Valley County to manage Horse Thief Reservoir campground under MOU with state agency

Valley County commissioners voted Feb. 17 to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game that transfers summer management of the Horse Thief Reservoir campground to the county.

Director Binghamen, who presented the item, said the county and Fish and Game have worked together on the agreement and on the provisions it contains. "This is us moving forward, taking over the horse thief campground management for the summer and, you know, the provisions that we built into it," Binghamen said during the meeting.

Binghamen told commissioners the county has been coordinating the MOU with the Fish and Game agency and the county's legal office and has prepared job descriptions for campground staff. "We're trying to get our 2 positions filled or I should say our 5 positions filled out there," Binghamen said, using varying figures when describing planned seasonal hires. He also said the county will work with the recreation board at a future meeting to finalize a budget proposal for the campground.

Commissioner Caldwell moved to sign the MOU; the motion was seconded and approved by voice vote. Chair (unnamed) and other commissioners responded "aye" during the roll call by voice; no roll-call tally by named commissioners was recorded in the transcript.

The county will now finalize staffing and a budget for the campground and will send copies of the signed MOU to commissioners, the director said. The recreation board is expected to see the budget proposal at a future meeting.

Clarifying details: the transcript uses inconsistent names for the site (references to "Horse Thief" and to "Horse State Reservoir Campgrounds property"); the director also gave inconsistent counts for seasonal positions (two and five). Those discrepancies were noted aloud during the meeting and remain unresolved in the record.

The commission did not identify funding sources for the campground operating budget during the discussion.