more school campuses and space are usually available. In Kimberly, a district that will add its fourth campus this fall, student growth has been equivalent to an entire new school over the past six years.

“We’ve seen some staggering growth,” Schroeder said.

From E1

Kimberly is largely a bedroom community, with many of its residents commuting to work in Twin Falls.

“There are some of the highest-valued residential dwellings in the Magic Valley, but very little commercial and industry to support that,” Schroeder said.

As a result, “we’re always playing catch-up when it comes to building buildings.”

The community has been supportive and only one bond has failed in the past 40 years. But since school districts can only bond for up to 5 percent of the total market value, “we’re always hitting the ceiling of that debt capacity,” Schroeder said.

Accommodating enrollment growth – a byproduct of booming population growth – is a challenge faced by Magic Valley school districts, especially bigger ones like Twin Falls and Cassia County.

And other than pursuing bonds, school districts don’t have many options to accommodate growth. Still, Magic Valley school districts have had more success pursuing bonds than some other districts across Idaho and the Mountain West.

‘Staggering growth’‌

The Twin Falls School District has gained more than 1,800 students since 2010 — from 7,777 in 2010 to 9,602 in 2017. The annual growth rate has ranged from 1.7 to 5 percent.

Several years ago, schools were filling up quickly and exceeding building capacities. In 2014, voters approved a nearly $74 million bond to build three new schools: Rock Creek and Pillar Falls elementary schools, which opened in 2016, and South Hills Middle School, which opened in 2017.

To prepare for opening three new schools, a committee of community members redrew elementary and middle school attendance zones.

Through the process, one of the lessons learned was “new schools fill up faster than you think they’re going to,” said Brady Dickinson, superintendent of the Twin Falls School District. And it’s important, he said, to be strategic when drawing attendance zones.

Pillar Falls Elementary has a comfortable capacity of 650 students. In two years, the school has already reached capacity — much faster than the five years the school district was originally projecting.

People like sending their children to new schools, Dickinson said. Although there haven’t been any more transfer requests for new schools than older ones, families tend to purchase homes near new schools, he said.

As enrollment across the district continues to grow, Dickin-

What about rural schools?‌

Students attend an English class July 2 at Jerome High School. son said he’d like to avoid having to adjust school attendance zones. It’s a difficult and unpopular proposition, he said, and would only be considered as a last resort.

Redrawing attendance zones is unpopular because many families buy or rent homes based on which school they want their children to attend. Plus, it can be emotional leaving a school where a child has friends and knows the teachers.

But the district can’t have an overcrowded school while another is half empty, he said. If that ever happens — which Dickinson predicts won’t be in the near future — the district would likely ask for volunteers first to move to a different school.

In Cassia County, the school district’s long-range facilities planning committee will pres-

ent a formal recommendation in August to the school board.

“The facilities group is considering every option and not ruling out a school bond at some point,” said Debbie Critchfield, spokeswoman for the Cassia County School District.

The group has been meeting since October to discuss facility needs, Critchfield said, including “learning from missteps” surrounding a 2015 bond election seeking public input.

Voters approved a $37 million measure in 2015, which included opening Burley’s new John V. Evans Elementary School in 2017.

But an architect underestimated costs, so the district pursued a $15 million bond in 2016 to try to make up the difference. Voters rejected the additional ballot measure, forcing the district to scale back its list of facility proj-

ects.

This fall, Burley will have four neighborhood elementary schools for the first time. “We’re feeling comfortable with the elementary situation,” Critchfield said.

Now the concern is that Burley Junior High School and Burley High School are overcrowded.

The 2015 bond called for classroom additions at each of the buildings, but those projects were nixed due to the funding shortfall.

The school district is conservatively predicting a 2 percent annual growth rate. It had 5,531 students enrolled last school year — a few hundred more than the 2012-13 school year.

In Kimberly, Schroeder said he doesn’t think people realize how much the school district has grown in recent years. “Growth is

While Twin Falls and Burley-area schools are growing quickly, that generally isn’t spilling over to the smallest, most rural Magic Valley school districts.

In some communities with limited housing and not much new business activity, school leaders say their enrollment isn’t fluctuating much.

The Valley School District in Hazelton — about a 30-minute drive from Twin Falls — has about 600 students.

“The trend so far is just that we’re holding steady,” Superintendent Eric Anderson said.

Other small, rural Magic Valley school districts—Buhl, Hansen, Bliss and Shoshone — also told the Times-News in April they’re predicting flat enrollment numbers for next school year.

The biggest reason for Valley’s flat enrollment, Anderson said, is a lack of new subdivisions in Eden or Hazelton. “I don’t suspect that will happen in the immediate future. Until that happens, I see us staying about where we’re at, unless something changes in the next several years.”

But when homes do come on the market, he said, they sell quickly.

Anderson describes Hazelton and Eden as a “very rural area.”

It’s possible if Twin Falls continues on pace with growth, he said, the spillover effect on Kimberly could continue out toward Hazelton and Eden.

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Times-News

Sunday, August 5, 2018 | E3

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS‌

Balloon wallpaper is seen from outside the building July 12 at Kimberly Elementary School. The entire foyer is being redone.

The guessing game‌ School districts try to predict how many students they’ll gain each year, relying on information about new companies coming to town and planned new subdivisions.

Ultimately, though, it’s just an educated guess in the weeks leading up to the first day of school.

The Twin Falls School District has grown about 3 percent each of the past two years. Like other growing Magic Valley school districts, the district has budgeted conservatively, assuming only 2 percent growth.

The Jerome School District — which has about 4,000 students — has gained more than 460 students since the 2010-11 school year. District leaders expect to see about 75 to 100 more students next school year and again the year after that.

“We believe the most growth is going to be at the high school for the next two years due to the sizes of the classes that are moving through the system,” Superintendent Dale Layne said.

In Kimberly, enrollment growth has been as high as 7 percent some years. Student numbers are expected to surpass 2,000 by the 2019-20 school year.

“It’s very hard to guess from year to year what percentage of growth you’re going to see,” Schroeder said. He anticipates seeing another enrollment spike around 2020, once more subdivisions are built.

Stanger is a member of the school district’s 25-year facilities planning committee, and said the district is prepared for growth and has back-up plans.

“I know they’re already planning,” she said, and she doesn’t envision huge class sizes becoming an issue.

School officials are going into the future with eyes wide open, Schroeder said, but “just because you have a plan doesn’t mean it’s going to be seamless.”

‘A huge commitment’‌

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With more enrollment growth expected in the next few years, several school districts are exploring the need for new schools.

The Twin Falls School District is predicting it will need to build a new elementary school in five years and a new high school in 12 years, Dickinson said. The district will likely reconvene its long-range facilities planning committee in two or three years.

Dickinson said he predicts the new elementary school could be in south Twin Falls, but it depends on how quickly new homes are built in that area.

In May, the Twin Falls school board voted to buy 58.7 acres of land — with a $520,000 price tag — that could be used for a future high school site. The parcel is at Blue Lakes Boulevard South and 3600 North. The school district also owns land near the Sunway

Noble Smith attends an English class July 2 at Jerome High School.

Soccer Complex in northwest Twin Falls.

There are two philosophies to handling growth, Dickinson said: wait until schools are overcrowded and there are lots of portable classrooms, or get ahead of the growth by building schools to grow into.

In Twin Falls, the community has been supportive, he said, noting the ideal window of opportunity to build a new school is when buildings are “full, but not overcrowded.”

“Building new schools is a huge commitment from the community,” Dickinson said.

In Kimberly, despite overcrowding in the middle and high schools, Schroeder said there are no plans to build new schools on the heels of the new Stricker Elementary.

In the meantime, the district plans to explore options for how to utilize available square footage at Kimberly Elementary — such as for College of Southern Idaho classes for high schoolers or specialized academies. The school has two portable classrooms – buildings that resemble mobile homes with classrooms inside.

Using portables isn’t ideal, Schroeder said. “It definitely is not something our school board and our community likes having.”

In Jerome, voters approved a nearly $24 million bond in 2014.

The bulk of the money was used at Jerome High School for a new

wing, including more classroom space and a second gymnasium.

Money was also used to add classrooms at other campuses.

Although classrooms were added on, the problem is “the infrastructure of the building itself isn’t always conducive,” Layne said. So while districts can add additional classroom space, common areas like school cafeterias and hallways remain overcrowded.

The Jerome School District is scoping out land for a possible new school, with a construction timeline still unknown.

Layne said his best guess is a new campus will be an elementary school, but “we’ll go through a process with the community as far as input.”

Jerome Middle School — the only middle school in town — has about 1,000 sixth through eighth-graders.

“That’s a large middle school,” Layne said. “We’re trying to figure out if there’s a way to help there also.”

Charter schools‌

Xavier Charter School in Twin Falls is also coping with enrollment growth, but it’s restricted by charter and facility constraints.

“We know we’re limited by the size of our facility at this point in time,” administrator Gary Moon said.

The school’s enrollment — including the number of students allowed in each grade level — is

regulated by the Idaho Public Charter School Commission.

Xavier ended the school year with 705 students and expects at least 720 when classes resume this fall.

“I believe if we add more modular units, we’d be near our capacity of 810 students,” Moon said Unlike traditional public school districts, Idaho charter schools aren’t allowed to bring ballot measures to voters to help pay for operating or building expenses.

“We have to come up with different means of funding and expansion,” Moon said.

Xavier has two modular buildings — another word for portable classrooms — on campus, with a total of four classrooms.

School officials have worked with a Boise-based architect to figure out how to maximize and expand classroom space, and build science labs. The school also has a marketing and fundraising director, allowing Xavier to pursue outside sources of funding to work around its funding restraints.

Demand for more teachers‌ As students pour in, school districts naturally require additional teachers. But finding teachers to fill open positions is difficult because of a statewide teacher shortage that’s hit south-central Idaho harder than

any other region in the state.

As student numbers increase, so does state funding based on average daily attendance. That allows school districts to hire more teachers.

But many Magic Valley school districts hire more teachers and support staff than state funding covers. And they often boost salaries above the state minimum to help attract and retain educators.

For next school year, Jerome School District plans to add seven new job positions. Three of them hadn’t been filled as of early July, even though the district began looking for teachers in February.

If a school district hires too many teachers, it may not have enough state funding to cover the costs. But if it doesn’t hire enough teachers, it’s nearly impossible to find them once a new school year starts.

In Kimberly, enrollment began growing just after the economic recession of the late 2000s — a time when the district had cut job positions.

Teachers can be added using state funding, Schroeder said, but enrollment growth has also put a strain on support staff such as administrative, clerical and maintenance workers.

“We haven’t been able to keep up with the pace of enrollment,” he said. “Those positions are being stretched very, very thin.”

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DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS‌

Jerome High School is shown July 2.

Growth From E3

How are other school districts coping?‌ Plenty of other growing cities’ school districts in Idaho and the western U.S. have grappled with enrollment growth. But since many of those are significantly larger, their solutions for absorbing students would be tough to emulate here in the Magic Valley.

West Ada School District in Meridian — Idaho’s largest school district — has about 39,500 students. That’s more than four times the size of the Twin Falls School District, by far the biggest district in the Magic Valley.

It has seen explosive enrollment growth, gaining an average of 975 children each year. Over the past 20 years, the district has built 23 new schools.

“It’s just kind of a way of life here in West Ada,” district spokesman Eric Exline said.

A few years ago, when the Twin Falls School District was preparing to redraw elementary and middle school boundaries to accommodate three new schools, Exline explained West Ada’s process to Twin Falls’ attendance zone committee.

West Ada serves all or part of six different cities, spanning 382 square miles. Under a long-term facilities plan, the district expects to build seven new schools in the next 10 years — two high schools, two middle schools and five elementary schools.

Within school district boundaries, 14,000 home sites have been approved for construction. Using U.S. Census data, that means an estimated 11,000 more students could be in the pipeline to come to West Ada schools in the next decade or so, Exline said.

There’s only one real mechanism to deal with enrollment growth, he said, and that’s pursuing bond measures. “When you’re running bonds and opening new schools every two years, that’s a lot.”

It also means changing school attendance zone boundaries frequently. “It’s emotional and it’s a really charged process,” Exline said.

Voters approved West Ada school bonds in 1996, 1998, 2002 and 2005. The 2005 bond was the largest, at $139 million. One of the last facilities built before the recession was Rocky Mountain High School, which opened in 2008.

“When we were thinking about running another bond, the recession hit,” Exline said.

West Ada has often been able to run new bonds without the property tax rate going up, he said, due to an increase in market value, but that wasn’t possible during the recession.

A 2014 attempt to pass a bond was unsuccessful. The district tried again in 2015 and the $96 million measure passed, providing money for two middle schools, an elementary school and the expansion of an existing high school.

This March, voters approved a $95 million bond to build a new

Lockers line the halls July 2 at Jerome High School. high school and a new elementary school.

“Management of the bond projects and trying to keep them on time and budget is a difficult task,” Exline said. “It’s very time consuming. You can be caught off guard by just changes in the bid environment and the cost of construction.”

School bonds require a twothirds supermajority vote to pass, providing another barrier for schools to acquire the funding.

Though the 2014 ballot measure is the only one in West Ada that has failed in recent years, the supermajority requires communities to be fully on board with the measure.

“That means that you have to have the trust of your community,” Exline said. “They have to know you’re planning well and spending money well.”

Idaho is the fastest-growing state in the U.S., but it’s hardly the only state where cities are grappling with growth. Fort Collins, Colo., for example has seen persistent enrollment growth in recent years.

The approximately 30,000-student Poudre School District in Fort Collins has grown 1 to 1.5 percent annually for the last five years.

That equates to about 300 to 500 more students each year — about the size of an elementary school – but growth is interspersed in different geographic areas, said school district spokeswoman Danielle Clark.

It’s easier to absorb students in larger school districts, Clark said. “Up until this point, we’ve been able to accommodate the growth with things like modular classrooms.”

Some Fort Collins high schools that were originally built to accommodate 1,600 students now house more than 2,000.

Enrollment growth has now slowed down a little bit compared with what school officials were projecting, Clark said. But still, “we’ve really started to feel the pinch within the last couple of years.”

In November 2016, voters approved a $375 million bond to build three new schools: an elementary school and two sixth through 12th grade campuses.

But construction hasn’t started yet.

Projects have been tied up in litigation — a series of rulings and appeals involving community activist Eric Sutherland and the topic of tax-increment financing — for the past two years, Clark said. She hopes a decision will be made by the Colorado Supreme Court in the coming months.

Back in eastern Idaho, the Bonneville Joint School District has about 12,500 students. The district’s boundaries include a portion of Idaho Falls, along with Ammon, Iona and Ucon.

District officials wanted to build a new middle school and a new $25 million elementary school to help alleviate overcrowding, Idaho Education News reported in January. But community pushback and concerns led the school board to pursue a bond just for a middle school and other smaller projects. Voters approved the $35.3 million measure in March.

Unlike Twin Falls and neighboring Magic Valley school districts, Bonneville’s growth has been slow and steady. The district has seen an approximately

3 percent annual enrollment increase for the past 15 years.

The early 2000s is “when we really started to see the uptick in our enrollment,” said Scott Woolstenhulme, assistant superintendent of the Bonneville Joint School District. Until then, student numbers had remained fairly stable.

Woolstenhulme said he has heard anecdotally when a city hits around the 50,000 population mark, “it’s almost like a magic number” for how it fuels further growth. Idaho Falls’ population is about 61,000, according to 2017 U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Another factor in Bonneville school growth: One major homebuilder was building homes inexpensively on the Bonneville school district’s side of Idaho Falls, which brought a lot of young families into the area, Woolstenhulme said.

Over more than a decade from 2000 to 2013, the district built seven new elementary schools.

“We basically doubled the number of elementary schools we had at that time,” he said.

But district officials knew they weren’t meeting the needs at the high school level. A decade ago, a facilities planning study showed it was “very evident we needed to be bonding for a high school,” Woolstenhulme said.

But like in West Ada, it was around the time of the economic recession when a recommendation came to the Bonneville school board.

“The school board said absolutely not,” Woolstenhulme said, because it would have meant a tax increase for property owners. Instead, “we started adding

lots and lots of trailers to our high school.”

The district purchased portable classroom buildings from neighboring school districts and private schools. That helped get through the next few years.

On the district’s third attempt, voters passed a $55.3 million bond for a new high school in 2015 — plus $8.2 million for an athletics complex and performing arts center at the new school — and the campus opens in August.

New schools will take care of middle and high school needs for the next 15 to 20 years, Woolstenhulme said. But now the district is again over capacity at its elementary schools.

The district plans to gradually move portable classrooms from the high schools to elementary schools, he said, but will need permanent classroom space in the future.

For Woolstenhulme, the biggest surprise of coping with enrollment growth and building new schools was community opposition to the high school bond.

Bonneville passed five bonds for elementary schools without any significant organized opposition, Woolstenhulme said, but they didn’t increase the levy rate.

With the high school, “we faced quite a bit of unexpected criticism,” he said, and the level of opposition and tactics “really caught us by surprise. None of us were really geared up for that.”

Woolstenhulme said he hears a question from community members: “When are you going to stop asking for bonds?”

But as long as enrollment keeps growing, the district will need to keep building schools, he said.

“It’s just not going to stop.”

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SECTION E

PAT SUTPHIN TIMES-NEWS

Dr. John Hanowell speaks with his patient, Larry Shepherd, on July 6 at St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center emergency room in Twin Falls.

Creative solutions Magic Valley health care providers adapt to booming population STORY BY JULIE WOOTTON-GREENER | JWOOTTON@MAGICVALLEY.COM

T

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WIN FALLS — More than a year ago, North Canyon Medical Center contemplated the future of its Gooding hospital and how to extend its reach.

