Sgt. Christie: Bloem Top Mayor Bar None

39 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

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  Howard_Martinson on March 14 at 10:49 a.m.

  Sandi has to rank at or near the top. Ray Stone was also an effective mayor. If Al Hassel hadn’t stopped the leaf pickup program, he might still be mayor. Steve Judy was a catastrophe, an embarrassment.

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  christiewood on March 14 at 10:51 a.m.

  Al was a good a Mayor.He was a quiet leader but a consistent one who exercised good judgement.The City empolyees liked him very much. Fortunatley he has chosen to stay in public service as a councilman. He is very thoughtful by making time to attend special events that honor employees.

  Mayor Judy was entertaining.He had a good sense of humor. I always thought he tried his best but sometimes things blew up in his face due to lack of life experience. If he had been in his 40’s and had a little public service under his belt I think his term would have been more rewarding for him and his constituents.

  Mayor Stone is a character! He does not mess around when it comes to telling you what he thinks. I was not employed by the City very long before he left so my experience with him is limited.

  Mayor Fromm was before my time but I know him well due to his long public service to the police department as a reserve officer. He is a nice guy and was a good officer. He left the reserve program last year.

  I think what they all have in common is a love for this community. We have not had to deal with corruption or power hungry people. We have been very fortunate.

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  Sam on March 14 at 11:13 a.m.

  what did judy do wrong?

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  yabetcha on March 14 at 12:32 p.m.

  Christie, you’re sweet but very naive when you say, “we have not had to deal with corruption or power hungry people.”

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  JohnA on March 14 at 3:29 p.m.

  DFO, it is hard to believe you have Steve Judy on the list, and ahead of Don Johnston and Ron Edinger to boot.

  Sam, here’s some things that happened during Judy’s 4-years:

  1- Cost the city $300,000 (some say more) in severance pay for the three city administrators, two police chiefs, two fire chiefs, public works director, treasurer, city attorney and streets supervisor who left during his term. One adminstrator received four months severance after working just 90 days for Judy.
  2- Paid at least $1.6 million for Fire Station #3, five times what Fire Station #2 had cost eight years earlier under Mayor Stone.
  3- To pay for it all, raised property taxes all four years, ending the nine years of no tax increases under Mayors Hassell and Stone.

  And, for good measure:

  4- Insulted his predecessor by refusing to reappoint him to the Board of LCDC (which Al had created as Mayor), a situation since rectified by Mayor Bloem.

  To be fair, here’s two things he got right:

  1- Acquired the Cherry Hill property for a bargain price, and
  2- Got $2 million from the state for the rebuild of Northwest Boulevard, using as matching dollars the $1.5 million left over from the $9 million bond issue that paid for upgrades to Ramsey, Gov’t Way and east Sherman during Mayor Hassell’s term.

  Christie is correct that at age 28 Judy was too young and inexperienced to by Mayor. His lasting legacy will be the expensive, and I say destructive way in which he led the city.

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  DFO on March 14 at 3:44 p.m.

  JohnA; I was judging the mayors in office over my 25 years in Coeur d’Alene. Jim Fromm was more than midway through his term when I arrived in September 1984. Don Johnston and Ron Edinger were mayors before my arrival. I had no opportunity to judge them. Judy made my list simply because he was one of the five mayors who served during my time in CDA. I’m sure that he’d rank on the bottom, if I added Johnston and Edinger to the list.

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  DFO on March 14 at 3:46 p.m.

  BTW, JohnA; you got Judy’s two accomplishments right — Cherry Hill and the beginning of the Northwest Boulevard redevelopment. Gotta give the devil his due.

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  christiewood on March 14 at 5:02 p.m.

  Yabetcha you have such a cute mug that it is hard to argue with you. You did not state what elected official past or present your referring to so I guess I do not have a comment for you. Have a great pug day.

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  Stickman on March 14 at 6:20 p.m.

  I agee with Christie, only because I have met the Mayor many times and like her more each time. She is what we want to represent us, though I’m sure some will disagree. She we always have my vote.

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  cantyoureadthesigns on March 14 at 8:18 p.m.

  What sort of political vacuum/tsunami allowed the very young and politically inexperienced Steve Judy to get elected?

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  JohnA on March 14 at 8:50 p.m.

