Although yesterday’s Coeur d’Alene Press story by staff writer Sean Garmire had some significant factual errors (corrected in the online version by the Editor), the story headlined Sinking hopes also had some distressing allegations supported by physical evidence. Those allegations should cause Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Douglas or US Attorney Tom Moss to quickly convene a grand jury to investigate the cozy connections between developers, builders, realtors, and the City of Coeur d’Alene.
The victim in the Press story, Margaret Cultice, is wisely pursuing a civil lawsuit to protect her financial investment in her home. Assuming she does not reach a “we’ll-pay-if-you-keep-quiet” settlement with the defendants and also assuming that Idaho’s law will actually allow her to sue, the civil trial should reveal a good deal of information about how residential real estate development was done in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in the past decade.
Regardless of the civil trial, the State of Idaho or the federal government needs to step in with a grand jury investigation into the possible criminal side of this matter.
The big questions that must be answered are:
- Who was responsible for assuring the land under Ms. Cultice’s home was suitable and safe for building?
- Who knew or should have known the structural integrity of the land under her home had been compromised? Who looked the other way?
- How many other people in the City of Coeur d’Alene are at risk of having their homes sink from under them?
- Why should anyone, including honest mortgage lenders, have any confidence in the permitting and inspection processes of Coeur d’Alene’s city government, especially the Building Services Department and the Engineering Services Department?
- Did an extremely close and cozy relationship between financially interested parties and the City of Coeur d’Alene cause the City to fail to diligently protect the interests of citizens who must depend on the City’s processes?
Ms. Cultice’s home was built around 2000 in Heartland. It has taken seven or eight years for the conditions to surface. It is reasonable to ask if people in newer developments such as Sunshine Meadows and Hawk’s Nest will face similar problems a few years down the road. We live in Coeur d’Alene Place and have found construction waste buried on our property. We hope there was none dumped under our basement slab and foundation.
One final note: As I drove through Ms. Cultice’s neighborhood, I saw one Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department car and one Coeur d’Alene Police Department car parked overnight. The Coeur d’Alene Mayor and City Council have been telling us there is a compelling need for affordable housing for police, fire, and educators in Coeur d’Alene. I wonder if this is the kind of affordable housing our Mayor and Council wants for city, county, and school district employees?
Please, Mr. Douglas. Please, Mr. Moss. You know, as I do, there are other examples of shoddy home construction practices in Coeur d’Alene. Convene a grand jury. Now. Please!
There is a culpable party here. If the city played any part in the circumstances that allowed such work to be done they are as well culpable.
Comment by Wallypog — April 25, 2008 @ 3:14 pm
I feel so sorry for this woman. She was patient enough to wait through this harsh winter, rolling up beachtowels to block the cracks? Wow. She’s a hospice nurse and now has to go through all this too. Then Viking Homes won’t honor their committment? I agree with you all that there are some big lawsuits out there on this one.
Comment by mary — April 25, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
I hope that the Coeur d’Alene Press is not going to just let this drop after one story. The story was nowhere completely told.
You might recall that back in September 2004 a city parks employee caught Sunshine Meadows developers Prairie Falls LLC (Tim Mueller and William Radobenko) illegally surface mining the still uncompleted 2.6 acre park in Sunshine Meadows. The material was trucked to Blackwell Island and used by Duane Hagadone to raise the profile of land he was proposing to be a marina. Jim Brady from Idaho Department of Lands red-tagged Sunshine Meadows over that, but the investigation of that incident was quietly dropped before it ever got started. Mr. Brady and the Idaho Department of Lands owes the public an explanation why that investigation was dropped. The people who are still waiting for that park are also entitled to know what Radobenko and Mueller put back in that hole.
Mayor Sandi Bloem and City Engineer Gordon Dobler also signed off on a lot line change that decreased the amount of ground allocated for the Sunshine Meadows Park, closed Larix Avenue and turned it into a cul-de-sac (Larix Court), and gave the developers (Mueller and Radobenko) one more very large and buildable residential lot. One factor influencing their decision to change Larix Avenue into Larix Court was a request from the Hayden Lake Irrigation District. Due to a “design error,” Larix Avenue was too close to HLID Well #4. The City had not brought City water into the project; it was depending on HLID to provide water from HLID Well #4, but as a through street Larix Avenue was too close to the well for it to be used for drinking water. By changing Larix Avenue into Larix Court, the street could be closer to the well. Gary Gaffney from Idaho Department of Environmental Quality encouraged that change as well. That benefitted the HLID, the developer, and the City.