Since it received funding through a taxing district, the medical center was limited to providing services in Gooding County. But in a county with fewer than 16,000 residents, “it’s difficult to have traction to be a viable enterprise,” said Chief Executive Officer Tim Powers.

In May, Gooding County residents voted overwhelmingly — with 87 percent support — to dissolve North Canyon’s hospital taxing district and allow it to become a nonprofit. The hospital had already cut tax revenue out of its operating budget in July 2017.

The change means North Canyon — an 18-bed critical access hospital that’s independent and locally-controlled by a board of directors — can now expand outside its primary service area.

After conducting a feasibility study last summer, results showed expansion was a difficult proposition, Powers said, but the board felt it was the right avenue economically to support the hospital.

Today, construction is underway on a clinic in Buhl — the hospital’s first test market outside of Gooding County — which finally fulfilled a request Buhl business leaders brought to North Canyon more than six years ago.

In the future, North Canyon may consider expanding its health care services to Jerome and parts of Twin Falls, such as the industrial area near Chobani and close to Kimberly.

“I think there’s room enough for a lot of players down there,” Powers said.

As the Magic Valley’s population booms, more patients are coming into hospitals, medical clinics and dental offices and more residents are seeking health care services such as physical therapy and assisted living. An aging population and a physician shortage compounds the challenge.

Hospital systems are exploring options such as expanding their service areas, building new facilities and offering more health care options — whether in-person, via telehealth or by affiliating with larger hospitals to provide specialty care. And a tighter focus is on keeping people healthy and encouraging them to seek intervention earlier, instead of dealing with worse issues in an emergency room.

At North Canyon Medical Center, hospital officials are preparing for growth and expansion “in anticipation of the Magic Valley just mushrooming,” Powers said. “How do you have an infrastructure to support that? That’s truly concerning to us.”

Growth across the Magic Valley puts a strain on health care providers, Powers said. And even in Twin Falls, the valley’s population and health care hub, St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center is the only hospital in town.

“Without any direct competition from anyone else,” Powers said, “that really leaves the community and the marketplace at a disadvantage.”

Magic Valley medical centers: By the numbers St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center

192

Employees

Data from the 2017 fiscal year:

1,811

Newborns

10,855 Surgeries

2,777

Number of employees (hospital and clinics)

436,525

10,750

Rehabilitation visits (physical, occupational and speech therapy)

22

Medical staff

8,954

Clinic visits

Clinic visits

16,705

St. Luke’s Mountain States Tumor Institute – Twin Falls

4,683

Data from the 2017 fiscal year:

5,711

Chemotherapy infusion visits

8,592

Clinic oncology visits

4,484

Radiation oncology provider visits

70

Number of employees North Canyon Medical Center in Gooding

30,342

Hospital outpatient visits

Family Health Services

Hospital in-patient admissions

596

Surgeries performed Source: North Canyon Medical Center’s 2017 annual report

11.2 percent

Patients best served in a language other than English.

41.4 percent

Magic Valley Paramedics

Patients who don’t have health insurance, Medicare or Medicaid.

79,144

26,508

Service calls since 2009

44.9 percent 17.5 percent

Competition

Idahoans who have any mental illness – one of the highest rates in the nation

458

87,030

Imaging studies

23.3 percent

Source: 2017 St. Luke’s Magic Valley Community Health Needs Assessment

Outpatient visits

11,164

Population increase from 2000 to 2013 in Twin Falls and Jerome counties

Emergency department visits

Increase in volume from 2009 to 2017

Lab procedures

24 percent

Increase in staffing, by adding 8.4 job positions, during that same time period

Several government agencies and medical centers — including the Federal Trade Commission and Idaho Attorney General — filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the St. Luke’s Health System in 2012.

U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled in 2014 the St. Luke’s broke antitrust laws when it acquired Saltzer Medical Group, based in Nampa.

Regulators cited the Magic Valley as an example of alleged anti-competitive practices. The complaint also alleged rates at St. Luke’s Magic Valley are “among the most expensive in the entire state, with rates rising much faster than the national av-

Clinical patients treated

60,002

Medical visits

246

Babies delivered

22,264

Dental visits

4,923

Behavioral health visits

34,456

Prescriptions filled

$22.6 million Total revenue

Source: Family Health Services’ 2017 annual report

erage.”

A second hospital in Twin Falls could provide competition for St. Luke’s. But if and when that second hospital will come is still unknown.

During summer 2017, St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center — which operates in Boise, Nampa, and Ontario and Baker City, Ore. — was in talks with city officials about building a hospital and emergency department in Twin Falls. It contacted the city’s building department and asked to meet about a conceptual plan.

Please see SOLUTIONS, Page E2

THE BIG STORY

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Sunday, August 12, 2018 | E2

PAT SUTPHIN TIMES-NEWS‌

Dr. John Hanowell, left, and Certified Nursing Assistant Molly Veenstra prepare an arm sling for 15-month-old Amayrani Yescas Damas before her broken arm can be put into a cast July 6 at St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center emergency room in Twin Falls.

Solutions From E1

In late July, a St. Alphonsus spokesman said there wasn’t anything new to report, and the health system continues to evaluate communities where there’s a need but isn’t prepared to make any announcements.

St. Luke’s Magic Valley — a 224bed hospital in Twin Falls — has a daily average of 128 in-patients, so it still has space still available.

Elsewhere across south-central Idaho, St. Luke’s operates 25-bed critical access hospitals in Jerome and the Wood River Valley.

St. Luke’s Magic Valley is a medical hub for a population of between 200,000 and 250,000 people. A lot of those people are from rural communities and drive into Twin Falls to receive medical care, said Debbie Kytle, a St. Luke’s east region administrator overseeing physician services and population health.

With overall patient numbers, “we’re experiencing very significant growth,” said Mike Fenello, the hospital’s site administrator.

As the population continues to grow, St. Luke’s will continue to seek creative ways to connect patients with care, he said, such as through telehealth — a way of delivering patient care remotely by using a live video system.

To keep up with the Magic Valley’s population growth, “we have to start transforming health care,” Kytle said, including addressing fragmentation in care. St. Luke’s wants to provide proactive health care, she said, instead of reactive health care that just provides fixes when a patient is sick.

Another big consideration for hospitals and patients alike is the price tag.

“We know the cost of health care is unsustainable,” Fenello said.

The only way to truly change that is to keep people healthy and intervene faster. That, he said, would help St. Luke’s Magic Valley focus on a small population — 5 percent of patients — that account for 50 percent of total health care costs.

‘The demand is growing’‌

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It’s a common trend among Magic Valley health care providers: They’re seeing more patients and figuring out how to meet their needs, including cost-effective care for those who have a high-deductible health insurance plan or no insurance.

For Family Health Services — with locations in Buhl, Fairfield, Jerome, Twin Falls, Kimberly, Burley and Rupert — new patients are still accepted at all clinics, but some individual providers have full caseloads and aren’t accepting new patients.

FHS provides medical, dental and behavioral health care on a sliding fee scale that’s dependent on income, and they also provide affordable prescription drug coverage. About 41 percent of patients don’t have health insurance, Medicare or Medicaid.

“That number does seem to be rising,” said Aaron Houston, chief executive officer for Family Health Services.

Economic impact of Magic Valley hospitals Total sales impacts derived from all hospital expenditures St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center

Wage and salary earning impacts

$642.8 million

Indirect tax effect (mostly sales and property taxes)

Total jobs created

$293.1 million

6,532

$10.5 million

St. Luke’s Jerome Medical Center $30.4 million

$12.9 million

300

$490,357

St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center $98.5 million

$46.5 million

776

$1.46 million

Source: 2017 Report on the Local and Statewide Economic Impact of Idaho’s Community Hospitals

More people have jobs that don’t offer health insurance, he said, noting costs are rising and it’s difficult for companies — especially small ones — to cover them.

That’s despite a low unemployment rate, 2.5 percent in June, for the south-central Idaho region.

Nationwide, 88 percent of fulltime workers have access to health insurance benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. But for part-time civilian workers, that number is just 21 percent. The Idaho Department of Labor used to compile a fringe benefit survey but doesn’t anymore due to a loss of grant funding.

There’s also a trend toward a “gig economy,” where workers fill temporary jobs in areas like housekeeping and ride-sharing. Almost 25 percent of Americans fill these types of positions, according to the Pew Reseach Center. While some workers say they enjoy the flexibility, the downside is no employer-provided health insurance.

Approximately 64 percent of FHS’ patients are below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, meaning they’re eligible to receive discounts on primary care health services. And 11.2 percent are best served in a language other than English.

For low-income residents, another option for health care is Wellness Tree Community Clinic, a nonprofit in Twin Falls that provides medical and dental care for those living at or below the poverty level or who don’t have health insurance.

Low-income Shoshone-area residents who don’t have health insurance can access the Good Samaritan Clinic, operating out of Shoshone Family Medical Center.

At FHS, Houston has also noticed a recent increase in the number of patients who have high-deductible health insurance plans.

With that kind of plan, it’s tough for a parent to take their child to a doctor, he said, if they’re paying more than $100 out of pocket for an office visit, testing and medications.

The same is true at Cassia Regional Hospital, where administrator Ben Smalley said he’s seen an influx of patients who have high-deductible plans and are seeking cost-effective care.

The 25-bed critical access hospital in Burley has seen overall growth in patient numbers and the number of surgeries performed. Most patients are from Mini-Cassia, although some come from Twin Falls and the surrounding areas.

“I think we’re seeing that as the population grows, the demand is

Lee Enterprises graphic

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

An airy reception area greets patients July 17 at North Canyon Medical Center in Gooding.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Employees go about their business July 17 at North Canyon Medical Center in Gooding. growing as well,” Smalley said.

At nearby Minidoka Memorial Hospital in Rupert, “we’re definitely growing,” said chief executive officer Tom Murphy.

Within the past year, the hospital has added a couple more primary care providers. It also saw 300 more in-patient days —visits where a patient is admitted to the hospital — than the previous year.

“That’s quite an increase for us,” Murphy said.

At North Canyon Medical Center, patients often hail from

as far away as northern Nevada, Mini-Cassia and Glenns Ferry. But Powers said the number of emergency room visits are fairly flat, if not dipping a little. One possible explanation is a walk-in clinic opened one-and-a-half years ago, so people may be going there for minor issues instead of the ER.

Hiring and expanding‌

Magic Valley hospitals are pushing to recruit more medical staff.

But to fill the gaps and provide more specialized care, many small

hospitals are turning to telehealth services or establishing partnerships with larger health care organizations. And they’re using technology to help patients more easily communicate with providers and schedule appointments.

In 2006, 84 percent of Twin Falls County voters approved selling the county-owned Magic Valley Regional Medical Center to the St. Luke’s Health System.

Since then, St. Luke’s has hired 152 physicians and 77 advanced-level providers, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

When providers come to visit the Magic Valley, they tend to like the area’s culture, Kytle said. “Of course, having a new hospital has been huge to recruitment.”

Many of the physicians hired have a connection to the region, and they like that Twin Falls is a small but vibrant area with a strong hospital system, Fenello said.

There is a nationwide physician shortage, and Idaho and the Magic Valley are no exception.

In south-central Idaho, Fenello said, there’s an acute shortage of physiatrists and adolescent psychiatrists. Addressing mental health needs is “an enormous issue for every hospital and community across the country.”

St. Luke’s is working to integrate licensed clinical social workers into its primary care clinics, Fenello said, and several are working there already. The Twin Falls hospital has also integrated social workers into the emergency dePlease see SOLUTIONS, Page E3

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DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Physician assistant Todd Thorne talks with a patient July 19 at Family Health Services in Jerome.

PAT SUTPHIN TIMES-NEWS‌

Dr. John Hanowell inspects the arm of Amayrani Yescas Damas on Friday, July 6, 2018, at St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center emergency room in Twin Falls.

Dr. Guy Grooms meets with a patient July 17 at North Canyon Medical Center in Gooding.

Melchor Avila Ocarranza, right, is examined by physician assistant Todd Thorne July 19, at Family Health Services in Jerome.

Solutions From E2

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partment.

Family Medicine Residency of Idaho has a Magic Valley rural training track to bring residents to Twin Falls and Jerome. St. Luke’s also takes in a lot of students in areas like nursing and pharmacy.

Since 2016, Cassia Regional Hospital has hired seven physicians, including in primary care.

In August, it plans to add a general surgeon. It will also add providers in podiatry and internal medicine.

For years, the hospital hovered around 27-28 physicians on its medical staff, which includes those employed by the hospital and with affiliated organizations.

It’s now up to 31 physicians.

The hospital reaches out to medical students to encourage them to rotate through, and it invests in tuition reimbursement — more than $30,000 so far in 2018 — to help its employees pursue more education and advance to higher-level positions.

To expand available services for patients, Cassia Regional Hospital — which is part of Intermountain Healthcare — uses a high-definition camera system to connect with specialists in other Intermountain hospitals.

For example, local patients may receive chemotherapy at Cassia Regional Hospital so they don’t have to drive to another city and can stay close to their family. Patients can have face-to-face interaction with an oncologist via video system.

Telehealth services are also used for intensive care. And the emergency department can connect with a neurologist who can assess patients for stroke symptoms.

Specialists are available through Intermountain Healthcare’s virtual hospital.

At North Canyon Medical Center, the hospital began a relationship with Mayo Clinic Health Solutions about three years ago.

Previously, the hospital had a relationship with St. Luke’s, but Powers said it was an “amicable split.”

North Canyon also offers tele-behavioral health in partnership with the University of Utah.

For patients, it means having more specialized physicians who can review their case. And there’s the opportunity for referrals to travel to Mayo Clinic hospitals for testing and treatment.

North Canyon also brings in about a dozen rotating specialists and is hiring more of its own providers.

Starting in April 2017, North Canyon brought in an orthopedic surgeon one week per month.

Several months ago, the physician from Oklahoma agreed to practice in Gooding full-time. He started on staff June 1. The hospital also

The radiography room is shown July 17 at North Canyon Medical Center in Gooding. added a general surgeon about 18 months ago.

Minidoka Memorial Hospital has visiting specialists from St. Luke’s Magic Valley, but doesn’t have affiliation agreements with other health care organizations, Murphy said. “We’re pretty independent.”

The hospital is fully owned

by Minidoka County and is governed by a seven-member board appointed by county commissioners. But the hospital’s operations and revenues are separate from the county.

Minidoka Memorial isn’t looking to sell to any other health system, Murphy said. It may look to collaborate with larger health systems, though, to provide telehealth services in areas where it’s not feasible to provide local services, he said, such as burn, stroke and intensive care.

“We’re excited about telehealth to afford us opportunities to access specialty care,” Murphy said. It would allow for treating patients locally instead of having to transfer them to other hospitals.

For Family Health Services, being able to expand services would require funding through grants and donations from foundations or individuals. Expanding Medicaid coverage in Idaho, Houston said, would be a big help.

Patients in what’s commonly referred to as the “Medicaid gap,” receive subsidized health care services from FHS and some are only paying $20 for a doctor’s visit.

With Medicaid, Family Health Services would receive a much higher level of reimbursement.

“We’d be able to offer a lot more services,” Houston said.

Even without Medicaid expansion, FHS has hired several new providers recently, including a new physician who started in midJuly in Burley and one who starts this month in Rupert. In January, a new physician started in Jerome.

“We don’t hire physicians very often,” Houston said. “They’re very hard to come by.”

For instance, FHS spent about five years recruiting for a Burley physician. The only providers who come have ties to the community, he said, adding they can make more money elsewhere.

Still, FHS has doubled the number of providers in its behavioral health program over the past 18 months. At the beginning of 2017, FHS had four counselors and a psychologist in Twin Falls, and one counselor in Burley. Now, it has a total of seven counselors in Twin Falls, Jerome and Burley, one psychologist in Twin Falls and three integrated counselors in Twin Falls, Jerome and Burley.

New facilities‌

To offset recent population growth, some Magic Valley hospitals are looking to build new facilities. But they want to focus more on outlying areas rather than Twin Falls, where St. Luke’s Magic Valley’s often has available beds.

“Our five-year plan is looking to

put services more away from our campus,” Fenello said.

There’s still the possibility of building more facilities at the Twin Falls hospital campus, he said. But the hospital’s first priority is starting small primary care clinics, which will likely include rotating specialists. Despite the hospital’s stated focus on areas outside of Twin Falls, Kimberly and south Twin Falls are two areas where Fenello said a new clinic would make sense, as the populations there grow rapidly.

St. Luke’s is building an expanded clinic in Buhl, which will accommodate more patients and services. It’s tentatively set to open in early 2019.

St. Luke’s also recently built new facilities on its Twin Falls hospital campus. An outpatient surgery center opened in November 2016 and a new medical office building — Medical Plaza 2 — opened to patients this March.

Family Health Services plans to build a new clinic in Jerome, which will double its dental capacity. Right now, it’s hard to get new patients in, Houston said, even though the dental clinic is open 10 hours a day, five days a week.

The current facility in Jerome is only about six years old, Houston said, but FHS has already outgrown the space.

Finding land along the South Lincoln Avenue corridor has been a challenge, though. FHS is on its fifth bid and is now looking

at other areas of Jerome as possibilities. Officials hope to purchase land within the next month, then it will take about a year to build a new facility.

In Burley, Cassia Regional Hospital sits on a 30-acre campus, where it has been since 1995.

“We’re just ready for this growth whenever it comes because we have plenty of land for that growth to take place,” Smalley said.

