Land board rebuffs Valley County request to postpone auction

BY DREW DODSON

This story was originally published in The Star-News in McCall on Thursday, June 23rd, 2022. It is republished here with permission.

The state land board held firm on Tuesday in its decision to sell Cougar Island in Payette Lake in a public auction tentatively set for Sept. 8.

The land board rebuffed a request by Valley County commissioners to delay the auction to give the county time to raise funds to buy or preserve the island.

An appraisal of the 14.2-acre island will be completed this summer to set minimum bids at the auction, IDL spokesperson Sharla Arledge said.

The land board, made up of Gov. Brad Little, Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, Secretary of State Lawerence Denney, Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra and State Controller Brandon Woolf, voted unanimously to move forward with the auction.

The members held a closed session for 25 minutes on Tuesday before hearing the public comments.

No member of the board commented before the vote was taken during the public part of the meeting.

Tuesday’s meeting was prompted by an April letter from Valley commissioners asking for the delay.

“We are trying to raise funds as fast as we can,” Commissioner Sherry Maupin told the land board. “It’s very difficult for governments to do this on such short notice.”

Maupin suggested swapping county-owned land south of Cascade for the island as one possible deal.

State law also allows the state and county to finance a sale using a 20-year note that would earn interest and be paid out annually, she said.

The 20-year note would allow the county to allocate county funds, form partnerships and apply for grants to pay for the island, she said.

All or Part

Bidders will be able to bid on five separate lots on the island, two halves of the island or the entire island, IDL staffers told the land board.

“We’d offer it in various ways, and whichever generates the most revenue is the winner,” IDL Real Estate Services Bureau Chief Josh Purkiss said.

An appraisal conducted last summer estimated the island is worth about $5.6 million if sold in one piece.

The auction is the first action recommended by a state plan passed last year that would sell 377 acres of state land around the lake within 20 years.

Each additional auction recommended by the Payette Endowment Lands Strategy would need to be authorized by the land board, Arledge said.

The Cougar Island auction was specifically requested by Bellevue attorney Jim Laski, who holds the lease on one of five lots on the island.

Laski told the land board he wants to own his 2.5-acre parcel outright. Four other lots on the island are not leased.

“Further delay means more unreimbursed costs for us to stay in the process,” he said.

Laski has leased his lot from the state for 10 years and built a vacation home that his family uses in the summer.

Laski currently pays the state about $34,000 per year for his lease.

The Process

State endowment lands can only be sold at public auction so that the lands department gets the most return as mandated by the Idaho Constitution.

Endowment land around Payette Lake has been leased for use as residential cottage sites as far back as the early 1900s.

In 2010, the state land board approved a plan to divest ownership of leased cottage site parcels to give lessees a chance to buy the land outright at auction.

If Laski’s bid for his Cougar Island lot is not successful, the winning bidder must pay him for the appraised value of his home on the island. That value has not been set.

Since 2010, 154 cottage site lots have been sold, including 127 lots that were leased. The auctions have raised more than $66 million. Twenty leased cottage site lots remain.

Money from the land sales is deposited into a fund that the lands department may use to buy other timberlands in Idaho or invested in financial markets.