The City received a 2020 Association of Idaho Cities (AIC) Achievement Award for Community Outreach and Engagement. Opportunities for the public to participate in governance efforts and the decision-making process include surveys, workshops, blogs, Facebook, e-mail, master planning presentations, local media, Open Town Hall, and Engage Sandpoint, an online app where citizens can learn about city initiatives, provide input, identify issues, and report problems.

Engage Sandpoint is the official app for the City of Sandpoint, giving residents and visitors an easy way to report non-emergency issues, such as snow removal concerns, potholes and noise complaints. Once a request has been submitted, the user can monitor progress and will receive a notification when the concern has been resolved.

In 2019, the City closed nearly 100 percent of issues reported. The performance goals for 2020 are as follows:

1. 100 percent of issues are acknowledged; and,

2. The average time to acknowledge reported issues is within 48 hours.

Logan Simpson has been contracted to update the City's Comprehensive Plan. Utilizing extensive public input through open houses, workshops forums, surveys, and stakeholder outreach, the Comprehensive Plan will help guide the City's major decision, policies and planning efforts through the next 20 years.

The City has been awarded over $1,000,000 in grants for fiscal year 2020-21 with the outcome of many grant applications still pending.

The use of data has become a critical component of planning efforts citywide including water and wastewater treatment, the Comprehensive Plan update, housing assessment, and development of performance metrics to measure the success of city initiatives. A new section was added to Title 1, Chapter 15 of the Sandpoint City Code establishing enterprise performance measurement standards. Performance metrics will be an ongoing part of the budget process.

The Sandpoint Fire Department implemented pre-construction inspections as part of the building permit process resulting in an improvement in Sandpoint’s Public Protection Classification (PPC) from four to three. Virtually all U.S. insurers of homes and business properties use the PPC in calculating premiums and the price of fire insurance in a community with a good PPC is substantially lower than in a community with a poor PPC, assuming all other factors are equal.

The Sandpoint Police Department’s School Resource Officer is a law enforcement officer assigned to the schools within the City of Sandpoint and, through an agreement with the City of Kootenai, Kootenai Elementary. The SRO’s work in collaboration (SRO) educators, students, parents, and the community to reduce crime, drug abuse, and violence with the overall goal of providing a safe school environment. The SRO attains specialty certification through Idaho POST and receives specialized training to perform three main roles, law enforcement officer, law related counselor, and law related education teacher.

Independent, regulatory audits and regular monitoring serves to verify water the quality and compliance of the drinking water.

In 2019 the Idaho Department of Environment Quality (IDEQ) conducted a Sanitary Survey (audit) of the City's drinking water system. The Sanitary Survey found NO significant deficiencies. Significant deficiency is any system design, operation, maintenance, or administration, as well as any failure or malfunction of any system component that the IDEQ determines to cause, or have potential to cause risk to health or safety, or that could affect the reliable delivery of safe drinking water.

Each year the City takes hundreds of water samples to identify the presence of any radioactive, biological, inorganic, volatile organic, or synthetic organic contaminants. The test results indicate that no contaminants exceeded the maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) and most were not present (detectable).

The City of Sandpoint's current wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was originally built with components purchased from the Farragut Naval Station in 1955. Portions of the original plant are still in use today over 60 years later. Although the WWTP operates in compliance with the regulatory permit (including all discharges into the Pend Orielle River), Sandpoint's WWTP is now at the end of its useful life span (maintenance/repairs are no longer practical) and in August of 2018, the City Council adopted a facility plan to replace and reconstruct the facility at its current location by 2026. The replacement project will ensure the City remains in compliance with permit conditions and state and federal laws.