The hospital recently expanded its emergency room and imaging facilities. And it remodeled much of its building space, purchasing new boiler and air systems.

Assisted living‌

Hospitals and traditional health care providers aren’t the only facilities feeling the effects of growth. Assisted living centers — providers of services such as nursing and rehabilitation — are also stretched thin.

Bridgeview Estates in Twin Falls is 75 percent full, although occupancy rates vary depending on whether it’s independent living, assisted living (which is traditionally more full) or skilled care.

Bridgeview’s resident numbers have increased within the last year, executive director Joanne Johnson said, as more people come to the facility from the Wood River Valley.

Bridgeview opened in 1992 and doubled its number of rooms in 1996 during the second phase of Please see SOLUTIONS, Page E4

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DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Employee Annika Eames greets Sherry Hann while Keelee Graves, right, works July 17, at North Canyon Medical Center in Gooding.

Solutions From E3

construction. “They planned for the growth, and that’s why we’re so big,” Johnson said.

In addition to the elderly, Bridgeview cares for young people who have conditions that require long-term care. People can also live at Bridgeview while undergoing physical rehabilitation before returning home.

Bridgeview is a continuum-of-care facility, which means residents can move among the different levels over time as their needs change. It’s one of the only centers in the Magic Valley that provides that option, Bridgeview executive director Cindy Riedel said.

Bridgeview offers speech, occupational and physical therapy on site, and employs its own providers.

The facility provides medical care, but is also a fun place to live, Johnson said, offering activities such as a luau in August. “We also provide that social part of your life that’s so important.”

What are other hospitals are doing?‌

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A major need for Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls — along with most hospitals in Idaho and across the western United States — is physician recruitment.

“A bit of a double whammy, of course, is population growth coupled with an aging physician population,” said hospital spokeswoman Coleen Niemann.

Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center — a 334-bed hospital — primarily serves Bonneville County, which includes Idaho Falls. But it’s also the primary trauma facility near Yellowstone National Park, and sees patients from areas of nearby Wyoming and Montana.

There’s already a physician shortage with today’s current population in southeast Idaho, Niemann said. “When you factor in growing communities and retirements within the next five years or so of specialists in Idaho Falls and the surrounding communities, the shortage is even greater.”

Physicians who have roots in Idaho or are drawn to the lifestyle and recreational activities are the two types of providers most likely to move to Idaho Falls, she said.

The hospital spends a significant amount of time and resources working to recruit physicians, Niemann said. A new strategy for EIRMC has been establishing a residency program.

“We already know that residents have a higher probability of practicing in the community in which they did their training,” she said.

The hospital’s first group of 10 internal medicine physicians started in July on a three-year residency. The hospital will add 10 more residents each year. It also intends to start other specialty residency programs, Niemann said.

In Corvallis, Ore. — a city only slightly larger than Twin Falls —

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Maria Chavez arrives for a dental appointment Thursday, July 19, 2018, at Family Health Services in Jerome.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

The MRI zone is seen Tuesday, July 17, 2018, at North Canyon Medical Center in Gooding.

Samaritan Health Services hasn’t necessarily seen an increase in the number of hospital stays, despite population growth, spokeswoman Julie Manning said.

That’s because five years ago — using a waiver from the federal government — Oregon established regional Coordinated Care Organizations, she said.

They focus on caring for Medicaid patient needs earlier on, reducing the number of emergency room visits and hospital stays.

The regional health system — based in Corvallis — serves three Oregon counties and includes five hospitals, three of which are critical access with fewer than 25 beds.

The health system is building new hospitals in Newport and Lincoln

City to replace aging structures.

The health system’s service area includes about 275,000 residents — only slightly larger than the St. Luke’s Magic Valley service area. But Corvallis is home to Oregon State University, so its demographic makeup is much different than Twin Falls.

“Corvallis is a little bit of an enigma, in the sense that (of) 56,000 people, half of the population are OSU students who live in the city limits,” Manning said.

Despite the disproportionate number of college-aged students in Corvallis, however, the city has seen the fourth-largest increase in Oregon for the number of residents ages 65 and older since 2010 — a surprising figure,

Manning said.

The main driver of patient numbers has been Medicaid expansion, Manning said. The biggest uptick was in 2015 as more people came onto the Oregon Health Plan.

Medicaid expansion is a major topic of discussion here in Idaho.

An expansion proposal has received enough signatures to get a spot on November ballots, and it was recently backed by Rep. Fred Wood, a Republican from Burley and chair of the House and Welfare Committee. If the ballot initiative passes, it could mean coverage for about 62,000 low-income Idahoans.

Back in Oregon, the state has faced a lot of challenges with get-

ting Medicaid enrollment infrastructure up and running, Manning said, and accurately tracking who’s eligible or ineligible for the Oregon Health Plan.

With Medicaid expansion, Samaritan Health System has seen more low-income community members beginning to access services in a primary care settling instead of through a hospital emergency department, Manning said.

“We’ve definitely seen that has been the case,” she said. “Folks are having their preventative care.

They’re accessing services in a more typical way. That has helped us contain costs.”

The real focus for the health system is population health, Manning said. It’s about helping people try to stay healthy and manage chronic conditions — such as diabetes, high blood pressure and congestive heart failure — that can greatly impact their health and quality of life.

“We’re working more closely than ever with community-based organizations,” she said.

With more people accessing primary care, “it means we really need to ramp up ways people can receive primary care,” Manning said, such as quick care, online appointments and walk-ins.

Eastern Idaho and Corvallis are just a few examples of communities of a similar size to Twin Falls. Like Twin Falls, they’re exploring new ways to treat patients, including putting a larger emphasis on reaching people in clinics earlier to help to reduce the number of emergency room visits and hospitalizations further down the road.

“We are really trying to broaden the front door to our system,” Manning said.

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LAURIE WELCH, TIMES-NEWS

Derek Larson harvests a grain field on July 26 between the new John V. Evans Elementary and Cliff Goichoechea’s home.

THE RURAL-URBAN

DIVIDE As cities expand, rural residents feel the squeeze of population growth MYCHEL MATTHEWS | mmatthews@magicvalley.com

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WIN FALLS — Magic Valley residents have a complicated relationship with agriculture.

We love seeing horses frolicking in a pasture, but we hate listening to farmers bale hay at night. We love food, but we hate the noise and dust that harvest creates. We love the taste of cheese, ice cream and yogurt, but we hate the smell of dairies.

We love the wealth that agriculture has given us, but we hate the nuisances that come with agriculture.

For the past few years, Twin Falls County has played catch-up trying to keep pace with its rapid growth. But in the not-so-distant future, zoning issues between rural and urban areas are likely to come to a head. The impending collision of incompatible land uses, commissioners say, is a recipe for conflict.

The collision

“Not in my backyard,” some disgruntled residents say. But just whose backyard is it anyway?

Jill and Tom Skeem own a home on one acre on Champlin Road west of Kimberly. A little more than a mile west of the Skeems’ home sits Amalgamated Sugar Co.’s century-old processing plant. Just north of the sugar factory sits Jayco Inc., a manufacturer of recreational camp trailers, and a half-mile south of the Skeems’ home sits a dairy.

For years, the Skeems fully expected to retire and live happily ever after in their home, directly surrounded by farm ground. But nearly six years ago, Chobani purchased land a mile north of the couple’s home, followed soon by Clif Bar. Now Twin Falls city limits are within a half-mile of their home.

The Skeems and their country neighbors are feeling the pinch.

Kimberly recently approved two subdivisions in the city’s impact area east of Champlin Road, also known as 3300 East, just up the road from the Skeems. Phase I of Evening Star Subdivision includes 10 homes on 10 acres and Sugar Slope Subdivision includes four homes on five acres.

Impact areas are not inside a city’s legal bounds but are areas a city expects to annex in the future.

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PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

Amalgamated Sugar Co.’s processing plant is seen in the background on July 27. Twin Falls County Planning and Zoning Commission denied a request to build two potato cellars at this site on 3300 East south of Clif Bar in the agriculture zone in the city of Twin Falls’ Area of Impact.

Eagle Eye Properties has appealed the decision to the county commissioners.

“If we break the cow’s back, she won’t give any milk.

If we break agriculture’s back, we won’t have to worry about zoning.

There will be no Chobani.

No Glanbia. No Clif Bar.” Bill Crafton, Twin Falls County Planning and Zoning administrator In May, local potato growers proposed to construct two spud cellars on 38 acres in the agriculture zone west of Champlin Road. Complicating the issue, the proposed site of the spud cellars is in Twin Falls’ impact area, but because the site is in an ag zone and is more than 20 acres, Twin Falls County has zoning jurisdiction.

the county Planning and Zoning Commission in May, but not because of the neighbors’ argument. The Idaho Fallsbased business has appealed the decision, and it will go before the county commission on Aug. 30.

Finding a balance

Because the company is appealing the P&Z’s decision, Administrator Bill Crafton couldn’t comment on the case but The Skeems and their neighbors sprang agreed to discuss the county’s growing into action to oppose the spud cellars. The pains. The county will probably see more cellars are part of a commercial operation land use conflicts as urbanization continand shouldn’t be allowed in an agriculture ues, he said. zone, they protested.

Idaho’s Right to Farm Act protects The applicant, Eagle Eye Properties, farmland from urbanization, Crafton represents a cooperative of five local said, but it also empowers counties to engrowers whose potatoes are packed and act restrictive codes to protect everyone’s shipped by Eagle Eye Produce. property rights.

Eagle Eye Properties’ application for a conditional use permit was rejected by Please see DIVIDE, Page E4

MORE INSIDE: Nearby growth trickles into small Mini-Cassia towns, E2 | A Right to Farm state, E4 | Components of a comprehensive plan, E4

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LAURIE WELCH, TIMES-NEWS

glenna Hansen and her son William Praegitzer discuss how Heyburn is changing on July 26 at their home.

Nearby growth trickles into small Mini-Cassia towns LAURIE WELCH

lwelch@magicvalley.com

BURLEY — When Cliff Goicoechea bought his home in 1985, it was nestled just beyond Burley’s southwest city limits. It represented an idyllic rural lifestyle.

Thirty-three years later, all that has changed.

Growth across Mini-Cassia brought more traffic, neighbors and noise and a lot less privacy.

It also left him wondering if he should sell his home and move farther away from the city.

Between 2007 and 2017, Cassia County’s population increased 9.4 percent, the third-largest growth of the eight counties in south-central Idaho.

The region’s population grew steadily over the same period, from 177,235 to 196,712, an 11-percent increase. Twin Falls topped the chart at 15.4 percent growth and Jerome came in at 14.9 percent.

Mini-Cassia’s two biggest cities, Burley and Rupert, contributed to most of the population and economic growth in the two counties. But the tiny towns and rural spaces around the two cities are starting to feel the ripples of change.

In 2015, Burley annexed a 14acre parcel of property that was previously used as farm ground to build the new John V. Evans Elementary School and add city utilities. One of those fields was north of Goicoechea’s home.

“We like to live outside of town where there’s not a lot of traffic,” Goicoechea said.

Since the school opened last fall, traffic on the county road in front DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS of his home increased about five- tony Morley, Heyburn city administrator, discusses possible upgrades July 5 at the Heyburn Wastewater treatment Facility. fold, he said. that’s caused a “We have to keep our animals drastic shift in penned, and our dogs can’t run,” he said. “It’s really changing my farmland.” attitude about living so close to Exactly how much land has town, and we are thinking about moving.” been diverted from Most residents in the area feel farm use remains the same way, he said. murky.

Packham “The city is encroaching on our The USDA’s agriculture cenlife,” Goicoechea said. “It has hurt sus tracks the number of farms my quality of life. I can’t even sit on my deck without having people and farm acres by county, but the looking at me. It’s a privacy issue. census is only completed every five It changed quickly, but the whole years. The next one is due out in community is changing quickly.” the spring of 2019.

Goicoechea is not alone. As The most recent census showed urban areas continue to grow, he that farmland in Cassia County is one of many Magic Valley resideclined from 644,740 acres in dents who feel the city’s presence 2007 to 611,055 in 2012. Residents and officials have mixed opinions creeping into their rural way of life. about whether that downward trend in farmland will continue Disappearing when the next census data is released. farm ground?

Cassia County Assessor Dwight Between Goicoechea’s home Davis said older computer softand the school, wheat in a field ware in his office makes it imswayed in the hot breeze on July 27. possible to run a report showing Harvesters shot plumes of dust how much farm ground exists in DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS the county. Planning and Zoning into the air as they cut grain stems and poured the golden kernels into ultra violet rays are used as a disinfectant July 5 at the Heyburn Wastewater treatment Facility.

Director Kerry McMurray said his office doesn’t track it either. waiting trucks.

Derek Larson, of Burley, leases surrounding the city diminish – said most of the shift from farm“Most of the homes out in the But when changes hamper the field along with others to grow replaced by subdivisions, busi- land to commercial or residential county that have been built in the farmers’ bottom lines, they tend in the county has occurred in the past few years were set apart for to notice the shift. his crops each year. nesses and the school.

In the past few years, he’s Joel Packham, extension edu- industrial area on Burley’s south- that purpose quite a while ago,” Packham said. “So I don’t think watched the available farm ground cator with the University of Idaho west side.

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LAURIE WELCH, TIMES-NEWS

the city of Paul on Ellis Street is shown looking west on aug. 1.

Mini-Cassia From E2

“A lot of the younger farmers rent ground to farm,” Larson said. “And it’s getting harder to find ground to rent. It affects me a lot. All the subdivisions and businesses that have taken up that ground mean the available acres are shrinking.”

The number of dairies in the county has also increased, making it more difficult to find farmland that’s farther away from the city, he said.

It’s also frustrating to watch the water diverted from irrigating crops to water lawns, Larson said, and sometimes the acreage is broken up, making pivots less effective.

The rented field next to Goicoechea’s property used to be irrigated by a center pivot. But after the school was built, hand lines had to be installed because the pivot could only go halfway around its circle course.

“It makes it tougher to irrigate,” Larson said.

A localized economy

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The towns surrounding Burley and Rupert are also starting to see gradual changes. But Heyburn – sandwiched between the two bigger cities – is taking the brunt of it.

The town, population 3,329, added 430 residents from 2010 to 2017. And more growth is on the horizon, with a backlog of subdivisions and commercial ventures in the pipeline.

“If you drive around you may not notice a lot going on yet,” Councilwoman Joanne Justesen said. “But there are a lot of things in the development stages.”

The city launched a new building department to handle commercial and residential building permits this spring, a project that was in the works before the growth spurt occurred.

All of the money from the building permit fees will now go directly to the city. Prior to the building department, the fees were shared with Minidoka County, which handled all of the city permits.

The change will streamline the process for developers in the future, Justesen said, because they won’t have to deal with the both the city and the county.

Tony Morley, now the city’s administrator, was the former administrator for the county building department, so he has the expertise to run the new city department, Justesen said.

“We have people knocking on our door all the time asking if there are any places to develop where they can put industry,” Morley said.

Other changes the city faces will hit residents solidly in the pocketbook.

After facing fines stiff enough to bankrupt the city, officials decided

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Machinery is shown in the headworks building July 5 at the Heyburn Wastewater treatment Facility. in July to ask a judge for a court order for a $7 to $8 million bond issue for upgrades to its wastewater treatment plant, which is out of compliance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards.

“Growth is good, but it causes problems,” Morley said. “It causes a lot of growing pains, but it’s beneficial in other ways.”

Rupert and Burley have done a good job of attracting new businesses in the past few years, Morley said.

“People have to understand that this is not a localized economy,” Morley said. “Industry benefits all of us. We are all in this together.”

When there is a tight labor and housing market, for example, it affects everyone throughout the region, he said.

The Minidoka County School District also announced this year that several of its elementary schools, including Heyburn’s, are bursting at the seams.

The school is so crowded that safety has become an issue because there is not always enough space between the tables and desks for a safe exit plan in case of an emergency, Minidoka School District Superintendent Ken Cox said in April.

Despite Heyburn’s growing pains, neighbors still chat across fences, children still play in their front yards and tractors still roll down 21st Street, which was widened a few years ago to accommodate the anticipated increase

in traffic load.

Few people would dispute that the town is on the threshold of change.

“There is more growth in the area,” said Heyburn resident Glenna Hansen “But I don’t see our quality of life changing, unless all the farmers sell out.”

In the midst of the growth, Hansen and her adult son, William Praegitzer, moved back to Heyburn after living in Arizona and then Twin Falls for several years.

They now live with Hansen’s daughter, Kasi Praegitzer. The house is nestled into a cozy neighborhood on the northwest edge of Heyburn, with the back yard bordered by a field and a view of Interstate 84.

William Praegitzer spent his childhood in Mini-Cassia. When he returned in March as an adult, he was struck by everything that had changed.

“It literally has been torn down and rebuilt,” he said.

His old stomping grounds have disappeared, along with personal childhood landmarks like friends’ houses.

Most of the old mom and pop shops that once dotted the streets are gone, replaced in part by big box stores.

“It was like a consolidation,” Praegitzer said. “All the small stores dried up and were replaced by big stores. There’s been rejuvenation.”

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DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Water trickles from a clarifier July 5 at the Heyburn Wastewater treatment Facility.

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Mini-Cassia From E3

Kasi Praegitzer bought her home in Heyburn because it was close to her job as a truck driver for Dot Foods.

Dot Foods was one of several large businesses that moved to Mini-Cassia after the J.R. Simplot Co. shuttered its Heyburn plant in 2003. The closure eliminated about 650 jobs and rocked Mini-Cassia’s economy.

Since then, the two counties have steadily rebuilt their economies. Hansen sees the economic benefits of growth far outweighing any negatives.

