July 2025 Board Meeting Minutes

by | Feb 27, 2026 | Meetings & Minutes

 

West Central Mountains Economic Development Council

July 2025 Board Meeting Minutes

July 8, 2025 3:00pm

Donnelly City Hall Community Room, 169 Halferty St, Donnelly, ID 83615
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88234961292?pwd=nSUrhBKZK9aumQR7GdPECJcnE0PDTl.1

In-Person Board Members: Julie Good, Sherry Maupin

Online Board Members: Vonna Torrey, Dylan Martin, Kelly Hill, Rachel Wessel, Belinda Provancher

Guests: Ron Coate (in-person), Mindi Anderson (online), Lindsey Harris (in-person), Trace McKellips (in-person)

Board Meeting called to order at 3:05pm

  • Call to Order, Welcoming of Guests (Ron Coate joined us as in interested potential board member)
  • Approval of July Agenda
    • Motion by Julie
    • 2nd by Sherry
    • Motion Passes
  • Approval of June Minutes
    • Motion by Vonna
    • 2nd by Sherry
    • Motion Passes
  • Treasurer’s report
    • Approval of July Treasurer’s Report
      • Motion by Sherry
      • 2nd by Dylan
      • Motion Passes
    • Letter(s) of support: None this month
    • Executive Items
      • New Board Member Interest: Ron Coate, native Idahoan, longstanding Boise experience, sold his financial advisory business recently, and has time and wants to give back to the community. Motivated by responsible growth and development. Fund Raising experience in the past. Affordable housing interest as well. Lindsey to send follow up information to Ron if he wishes to apply for a seat on the board.
      • Vice President Seat: with Joni’s departure, the Board has not had a VP designee. Rachel Wessel has agreed to step-up into the VP role on the Executive Board.
        • Motion by Julie for Rachel’s designation as Vice President
        • 2nd by Sherry
        • Motion Passes
      • WCMEDC Bylaws: review seeking clarification on the following – Section II, at large directors’ clarification specific to geographic representation, looking for support from the local governments to submit a representative of their community for participation. Creating a more robust program. We have 5 designated Directors and 3 Chambers as well as Adams County representative. We will review each board member to determine their representation. Additional clarification of Proxy vs. Electronic voting for time sensitive matters. Additionally, there is only one vote per Director. Article III, Section 6, clarification on Committee Quorum requirements, removing the advisory Committees.  Due to further clarity and review, the Board determined a more in-depth review should be done by interested board members in a special meeting to review the By-Laws and share the findings at the next meeting or when they are able to conduct the review.
        • Motion tabled to approve the By-Laws with amendments at a later meeting after further assessment and review.
      • Executive Director Contract completed in July.
    • Executive Director Update
      • June 26th Commerce Connect Event roundup, 4 communities represented. We had nearly 30 people attend. Happy with the turnout. Attendees relayed that the most valuable part they felt was the sharing of community projects. Would like to see more of this opportunity for the region to share in the future. They saw the value in that.
      • July 14th City of New Meadows Presentation. This will no longer coincide with the open house for the new City Hall building.
      • July 21-25 Northwest Community Development Institute in Boise. Lindsey will be attending for the whole week for her 2nd year of the 3 year program.
      • November 2025 Economic Summit Update, next week planning committee meeting is planned, potential to hold the meeting at Brundage in their new tent. An option they are considering.
      • Other Updates, we were recommended for workforce funding by City of McCall Local Option Tax Committee and were highly regarded in the application review process. Now will go to City Council for approval of their funding recommendations. These funds would be to offer additional programming like what was conducted in April.
    • Early Childhood Education (Trace)
      • Cascade Community Center is scheduled to open a child care center, they received a large funding injection and it has been officially approved.
      • New Meadows is pending an open house sometime in August for their youth and early childhood center.
      • Roots Forest School is still looking for its permanent home, seeking community connections and conversations to generate support. Possibly connecting with the Alscott group to communicate interest in the Camp Morrison property.
      • 21st Century Grant, K-12 funds are being reviewed and may be going away.
