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Dealer Advisory Board to provide annual report
at transportation board meeting Thursday

Bobby Petersen, chairman of the Dealer Advisory Board, will summarize activities and accomplishments of the past year with the Idaho Transportation Board when it meets in Boise Thursday.

The Dealer Advisory Board (DAB) was established to assist and advise ITD in the administration of and activities related to motor vehicle dealers and salesmen licensing. The DAB is composed of eight members. Five represent new vehicle dealerships, two represent used vehicle dealerships and one represents the recreational vehicle industry.

During the past year the advisory board concurred with the department’s recommendations for denying a renewal of a dealer license in Hayden.

It considered two legislative proposals. The first concept was to change the DAB membership from eight to 10 by doubling representation of used vehicle dealerships. The proposal would included one member from northern Idaho and one from eastern Idaho. It also suggested adding a motorcycle dealer as a non-voting, ex-officio member until motorcycle dealers form their own association and then formally add an additional member to the DAB.

The second legislative proposal was to replace the current required open book test with an eight-hour pre-licensing class. The DAB generally favored the change, but ITD staff indicated it would like further review and discussion on roles and responsibilities under the new proposal.

Other board discussion

Annual report on outdoor advertising signs
ITD’s right-of-way staff will submit its annual off-premise outdoor advertising sign report to the board, covering the period of Oct. 1, 2008 through this September. During that period, 25 permits for new signs were processed. ITD required the removal of 51 illegal signs – 45 in District 3 and six in District 1. ROW staff report 13 illegal signs remain in Districts 1, 2, 3, and 6. They have identified another 178 non-conforming signs throughout the state.

Illegal signs that do not comply with state and federal law must be removed. Non-conforming signs at one time complied with the law, but because of subsequent changes (such as in roadway alignment or new rules), have lost their conforming status. Non-conforming signs are allowed to remain in place but cannot be improved.

Professional services agreements and term agreement work task report
ITD staff is required by board policy to report on all professional services that were used during the preceding month. Professional services are defined as engineering (i.e., material inspection, bridge inspection, construction inspection, design, environmental, archaeological, geotechnical engineering, transportation planning, public involvement, and information technology engineering), architectural, legal, accounting, claim analysis, auditing and right-of way-services where negotiating the price is the accepted practice of the profession.

In November, 13 new professional services agreements and work tasks were issued in the amount of $1.8 million. Seven of the agreements were issued because ITD did not have the resources in-house to do the work, consisting of design, surveying, planning, construction and environmental. One agreement issued because special expertise in the hydraulics field was needed. The other five agreements were for local agencies.