  “What sort of political vacuum/tsunami allowed the very young and politically inexperienced Steve Judy to get elected?”

  Two things, one of which Howard touched on.

  1- Steve Judy outspent Al by five to one, allowing him to win by 67 votes out of more than 10,000 cast.
  2- Kootenai County in 1997 decided the cost to bring the leaves to the landfill would be close to $100,000, from less than $5,000 the year before. Al Hassell made the right decision to work with the county on a better price, one that didn’t cost his taxpayers that kind of money. In the end, the matter was settled; it shouldn’t have been a campaign issue at all.

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  cantyoureadthesigns on March 14 at 9:22 p.m.

  Thanks for that info, John.

  Where did all this money for Judy come from? How much was self-financed? Pro Steve Judy, or anti-Al?

  67 votes out of 10,000 cast, wow! Was there a hand recount?

  Leaf, or “green” material disposal has also had some rather negative outcomes in Spokane County. Can’t remember how much the composting plant fiasco cost a few years ago, but it was multi-million$.

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  JIMMYMAC on March 15 at 12:16 a.m.

  I don’t have much of a comment here regarding the ranking but am very glad we have JohnA here with so much history and information to offer us here on HBO. Grazi!

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  JohnA on March 15 at 11:52 a.m.

  Thank you, Jimmy. It was nice meeting you at blogfest, if only briefly.

  Cantyouread: Judy comes from a rich Boise-area family (his mother is a Little, his uncle is Lt. Governor) so the money was never an issue. He also was the executive director of Concerned Business of North Idaho when he ran, so he may have had some backing from them.

  It didn’t help that Judy kept his candidacy a secret and filed for the position on the last day possible. That made it tough for Al to get his campaign going. Plus, Al was deeply involved that fall with creating the city’s urban renewal agency. He devoted his time to city business and not so much to campaigning, which is the kind of leader Al is. I’m glad he’s back on the Council and again involved with LCDC.
  
  My biggest issue with Judy was that he was not honest about his intentions for the office once he was elected. He denied to me the rumors that he wanted to clean house from the top down starting with the administrator, finance director (me) and city attorney. I met with him during that time because I was offered a lucrative position in Post Falls, as well as the position of Assistant Finance Director for Boise, and was ready to move on if he didn’t want me. He assured me the rumors were false so I stayed at CDA, only to hear that at his first Council meeting two weeks later that he wanted to start the house-cleaning.

  In the end, Judy moved to Boise, Sandy Bloem to the Mayor’s office and those of us who left during his administration ended up with good positions elsewhere.

  Like they say, all’s well that ends well. :)

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  Stickman on March 15 at 7:05 p.m.

  Thanks John, I liike that. All’s well that end’s well. Perfect.

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  cantyoureadthesigns on March 15 at 7:19 p.m.

  Thanks for the info on Steve Judy’s campaign and his lack of honesty, evident upon taking office, JohnA.

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  Stickman on March 15 at 7:32 p.m.

  In person, John is exactly how he speaks. I like that, and of course the lovely Deena, who I have also met. Such a nice couple are they, I am thankful to have met them.

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  hmoffsuite on March 15 at 7:35 p.m.

  JohnA. You left out one brief chapter of the Judy saga. He went out into the cruel business world, started his own, and failed rather rapidly. Had he done that before becoming Mayor, and not after, I think he would have been a better Mayor.

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  Sam on March 15 at 10:56 p.m.

  John, thank you very much for enlightening me. I was never at all concerned about Cd’A politics as a kid, so I knew none of that. Heck, I was never even a voter in Cd’A, technically, since I turned 18 in Hollywood and my first election was as a university student in Moscow while attending UI. Good times.

  I must say, I think it’s utterly fantastic that a campaign issue in my home city is how leaves are transported to a landfill and that 10,000 votes is an election. Absolutely love it. I miss home.

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  JohnA on March 15 at 11:02 p.m.

  Thanks, Stickman. We’ll stop by again soon.

  Hmoffsuite: Yes, I heard he blew through about $3 million in family funds with his business venture (now the Harley Davidson store on Appleway).

  You may be right that having been in business first might have made him a better mayor. He might have needed the failure to get him from mayor to the next step - career politician.

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