CdA council books new location

The Coeur d’Alene City Council will move Tuesday to roomier chambers at the new Coeur d’Alene Public Library.

There are few sentimental attachments to the current chambers in City Hall, where the council has been meeting since about 1978 – and where sometimes people had to stand in the hall, straining to hear debate.

The brass plaque on the building reads 1978 but the official dedication was in March 1979. None of the remaining staff remembers for sure. But it doesn’t matter – they all look forward to the new room just a short walk from City Hall.

“Hell, no,” said Councilman Ron Edinger, the grandfather of city government who as a former mayor has served since 1968. “I don’t care where we meet.”

If he has any attachment it’s to the original City Hall at the corner of Fifth and Sherman, where shops and office space now fill what was once the mayor’s office along with the Fire and Police departments.

Mayor Sandi Bloem said there’s a general sense of excitement about the new public meeting room that looks over McEuen Park, Tubbs Hill and Lake Coeur d’Alene.

To avoid Library Director Bette Ammon’s wrath, make sure to refer to it as the “community room,” not the council chambers. She points out that the council meets there two Tuesdays a month while the rest of the time the room is used for other public gatherings.

Bloem and Ammon anticipate the community room will attract more people to the library and more people to city meetings.

Besides the view, the real upgrade is in the technology that will allow the city to broadcast its council and commission meetings on Cable Channel 19.

Viewers will get a cleaner signal with less humming and interference.

With a capacity of 414 people, the room is large enough and the capabilities grand enough that any group can have its meeting broadcast if it makes arrangements with the city clerk.

“I view it as a real step forward,” Bloem said.

It didn’t take anything very controversial to send onlookers overflowing into the foyer of the old City Hall chambers. It often was hot and cramped and had a less-than-picturesque view of the parking lot.

The new room in the library is open and airy and is filled with images of Coeur d’Alene’s past – dozens of sepia photos of the beginning as a logging, mining and steamboat town that also is part of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s homeland. There aren’t any present-day photos because all visitors have to do is look out the window and see that Coeur d’Alene has transformed into a resort town.

The photos are part of the Heritage Wall, which honors local families who gave $10,000 donations to the Library Foundation.

“For me I will be able to look to my left and have a reminder of the heritage that made Coeur d’Alene what it is today,” said Bloem, a member of the Dingle family that’s listed on the wall. “It’s a reminder that we have the same responsibility to hand down to the generation that follows us.”

Councilman Woody McEvers has been spending his free time helping broadcast contractor Jeff Crowe, of Bunkhouse Media, move equipment to the new control room and rewire the system.

“I like wires and soldering and electronics,” McEvers said this week while soldering a wire to the new microphones.

He doesn’t have any sentimental attachment to the old chambers, but he admits when the room fills up and Bloem gavels the council meeting to order Tuesday it will be a change.

“It’s going to be weird,” he said.

As for a ribbon cutting or some sort of party, the council doubts there will be much fuss other than perhaps an acknowledgement of everyone’s work.

“It’s just business,” McEvers said. “We ain’t got time to party.”