“We welcome any changes that come,” she said. “Build us some more places for people to work.”

Her family, she said, would ea-

gerly accept the town’s growing city’s wastewater system would pains in exchange for the gains not handle commercial developthose companies bring to the area. ment, Hossfeld said.

“It would have to be upgraded Smaller towns, for that to happen,” he said.

Growth in Albion, Mayor Shasmaller growth ron Wilmot said, is in the valley The smallest of Mini-Cassia rather than in town, as some peotowns, places like Paul and Al- ple buy up old farms. bion, are also feeling the effects of “We’ve had five or six big homes regional growth, but on a smaller built south of Albion in the last scale. couple of years,” she said.

A new 58-lot subdivision in The city also has one newer Paul is still in the planning stages. subdivision with several lots still It will be the first subdivision built available, and another one under development. in Paul since the 1970s.

“I think our housing is like the Albion, Almo and Elba, are all rest of the area,” Mayor Bruce considered bedroom communities Hossfeld said. “It is really tight, for people working in Burley and and there is nothing for rent.”

Rupert. But business in Albion has There is no industrial or com- remained stagnant, Wilmot said.

One reason is the lack of housmercial growth in the town yet.

While the rest of the city’s in- ing. The other is a dearth of availfrastructure is in good shape, the able employees.

Times-News

“Small businesses can’t afford to hire anyone,” Wilmot said.

“And you can’t hire workers if there are no rentals and no houses for sale.”

Development outside the city, which is surrounded by mountains, comes with its own set of problems and could potentially wreak havoc on the city’s water system, she said.

Country homes have septic systems, and that water can run downhill toward the city, potentially contaminating the tiny town’s enclosed aquifer, the city’s only water source.

“We have a contained aquifer and water is pulled from the ground to a tank,” she said. “We have no reservoir and no way to control it. Without water you have nothing. Water is so vital to life.

It is life.”

There is a quarter-mile buffer zone around the city. Officials have considered annexing areas of growth, but have yet to reach a consensus.

Good planning during the early stages of growth, she said, is crucial.

Across the Magic Valley, residents of tiny towns are feeling the sting of nearby growth. For some, like Goichoechea, the growth has had a profound effect quality of life, and is enough to consider moving elsewhere.

“The whole Mini-Cassia area is changing so fast,” Wilmot said.

“We all really need to be looking 20 years ahead. These problems are affecting all of us in Cassia County and Minidoka County. I’m not saying they are bad problems to have, but officials certainly need to stay on their toes.”

ficial Twin Falls County Zoning Map Approved By: I hereby certify that this is the Official Zone Map of Twin Falls County, which was adopted by the Board of County Commissioners on this 23rd day of January, 2012.

Legend Agricultural Agricultural Preservation

COURTESY TWIN FALLS COUNTY PLANNING AND ZONING

36

1

Streams

______________________________ January 23, 2012

Roads

Date

Highways Sawtooth National Forest

A Right to Farm state the Idaho Legislature reveals the intent of its Right to Farm act in title 22, Chapter 45:

the legislature finds that agricultural activities conducted on farmland in urbanizing areas are often subjected to nuisance lawsuits, and that such suits encourage and even force the premature removal of the R 15 E PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS lands from agricultural uses, and in Jill Skeem discusses zoning clashes July 27 from the deck of her home west of Kimberly. the road in front of her some cases prohibit investments in agricultural improvements. It is the house — 3300 East — where sheRlives husband, tom Skeem, is the dividing line between the Kimberly 16 with E herTWIN intent of the legislature to reduce FALLS area of Impact and the twin Falls area of Impact. the loss to the state of its agriR 17 E land in the country. They say we cultural resources by limiting the circumstances under which agriculshould be building on marginal tural operations may be deemed land – land that is rocky or hard PERRINE the state requires each city and county to have an up-to-date comprehenSHOSHONE to be a nuisance. the legislature BRIDGE to farm. sive plan addressing the following components: FALLS also finds that the right to farm is a 36 31 36 31 “We need more people in the natural right and is recognized as a R 18 E ” Property rights Public services and utilities city and fewer in the county, 1 permitted use throughout the state 6 1 6 Population transportation Spendlove said.

HANSEN 1 6 BRIDGE of Idaho.

School facilities and transpor Recreation tation Special areas or sites Needs vs. desires Economic development Housing 19 E future should valley’s Water is essential to sustaining about theR Filer Land use Community design no longer be made in isolation. life in the Magic Valley, and se natural resources Implementation Neighboring towns and the rious consequences are brought Hazardous areas airport facilities county need to know what the down on those who don’t play Text transmission corridors agriculture Electric Twin other is planning. byFalls the rules. Idaho Department Hansen “Cities drive growth,” Johnson R 20 E of Water Resources recently isKimberly 31 to the Will Twin Falls36 grow sued curtailment orders on 38 36 31said, “not counties.” public services 36 31 and utilities, 36 31 36 MURTAUGH east and west to eventually surtransportation and economic de- groundwater users for failing to BRIDGE 1 6 1 6 1 round nearby towns like Boise comply velopment — in their plans.

Weighing the possibilities 6 with the conditions of an 1 6 1 6 surrounded Garden City in Ada Updating Twin Falls County’s agreement with surface-water So how do we protect agriCounty? users. comprehensive plan will be a culture — the valley’s economic “We don’t see that coming be- time-consuming process, inWater is a serious subject, Hall foundation — while balancing Murtaugh cause we don’t have the (natural) volving tremendous amounts of said. And much is at stake. society’s needs? Spendlove has resources,” Crafton said. There is community input, Hall said.

“We have to ask ourselves, ‘Do suggested the towns and county not enough water or farm ground “It’s going to take a lot of com- we want lawns or industry?’” form a community planning asin the county to support that As growth continues, wastemunication — we’ve got some sociation to talk about the future. much population. water will become a more urgent hard questions to ask.”

The key is creating a compre“If we break the cow’s back, issue between communities. 36 31hensive plan that reflects We have36 enough farmland to the31 36 31 31 36 31 36 she won’t give any milk,” he said. keep our food-processing facilEven today, Twin Falls and Kim- desires of the community while 1 6 1 “If we break agriculture’s back, 6 capacity. But as berly “share” a wastewater treatities working at addressing its current and future 1 6 1 we won’t have to worry about more people move here, housing ment facility. needs, community leaders say.

2800 zoning. There will be no Chobani. will eat up more and more open Kimberly has no sewer plant We need clean drinking water.

2700 No Glanbia. No Clif Bar.” land, and residents will consume of its own and the city pays We need water for industry. We Twin Falls to treat its wastewamore irrigation water. need water for recreation.

2600 ter. While proponents of a new Both Hall and Spendlove We need good roads. We need ‘We’ve got some hard wastewater treatment plant in say builders should focus on schools.

We need clean air. questions to ask’ 2500 Kimberly say gaining independeveloping subdivisions and We also need a vibrant econNE1 dence from Twin Falls is essenmulti-family housing units in omy with agriculture as its base. NW1/4 Agriculture, land use and 2400 Hollister NW1/4 NW1 to the community’s growth, areas to ensure tial “We need to find a common property rights are only a part of cities and36impact 36 31 31 36 36 31 a 2015 proposal to build a plant vision for people and that’s one what will be considered in coun- residential growth doesn’t con2300 SE1 SW1/4 1 6 overwhelmingly failed at the balsume farmland. tough thing to do,” Crafton said. NW1/4 ties’ comprehensive plans.

The 6 1 1 6 1 NW1 2200 Both question the “estate sub- lot box.

“Common vision takes a long state requires each entity to conm 1 Officials agree that decisions time.” sider 17 components — including divisions” built on prime farm4800

Components of a comprehensive plan:

4700

1

Water bodies

4600

36

Wellhead City

4500

1

Recreation Overlay

Leon Mills

______________________________ Leon Mills

4400

36

Impact Area

4300

1

City Limits

Terry Ray Kramer Vice Chairman

4200

36

Airport Overlay

______________________________ Terry Ray Krammer

4100

1

“There are no carte blanche zoning ordinances,” he said.

To mitigate conflicts over private property, the state requires counties and cities to have upto-date comprehensive plans and impact area agreements to guide a town’s growth in a structured, logical manner and to stave off urban sprawl.

“You can’t control growth, but you can guide it into a better form,” said Jonathan Spendlove, OWSLEY Twin Falls Planning and Zoning BRIDGE director.

The comprehensive plans and impact area agreements are to be updated every 10 years, but 10 years may not be often enough, Twin Falls County Commissioner Don Hall said. Residential and commercial development may outpace local government’s abil31 ity to guideR it.14 E “Ten years ago, no one saw 6 Chobani coming,” said Hall, a former Twin Falls mayor and city councilman.

Spendlove emphasized the relationship between a city’s comprehensive plan and its zoning codes.

“Comp plan is the vision, and Buhl the zoning codes are the blue31 36 31 prints,” he said.

Twin Falls County’s current 6 1 6 plan was completed in 2008.

Commissioners have taken the first step to update it by soliciting consultants to do the job. And they aren’t alone. Kimberly is gearing up to update its plan in the next two years.

Castleford “The adopted area of impact is to be renegotiated (with the 31county) in approximately 36 31 two years,” Kimberly Planning and 6 1 6 Zoning Administrator Craig Eckles wrote in an email. “At such time the City of Kimberly, Twin Falls, Twin Falls County and staff shall be meeting on this issue to determine any boundary changes.”

When founded, Twin Falls and Kimberly sat six miles apart.

31 Today, only one mile separates 36 31 the eastern city limits of Twin 6 1 6 Falls and the western city limits of Kimberly. The cities’ areas of impact touch for 3 1/2 miles along 3300 East and 3800 North.

Twin Falls now consumes some 50 square miles, including its impact area. Kimberly controls 7 1/2 square miles. The city limits of Twin Falls now extend east to 36 section 31 include most of the mile 31 containing Chobani, Jayco and 6 6 Clif Bar. Kimberly now1 extends west to include a subdivision at 3400 East and Orchard Drive.

Rural Residential

T 12 S

36

From E1

Sawtooth

2100

2000

13 S

R 13 E

Industrial Zone- County Landfill

4000

Divide

Commercial

George Urie

______________________________ George Urie Chairman

NW1/4 SW1/4

NE1 SW1

SW1/4

SE1/

THE BIG STORY SUNDAY, AUGUST 26, 2018 |

magicvalley.com

|

SECTION E

GROWING UP | MAGIC VALLEY’S VISION FOR THE FUTURE

Upgrades and catch-up

WATER WAYS: Growing the

Magic Valley

A history of upgrades to Twin Falls’ wastewater treatment plant  1961 – Primary clarification,

digestion, disinfection

 1974 – Secondary treatment



 

 



(biotower, aeration basins 1 & 2, clarification) 1980 – Intermediate clarifier, aeration basin No. 3, anaerobic digestion 1995 – Headworks facility, UV disinfection 1999 – Aeration basin No. 4, secondary clarifier No. 3, gravity belt thickening 2010 – Chemically Enhanced Primary Treatment (CEPT) 2012 – UV disinfection system upgrade, aeration blower No. 4 2013 – Conversion of intermediate clarifier to primary clarifier No. 3

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS M 1

A secondary clarifier helps separate sludge from water Aug. 15 at the wastewater facility in Twin Falls. Story begins on E2.

E2

| SUNDAY, AUGUST 26, 2018

BIG STORY

TIMES-NEWS

After water clears the secondary clarifier, sludge comes here and is pumped back through the integrated fixed-film activated sludge process.

Magic Valley wastewater plants grapple with growth, plan for future STORY AND PHOTOS BY DREW NASH | dnash@magicvalley.com

J

EROME — Gilbert Sanchez, wastewater superintendent with the city of Jerome, is less concerned about Environmental Protection Agency violations these days and more worried about picking up loose screws found outside his plant.

Jerome is investing 35.7 million dollars into upgrades for its plant, including intermediate clarifiers, a pump station and a control building. In years past, Jerome struggled to keep up with EPA requirements. But now that the plant is in compliance after finishing an emergency storage pond and work on membrane basins that are part of the filtration system, it’s turning its focus toward updating equipment. The city signed a consent decree giving it six years to finish the plant’s upgrades.

“We’ve only had two violations since I’ve come here in 2012 and (it) wasn’t because we did it…but outside factors,” Sanchez said. “Prior to that, there were 1,500 (violations).”

Sanchez expects construction on the plant to be completed by the end of December. Once upgrades are complete, the facility will be capable of handling

About two-thirds of the Twin Falls’ sewage comes down the pipe shown here Aug. 15. An elevation fall across the site allows the water to flow gradually, saving more energy than if the city had to pump it.

5 million gallons of inflow, up from its previous capacity of 3 million.

As the Magic Valley’s population continues to boom, small towns and bigger cities alike are monitoring their core services, like wastewater plants, to determine whether they’re prepared for future growth.

Over in Cassia County, Heyburn is just getting started. The city’s wastewater plant is out of compliance with the EPA, and faces massive fines if it does not rectify the issues.

The first phase of Heyburn’s upgrades must be finished by June 19, 2020, according to an EPA draft consent order, and the second phase must be finished by May 31, 2022. If the city does not comply, it may face fines in excess of $50,000 per day.

“Those kinds of fines could bankrupt the city,” City Administrator Tony Morley said in early July. “And in the engineering, construction and wastewater world, that is a really short timeline.”

The key to staying on top of wastewater upgrades, Sanchez said, is to have different city departments on the same page.

“You have to have a city council, a city manager and people on board to give you the tools that you need to make things successful,” he said.

When Sanchez was hired in 2012, he took a 1994 report, which he had helped create while working for a private wastewater company, to the city Please see WASTEWATER, Page E3

Construction continues on an intermediate clarifier Aug. 15 in Jerome.

M 1

BIG STORY

Times-News

Sunday, August 26, 2018 | E3

Construction workers stand atop two anaerobic digesters that will create Class B biosolids when completed. Class B biosolid is a designation for treated sewage sludge that meets U.S. EPA guidelines for land application as fertilizer with restrictions. The tanks can hold 545,000 gallons of sludge apiece.

Wastewater From E2

council and told them the suggestions in that report were still relevant.

Jerome’s population sits around 11,000, but 64 percent of the plant’s capacity is used by non-residential customers.

There have been organic loads (matter that contains more than oxygen, carbon and hydrogen) come into the plant that equate to a population of 150,000.

According to Jerome’s website, when a new business wants to discharge wastewater to the city of Jerome’s publicly-owned treatment works, the city must determine the characteristics of the business’ wastewater to evaluate the potential impact.

“We have the same amount of water we started in this world

with, and that’s what we’ve got to work with. So we need to make sure we take care of it,” Sanchez said.

“When I first got here, our facility was the laughing Vitek stock of the state of Idaho, and now we have really kicked it into high gear, and I’d say we’re one of the diamonds and I can prove it with our personal and our operating records.”

In Twin Falls, where the city shares a wastewater treatment plant with nearby Kimberly, a similar approach has taken hold.

In March 2013, voters approved a $38 million bond election to pay for the expansion of the wastewater treatment facility and its collection lines.

The treatment plant was nearing maximum capacity and needed

Water is discharged back into the canal system from the wastewater treatment plant Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2018, in Jerome. There were numerous fish found at the confluence. to be expanded to accommodate growth in the Twin Falls/Kimberly area.

Troy Vitek, assistant city engineer, said Twin Falls is currently averaging 8.25 million

gallons of wastewater into the plant with a capacity set at 18 million gallons. Around 750,000 of those gallons come from Kimberly.

“We created a great system here,” Vitek said, “and the operators here are proud of it and take really good care of it.

Growth in the Magic Valley brings plenty of positives, but city officials emphasize the need to keep core services in step with population growth. If they don’t, falling out of compliance – like Heyburn – could present a bevy of new problems and fines.

“If you want growth in your area, then look at the wastewater plant, look at your services,” Sanchez said. “Are we gonna be able to grow? Growth means jobs, opportunity, all these things. When people don’t invest, they don’t get anything in return”, said Sanchez.

Dozens of certificates from the Idaho Board of Drinking Water and Wastewater Professionals hang in the operations office during an Aug. 15 tour of the Jerome wastewater treatment plant.

Dan Black, operator, explains the aeration process during an Aug. 15 tour of the Twin Falls wastewater treatment plant.

M 1

A secondary clarifer helps seperate sludge and water Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2018, at the facility in Twin Falls.

Piping is shown on an Aug. 15 tour of the Twin Falls wastewater treatment plant.

Zane Austin, operations supervisor, talks about the updates happening during a tour of the wastewater treatment plant Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2018, in Jerome.

E4 | Sunday, August 26, 2018

BIG STORY

Times-News

Gilbert Sanchez, wastewater superintendent, discusses lab work during a tour of the wastewater treatment plant Aug. 15 in Jerome.

Tiny discs called ‘media,’ shown here Aug. 15 at the Twin Falls wastewater plant, help with the biological processes of cleaning water.

(From left) Gilbert Sanchez, wastewater superintendent, and Zane Austin, operations supervisor, check on the membrane bioreactor during an Aug. 15 tour of the Jerome wastewater treatment plant.

M 1

THE BIG STORY SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2018

|

magicvalley.com

|

SECTION E

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

Amanda Ely, general manager at TRPTA, discusses the company’s facilities July 26 in Idaho Falls.

Fixed-route public transportation?

Not so fast Ahead of planning requirements, Twin Falls considers how and when to install buses

HEATHER KENNISON

Hkennison@magicvalley.com

T

WIN FALLS — Every week, newcomers to Twin Falls rely on crowded, rundown vans to get them to essential services. Senior citizens take taxis and buses to medical appointments. And people with disabilities or chronic illnesses rely on last-resort services to get around town.

