COEUR d’ALENE — City Council member Dan English wants the proposed county transit center at Riverstone to provide the public with amenities becoming of its name.

That means restrooms, warmth, shelter and a place to kick back as people wait for a bus, buy tickets and view maps of the route they will take to get wherever they’re going.

The wish list — what English calls his two cents worth — may make its way to the final drawing board. But for now, plans for the county-administered public transit center are more spartan, and more closely resemble a rudimentary bus stop.

English voiced his concerns at Tuesday’s City Council meeting after council member Dan Gookin, the city’s transit liaison, reported on a recent meeting with the county’s transit administration and architects.

Gookin said that plans, so far, are for warming shelters where bus-riding patrons can get out of the weather, and for public restrooms such as the ones found in city parks. The rest of the center, which will house transit officials, will not be open to the public.

“I just want to know if the council is OK with that type of thing,” Gookin said. “To have a covered, heated shelter ... it’s not the same as being in the lobby of the building.”

The shelters would be glass-enclosed, 10 feet wide and 20 feet long, heated, but the glass walls would be open at the bottom to allow air inside.

“But it also prevents people from camping in there,” Gookin said. “That was one of the concerns of the county, that they didn’t want this to be a place where someone would camp.”

English considered the latest plan for a transit center “better than nothing, but in my mind a poor substitute...”

English, whose career includes top-tier positions in several North Idaho nonprofits, said the latest proposal separates the staff from the people they’re supposed to be serving.

“This is a transit center, not a transient center,” English said. “It just seems like going to a kind of extreme amount of effort to kind of set the folks that are doing this apart.”

He said the glass-enclosed huts would work well at bus stops throughout the city, but not at the main bus hub.

The transit center has become a point of contention since its proposal seven years ago as part of the Citylink bus route that serves the city and county.

Critics of the proposed hub see it as a place that will draw transients and increase crime, while proponents want it to amiably serve the entire bus-riding public.

City Council members opted to withhold money from the county transit department after county officials a few months ago said they wouldn’t build a lobby in the proposed center because it would attract area homeless.

Council member Kiki Miller introduced a motion to not renew the city’s $48,000 payments to Citylink following the discussion at an earlier council meeting in which Gookin complained that the city has little say in where bus stops are located, that it has no authority to handle consumer complaints and that the city has been given little opportunity for input.

The motion prompted an email by County Commissioner Bob Bingham to the city, in which the commissioner voiced his own complaints.

“If the city does not want or will not financially support the transit system, then we can shut it down in as much as we are allowed to shut it down,” Bingham wrote to the mayor and council. “As a commissioner I have little desire to maintain something the city does not want. The city leaders can deal with those affected.”

Expanding the transit center, Bingham warned, could turn into a problem for the city, and he asked that if the center is expanded to include wishes such as the ones English addressed, then a greater law enforcement presence should follow.

“If we are to yield to the city desire for inside sitting areas for patrons, I would personally insist that the city provide law enforcement either by setting up an office there or have a deputy very frequently patrolling that area,” Bingham wrote.

He added that while transit service is ideal for areas that provide low-income housing such as the west side of Riverstone, “...Predictably, the mixing of these will gradually bring an increase in crime, health and safety issues unless a high safety standard is held up ... To wit, the transit center could become something it is not designed to be.”

English insisted that a transit hub needs to be a place where the public can comfortably wait and interact with county employees if necessary.

“Since it’s the main area ... why in the world wouldn’t we want them to go in there and wait for their bus, at least one stop out of all of those stops?” English said. “My two cents is, I would like to see indoor bathrooms and a lobby area. I think it’s reasonable.”

Gookin will bring the city’s suggestions to the next Citylink meeting. Approval of the final plan will come from the commissioners and the county, Gookin said.