SANDPOINT — After two groups asked to use an empty county conference room and office space, Bonner County commissioners are waiting to see if they can allow external usage of county property. 

The discussion item was brought forth by Commissioner Asia Williams, who read a memorandum from the First District Family Court requesting to utilize office space at the county’s 521 S. Division Avenue EMS multi-use facility in Sandpoint. The space, according to the memorandum, would be utilized on Mondays and Fridays for court assistance officers to schedule appointments with Bonner County residents.  

Officials from the First District Court made the request April 13, 2026.  

A similar request was made in late May by the Bonner Soil & Water Conservation District, which is seeking office space inside the county’s administration building on 1500 U.S. Highway 2 to reduce facility costs after the district saw a $200,000 reduction in operations, resulting in a $90,000 deficit.  

“We have a lot of empty space here, and so there's some value to doing in-kind. And so, with respect to soil, we give them $25,000 a year, and so my thought was looking at could we give them space and then making an in-kind donation and potentially reduce our cash donation by helping them achieve a higher amount that gets returned in from the state,” Williams said. 

Commissioner Brian Domke, who was tasked with communicating with the leaseholder of the administration building, shared that the county’s current lease prevented subletting or allowing other parties to use the building without the leaseholder's approval. At the time of publishing, the leaseholder is currently reviewing the request with their legal department and mortgage holders.  

Even though the 521 S. Division building is not leased, Domke said he believed it was important to finalize exact ownership of the building before leasing conference rooms. Currently, it is undetermined whether the county or the Bonner County Ambulance District owns the building, since both municipalities monetarily contributed to its construction and utilize the building.  

“The specific request from the Idaho courts was our 521 S. Division facility, not this building, and so because we have the question before us still that has yet to be finalized of ownership of facilities and any MOU, any kind of agreement we might have about who has ownership and or who has leases or other rights to use facilities between the two entities, I don't think we should complicate the situation with having a third party involved in a building that we have not defined final ownership,” Domke said.  

Commissioner Ron Korn shared several concerns of housing non-county employees in the building, citing potential issues around scheduling and the legalities if a non-employee was hurt on county property.  

“There's risk issues that I see with this having other than Bonner County employees in the rooms in the buildings more often than normal, having meetings there. The people that they're meeting with may not be the preferred people that we want in the building,” Korn said. “Somebody comes in with a scheduled meeting, trips over the threshold, falls. Who's going to be sued for that? I would imagine it would be the county that would be sued for that. I don't like signing up for more risk issues like that.” 

He went on to discuss how adding organizations into the building could make it difficult to schedule county business, and may bring forth issues of having to work around the other entities’ schedules, instead of the other way around. Parking was another concern, where Korn mentioned there were limited spaces that county department heads were even restricted from.  

A decision was not made on allowing external usage of county buildings as commissioners await opinions and direction from their leaseholders.