There’s no doubt that some form of public transportation is needed in Twin Falls. But how that service will look down the road is anyone’s guess.

When Twin Falls’ population hits 50,000 — as is expected after the 2020 Census — the city will become an urbanized area. And barring a rule change, Twin Falls will have to plan for public transportation.

“We don’t know what we’ll do,” Deputy City Manager Mitch Humble said. “At this point, there’s a lot of unknowns.”

For now, Twin Falls relies on services such as Trans IV Buses, the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center, taxis and ride-sharing companies such as Uber to meet the needs of citizens.

“We know that as we grow, that’s not going to continue to be adequate,” Humble said.

But a fixed-route system would be costly — and a transit study two years ago “rudely awakened” the city to the reality.

“If we do a fixed route bus system, it’ll likely fail — unless we do some other things first,” Humble said. “It’s just a huge ugly downward spiral. I’m not going to attempt to do that poorly.”

In the meantime, the city has agreed to assist Trans IV Buses with more funding. Twin Falls pays a local match of about $25,000 annually but will increase that to

M 1

2018-2019 transit funding for District 4 5311 formula grant for rural areas — general population transit funding program Mountain Rides Transportation Authority: $1,268,065 Driver Max Haderlie waits at a transfer stop and converses July 26 in Idaho Trans VI-College of Southern Idaho: $404,234 Falls. $45,000 in the next two years.

But Trans IV Director Lynn Baird says CSI isn’t so sure it’ll continue the service unless city leaders say they want it — “they haven’t done so at this point,” he said.

“I’m guessing the college will probably do it another two to four years,” Baird said in late July.

Metropolitan planning

Once the 2020 Census data is verified, around 2022, the urbanized area boundaries will be determined. Twin Falls and Kimberly are lumped together because of population density, and it’s estimated they will continue to be in the future. When the urbanized area is established, the cities and counties involved will be required to set up a Metropolitan Planning Organization.

An MPO is a type of regional planning organization that works with Idaho Transportation Department to plan and coordinate local transportation policies — and one of those will incorporate

transit, said ITD Public Transportation Manager Kim McGourty.

“It’s a function of the MPO but it’s just a small piece,” she said.

The plan also includes other transportation needs, such as widening roads and building bridges.

The planning organization could operate as a separate entity or as a function of the city or county, said ITD Senior Transportation Planner Maranda Obray. And if it doesn’t have a sustainable transit plan, it won’t receive the federal funding to provide transit.

The rules could still change — and there’s a chance Twin Falls could get out of having to form an MPO for a few more years. The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act expires in 2020. Its replacement could change the funding formula or even the MPO requirements.

“We ultimately don’t know what that bill will say,” Obray said.

But for now, ITD is moving forward as if nothing will change, and it’s helping Twin prepare to create an MPO.

5310 formula grant for elderly and persons with disabilities Living Independent Network Corporation (LINC): $89,565 5339 grant for bus and bus facilities Mountain Rides Transportation Authority: $968,000 for vehicle purchases Vehicle Investment Program Mountain Rides Transportation Authority: $112,000 Minidoka Memorial Hospital: $57,864 Crisis Center of South Central Idaho: $27,200 “What we’re doing right now is kind of preparing for what we’re anticipating to come out of the 2020 Census,” McGourty said.

Funding formula

The Idaho legislature does not allocate funding for public transPlease see TRANSPORTATION, Page E2

MORE INSIDE: Magic Valley bus services by the numbers, B2 | What can Twin Falls learn from Idaho Falls? B3 | Hailey bus service seeks to change attitudes, B4

E2

BIG STORY

| SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2018

TIMES-NEWS

BEND, ORE.

Recreation, downtown transit in Oregon HEATHER KENNISON

hkennison@magicvalley.com

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS

Suad Saeed, center, sits in the CSI Refugee Center van July 31 as she waits to go home after class at the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center in Twin Falls.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

A money box on a bus is shown July 26 in Idaho Falls.

BEND — Public transportation plays a vital role in Bend, Ore., a booming city in Oregon that’s nearly doubled its population since 2000.

A free seasonal shuttle runs every 15 minutes to take people to destinations downtown. Recreational shuttles go to the nearby river and mountains. With all of its services, the Cascades East Transit offers approximately 750,000 rides annually.

“For a growing city, it’s one of the best things cities can do to curb congestion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Derek Hofbauer, outreach and engagement administrator with the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council.

Nationwide, ride hailing companies and the popularity of bicycles has led to a decline in transit. But as it becomes more expensive to live in Bend, more people are choosing to commute from outside of town, and social behaviors toward public transit are changing.

Who runs it

Cascades East Transit, a division of the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, operates the public transportation in Bend. The COIC has been around since 1972 as a council of governments within central Oregon.

How it got started

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

The bus depot sits empty July 26 in Idaho Falls.

Operating costs per vehicle revenue mile (2016)

Magic Valley bus services

Targhee Regional Transportation Authority – Demand Response

Ridership is up for both Mountain Rides Transportation Authority in Hailey and Trans IV Buses in Twin Falls. At Targhee Regional Transportation Authority in Idaho Falls, the number of passenger trips has fluctuated in the past few years.

$1.73

Targhee Regional Transportation Authority – Fixed Route

$3.57

Trans IV (Demand response only)

$5.33

Mountain Rides Transportation Authority – Demand Response

$3

Mountain Rides Transportation Authority – Fixed Route

Passenger trips: Demand response Targhee Regional Transportation Authority (Idaho Falls)

$4.14

Operating costs per passenger trip (See key at left) $25

Mountain Rides Transportation Authority (Hailey)

Trans IV Buses (Twin Falls - Demand response only)

500

60K

100K

400

50K

80K

$20

60K

$15

40K

$10

20K

$5

40K

300

30K

200

20K

100

10K

0

2013

2014

2015

2016

0

2013

2014

2015

2016

Passenger trips: Fixed route

0

2013

2014

2015

2016

Mountain Rides Transportation Authority (Hailey)

Targhee Regional Transportation Authority (Idaho Falls)

500K

50K

Operating costs per passenger trip (See key at left) $ 25

400K

40K

$20

300K

30K

$15

200K

20K

$10

100K

10K

$5

0

2013 2014 2015 2016

0

2013

2014

2015

2016

$0

2013

2014

2015

2016

$0

2013

2014

2015

2016

How they’re doing it

Lee Enterprises graphic

Source: Idaho Transportation Department

Transportation

Public transportation key

From E1

portation, McGourty said. But ITD distributes $12 million in federal funds each year. These funds are available to both government and private entities.

The Twin Falls area receives rural funding for now, but after its population surpasses 50,000, the city will need to take from “small urban” money pool. This money is awarded competitively based on population and need.

And Twin Falls would be competing with more populated areas.

There are five MPOs throughout Idaho that vet projects for funding. ITD provides federal oversight for some of those grants, and bus systems are required to secure a local match.

Some of the federal funding money goes specifically to programs that serve senior citizens and people with disabilities. But some funds are also available for general operations and capital projects such as buying buses.

The Twin Falls MPO would

PASSENGER TRIPS: The number of passengers who boarded public transportation vehicles.

This includes each time a passenger boards and then disembarks from a vehicle.

OPERATING COST PER PASSENGER TRIP: Calculated based on the agency’s annual operating costs divided by the number of passenger trips provided during the reporting period.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Mike Pressler, Operations Manager at TRPTA, discusses public transportation while on a route July 26 in Idaho Falls. need to have a public transportation plan that showed the ridership and community needs. These plans are typically for a 20-year timeframe, Obray said.

As is often the case, Bend’s bus system got off to a bumpy start. The city of Bend initially started offering a fixed route in 2006 with the Bend Area Transit. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city’s population around that time was about 72,000.

Its mistake: The half-dozen buses it purchased from a California company were in bad shape with major mechanical issues. The buses had initially been sold to that company for scrap, and the city sunk $100,000 into repairs, according to The Source Weekly.

Four years later, the COIC took over the transit.

“It seemed like a natural fit,” Hofbauer said.

Funding was a challenge, given that several ballot measures that would have funded public transit were turned down.

“It takes some stable funding to really get a transit system off the ground,” he said.

Cascades East Transit receives funding primarily through federal, state and local governments and public/private partnerships.

OPERATING COST PER REVENUE MILE: Calculated based on the reporting agency’s annual operating costs divided by the number of miles driven while in service during the reporting period.

response program” where riders are asked to call and schedule a ride a day in advance. The ride costs $5 and includes the return trip.

Of Trans IV’s 13 buses, about 10 are on the road most days, Baird Funding is the major limiting Fixed route — said. Some of these trips are con- factor for doing a fixed route, or tracted for through the Office on even expanding the current service, why or why not?

Aging or Independent Living NetTrans IV Buses offers a “demand work.

Please see TRANSPORTATION, Page E4

Cascades East Transit has more than 80 buses and nine fixed routes around the city, Hofbauer said. It based its routes on where people live, work and recreate.

“Bend is not that dense, and I think that’s been an issue,” Hofbauer said.

Rides cost about $1.50 for the general public, and 75 cents for senior citizens and people with disabilities.

The city also started doing a Ride the River shuttle. For $3 a day, people can ride the shuttle an unlimited number of times.

This shuttle is offered in partnership with Bend Parks and Recreation and a local kayaking company, Hofbauer said. On the busiest days, there are more than 1,000 riders.

Another service Cascades East Transit provides is a free summer shuttle with a focus on recreation and downtown.

The shuttle runs from noon to 10 p.m., every 15 minutes.

It’s paid for with a partnership between the COIC, the city of Bend and Visit Bend.

Hofbauer said this free shuttle can help a lot with reducing traffic during the busy tourism season when “Our little city gets crowded.”

Bend also offers some other recreational shuttles and dial-a-ride services, as well as buses that connect Bend with the communities of Redmond and Terrebonne, for example.

The Oregon legislature recently Please see OREGON, Page E4

M 1

BIG STORY

Times-News

Sunday, September 2, 2018 | E3

‘In Twin Falls, you have to have a car’ HEATHER KENNISON

hkennison@magicvalley.com‌

TWIN FALLS — A power‌ ful smell of cigarettes and food permeated the van as it rattled around Twin Falls.

The inside of the van bore the scars of its many journeys: gashes in the ceilings, a defunct door handle and a seat cushion with the foam innards exposed. The driver’s seat appeared to have been re-stuffed with an old bedsheet.

Still, the occupants of the vehicle didn’t seem to notice these imperfections on July 31. Most sat in silence as driver Bob Schmidt drove through older parts of town.

A few talked amongst themselves in their native languages.

They had just finished with their English class at the College of Southern Idaho’s Refugee Center.

“We provide transportation to all newly arrived refugees,” refugee center director Zeze Rwasama said. “We take them basically everywhere.”

But because of the cost, that service doesn’t continue for them forever. So the center aims to make them independent as soon as possible.

“In Twin Falls, you have to have a car,” said Lea Raly, a 19-year-old refugee who got a job working for a local manufacturing company.

Raly had just earned her driver’s license the day before but was saving up for a car. After five months in Twin Falls, she was still using the CSI Refugee Center van for medical appointments.

Most of the homes Schmidt drove to on July 31 were older brick buildings, with several bikes out front and few, if any, cars.

Typically, refugees receive an intro to Twin Falls via the van during their first month, Rwasama said. That includes trips to various grocery stores.

But after that, they have to rely on other refugees, friends and volunteers to take them anywhere besides medical appointments or employment. Most refugee arrivals get a job within three months, and they can use the center’s transportation services to travel to and from the job for another three or four months.

PAT SUTPHIN TIMES-NEWS‌

Wi Mana, center, sits in the back of the van as she travels home from class at the CSI Refugee Center July 31 in Twin Falls.

If a refugee has children younger than 18, they won’t be charged for employment transportation. But those without children pay $25 per week if they have a job for which they require transportation, Rwasama said.

“In this city where we don’t have public transit, the No. 1 goal is to buy a vehicle and get a driver’s license,” he said. “If there was a public transportation, they would rather use it.”

And Trans IV Buses, which offers rides on-demand in Twin Falls, isn’t used by most refugees, Rwasama said. That’s because the bus is not available during the hours they need them; refugees often work odd shifts at dairies or manufacturing companies.

The Refugee Center now transports about 30 people, but in past

years has transported around 100-150 in its 13 vehicles. Under current restrictions on refugee resettlement in the U.S., the CSI Refugee Center has a lot less to do. Schmidt said he’s gone from driving about 310 miles a day to about 100 miles per day.

But refugees aren’t the only ones who could benefit from a fixed-route transportation system.

“Anything is going to be better than what we have right now,” said Edie Schab, executive director of Interlink Volunteer Caregivers.

Interlink serves as a last-resort transportation option for people who are elderly, chronically ill, or have disabilities. Volunteers shuttle them to medical services and essential errands after all

other resources are exhausted.

“A lot of the people we serve — they wouldn’t be able to walk to a bus stop,” Schab said.

But about 25 percent of them would benefit from a fixed route — or even a demand-response service that had longer hours or went to more places.

“When Trans IV pulled out of Jerome, that really hurt us,” Schab said.

In 2017, Interlink offered more than 4,000 rides free of charge.

But a lot of Interlink’s clients first use Living Independent Network Corp., an organization that helps people 65 and older, or with disabilities, by paying for up to eight one-way rides per month — up to $7 per ride.

As LINC doesn’t have any working vehicles, its customers

may use Trans IV or a taxi within the city limits. The ride can be to anywhere they need to go, not necessarily just to medical appointments.

“Most use a taxi,” said Melva Heinrich, LINC’s community and resource integration director.

More of them would use a service such as Trans IV, she said, if they didn’t have to schedule the ride so far in advance. Trans IV requires rides to be scheduled by 2 p.m. the day before, according to the CSI website.

Heinrich believes there are many people in the community that would use a fixed route if it was available. LINC pays for 1,200 to 1,300 rides per month.

Between October 2017 and June 2018, the organization’s paid oneway rides totaled 11,825.

IDAHO FALLS

Idaho Falls seeks to expand bus routes HEATHER KENNISON

hkennison@magicvalley.com‌

‌IDAHO FALLS — A man carrying a white cooler boarded the Blue Route bus at Idaho Falls’ aquatic center on the afternoon of July 26.

While this was the Targhee Regional Transportation Authority’s most consistently busy route, Ben Worth was only the second passenger that hour. He’d just finished a few errands and shopping, and transferred over from another route on his way home.

“I find it helps me get around town so I can do things I want to do,” said Worth, who doesn’t drive.

The TRPTA buses aren’t his only option for transportation, but having more choices has certainly helped in the decade or so that he’s used the buses.

Bus driver Max Haderlie has been driving for 3 1/2 years and sees all age groups use the bus to get around to work, medical appointments and shopping. And yet there are still many passengers who say they’d never heard of TRPTA before, he said.

“I think ridership could be better,” TRPTA Operations Manager Mike Pressler agreed.

With limited funding, the transportation authority has little ability to advertise its services. But ridership has ticked up recently, especially since a new grant allowed the authority to provide rides to seniors for free.

Here in Idaho, he said, public transportation isn’t something a lot of people think about until they need it.

“I think it’s growing pains. People in southeastern Idaho are very independent,” TRPTA Assistant General Manager Bob FitzGibbons said. “But there’s still a great need for public transportation.”

Who runs it‌

The Targhee Regional Transportation Authority is the independent government entity that has operated the buses since 2006.

How it got started‌ M 1

The 1990 Census determined the population in the Idaho Falls

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Driver Max Haderlie drives the blue route July 26 in Idaho Falls. area had reached 50,000. So around 1992, the city established a Metropolitan Planning Organization and began planning for public transportation.

But in this case, it wasn’t the MPO that started the public transportation services, Bonneville Metropolitan Planning Organization director Darrell West said. A nonprofit known as CART Inc. had been offering a deviated-route service in partnership with the city. But a federal review identified that CART was not meeting its grant requirements, West said.

“It was all very complex and very complicated,” he said. “A lot of tension and anger.”

The city decided to ask voters to create a transportation authority to run the buses.

Voters approved the transportation authority in 1994, and for the first few years, it contracted for urban transit services with the nonprofit, according to the TRPTA website. West said the authority had a rough start with some leadership changes.

In 2002, it began operating its own buses as the Public Transit Authority with four new routes.

TRPTA later purchased a transit facility and grew to 2,500 passenger rides in October 2003.

Then, in 2006, the entity purchased and assumed transportation services previously being

provided by CART Inc. under TRPTA’s management. It began offering fixed routes in 2013.

How they’re doing it‌

TRPTA operates with a slim staff of about 10 people and 27 drivers. Its transit facility is set back from West Broadway Avenue, with room for buses to maneuver. On July 26, the empty terminal featured short benches under dim lighting, while most of the work was done behind the scenes.

“We’ve been talking about what to do with this because we don’t do much with it,” General Manager Amanda Ely said as she walked through the spacious lobby with high ceilings.

TRPTA has considered putting some kind of concessions or shaved ice stand inside the terminal to bring more people in.

Today, the authority offers several types of busing services, including four fixed routes, rides on demand, paratransit rides and routes to other smaller communities. These communities also have seats on the TRPTA board.

“Every year, ridership has gone up,” FitzGibbons said.

Still, in a 2016 case study done for the Twin Falls Transit Development Plan, consulting firm Gridworks reported that Idaho Falls “currently has a relatively low performing transit system. …

Its lower ridership levels make it difficult to convince elected leaders to invest adequate funding.”

