Hi everyone — here’s what I found worth knowing from around Emmett and Gem County this week.

CITY & COUNTY

Merrill’s Pit was approved, with a longer list of conditions. On Tuesday night, Gem County commissioners unanimously approved Granite Excavation’s 393-acre Merrill’s Pit gravel project near Star Lane and Sales Yard Road — but they added a set of conditions that have to be met before Phase 1 can start, including items like continuous watering during crushing, road/traffic requirements, and expanded groundwater monitoring. (More on the specific conditions in the full story link below.)

• KIVI story: https://www.kivitv.com/news/local-news/in-your-neighborhood/emmett/gem-county-approves-393-acre-merrills-pit-gravel-project-after-months-of-heated-debate

The City’s meeting page still looks behind. As of this week, the City of Emmett’s meeting page shows the most recent posted packet as the June 23 regular meeting, and the most recent posted minutes as the June 9 meeting. It also lists a July 7 special meeting, but I didn’t see newer packets/minutes beyond June.

• City meetings page: https://www.cityofemmett.org/meeting

SCHOOLS

The May levy failed — and the district is now publicly treating Emmett as “no supplemental levy” again. On the district’s levy/bond transparency page, Emmett Schools notes that the May 2026 supplemental levy measure failed and emphasizes that there are currently no school bonds or supplemental levies being paid to the district from local taxpayers.

• District levy page: https://www.emmettschools.org/transparency/2023-levy

DEVELOPMENT

No clearly new SH-16 milestone posted this week — but the official project status remains in the environmental reevaluation stage. ITD’s SH-16 (SH-44 to SH-52) page says the department is still in the final stages of an environmental reevaluation, with the last major public open houses listed as September 2025.

• ITD project page: https://itd.idaho.gov/project/sh-16-from-sh-44-to-sh-52/

COMMUNITY

If you’re looking for “what’s next” after Cherry Festival season, I didn’t find a fresh, clean list of August events published in an easy-to-read format this week — the Chamber’s events search page was still showing late-June/early-July listings when I checked.

• Chamber events search: https://business.emmettidaho.com/events/search

SPORTS

We’re in the summer gap for high school sports. If you’ve got Little League results, summer ball tournament notes, or standout performances you want included, reply and point me to an official schedule/result page and I’ll work them into next week’s issue. Otherwise, I’ll resume more detailed high school coverage when fall sports start showing real game results in late August.

Thanks for reading — and if you see something I missed, send it my way.