Board discusses historic preservation

Whitman County Commissioners Monday discussed the possibility of opening the historic preservation fund at their morning workshop.

Commissioner Michael Largent reported he has been asked about interest in using the historic preservation fund for a project in Pullman.

“The historic preservation fund works the same way as .09 money, you open it up to all the organizations, not just the one,” said Maribeth Becker, clerk of the board. “They will be competing with others.”

Currently, the county historic preservation fund totals $60,000. These funds can also be used by the county if needed.

The fund hasn’t been opened in the time that commissioners Art Swannack and Dean Kinzer have been on the board.

“I don’t have a problem with opening it up because I think there would be several outfits that would be applying for it,” Swannack said. “Small town wise they could use it.”

It was mentioned by Becker that some of this money could possibly be used in document preservation for commissioner documents.

“There is only $22,000 left in document preservation for commissioners documents,” Becker said. “When that money is gone, we have no money for document preservation. It originated with a grant from the state.”

Becker did note the amount needed for document preservation fluctuates over the years. On average when the documents are sent into the state it costs roughly $10,000 to $15,000.

“It’s not every year, just the years I send stuff to the state. I’m gearing up for it for 2020,” Becker said.

Swannack suggested possibly including document preservation as a line item in the budget.

“Why can’t we fund this out of our general fund as one of our line items,” Swannack asked. “I mean taking our current expense money and putting it into document preservation as one of our jobs.”

Swannack added that keeping the records protected is as important as anything else, but the money doesn’t need to come from the historic preservation fund.

The historic preservation fund generates approximately $5,500 a year.

Largent concluded the discussion saying that he will discuss and look into this further and come back with more information at a future workshop.