Today, TRPTA operates on a $2.6 million budget, FitzGibbons said. Of that, about $1.6 million is from federal funds. The rest is supplied from the city of Idaho Falls, Bonneville County, ridership fares, Medicaid and other grants.

The general public pays $1.75 one way for the fixed routes, or $6 one-way for an arranged pickup that’s not on the route.

Senior citizens and students are offered a discounted rate. However, the agency has funding from Eastern Idaho Community Action Program, the Area Agency on Aging and Development Workshop Inc., to pay for rides for seniors and people with disabilities, FitzGibbons said.

The EICAP grant has helped significantly with ridership, Pressler said.

The authority has plans to grow its services even more.

By October, TRPTA will take its plans to the public, hoping to expand from four to seven fixed routes — all with the same resources, FitzGibbons said.

That’ll be done with a reconfiguration of existing routes.

“We’ll actually cover more area in a more efficient way,” he said.

TRPTA has also applied for a grant that would pay for larger buses that could hold 26 passengers — up from the 16-passenger buses it currently operates. These new buses would not require a wheelchair lift, so it would speed up the time at stops for riders who use wheelchairs.

Takeaways for Twin Falls‌

Twin Falls Deputy City Manager Mitch Humble is wary of following in Idaho Falls’ footsteps. Gridworks’ consultant two years ago told the city, “You guys look a lot like Idaho Falls — but 20 years ago.”

Gridworks told Twin Falls officials that a transit system here would likely perform similarly to TRPTA if existing funding and land use policies remain the same.

Humble and other Twin Falls

leaders argue that Idaho Falls’ system costs more than what they’re getting for it, creating a “huge ugly downward spiral” with low ridership.

Twin Falls also has concerns about infrastructure for creating a similar fixed-route system.

But Idaho Falls’ infrastructure for buses is minimal: Each stop has a semi-permanent TRPTA sign, and occasionally a seating area. If there are no passengers waiting at the time of the scheduled pickup, the bus won’t stop.

Most stops didn’t have a designated pullout area for the bus, and some of the stops were in private parking lots.

On July 26, Haderlie drove the Blue Route from the TRPTA terminal to the aquatic center, announcing each of the bus’s 15 stops over an intercom. Road construction and a bumpy road in one part of town delayed the route by a few minutes.

“Now folks, I tell ya, this is one rough road so hold on to your shorts,” he announced.

The challenges Idaho Falls faces with its public transportation are hardly unique to the city, FitzGibbons said.

“There’s always struggles in public transportation,” he said.

“You’re never going to get the true cost of what it costs to run that bus. That’s why it’s called public transportation.”

And in his opinion, fixed routes are a proactive way to increase ridership and local funding.

“That gets you in the public’s eye a lot better,” he said.

FitzGibbons does warn about some hurdles TRPTA faced in its first few years.

“Make sure you have people in place that understand the government regulations behind the public transportation,” he said.

Also, look at other cities’ examples for guidance. And if you can start with at least some fixed routes, it isn’t a bad way to go, he said.

“If you don’t have it, then people don’t know about it and people don’t use it,” FitzGibbons said.

“You have to build it now for the future demand that’s coming.”

E4 | Sunday, September 2, 2018

BIG STORY

Times-News

WOOD RIVER VALLEY

Bus service aims to change behavior ronment. In about 2 1/2 years, Mountain Rides intends to spend $3.22 million for electric vehicles — eventually replacing its entire fleet in five years. The initial purchases include $2.54 million in federal funding with $680,000 in local match money.

“The industry is changing rapidly in terms of its technology and communication,” Blanchard said.

Mountain Rides uses an app for users to find routes, but he predicts that in time, bus stop signs will be able to tell riders how far the bus is away from the stop.

HEATHER KENNISON

hkennison@magicvalley.com‌

‌KETCHUM — At certain times of the day, trying to turn onto Main Street in Hailey, Ketchum or Bellevue can be next to impossible.

The busy Idaho 75 corridor can become gridlocked several times a day, especially in winter when traffic picks up for skiing, Tom Blanchard said. But Blanchard, a board member for Mountain Rides Transportation Authority, has also seen bus ridership increase during the winter months.

“We just passed a half-million riders last year,” he said. “That takes a significant number of vehicles off the road.”

In his opinion, cars are the problem — sucking up large budgets for street repairs. But to get people out of them, you have to change behaviors, which can be an uphill battle.

Takeaways for Twin Falls‌

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO

Who runs it‌

Mountain Rides is operated by A bus drives by Dec. 8, 2016, in Hailey. Some of Hailey’s local option tax revenue is used to pay the city’s Mountain Rides Transportation contract with Mountain Rides Transportation Authority.

Authority. The board represents the cities of Ketchum, Hailey, How they’re doing it‌ way, depending on distance trav- needs public transportation beBellevue, Sun Valley and Blaine Officials around the state have eled. And special seasonal routes cause they want to go places and County, which have filed a joined lauded Mountain Rides’ perfor- to Galena Lodge also cost a fee. they can’t drive,” he said. powers agreement and help fund mance in a rural area. But the Mountain Rides is experiOther services are set aside the transit system, Blanchard said. numbers speak for themselves. menting with transportation for specifically for people with disWith a $2.8 million annual specific purposes in Ketchum. abilities or those who need to How it got started‌ budget, Mountain Rides operates In a test run this summer, a free schedule a pickup from somePublic transportation got an 13 vans and 20 buses with 21 driv- evening bus takes people to local where that’s not on the route. early start in the Wood River ers in the summer and about 35 eateries in Ketchum, specifically Disability services are free in Valley. In the 1930s, Sun Val- drivers in the winter. With these targeting those living in short- Ketchum, but cost about $6 in ley Co. bused tourists from the resources, it offers a wide selec- term rentals, Blanchard said. other cities to take someone Ketchum train depot to the re- tion of services for Blaine County This bus is sometimes called the from their home to the clinic or sort, Blanchard said. Then, dat- residents and visitors. “gourmet bus” or “bus appetite.” hospital.

The cities of Ketchum and Sun ing back to the 1970s, there were a And later in the evenings, a Of Mountain Rides’ nine few short-lived efforts to provide Valley have free bus routes within separate “Night Owl” service fixed routes, five are year-round public transportation in the dif- their cities, paid for by a local op- through Ketchum aims to pre- and four are in the winter only, Blanchard said. And for those ferent cities. tion tax to support transportation vent DUIs. In the 1990s, bus systems efforts. Free routes also link beSome employers buy bus passes who prefer alternative or addiowned by Ketchum, Sun Valley tween cities and recreational ar- for their workers, but others make tional modes of transportation, Co. and Blaine County merged eas, but not all of them run year- use of a vanpool system offered by bicycles for rent are stationed when public officials decided to round.

Mountain Rides. Schoolchildren around Ketchum, Sun Valley and join forces, Blanchard said.

Additionally, a year-round val- in Blaine County, meanwhile, Hailey.

“It’s been a long process — 10 ley route runs from Bellevue to get a free bus pass for anywhere, The transportation company isn’t done with its movement to 15 years at a minimum — in the Sun Valley — and all the cities in Blanchard said. building,” he said. between — at a cost of $1-4 one“That’s an age group that really to reduce impacts on the envi-

Having a successful bus system all comes down to changing people’s behavior, Blanchard said.

“That takes a lot of time,” he said. “You’re not always going to get it right.”

It’ll also take a lot of political commitment and money. To encourage ridership, Mountain Rides has tried to adapt its routes to make it as convenient as possible for people.

“People will walk a certain distance — but they won’t walk too far,” he said.

In time, he hopes most routes will run every 15 to 20 minutes.

But Blanchard can agree that Mountain Rides’ approach to public transportation might not necessarily work in Twin Falls.

The Wood River Valley is unique because of seasonal influxes and the residents who want to get out of their cars and go to specific destinations like Bald Mountain, he said.

He could see Twin Falls adopting some routes by partnering with big employers and school districts. There are also opportunities to use buses to take people from outlying residential areas to downtown, Blanchard said.

“Twin is behind in terms of their adoption of public transportation,” he said.

“For the first time ever we have kind of a stable funding base.”

Derek Hofbauer, outreach and engagement administrator with the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council

Oregon From E2

approved a new statewide payroll tax for expanding public transportation service. The state begins collecting the tax this year, with disbursements starting in early 2019.

“For the first time ever we have kind of a stable funding base,” Hofbauer said.

Takeaways for Twin Falls‌

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS‌

Targhee Regional Public Transportation Authority’s terminal is shown July 26 in Idaho Falls.

The view from the back of the bus while on a route July 26 in Idaho Falls.

Transportation From E2

which is available 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, Baird said.

“There’s not a lot of infrastructure currently to support a fixed route system,” he said.

Another limiting factor is how Twin Falls has grown. There aren’t a lot of high-density areas in the city, nor a lot of mixed-use, Humble said. The city also faces problems with making a bus system accessible, since many neighborhoods have missing or damaged sidewalk. These things could make it difficult to get regular ridership.

“If we’re paying for something

One of the many routes for the Targhee Regional Public Transportation Authority stops at Walmart July 26 in Idaho Falls. that nobody uses, we’re a failure,” And if you don’t, you pay for Humble said. more road maintenance and conStill, other cities argue the phi- struction due to congestion. losophy of “if you build it, they The city and Trans IV have agreed will come.” to work together when deciding

what the future of public transportation in Twin Falls will look like.

“We will start doing it when we have to start doing it,” Humble said.

“Until then, it is really expensive.”

Getting people to use public transportation can be a challenge, especially in places where downtowns have free parking, Hofbauer said.

“When parking is free, their behavior shifts to that economic mindset,” he said.

But Hofbauer predicts as more millennials come to a town and Baby Boomers lose mobility, public transportation use will also grow. Millennials, in general, are less into driving and more into living in walkable cities, he said.

This could prove challenging in Twin Falls, where sidewalks are absent or in poor shape across the city.

To make the public transportation simpler, Cascades East Transit recently began using an app to help people know when their next bus is coming to where they are, based on the schedule.

When it comes to funding, Hofbauer says partnerships are key. He, too, recommends having a fixed route to give a city or organization a higher return on its investment.

If it doesn’t invest in public transportation, a city will inevitably have to widen its roads to handle all the increased traffic, Hofbauer said. It’s either that, or it will need to become more bicycle friendly and walkable to relieve congestion.

Twin Falls could look for partnerships similar to those in Bend with other cities or tourism groups. Hofbauer recommends focusing on what brings people to the area: recreation.

“The partnerships are key,” he said.

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THE BIG STORY

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2018 |

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2018

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magicvalley.com

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| SECTION E

PAT SUTPHIN TIMES-NEWS

players

Sophia Vandenberg, 12, prepares to serve the ball July 6 during the CSI Volleyball Camp at the College of Southern Idaho gymnasium in Twin Falls.

All the right

Growth may bring new teams, sports facilities to the Magic Valley VICTOR FLORES

T

Vflores@magicvalley.com

WIN FALLS — A minor league baseball team. A recreation center. A better talent pool for the College of Southern Idaho.

The surging population growth in the Magic Valley has transformed local sports, but it’s rarely a straight line between population growth and bigger and better sports options.

A professional or semi-professional team is the biggest prize for some Magic Valley residents, and a larger population will increase the odds of landing one. But fielding a pro team, like building a community recreation center or starting a CSI soccer team, doesn’t just require more people. It requires the right people.

The incoming wave of new residents is sure to reshape the Magic Valley sports landscape 15 years from now, just like they have so far this century. In some areas, the effects of growth are already taking hold.

If they come, will it be built?

Twin Falls City Councilwoman Suzanne Hawkins sees the dream site of a future minor league baseball field every day when she goes to work.

Hawkins often sneaks away to a conference room on the third floor of the Twin Falls Council Chambers building on Main Avenue and Hansen Street East. Among the many large glass windows in the room is one window in particular that faces south down Hansen Street. The view spans five blocks, just past the TF Brickhouse to the railroad tracks that run parallel to the Rock Creek canyon.

Hawkins talked longingly about the area — currently occupied by rusty sheds, light poles, an oil derrick and sagebrush — on June 29 with Laird Stone, a Twin Falls attorney

M 1

COURTESY OF TWIN FALLS COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM

Twin Falls’ first baseball team, the Irrigators, are photographed at the Twin Falls Athletic Park on Second Avenue South.

and a member of the CSI Board of Trustees.

“I stand up on the third floor of city hall, look south and look out that window and say, ‘I can just see my baseball park right there,” Hawkins said over iced tea at the Wok ‘n Grill in Twin Falls. “If you build it, they will come.”

“It’s not a cornfield, Susan,” Stone joked.

“No, but it’s an empty field,” Hawkins replied.

Hawkins and Stone have been two of the Magic Valley’s biggest proponents of bringing a minor league or semi-professional baseball team to Twin Falls. Or, more accurately, bringing a team back to Twin Falls.

The city first formed a baseball team, called the Irrigators, in 1905.

The team became the Bruins and joined the minor leagues in 1925, but it disbanded four years later. In 1939, the Twin Falls Cowboys formed, and the New York Yankees affiliate played at Jaycee Field next to Harmon Park.

The team became the Magic Valley Cowboys in the early 1950s, and it was affiliated with several major league teams until 1971.

Stone was raised in Gooding and

attended Cowboy games as a kid.

Hawkins didn’t move to Twin Falls until she was 13, so she never experienced a professional baseball team in the Magic Valley. But Hawkins, like Stone, played on the diamond growing up (fast-pitch softball for her, baseball for him). They both had children who played baseball, and they frequently traveled the country for their sons’ American Legion games.

That bond led to discussions about the Cowboys, and the chances of bringing a team like that back to Twin Falls.

In the 1990s, city officials held discussions with several Major League Baseball organizations about

MORE INSIDE: Could Canyon Ridge High School be on the move?, E3 | Cultures develop, but challenges remain for entertainment scene, E3

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E2

| Sunday, September 9, 2018

BIG STORY

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Sports From E1

bringing a minor league team to town, Stone said, but it never turned into anything material. In 1999, an idea was floated to create an independent league involving Twin Falls, Boise, Pocatello and Ontario, Ore., but the idea never moved forward.

Despite Hawkins and Stone’s vision, at this point it’s still a dream. No plans to bring a minor or independent league team have come to fruition since then.

“The farm teams now are requiring so much about what they want their stadiums to hold — the hotel accommodations you have to provide for your team as well as the traveling teams, the benefits they want — and that has to come from local support,” Hawkins said. “There are just a lot of pieces that have to come together with all the right players.”

The No. 1 factor for bringing a team to Twin Falls, Hawkins and Stone said, is money. The city needs capital outlay to get the ball rolling, Stone said, and that can come from multiple sources. But Hawkins doesn’t believe public funding — typically an economically dubious proposition — for a ballpark is a viable option, so the money would need to come from a private source.

“We need a Melaleuca,” she said.

Melaleuca is an Idaho Fallsbased wellness company founded

by Frank Vandersloot, a prominent businessman and Republican donor. In 2007, Melaleuca Field was built, and the Pioneer League’s Idaho Falls Chukars, a Kansas City Royals affiliate, have played in the 3,600-seat stadium ever since.

The city of Idaho Falls launched a fundraising campaign, but the ballpark project was carried to the finish line thanks to a $600,000 donation from Vandersloot.

Idaho Falls’ longtime ballpark, McDermott Field, was in disrepair, so building Melaleuca Field was vital for the future of baseball in Idaho Falls.

“We never threatened to leave,” said Kevin Greene, the Chukars’ general manager. “However, the reality was if we didn’t get a new ballpark, at some point we would’ve had to.”

Even after clearing financial hurdles, Twin Falls would need to find a league that wanted to put a team here. Minor league expansion is one avenue, but no plans exist to expand the minors or the Pioneer League, said Pioneer League president Jim McCurdy.

Minor league teams relocate with relative frequency, but there’s no guarantee a major league franchise would want to move its farm team to Twin Falls.

For one, Twin Falls is in a tricky location, on a high desert island more than 100 miles away from Boise and Pocatello, and threeplus hours away from Salt Lake City. That alone isn’t a major obstacle since the Pioneer League has teams as far north as Montana and as far south (and east) as Grand Junction, Colo. Idaho Falls is not much closer to any other Pioneer League team. Still, location is not an asset for Twin Falls.

And it’s not just population and accessibility where a city must prove itself, McCurdy said. Demographics play a role, and Twin Falls has some hope on that front.

An area with high disposable income is attractive to franchises, especially if there’s a passion for baseball, which Hawkins and

JOHN ROARK, POST REGISTER

Chukars’ Kyle Kasser tags out Kenneth betancourt at second base as the Idaho Falls Chukars take on the Ogden raptors at melaleuca Field on Sept. 5.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Community leader Suzanne Hawkins talks about why she’d like to see a minor league baseball stadium built aug. 22 in downtown twin Falls.

JOHN ROARK, POST REGISTER

size is not everything. He prefers to think of markets as “strong” or “weak”, rather than “large” or “small” because size doesn’t always equal viability. Twin Falls’ population growth is a step in the right direction for a pro team, but it’s only a step.

“Growth always helps in the sense that you’re gonna get more major industries and businesses that want to have more entertainment, more recreation centers, more baseball parks, those types of things,” Stone said. “But that by itself isn’t gonna be enough to get it going.”

The Chukars provide a model for Twin Falls’ baseball dream, but only to an extent. The Kansas City affiliation and the Chukar mascot have been around since 2004, but Idaho Falls has fielded a Pioneer League team every year since the 1940s. It’s been almost 50 years since Twin Falls has had a team.

