County Offers Liberty Lake Home As Rental Ends Deal Where Caretaker Had Beachfront Home For $95 A Month

The Spokane County Parks Department is looking to become a landlord.

A county-owned home at Liberty Lake park will be renovated and then leased for $750 to $1,000 a month - its fair market value.

The home was occupied for more than five years by a fairgrounds maintenance worker who doubled as an assistant caretaker at the park.

County officials recently decided that his reduced rent of $95 a month was not in the taxpayers’ best interest.

After all, said the county’s assistant chief administrative officer, Fran Boxer, “the front yard is the lake.”

The worker, a distant cousin of County Commissioner Steve Hasson, moved out of the home at 2018 Zephyr Road in early April rather than pay full rent.

After repairs are completed, the home will be rented to a non-county employee, Boxer said.

That leaves two other county-owned homes, at Liberty and Bear lakes.

Those are for full-time caretakers who receive regular county salaries - $21,000 to $28,800 a year - plus the reduced monthly rent of just $95.

Boxer and parks director Wyn Birkenthal said the county wants to determine whether the caretakers do enough afterhours work to justify the discount.

But any changes must go through the union.

The reduced rent was written into the union contract several years ago in lieu of the county paying massive overtime, said Bill Keenan, who represents most county employees.

“You wouldn’t believe how many nights these people (caretakers) couldn’t get rest,” Keenan said. “People were partying, knocking on their doors wanting stuff, coming and going all night.

“By any stretch of the imagination, that is overtime.”

Keenan said the union enjoys a cordial relationship with the Parks Department and will listen with an open mind to any proposed changes.

But Keenan said a past evaluation showed that discounted rent was much cheaper for the taxpayers than time-and-a-half.

In addition to cheap rent, the caretakers also don’t have to pay utilities, which average about $75 a month at both homes.

“I would have never entered rent into the union contract,” Birkenthal said, “but it’s there and it’s hard to get out.”

Boxer said she ordered the review of the county’s rentals after they came to her attention a few months ago.

“I believe we’re more attuned to accountability and the public,” she said.

, DataTimes