COEUR d’ALENE — As the community waited to find out if North Idaho College will retain accreditation, the region's leaders expressed support for the college and urged trustees to protect it.

“The college’s loss of accreditation would have a devastating impact on the college, the local community and our state,” said a recent letter to the NIC board of trustees, signed by all five Coeur d’Alene City Council members and Mayor Jim Hammond.

The letter calls on NIC trustees to “look inward” for solutions to the board governance problems that have plagued the college for several years and culminated in a show cause sanction, the last step before loss of accreditation.

“Our citizens have been asking us to do something,” Coeur d’Alene City Councilman Dan Gookin said Monday. “Our hands are pretty much tied. NIC is a separate entity but we understand the concerns that citizens have about the college.”

The city asserted that the NIC board majority show improvement to the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities through action.

“Even a change in board leadership could be seen as a show of goodwill and effort to resolve your differences,” the letter said.

The letter also highlighted the city’s standing offer to work with NIC trustees to rezone the campus, forming a “university district” that would protect the campus from outside development, should it lose accreditation. The city of Moscow has a similar concept already in place.

Gookin said there has been no movement on the rezoning idea since it was first floated in March.

“The best way to do that is with the cooperation of the college,” Gookin said. “We are not in the habit in the city of Coeur d’Alene of forcing zoning changes on anyone.”

Dan English, who is on the Coeur d’Alene City Council and works in NIC’s Molstead Library, said the city and college have a symbiotic relationship.

North Idaho College provides education to thousands of students, the vast majority of whom are Idaho residents and nearly 1,700 of whom are dual enrolled high school students. The college’s economic impact is nearly $60 million annually to the local economy.

“The city and NIC are pretty much inseparable,” said English, himself an NIC graduate. “One affects the other.”