Balance North Idaho PAC emerges to restore nonpartisanship in city, school and hospital elections.

Huckleberrries is interviewing President Eden Irgens of Balance North Idaho, a new group that's formed for endorsing candidates and issues in nonpartisan races in Kootenai County. You can find the Balance North Idaho Facebook page here. And the Balance North Idaho Web page here. Following is a question & answer:

Huckleberries -- Is your group a response to the Reagan Republicans or any other partisan group in the area?

Eden Irgens -- Our group formed because we felt that there are several groups promoting their ideologies in positions where we feel ideologies shouldn't reside.

• Q -- How would you combat a charge that you're simply an ideological group from the other side?
• Irgens -- If they look at voting records and registrations of the five board members, they'll find we aren't very different from them. The five are: Mic Armon (treasurer), Steve Widmyer (of the Fort Ground Tavern), Elva Allan (Chief Allan's wife) and Sara Meyer (of Citizens for a Positive Coeur d'Alene).
• Q -- What do you hope to accomplish first?
• Irgens -- We will be interviewing candidates for the Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls and Lakeland school boards and the Kootenai Health Board of Trustee races in next few weeks.
• Q -- Why Kootenai Health?
• Irgens -- Kootenai Health has ability to levy and has about $17M in foregone taxes that (ideological groups) could go after. The two seats that are up in May will have more than one candidate vying for each seat.
• More below

• Q -- How do you differ from Citizens for a Positive Coeur d'Alene and Community Education Partnership?
• Irgens -- CItizens for Positive Coeur d'Alene is a Facebook group where positive news about Coeur d'Alene is shared. I hope (that Balance North Idaho is) a presence there frequently. And Community Education Partnership is a group of people who help get volunteers into schools. They are recruiting from businesses to get volunteers into schools. We're a political actiion committee.
• Q --Do you have financing to take on Reagan Republicans heavy financing?
• Irgens -- We are working on it.
• Q -- How can someone find out more about you?
• Irgens -- We have a Web site (www.balanceni.com) and a Facebook page.

Question: Do you think it's time to restore balance to city, school and hospital elections?

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