CSI’s Skip Walker Field would not be a long-term minor league ballpark option for many reasons, from its relatively small size to the fact that CSI owns it and restricts its use, Stone said. Twin

Falls would also be taking a major economic risk by building a stadium without a guarantee that a team was on the way. If you build it, they might not come.

The Hansen Street area that Hawkins envisions for a ballpark might not be doable, either, even in her dreams. Twin Falls city manager Travis Rothweiler said a ballpark site needs to be eight-to-13 acres large, and he’s not sure the Hansen site is big enough. A ballpark can only be so close to railroads tracks, he said, so that would also be an obstacle in an area with already limited space.

Hawkins said she would embrace a semi-pro team, which wouldn’t require nearly as much work to get off the ground as a minor league team. She’d love to tack on a ballpark with the proposed recreation center, but she hasn’t gained much traction on that front.

Hawkins’ inner circle is enthusiastic about the prospect of a team in Twin Falls, but they’re all baseball people. They can get the ball rolling, but they’ll need more support for it to pick up serious speed.

The population growth might provide the fuel Hawkins and Stone want. The influx of new people could bring extra baseball fever or, perhaps more importantly, a Vandersloot-type figure who is willing to provide a large chunk of the necessary funding.

The field of dreams might be built by those who come.

“I’d really like my legacy to be, I got this project started,” Hawkins said.

Recreation creation

Unlike a pro or semi-pro baseball team, a community recreation center in Twin Falls does appear to be on the horizon. The city has tried to measure interest for a rec Stone believe is present in Twin ulation increased 23 percent in center over the past several years, the 1990s and 28 percent in the Falls. and it sent out surveys this sumThere’s also a simple equation: 2000s. The 2020 Census is exmer. more people in an area equals a pected to show at least 15 percent Most of the pushback for a city higher likelihood for good atten- population growth during the dance, and thus a better chance 2010s. rec center relates to the cost. Taxes for the franchise to make money.

“You need to rely on fan support or a bond would likely pay for the Twin Falls, of course, has been for things,” McCurdy said. “The building. But another community growing for years. According to larger the market, the better.” facility — the city pool — is losing money.

U.S. Census data, the city’s popStill, McCurdy said market “I’m not really ready to step into a new facility if it’s going to be another drain,” Councilman Greg Lanting told the Times-News in May. Proponents of the center, such as city recreation supervisor Stacy McClintock, see clear needs that a rec center could address.

A communal gymnasium is at the top of the list. For one, it’s versatile, providing opportunities for basketball, volleyball and indoor soccer. Second, there are few places in town that offer those sports to even gym members. The College of Southern Idaho has a basketball gym open to paying community members, but the school occasionally utilizes it for practices and workouts for its athletic teams.

Right now, the Twin Falls Parks and Recreation Department (headquartered in the area where Hawkins envisions a ballpark) uses middle and high school gyms for its youth and adult league games.

“It’s hard on the staff there, it’s hard on the facilities there, so for us to have our own space where we could kinda pull out of the school and give them a little bit of reprieve… would be nice,” McClintock said. “It would be nice to have other people using gym space and PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS facilities because, in the winter aiden Humble, center front, swims a set with other members of the Canyon ridge High School swim team during practice Sept. 6 at the twin Falls City Please see SPORTS, Page E4 pool in twin Falls.

Fans cheer as the Idaho Falls Chukars take on the Ogden raptors at melaleuca Field on Sept. 5.

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BIG STORY

Times-News

Sunday, September 9, 2018 |

E3

Could Canyon Ridge High School be on the move?

VICTOR FLORES

Vflores@magicvalley.com

TWIN FALLS — Ten years ago, Canyon Ridge High School became Twin Falls’ rival and somewhat of a savior.

Canyon Ridge opened in 2009 on the west side of Twin Falls. Instead of one 5A school (TFHS), the city’s high school population split between the two 4A schools. Instead of traveling to eastern Idaho for all of their 5A District games — the closest region to the Magic Valley that houses 5A schools — the Bruins joined the 4A Great Basin Conference, which included District 4 teams Burley, Jerome, Minico and Wood River.

All six Magic Valley schools have played in the GBC since Canyon Ridge’s inception. But two years from now, the Riverhawks might find themselves in the same shoes that their east side rivals wore a decade ago — playing at the 5A level in a conference with schools that are hours away. They have the Twin Falls population growth to thank.

Canyon Ridge is the largest 4A school in the state, with a twoyear average enrollment of 1,235.5 students, according to the Idaho High School Activities Association. That number is narrowly below the maximum enrollment for 4A schools: 1,279.

“With the big incoming freshman class that’s coming in, and you compare it to the senior class that was much smaller that we lost last year, it looks like we’re gonna be over that 1,280 mark,” said Canyon Ridge athletic director Lonnie Ahlquist.

So the Riverhawks are staring at a near future where they may be the only 5A school within a 100mile drive.

But not every school in the state is tied to its enrollment classification. Idaho Falls High School, for instance, had an enrollment of 1,294.5 in the most recent twoyear classification cycle, placing it narrowly above the 5A minimum.

But the Tigers petitioned to stay at the 4A level, and the IDHSAA approved their petition.

The Boise-based 4A Southern Idaho Conference includes four teams with 5A enrollments: Nampa (1,502 students), Kuna (1,493.5), Caldwell (1,398) and Columbia (1,323). Though all four are comfortably above the 5A minimum, they were able to drop down a level because of Idaho’s new competitive history guidelines.

Canyon Ridge also plans to pe-

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO

Canyon ridge senior robert Swoboda slides past Jerome shortstop mason rue and into second base Wednesday, april 18, 2018, at Canyon ridge High School in twin Falls.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO

South’s Caitlin Crist takes a shot on goal against the north during the district IV all Senior Game tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, at Wendell High DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO School.

Canyon ridge’s athletic director Lonnie ahlquist makes the rounds Sep 24, 2015, at Canyon ridge High School in twin Falls. petitive history petition process, tition to remain in 4A when its things,” Ahlquist said. “It would Jones said. enrollment inevitably surpasses make much more sense to keep The entire city of Twin Falls is 1,280. us at 4A then it would be to move experiencing growth, but Canyon “Obviously, I can’t predict it to 5A.” Ridge is feeling it more than TFHS, 100 percent, but I feel strongly The IDHSAA often discusses said TFHS athletic director Ted about what our argument is, espe- changing the classification Reynolds. The Bruins’ most recially if our crosstown rival, Twin thresholds, but the organization cent enrollment count was 1,176, Falls High School, is still 4A, and hasn’t received any proposals, and Reynolds doesn’t expect that what our conference would look said IDHSAA executive director number to exceed 1,280 for at least like if we had to move to 5A — the Ty Jones. The IDHSAA is consid- two classification cycles. travel, the expense, those kinds of ering small tweaks to the com“We’re kinda landlocked here.

There aren’t a lot of places to build,” Reynolds said. “You can build out by Kimberly, but then you’ll go to Kimberly.”

If and when Twin Falls does reach a 5A enrollment, Ahlquist and Reynolds expect they’ll have no choice but to move to the state’s largest classification.

Pitching petitions to stay in 4A for both schools, especially one as athletically successful as TFHS has been this decade, would be difficult, they said.

TFHS might be better suited to handle a move up. For one, the Bruins played in 5A as recently as 2008-09, so many people still at the school remember those days.

TFHS has also been more successful than Canyon Ridge in almost every sport the past 10 years.

But growth might also lead to more success for the Riverhawks, mostly because the pool of available athletes will be bigger. A handful of star players and a little more depth could mitigate a move to a 5A conference that includes powerhouses such as Highland High School or Rocky Mountain High School.

“It would not be the end of the world,” Ahlquist said. “Canyon Ridge would keep going, and we’ll get stronger and better.”

Challenges persist in Twin Falls entertainment scene BOWEN WEST

Bwest@magicvalley.com

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TWIN FALLS – In the early 1920s, the Orpheum housed 900 seats, an orchestra pit and a stage that could host movies, vaudeville acts and stage plays.

About 30 years later, it was converted into a movie theater.

Then, in 2014, it was purchased

by Larry and Stephanie Johnson and Ovation Performing Arts.

Major renovations were made to the now-97-year-old building.

Upgraded light systems were added and a changing room was built beneath the stage. The Orpheum came full circle, hearkening back to its heyday as the hub for live performances in Twin Falls, whether in the form of comedy shows, Tedx Talks or musicals.

The Magic Valley is growing, and its art scene is growing along with it. Venues like the Orpheum are leading the way in transforming the valley into a place where recreation does not just happen outdoors.

The resurgence of arts in the area can be chalked up to one thing, said Orpheum manager Jared Johnson: an influx of people who want to put their skills to use.

With growing communities of refugees, Hispanic residents and LGBTQ members, Magic Valley residents have plenty of different perspectives and cultures to explore.

“This venue’s heart and soul in this town,” Johnson said.

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

people dance to the eric may band during twin Falls tonight aug. 15 in downtown twin Falls.

Communities

The drag community is one of several cultures that has found a home at the Orpheum Theatre.

The leading force behind that has been Twin Falls resident Brandon Tesch.

Tesch started his drag career in 2015 with the production “Snips and Snails and Puppy-dogs’ Tails,” as part of the CSI Stage Door Series. Throughout the show, Tesch would gradually transform into Ursula, his drag persona.

Later that year, he performed his first full Ursula show with a Christmas special titled “XXXmas.” The drag shows didn’t face opposition, Tesch said, because they weren’t too offensive and

they ultimately served as artistic expression.

“Right now, we are in a time where anyone can join in and do what they want,” Tesch said.

Kindsey Taylor, the owner of Brass Monkey, is one of the downtown business owners who has taken the reins in organizing events downtown.

For the past five years, she has organized Oktoberfest. When the old organizers quit, Taylor and her friend decided to pick up the torch.

Public art is also popping up around downtown, as shown by the recent murals in the new Downtown Commons. As the Magic Valley Arts Council grows,

the Orpheum theatre has become a symbol of entertainment in downtown twin Falls. local artists are offered more exhibits than ever before.

The Arts Council aims to create new programs and activities to get the community involved like Art and Soul and Art in the Park, said executive director Carolyn White.

Martin King, head beer brewer at Von Scheidt Brewing, said in

the four years his brewery has been open, he’s seen an increase in travelers coming to town to try local beer.

“Beer is like an intellectual sport. It’s like art you can taste,” King said. “A brewery is more than Please see ENTERTAINMENT, Page E4

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| Sunday, September 9, 2018

Times-News

Sports From E2

here, there’s nowhere to go.”

Twin Falls’ population growth didn’t spark the rec center discussions, McClintock said, but it did accelerate the process. In the not so distant past, people would routinely wait until the late registration period to sign up for various leagues, she said, and they’d usually be able to join without issue. Recently, those late registration slots have filled up more quickly, putting more people on waiting lists.

Population growth doesn’t necessarily correlate to more interest in rec leagues — the demographics of population drive that too — but McClintock believes it’s a major explanation for the increasingly packed leagues. She knows that leagues can’t stay the same size forever if the city continues to grow, but the leagues need enough time and space to play in order to expand.

Funding is no small obstacle, and Twin Falls residents will have plenty of opportunities to voice their opinions about a rec center.

Perhaps a donor will swoop in and cover the cost for a community gym, as happened in Hansen back in February, when a private family donated $1 million for a new high school gym that doubles as a community gym.

PAT SUTPHIN TIMES-NEWS Whatever the method, McClintock hopes enough people see the Kadance Jacobson, 12, bumps the ball July 6 during the CSI Volleyball Camp at the College of Southern Idaho utility not just of a gym but of gymnasium in twin Falls. an indoor running track, a rock climbing wall and more.

“I’d love to offer cooking classes. I’d love to offer those types of things, and I can’t,” she said. “I don’t have anywhere to do it.”

The recruiting trail

In some ways, the College of Southern Idaho is more immune to the effects of population growth than the rest of the city, especially when it comes to sports.

On the surface, CSI’s additions of a cross country/distance track program and proposed multipurpose field look like reflections of growth, and they are in some ways. But the city population has little to do with it.

The running program was easy to start financially and logistically, given the lack of facilities needed for its athletes, and athletic director Joel Bate hoped it would serve as an enrollment prop. The multipurpose field broke ground last summer, and CSI hopes it will be home to a future Golden Eagles soccer program.

“Those were just projects that were time to come,” Bate said.

“Doesn’t really have anything to do with the growth in the area.”

While more people are moving to the Magic Valley, CSI’s home game attendance numbers have not skyrocketed at the same rate.

Some CSI coaches believe that team success and local athletes (or lack thereof) on their rosters

JOHN ROARK, POST REGISTER

Zach Haake pitches as the Idaho Falls Chukars take on the Ogden raptors at melaleuca Field on Sept. 5. play roles in attendance, as does the recent ability for fans to live stream every game.

CSI head men’s basketball coach Jared Phay believes population growth might even be hurting attendance.

“When people talk about the old days when the gym was packed

every night and people were waiting in line, attendance is down in that sense,” he said. “Back then, there was literally nothing else to do in town. Now, we still get good crowds and good support, but there are just more options in town.”

One area that has been mini-

mally affected by growth, coaches said, is recruiting players outside of the Magic Valley. Jim Cartisser has coached volleyball at CSI since 2005, back when Twin Falls’ population was about 38,000.

That number is around 50,000 today, and business growth has followed suit.

“(When) I got here in 2005, they’d just opened the Costco.

None of this stuff was open on the Canyon Rim. We had the mall. …

We didn’t have the hospital,” Cartisser said. “There’s been a ton of growth, but we really haven’t changed that much. I think the area can absorb quite a few more people — there are lots of areas to grow in — and it’s not really gonna change this particular pocket very much.”

Cartisser, who is in his first year as CSI’s head coach following the death of his wife Heidi, said a recruit has never turned down the Golden Eagles because the town wasn’t big enough. Maybe a school like Salt Lake Community College has served as a tiebreaker over CSI because of Salt Lake City’s size, but if it has, Cartisser hasn’t heard.

Phay echoed Cartisser’s sentiment. At the junior college level, a program’s success and its track record for sending athletes to big schools are far more important than where the athletes will live for one or two years with summer breaks and holidays sprinkled in. Even if the recent growth had drastically changed Twin Falls’ identity, that factor would largely be beside the point.

Those CSI coaches, as well as head running coach Lindsey Anderson, also believe Twin Falls sits in a sweet spot.

“A lot of the small-town kids feel like they’re in a really big city,” Anderson said. “But it’s also big enough that kids coming in from big cities still feel like they have everything here.”

One difference Cartisser has noticed is the talent level in the Magic Valley has improved.

When he started Club Canyon in 2006, it was one of the few club volleyball programs in the state, and the only one in the Magic Valley. In those early years, CSI would often sign one or two local volleyball players per class, but their local ties and potential often outweighed their abilities to immediately play at the college level, Cartisser said.

As more people have funneled into the area, more youth club sports programs, such as Twin Falls Elite, have formed. As a result, local athletes have become more prepared for the college level.

This year’s CSI volleyball roster features four Idaho natives: Twin Falls High School graduate Kylie Baumert, Brianna Bart (Centennial), Tausha Cummins (Butte County) and Payton Spoja (Boise).

All four played club volleyball before signing with CSI. “With the growth of the town and volleyball backgrounds moving in, we’ve been able to take local kids like a Kylie Baumert, who started playing club when she was 10 years old,” Cartisser said. “It’s made it so we can take those local kids now and really count on them.

It’s not just bringing them in for potential anymore. They’ve got a lot of realized potential already.”

Entertainment From E3

just getting drunk. It’s about a sense of community.”

Limiting factors

For performers in the Magic Valley, creating a new scene from scratch often comes with unrest.

The fear, performers say, is if one person takes on too much responsibility, the scene will die if that person steps away from a leadership role. Without the support of the community, the scene cannot thrive.

Jordan Thornquest, a Twin Falls-based musician, knows that fear well. Thornquest has become one of the faces of music in the Magic Valley. He is a founder of the Neighborhood Sounds, a group that brings new musicians to Twin Falls for concerts. Still, he shies away from the role.

“I don’t want to run Neighborhood Sounds. I just want to play music,” Thornquest said. “If I stopped pushing for new music here I’m not sure the community would pick up the reins.”

He said creating a new music scene requires people to get outside of their comfort zones, and a lack of venues for young people to visit makes expansion difficult.

“It’s tough to point fingers at anyone. The blame comes from the mentality that where I live limits what I can do,” Thornquest said.

One outlet for local musicians is Twin Falls Tonight, a series of summer concerts that has just wrapped up its 19th season.

Tony Prater, the co-organizer for Twin Falls Tonight, has organized the event since its inception.

The first concert that he and his wife put together had four attendees, he said. Now, they average be-

Green Citrine lead singer antonio macias plays music aug. 26 at the former Idaho youth ranch building in downtown twin Falls.

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

people dance to the eric may band during twin Falls tonight aug. 15 in downtown twin Falls. tween 1,500 and 2,200 attendees per concert.

“The real reason why we do this is for our kids and grandkids,” Prater said. “This, the arts, it’s all about what we leave behind.”

For years, the entertainment scene in Twin Falls was stagnant.

But now, he said, residents can find a different form of entertainment any day of the week.

the eric may band plays during twin Falls tonight aug. 15 in downtown twin Falls.

‘We have artists here’

K.C. Hunt, founder of Liquid Milk Comedy Stuff, has been active in the Boise comedy scene for the past four years. Now he wants to bring that entertainment to Twin Falls.

