Women To Lead Cda City Council Voters Choose Goodlander, Wallace, Servick, Giving Women 4 Of 6 Seats

Women will dominate the City Council for the first time as a result of Tuesday’s election.

Unofficial results show that Coeur d’Alene businesswoman Deanna Goodlander and veteran council members Nancy Sue Wallace and Sue Servick easily won the three council seats in a field of six contenders.

With Dixie Reid, re-elected last year, it means four of the six Coeur d’Alene City Council members are women.

“I’m excited. … Now I’ll start learning,” said Goodlander, who owns Goodies Quik Stop and a trailer court.

Goodlander’s late husband, Jack, who died of cancer in February, wanted his wife to run for the office. “I’ve been thinking about him,” she said at a celebration at Capone’s. “I think he’d be real pleased.

Wallace, a civic activist who first joined the council in 1991, gathered the most votes, according to preliminary results. “I’m thrilled that the voters have faith in me to carry them into the next century,” Wallace said.

She put little stock in the composition of the new council. “The gender of the people will make no difference,” she said.

“We will make good decisions for the citizens.”

Attorney Sue Servick, appointed to the council in 1995, was the second-place vote-getter. She lauded her competitors for joining the race.

“What a commitment of themselves to the city of Coeur d’Alene,” Servick said of the time and effort required to run for office.

Private investor Hank Roseth was next in the ranking, according to early returns.

“I’m a successful businessman. Of course I’m a little disappointed,” Roseth said. “It was too short a campaign to get the message across.”

He attributed name recognition of the winners as one of the reasons for the outcome. Roseth was unsure whether he would take another run at public office.

Independent logger Stan Smith, the lone candidate to question the wisdom of spending taxpayer money on downtown redevelopment, was second to last on the vote tally. Real estate salesman Manny Olvera received the fewest votes, according to early results.

It was a quiet election season, with little division among the candidates. Smith’s unhappiness with downtown revitalization, and his criticism over the possibility that it would mean commercialization of McEuen Field, was the most striking difference among candidates.

, DataTimes