A divided Idaho Supreme Court today overturned a lower court ruling that upheld the city of Challis’ decision to incur $3.2 million in public debt for repairs and improvements to its city water system without a public vote, finding that two of the three projects included in the upgrades weren’t “urgently needed.” Those two projects, replacement of water meters and installation of a new telemetry system, represented roughly 30 percent of the overall project’s cost; the larger piece was constructing a new line to the airport and replacing aging pipes and fire hydrants in the city’s Old Town area.

A group called “Consent of the Governed Caucus” objected to the move; the justices remanded the case back to district court in Custer County with instructions to award reasonable attorney fees to the group. You can read the full decision here. It’s a 3-2 decision, authored by Justice Joel Horton, with Justices Dan Eismann and Warren Jones concurring; Chief Justice Jim Jones dissented, and Justice Roger Burdick concurred with the dissent. Jones wrote that the framers of Idaho’s Constitution didn’t require that “there must be a great sense of urgency in the present year for a governmental subdivision to incur indebtedness exceeding revenues or income in order to repair or improve existing infrastructure.”

“The framers of the Idaho Constitution were thrifty people, concerned about the possibility of county and city governments incurring unnecessary debt, but they were also practical people who looked to the future,” Jones wrote. “They hoped and expected that cities in Idaho would grow, that municipal services for those cities would necessarily expand, and that such services would require periodic updating. And, they did not want to place unnecessary fiscal restraints upon county and municipal governments.”

In the majority opinion, Horton wrote that the court must consider the project as a whole, and it must be determined to be an “ordinary and necessary” expense in order to occur without a public vote on the debt. “We cannot say that the proposed metering and telemetry upgrades are necessary,” he wrote. “Metering and telemetry upgrades are undoubtedly desirable from an economic perspective. However, the need for these upgrades cannot be characterized as urgent. … The city must get by with what it has until it obtains approval for these expenditures from the electorate.”