    • Community Reports
      • Valley County: Has taken over the management of Horsethief Campground from the YMCA, it has been profitable for the past few years. They are excited to get started and will be working on recreation access point accessibility. Family Ignite is going into the Cascade Community Center. Senior Support group activities are on the rise. Sampson school walking path extension approved for Phase II. Company that is Recycling wood debris will include wood in the future. Prosecuting Attorney resigned yesterday for a career opportunity at the state level. Will be looking to fill that position. New grant funding cycle is upcoming. Will be looking to open to more options than the normal funding sources. Highway 55 corridor study by ITD was approved. Sherry will be waiting to see ITD’s next steps and timeline. We will want community engagement on this.  Making progress on short term rental challenges on the state level.
      • Cascade: 4th of July was very busy, 5K run raised 4K for the chamber. Focus is on membership at this time. Seeing higher participation.
      • Donnelly: Market is in full swing for the summer.
      • McCall – No report available.
      • New Meadows: R& M Steel donated a cover just outside of the pre-school area. Skate Park, moving dirt, drains, plans for opening in 3 months. Taping and texturing at the youth center. Focus on fundraising. City Halll officially moved into the historic Train Depot, seeing volumes of activity already and additional foot traffic to the museum. Meadows Valley is seeking a plan and clarification on community impact on developments, and how those will affect water and sewer etc. Farmers Market is going great. Outside inspector has been put in place to monitor Ziply during installation. Partners in Attendance.
    • WCMEDC Updates:
      • Creative District Update (Delta) Self-Guided Artisans event this week for “Artisans in the Mountains”
      • Community Action Team (CAT) Updates:
        • Community Development (Lindsey)
          • T-Mobile grants were sent to community stakeholders.
          • Ski Heritage wall mural is starting today by the Chevron in McCall converting a blank wall into a beautiful ski heritage mural. Lindsey helped the Board with their public engagement for the artwork. Will be a Main Street win for downtown McCall.
        • Housing (Kelly)
          • Things are progressing, getting new leases signed at the Housing Trust
          • Confirmed the 50K LOT fund was approved by the City Council for the Housing Trust’s Jacob’s Manor lot.
          • Raven Ridge project in Cascade is behind schedule- Trust hopes for a fully erected building in August.
          • 19 units in total by the end of next year will be in the Housing Trust’s inventory that will just help provide more units.
          • GEM grant seeking clarity on the match requirements for the housing needs assessment gap funding from last year.
          • CAT team looking for a housing whitepaper concept and town hall strategy to educate the community, what the public/private sectors can and cannot do, facilitate thoughtful community discussions regarding the complex issue of local housing.
        • Infrastructure (Julie)
          • EDC be the entity to convene, the CAT was reluctant to take on that role due to propriety information held by individual water and sewer districts. The CAT had reservations about citing specific capacity and project details to the public that may or may be accurate and also that will and can change.
        • Workforce Development (Lindsey) – CAT met on July 8th. Lindsey had applied for the City of McCall LOT and Stibnite Foundation for the small business resources and programming. Have not found out about the Stibnite Foundation yet. Group is looking at other funding that is potentially available to expand and support CTE and career development for young adults. Youth have been coming up a lot and ways we can support youth workforce and career opportunities.
        • Broadband (Lindsey) – have not heard from Chris Curtain on a status of the letter of intent that the EDC and other regional stakeholders signed and sent to ENT for a community owned fiber network assessment. Will need to follow-up. Apparently the Middle Mile project has continued to move along. Still seeking properties in the communities for their small “offramp” buildings for the fiber to be housed.
      • New Business – Next board meeting Julie would like to present to the Board a five-year fiscal review to just go over where we were, where we’ve been, how we have evolved and changed.
      • Public Comment- None
      • Adjournment at 5:08 pm