Hunt has begun hosting open mics and bringing well-known comedians to Twin Falls. But without a home in the TF Brickhouse, he said, it would be impossible to grow an audience.

neighborhood Sounds promoter Jordan thornquest adjusts audio levels aug. 26 at the former Idaho youth ranch building in downtown twin Falls.

“I’m lucky I contacted Brickhouse when I did,” Hunt said.

“They were looking for entertainment there. People recognize that there is a need for this stuff.”

Acy Maldonado, co-owner of TF Brickhouse, said they give new acts three to six months to see how they perform. It takes a while for Twin Falls to get into something,

he said, but scenes can thrive once the city settles into a schedule and expects the entertainment.

“The big thing is to give yourself credit. Twin Falls is growing.

There are talented people here who don’t have an outlet,” Hunt said. “We have artists here. This isn’t a Podunk town anymore. It’s growing, and I want to be a part of that.”

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THE BIG STORY

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SECTION E

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Elvis Martinez, left, talks with friend and Realtor Tami Gooding while looking at a house for sale Sept. 4 in Twin Falls.

A major housing

SHORTAGE Housing crunch worsens in Mini-Cassia

LAURIE WELCH

B

lwelch@magicvalley.com

URLEY — When Katie and Brad Mitchell moved to Mini-Cassia, they found a housing market that didn’t leave much room to be picky.

Purchasing a home that met all of their needs was an impossible task, and finding a home to rent wasn’t much easier.

“There are not a whole lot of houses for rent that are decent,” said Katie Mitchell, formerly a resident of Fargo, N.D. “At first we looked for a home to buy, but we couldn’t find what we needed in our price range.”

On Aug. 30, Mitchell walked back and forth from her family’s new rental house in southwest Burley to a moving truck full of their belongings parked at the curb.

Clipboard in hand, she checked off items that had safely arrived.

The items had been on the truck for LAURIE WELCH, TIMES-NEWS two weeks while the family patiently Katie Mitchell watches as workers from a moving company unload her family’s household goods in Burley on Aug. 30. waited and slept on air mattresses inside their new rental home.

“It was really hard to find a home that was clean and in a good neighborhood to rent,” Mitchell said.

The Mitchells and their three boys, ages 4, 6 and 8, moved to Burley on Aug. 17 after her husband took a position at Double L Manufacturing Inc. in Heyburn.

They originally planned to buy a home, but nothing was the right fit.

“There was nothing in our price She’s heard veteran agents discuss range that met our needs,” she said. the days when there were 300 homes “We felt like we’d grow out of the for sale. But for now, at least, those space right away or they were just not days are long gone. very nice.”

And a tighter housing market means The Mitchells’ experience is not more houses receive multiple offers. uncommon. Despite a recent populaWhen those offers come in, money tion and business boom, Mini-Cassia usually talks. But other factors might residents are finding that affordable sway a seller’s decision, including how housing, whether they’re renting or quickly the buyer is able to close the buying, is almost nonexistent. deal.

The average number of days that LAURIE WELCH, TIMES-NEWS houses remained on the market in Need a house? Better act fast Katie Mitchell, formerly of Fargo, N.D., helps move her family’s belongings into a “The housing market is crazy right new Burley rental home on Aug. 30.

Cassia County shrank from 69 in 2017 now,” said Alyssa Terry, a real estate to 60 in 2018. In Minidoka County, agent for Century 21 Riverside Realty.

Since Terry became a real estate scarcer. But during the past year, she houses stayed on the market for an “Just like the rest of the country, we agent five years ago, houses for sale in said, the market has tightened even are having a major housing shortage.” Mini-Cassia have continually grown more.

Please see HOUSING, Page E2

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| Sunday, September 16, 2018

Times-News

LAURIE WELCH, TIMES-NEWS

the new mountain Heights apartments on Hiland avenue in burley are being offered for rent for $850 for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment.

Housing From E1

average of 91 days in 2017. This year, that number fell to 58 days, according to the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service.

Most families, Terry said, seek houses in the $130,000 to $180,000 range, and there are only about a half-dozen that fall in that category for sale in Burley. Rupert has 11 houses for sale in that range, but five of them are new construction that will not be finished until the end of January. There are nine homes in that range in Heyburn.

“When you’re buying a home you have to be quick and have a set of eyes watching for you,” Terry said. “You have to look at the home quickly and if you’re interested you have to be prepared to move in and make an offer.”

More than ever, Terry said, home buyers need to work with a real estate agent who can watch the market for them in order to be successful in this competitive market.

“I’ve had times where I’ve spoken with a client that wants to list a house and I have a client looking for one and I’ve been able to put them together before the house was even listed. You really need to have someone in your corner looking out for you,” she said.

Houses in one Burley subdivision that’s under development will start at $197,000, which is PHOTO COURTESY ALYSSA TERRY, CENTURY 21 RIVERSIDE REALTY more than many families can afthis house, 1209 boardwalk Ct. in burley, is listed at $385,000. built in 2003, it is 4,100 square feet and includes seven bedrooms and 3 1/2 ford, Terry said. But even that is bathrooms. on the low end of available housing. More than half of the available homes cost $200,000 and up..

For families like the Mitchells, who could not nail down a home to buy, renting is often the backup plan. But the rental market in Mini-Cassia is even faster-paced than the buying market.

Terry’s office keeps a list of rentals that are available in the area. The list typically includes about six to eight listings.

“We have seven to 10 people coming in every day for that list,” she said. “The rental market is just insane right now.”

People who are caught in the tight rental market should consider at least looking into the option of buying a home, she said, because sometimes a rent check costs as much as a mortgage payment.

“I’ve had clients who didn’t think they could buy but when they checked with a lender, they found out they could. It’s worth it to at least check it out,” she said.

So is relief for homebuyers on the horizon?

“I don’t see houses flooding the market in the near future, and I don’t really see people moving PHOTO COURTESY OF ALYSSA TERRY, CENTURY 21 RIVERSIDE REALTY out of the area,” Terry said. “Why this house, 2031 Z St. in Heyburn, is listed at $167,500. built in 1975, it is 1,824 square feet and includes three bedrooms and one bathroom. would they want to leave? It’s an amazing place to live.”

An organic process

Despite the tight housing market, city officials say new developers approach the city every day.

The supply has yet to materialize, but there is demand from both prospective buyers and builders.

“We have not seen housing growth slow down at all in the last year,” Kelly Anthon, Rupert city administrator said.

In recent memory, Rupert was downright stagnant. Five years ago, the average age Rupert homes was 63 years old, one of the oldest Please see HOUSING, Page E4

Increasing prices and stagnant quantity *2018 data is year-to-date, as of Sept. 5.

Twin Falls average price of homes Jerome average price of homes sold 2014-2018 sold 2014-2018 $250K $250K $222,222 $200K

$200K

$150K

$150K

$100K

$100K

$50K

$50K

$0

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018*

Source: Multiple Listing Service

$0

$189,190

Homes sold in Twin Falls 911

995

Homes sold in Jerome 984

762 633

181

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018*

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018*

235

231

218

151

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018* Lee Enterprises graphic m 1

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E3

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Realtor Tami Gooding shows a house for sale Sept. 4 in Twin Falls.

Homebuilding rebounds as buyers struggle with tight housing market HEATHER KENNISON

Hkennison@magicvalley.com

TWIN FALLS – Realtor Tami Gooding could see the indecisiveness in her client’s eyes.

“You don’t have to make a decision right this minute,” she said.

“Have you seen this market?”

Elvis Martinez replied. “Yes, you do.”

After nine months of house hunting, Martinez was feeling the pressure to buy. She was unsure about the small house on Cherrywood Road, but she knew it wouldn’t stay on the market for long.

“There’s been times when I’ve slept on it, and the next day it’s gone,” Martinez said.

When Gooding showed up to the house at 5:30 p.m. on Sept.

4 — its first day on the market — two other real estate agents were already there with clients.

“This is not uncommon,” Gooding said, especially for houses listed at less than $200,000.

In both Twin Falls and Jerome, prospective homebuyers are grappling with a tight housing market.

Homebuilders, desperate to keep up with demand, are turning in building permits as fast as they can fill them out.

It’s difficult to predict how long the tight housing market will last.

But for now, as the Magic Valley’s population booms, sellers and builders are reaping the benefits Masyn Malmstrom takes a look at the backyard while he and his girlfriend look over a house for sale Sept. 4 in Twin Falls. while buyers like Martinez scramble to find housing within their amount of inventory in over five able homes,homebuilding is on Sept. 5, 2018 budgets. years,” Gooding said. the rebound. The only question is Twin Falls As of Sept. 5, there were only Jerome whether it will rebound enough to Active listings: 39 Active listings: 201 201 active listings in Twin Falls A seller’s market meet the high demand.

The house Gooding showed on and 39 in Jerome. Countywide, Twin Falls’ building department approved 220 permits for Sept. 4 was listed at $159,900, Twin Falls County had 19 percent the high end of Martinez’s price fewer listings than last September, new homes between October 2017 range. She’d been pre-qualified and Jerome County had 17 percent and August 2018.

“We are seeing a continual infor a mortgage in November 2017 fewer. in anticipation of her lease ending And while demand is high and crease of new single-family perAverage listing price Average listing price in February. supply is low, it’s an ideal time for mits,” Twin Falls Building Official $288,491 $289,331 “We thought if we started in homeowners to sell.

Jarrod Bordi said.

Average days on market Builders are having a heyday as November we’d have just enough “Equity is high too,” said Ryan Average days on market time to find something,” she said. Swinney, association executive. farmland is converted into subdi84 365 0 76 365 “That wasn’t the case.”

“If you purchased your home in 0 visions throughout town. And it’s Source: Multiple Listing Service Lee Enterprises graphic Some of the houses in her price 2014, you’ve got equity already.” all market-driven, Bordi said. range didn’t qualify for a fedZillow’s Home Value Forecast Still, the city issued only 212 eral loan because they needed estimates the median home price erage of 55 days. In Jerome, 151 tle for anything else. home permits for the entire 2017 “They want it, and they want it calendar year, 37 fewer than the too many repairs. Martinez put has climbed 12.4 percent over the homes have been sold, and they’ve year prior. While these are still offers on two different houses, past year in Twin Falls, and 9.4 stayed on the market for an aver- now,” Gooding said. age of 57 days. but neither one of them worked percent in Jerome.

The most popular homes higher numbers than Twin Falls out. Still, she felt she could trust Starter homes are one of the in Twin Falls right now are in has seen in a decade, Bordi doesn’t biggest needs real estate agents the price range of $160,000 to know why home permits spiked in Gooding, who was renting a Starter homes place to Martinez while she and While housing is generally tight see for both cities. In Jerome, $180,000, she said. In Jerome, it’s 2016 and declined the following her boyfriend, Masyn Malstrom, across the Magic Valley, one seg- that’s in the $130,000 to $160,000 between $130,000 and $150,000. year.

“We are seeing younger people looked for something perma- ment of houses has been more range, while in Twin Falls it’s in But it looks like they could be nent. available than the others: expen- the $150,000 to $200,000 range. who want their own home because going up again. He already has Jerome’s housing market, Mower it’s cheaper to buy than to rent,” another 17 or 18 home permits in “She’s not going to let me get sive homes. into something that I regret,” the queue, pending approval.

“The higher-end homes we said, hasn’t come back from the Gooding said. seem to always have plenty of,” Great Recession as strongly as On Sept. 5, there were only six Martinez said.

Detached homes aren’t the listed homes in Jerome and seven only thing that’s in demand. For But the inventory of homes Mower said. expected. continues to decrease, said Beth Still, even those are moving “I think there are a lot of peo- in Twin Falls that were priced the first time in years, Twin Falls Mower, board president of West- much quicker than expected. ple who are still reluctant to buy between $130,000 and $150,000, is seeing multiple multifamily ern Magic Valley Realtors. At one And for houses listed at less than a home in Jerome,” Mower said. and several of them were fix- dwellings cropping up. For the fistime, Gooding could spend two to $150,000, having multiple offers Today’s “starter home” isn’t er-uppers. cal year through August, the city three full days showing homes to is the new normal. what it used to be, Gooding said. has issued 25 fourplex permits, a couple from out of town. Now As of early September, 633 The first-time homebuyer of to- Single-family and “which is a record as far back as she struggles to find enough home homes have been sold in Twin day wants a big backyard, two multifamily rebounds I can tell,” Bordi said.

Falls this year. Those homes bathrooms and three bedrooms. showings for even one day.

“We haven’t had an abundant stayed on the market for an av- And the buyer is less likely to setDespite the shortage of availPlease see HOMEBUILDING, Page E4

Housing snapshot

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PHOTO COURTESY OF ALYSSA TERRY, CENTURY 21 RIVERSIDE REALTY

This house, 545 Terrace Dr. in Burley, asking price is listed at $655,000. Built in 1994, it is 3,542 square feet with another 1,111 square feet of unfinished basement, and it includes three bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms.

Housing

Rent by wages How much does a person need to make per hour to afford a two-bedroom rental in each of the eight south-central Idaho counties? Blaine County checks in as the most expensive rental county in the state, while the other seven counties are cheaper than the statewide average.

CUSTER

From E2

averages of any city in Idaho.

“It’s really interesting that Rupert is seeing this kind of construction,” Anthon said. “We haven’t seen this kind of growth for decades.”

As of early September, more than 200 homes were under development in Rupert. A variety of housing, including duplexes and single-family homes, are being built. Much of the development is being done by outside investors, he said.

In the meantime, a tight housing market is part of a natural growth cycle, Anthon said.

“Growth happens through this organic process,” Anthon said.

First jobs are created, and then it’s time for more places for people to live, Anthon said. Amenities and retail soon follow.

Creating amenities and a place where people want to live and have a business are crucial parts of that cycle. In the past few years, Rupert has opened a Boys and Girls Club of Magic Valley and is now in the process of revamping the Rupert Square.

“The Square is a way of securing Rupert’s future. The city has always been identified with the Square. When you beautify the Square, Rupert is beautified,” Anthon said.

Workers in short supply

Jan Roeser, a regional economist with the Idaho Department of Labor, said she’s surprised that there aren’t more newly constructed homes on the market in

Statewide average: $15.44/hour BLAINE

CAMAS

$19.54

$13.40

GOODING

BINGHAM LINCOLN

$13.40 $13.40 JEROME

$14.50 TWIN FALLS

$14.33

MINIDOKA

$13.40 CASSIA

$13.40

Source: National Low Income Housing Coalition Lee Enterprises graphic

PHOTO COURTESY OF ALYSSA TERRY, CENTURY 21 RIVERSIDE REALTY

This house, 1700 Conant Ave. in Burley is listed at $139,000. Built in 1915, it is 1,540 square feet with another 594 square feet of unfinished basement, and it includes three bedrooms and one bathroom.

Mini-Cassia.

It’s helpful for a community to have some extra housing to pull out of its “back pocket” for emergencies during a big company expansion or relocation, she said.

Still, it’s not uncommon during a period of growth for a community to experience a lag in housing availability.

“No one wants to build a home without a job,” she said. “I think we’re just playing catch-up right now.”

But Roeser is confident that as the labor force continues to grow, available housing won’t be far behind. Part of the existing lag may be left over from the Great Recession of the late 2000s, she said, as Idaho’s construction industry has struggled to regain solid footing since then.

“The construction industry has never really recovered its workforce,” Roeser said.

The total number of nonfarm jobs statewide in 2006 was

640,300 and in July 2018 that number rose to 740,000. Over the same span, the number of construction jobs dropped from 52,900 to 47,300, according to the Idaho Department of Labor.

“I think those numbers are very telling, especially for our area,” Roeser said.

Meanwhile, for families like the Mitchells who need to find housing, compromises are often necessary. The rental home they chose has three bedrooms and 1 ½

baths. It rents for $950 a month, and it has some problems. There’s not enough room in the kitchen for a table, so the family will use one of the bedrooms as a dining area.

“But it was clean,” she said, and it has a backyard.

While some towns are faring better than others, and businesses continue to boom, a lack of housing across Mini-Cassia could temper growth across the board.

“The process has been really difficult,” Mitchell said. “The rental prices are really high for what you get and although there are some new apartments available, they rent for what it costs to rent a house.”

Above: Katie Mitchell marks off items on a clipboard on Aug. 30 in Burley as her household belongings arrive from North Dakota.

Left: New Burley resident Katie Mitchell watches workers unload boxes and furniture on Aug. 30. in Burley.

LAURIE WELCH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

Homebuilding From E3

Combined with 220 single-family homes and seven duplexes, that makes 334 new dwellings within the city. Bordi expects even more multifamily housing will follow. Several townhouse projects are also getting close to

submitting permits, he said.

Jerome, too, has experienced an increase in builder activity. The city had issued 38 single-family permits through August, compared to 25 last year.

Despite growing numbers of housing and rentals, the costs for renters are continuing to rise around the Magic Valley, said Toni Shinn, office supervisor for

the Twin Falls branch of the Idaho Housing and Finance Association.

“The rents in our community are absolutely increasing and they’ve been steadily increasing for the last several years, in fact,” Shinn said. “The problem is, we have way more renters than rentals available.”

Her clients for the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program

sometimes have trouble getting into apartments because landlords already have a line of people waiting to rent with cash in hand.

The voucher recipients must pay at least 30 percent, and often 40 percent, of their adjusted income toward rent.

One-bedroom and studio apartments, especially, are hard to find, Shinn said. But even two- and

three-bedroom apartments are needed.

With a limited market, the new homes and apartments will be a welcome addition to an area that has demand for more housing. In the meantime, finding a home isn’t impossible, Mower said. But you must be aggressive and act fast.

“I think we’re on the map,” Bordi said, “and people want to live here.”

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