BONNERS FERRY — While an unexpected grant gave the city a boost toward its efforts to promote fitness, the city's whistle isn't in great shape, city officials were told at Tuesday's council meeting.

"I know not everyone in the room is going to understand the importance of the new whistle, but it hasn't been working for a while now, because of the controller that was put in," City Administrator Mike Klaus said. "And so, people get used to the new whistle going off, and so a lot of people have been missing lunch for two weeks now."

Klaus said the city's electrician is working on the controller in an effort to resolve the problem.

"We're hoping to not buy a new one because we need to find another way to do that if possible," he said.

On a more serious code issue, Klaus told the council that city staff has met several times over the past few weeks to discuss effective strategies for enforcing city codes. The city has received a rash of complaints over nuisances, RVs, wrecked cars and other issues.

While the codes exist to address the issues, Klaus said the city may need to bolster the enforcement portion of the code with administrative fees or other avenues to get compliance.

"We do get complaints from some people, and we really owe it to the citizens that follow the law to enforce the laws ourselves, but we need some more tools," Klaus said. 

Klaus said he has been meeting with city attorney Andrakay Pluid and other city staff to review potential code and policy changes. Once complete, the administrative fee structure would be brought to the council for review and a potential vote.

The city administrator said the changes would not necessarily include fines but could include billing for administrative fees associated with the enforcement as well as towing or cleanup fees.

"You really want to just capture staff time that's spent in trying to get compliance from code itself, and I wouldn't want to pretend to have all the answers here on the spot, but that's what we're looking at," Klaus told councilors. 

Klaus also advised the council that the city received a $1,025 check from the Blue Cross Foundation. Klaus said Bonners Ferry had received a grant from the foundation several years ago to revamp the city's pool. The foundation board recently decided to award grants to cities around the state "that have projects that have kind of created a lasting value for fitness," he said.

Police Chief Willie Cowell told council members the city had received a grant that will allow the department to have additional officers on duty during Kootenai River Days.

"People are used to us being out at this time of year because of these grant schedules," he said. "It is effective, and getting that grant for the Kootenai Rivers Days is huge, because that's going to put a lot of officers in the field."

In other business, resident Gerald Higgs raised the question of conflicts between e-bike riders and pedestrians. He noted he had almost been hit by e-bikes traveling at a high speed as they are coming down the corner near the Boundary County Library.

"Some of them stay on the sidewalk, then divert to the streets, run the stop signs, whatever," Higgs told the council.

The man suggested designating a bike route for through traffic. A possible route would send bicycles and others across the crosswalk near the library as a place before being routed through the city parking lot to the north side of town instead of coming down Kootenai Street by the library when they enter Bonners Ferry's downtown. A second option would be to prohibit bicycles on downtown sidewalks. 

Higgs said with the sightline complicated by trees in the area, e-bike riders come upon pedestrians with little warning for both.

"There's a lot of kids and moms coming out of here," he said. "Sometimes the kids run ahead of the moms as they're going home, and how long you want to be before someone gets hit."