Proposal would combine Pocatello and Chubbuck into one city under new name

[TexasTowelie]

Pocatello City Council President Jim Johnston is championing a long-shot plan he’s convinced would result in big municipal savings, thereby easing a weighty tax burden on many Bannock County residents.

Nonetheless, Johnston acknowledges a lot of people won’t like the idea he’s espousing — especially if they live in Pocatello’s northern neighbor, Chubbuck.

Johnston is in the early stages of researching the merits of merging Pocatello and Chubbuck to avoid duplicating services and to improve efficiency. He hopes to have the issue of combining the cities on next spring’s election ballot.

“There’s quite a group who feel we could accomplish a lot if we went to the very highest source of spending within our Bannock County, and that would be the two cities,” said Johnston, who plans to make merging the cities an issue in his upcoming bid for re-election. “If we could eliminate duplication of services, we would save huge dollars and be able to reduce the tax burden.”

Read more: https://www.idahostatejournal.com/news/local/proposal-would-combine-pocatello-and-chubbuck-into-one-city-under/article_d4e33823-764d-5dbd-aa91-e53836c251ba.html

[lanlady]

1. Put it to a vote

Chubbatello or Pocabuck?

[Zambero]

2. Howzabout...

Pocabuckachubbatello??? In keeping with the area's agricultural output, that name would also include all the letters found in "potato".

[2naSalit]

3. Well...

I lived there for quite a while and it isn't like folks in Pocatello are fond of Chubbuck, which is basically a bedroom community to the north of Pocatello, an old RR city. Pocatello is the name of a Shoshone leader, I don't know where they came up with Chubbuck but it's probably the name of some mormon. And they both have contaminated water.

After reading the article... So this Satterfield guy is not only a commissioner or whatever, he's also a major property owner in both communities and a major developer of housing, mostly, but other types too. He has a beef with the tax codes (and possibly zoning) for each community and since he conducts similar business in each, I would imagine that he doesn't like something about the way Chubbuck does business when it comes to development. There is little space left between Chubbuck and the Fort Hall Indian Reservation to the north of Chubbuck. There are houses and tilt ups as far as you can see. I recall when Chubbuck was pretty rural, about twenty years ago.

And I can't see how anyone can live in Chubbuck since Simplot regularly fouls the air from the elemental phosphate processing plant directly upwind of that end of the Snake River Plane. It always smells like someone dumped a pallet of ripped open bags of fertilizer in your yard. It's bad enough in the Pocatello valley when there's a temperature inversion, happens often in winter, all the pollution from Simplot fills the valley and it's nearly impossible to breathe.

And the water is tainted with it too.

But I digress...

So if Satterfield is pushing for this merger, he has something significant to gain from it. If the the church is into it, the sheep will vote for it. And it will end up costing everyone because they have no water except for what is piped in from a reservoir thirty miles away with Simplot in between.

It's an interesting landscape around there but it's a hard place to make a living.