A rendering of the New Meadows Childcare Center that is under construction and expected to open in the summer of 2025.

New Meadows Mayor Julie Good and City Clerk Kyla Gardner attended the Community Health Academy in 2022. The Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health program is a learning collaborative that provides opportunities for city and community leaders to explore how they can improve the health of their communities.

“I think the largest takeaway that I had from the academy was that it’s OK to think outside the box in regard to your own community and not be stuck on what another community may have done,” Mayor Good said.

Thinking outside the box has become somewhat of a norm in New Meadows. The small city of about 500 residents, sits at the north end of Adams County and is about 12 miles from McCall, a place where many people do their shopping and access healthcare. New Meadows doesn’t have a grocery store and faces numerous other resource challenges.

That hasn’t stopped the city from applying some of its learnings from the Community Health Academy, which included sessions on childcare and early education, housing, designing healthy communities, civility, food systems, and storytelling and branding.

Childcare and early education was one topic that resonated with New Meadows.

Kyla Gardner is the New Meadows city clerk.

“We really struggle with childcare,” Gardner said. “We have teachers bringing their babies with them to school and class with them. We are losing out on forest service employees because there is not daycare for local employees, the same with the small businesses in town. The Community Health Academy really started that conversation for us about how do we fix this problem, what creative things could we come up with?”

AN INNOVATIVE SOLUTION

The city acquired an old recycling center and is converting it into a childcare and youth center. The project, funded largely from a grant from Idaho Commerce, is expected to open this summer. The Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health provided New Meadows with a grant for a feasibility study to see if converting the old building would work.

It did. One part of the facility will be used for childcare and early education, while another will serve as a youth center and have after-school programs.

“It’s going to have a big impact, and not just on the childcare side,” Good said. “It’s also creating a space for youth, and we’ve never had that before in our community. There’s also going to be an economic impact because we’ll have another place that could hire people to work. There are a lot of different impacts we’re going to feel from it.”

None of which is larger than the childcare. Good pointed out that one of the public works employees in the city takes her children to daycare in McCall every day, which equates to almost two hours of drive time each day. The cost of fuel and wear-and-tear on a vehicle are additional obstacles that New Meadows residents faced.

TRANSPORTATION ISSUES

That city employee isn’t alone. Many New Meadows residents work in McCall, plus others need to travel to the city for other necessities. There is bus service — Mountain Community Transit operated by Treasure Valley Transit — between the two cities that runs eight times a day. Funding from the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health allowed the free transportation to expand from two to five days a week.

New Meadows Mayor Julie Good attended the Community Health Academy in 2022.

“I cannot express how impactful that has been for our community,” Good said.

Ridership from the program has jumped from 80 riders a month to 237 in December 2024. People can take the bus to grocery stores, medical appointments, and more.

“We’re reaching commuters in the mornings and evenings,” she said. “It’s just been so powerful for our community to be able to offer that.”

COMMUNITY HEALTH ACADEMY GRANT

Cities that complete the academy receive funding for a project.

New Meadows opted to purchase and install a rectangular rapid flashing beacon crosswalk to make it safer for pedestrians to cross Idaho 95, a state highway that runs through downtown.

“As things are growing, highway use is increasing a lot, and vehicles come screaming through our little town,” Gardner said. “We have a great park in New Meadows that people use for walking and all sorts of things, but we never had a safe way for people to get across the busy highway.”

The crosswalk, which was bolstered by incorporating highly reflective paint, has made a difference in vehicle speed and ensuring compliance while people cross.

“A couple years ago we put in flashing speed limit signs on all corners of town, but those are not as effective as the flashing crosswalk signs. Those just bring everybody to a stop,” Good said. “That crosswalk is used all of the time, and it made us realize how helpful and safety oriented it is. In fact, because of that, we’re going to put one down by the new childcare center.”