Yesterday’s story reports that Viking Homes, the builder, declined to repair Ms. Cultice’s house because “Cultice’s problems were a result of the air pockets and organic material placed in a pit and covered with top soil by Morko, the Dalton Gardens company that cleared the lots and sold the property to Viking.” Morko LLC’s listing with the Secretary of State shows its registered agent and managing partner is William Radobenko, 7500 Mulholland, Dalton Gardens.
If the name William Radobenko rings a bell, it should. He is listed by the Secretary of State as a director of ACI Northwest, Inc., the company which Mayor Sandi Bloem favored to receive the nearly $3M subcontract to fill the Kroc hole and deliver a buildable lot to Goebel of Spokane for the Kroc Center. ACI has also been seen on a lot of jobsites for the City, including the new library and Ramsey Road.
In my view, the documented involvement of two State of Idaho agencies and the City almost require any investigation to be conducted at federal level. That would mean a federal grand jury.
Comment by Bill — April 25, 2008 @ 4:34 pm
When substantial changes take place to a Planning Commission approved subdivision, that plat is to be returned to Planning Commission for review and a determination . This was not the case in this issue. I wonder why Sandi Bloem and Gordon Dobler signed off on this plat without submitting it for review.
Comment by Susie Snedaker — April 26, 2008 @ 7:12 am
Susie,
I don’t know the exact answer to your question in 4. Based on other information I have, I’ll speculate that the Mayor and City Engineer and City Attorney wanted as few public questions as possible about Sunshine Meadows and the City’s relationship with interested parties involved.
Comment by Bill — April 26, 2008 @ 7:30 am
I agree with Susie. As former CdA P&Z Commissioners, Susie and I both know that any significant changes in an approved project are required to come back to P&Z for review. Changing a through street to a cul de sac (which the city hates anyway) and decreasing the size of designated parkland are both significant changes in my opinion. The P&Z Commission was not told about these changes and the Mayor signed off on them herself, thus bypassing the public process.
Comment by mary — April 26, 2008 @ 8:55 am
My family and I have gone through a law suit on a house that was intentionally not built to code to increase the profit for the developer while city inspectors looked the other way. We won, of course, but not until five years of our families life was put on hold. We got 20 cents on the dollar and had to pick up the rest of the tab on our own.
270 of 480 homes had to be rebuilt. The developer got a slap on the hand and is STILL building houses to this day.
No moisture barrier between the exterior walls and exterior siding and no flashing around the windows to keep moisture from entering the house are just acouple of the things that we had wrong.
These are the SAME things they are doing in Hawks Nest.
We HAVE to be able to hold the city and county inspectors accountable.
Oh, I forgot, this is CdA we are talking about.
Comment by concerned citizen — April 26, 2008 @ 9:20 am
concerned citizen,
Some months ago I contacted Ed Wagner, the City building inspector, about the absence of housewrap in Sunshine Meadows and Hawk’s Nest. He informed me that the building code in effect at that time required a vapor barrier but not the vapor-air penetration barrier (“housewrap”) between siding and exterior sheathing.
All you have to do is look at some of the high-quality residential and commercial construction in our area, and you will see the exterior air-vapor barrier and flashing around the windows. While its installation may not have been a code requirement, it is highly recommended in our region because of the weather. It protects the sheathing from premature decomposition and mildew.
Comment by Bill — April 26, 2008 @ 9:57 am
Bill,
I will have to look that up and find it again. It is in the NBC (National Building Code) which supersedes local code. It is the minimum one can build a structure in all 50 states. How can that be in one area or state and not another?
Comment by concerned citizen — April 26, 2008 @ 11:31 am
concerned citizen,
At its December 18, 2007, meeting, the Coeur d’Alene City Council adopted Council Bill 07-1046 as Ordinance 3325. That ordinance adopted the 2006 International Fire, Building, Residential, Energy Conservation, Fuel Gas, Mechanical and existing codes with amendments, deletions, or additions. I presume this is the current code, but you might want to check with the City to be sure.
Comment by Bill — April 26, 2008 @ 12:12 pm
Does this about sum it up?
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Comment by Will Penny — April 27, 2008 @ 5:59 am
Will Penny,
Roosevelt’s quote fits Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai County.
With no aggressive local newspapers, radio news, and television news here, invisibility becomes easier. The “Sinking hopes” story from last Thursday’s Coeur d’Alene Press would have been a dynamite intro to a multi-part series exposing how honest homebuyers have been betrayed in Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai County. No follow up on Friday, or Saturday, or today by the Press, and nothing at all in the Spokane rag. Invisibility thrives when the news media are accomplices.
Combine manipulated news coverage with an alarming degree of voter apathy and with local political parties that seem more interested in power-brokering than honest government, and continued invisibility is assured.
Comment by Bill — April 27, 2008 @ 8:59 am