Donoval appeals records ruling
Jim Donoval, husband and sometimes attorney for former Sun Valley City Administrator Sharon Hammer, has appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court a ruling in 5th District Court denying his request that the city be compelled to explain what happened to allegedly missing bill-payment authorization forms.
Donoval filed a lawsuit against the city on Aug. 20, claiming that it produced copies of only 25 of 42 forms, called “yellow sheets,” from 2010 and 2011 that he had requested in March 2012. Donoval asked the court to compel the city to either produce the forms or explain what happened to them.
In February, Judge Jonathan Brody ruled that the city had done all that could reasonably be expected of it in producing the yellow sheets and that Idaho’s Public Records Law does not give the court authority to order the city to “explain what happened” to documents that it does not have.
“I believe that the Public Records laws provide a judge with much broader powers to demand that a government entity answer questions, under oath, as to what happened to documents that former officials, both former Mayor [Wayne] Willich and Ms. Hammer, swore under oath in affidavits existed when they left office in January of 2012,” Donoval said.
Wake Up Hailey set for Tuesday
Representatives from the 5B Bike Share program will be at the Hailey Chamber of Commerce’s Wake Up Hailey event on Tuesday, April 9, from 9-10 a.m. at the Hailey Public Library. They will tell attendees about the “smart bikes” that will be around town. People are invited to come and enjoy a cup of coffee, a light treat and conversation about the chamber.
For more information, call the chamber at 788-3484.
City: Holiday lights must go dark
Holiday lights in Ketchum must be turned off starting April 19 to comply with the city’s Dark Skies ordinance, which gives more lenience to such lighting in the winter than it does during the summer.
The ordinance states that holiday lights are exempt from the ordinance’s requirements from Nov. 1 through April 15. The city’s Planning Division confirmed that this year the city will begin enforcing the lights-out date on April 19. Even during the winter, the ordinance “encourages” people to turn holiday lights off after bedtime and close of business. The ordinance prohibits flashing holiday lights on commercial properties and “discourages” them on residential properties.
Holiday lights are defined in the ordinance as “festoon” type lights, limited to small individual bulbs on a string, where the spacing of bulbs is not closer than three inches and where the output per bulb is no greater than 15 lumens. For more information on the ordinance, call the city’s Planning Division at 726-7801.
Anti-DUI effort yields 6 arrests
Police in the Magic and Wood River valleys made six DUI arrests during high-visibility impaired-driving enforcement patrols from March 10-18. Using federal grant funds, the Idaho Transportation Department partnered with the Idaho State Police and local agencies.
“The effort is part of Idaho’s Toward Zero Deaths’ goal to someday have no traffic deaths on Idaho’s roads,” said Kevin Bechen with ITD’s Office of Highway Operations and Safety.
According to the ITD, in 2010 there were 10,726 DUI arrests in Idaho and 1,593 impaired-driving crashes. Those resulted in 96 fatalities, almost 46 percent of all vehicle-crash fatalities that year.
During the campaign, District 4 Idaho State Police troopers also issued 183 speeding tickets and 89 citations for seat belt or child restraint violations.