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Huckleberries: GOP committee shows love for Steve Adams
City Attorney Mike Gridley may think Steve Adams is a moron (for threatening legal action that could sidetrack a federally mandated expansion of the sewer plant). And Mayor Sandi Bloem may want to punch Adams in the nose (for poking his finger in her face). But the Coeur d’Alene councilman has support in the very, very conservative Kootenai County GOP Central Committee.
In fact, Adams was invited, along with Chris Fillios and Brent Regan, to count ballots for a vote to fill a vacant precinct committeeman position Tuesday. On his Facebook page, Regan reports that a committeeman joked when Adams’ name was announced as a tabulator: “But Gridley says he is a moron. Can he count?” That brought the house down, Regan reports. Who later applauded Adams’ counting skills. But didn’t say if Adams took his shoes off to tally Gerald Dale’s 35-20 victory over Jeff Ward in Precinct 23.
Fools rush in
Weighing in on the Adams-Gridley feud and Adams’ call to 911 seeking to put potty-mouth Gridley under citizen’s arrest March 19 was Glenn Church of the blog Foolocracy: Government by Fools, Silliness and Unintelligent People, who writes: “While calling Adams a ‘moron’ isn’t going to settle any political issues, Adams reaction to calling the police doesn’t do anything to dispute Gridley’s observation” … Adams warned us that he was extreme on the North Idaho Patriots for Ron Paul website during the 2011 council campaign when he described himself as “a temperamental, fundamental, right wing, Christian wacko” … Speaking of extremes, at least one candidate for an elective office at the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee meeting Tuesday said she was running to get rid of communists and socialists in the system. Paging Senator McCarthy.
Mayor Gookin
Dan Gookin won a seat on the Coeur d’Alene City Council by hating all things involving the Lake City Development Corporation. Seldom has Gookin said an encouraging word about the city’s urban renewal agency. So LCDC board member Dave Patzer was ready during a joint meeting between the LCDC and the council Thursday when Gookin asked if there were any issues that would impede LCDC’s future work. Patzer responded by saying, “the November elections,” adding: “I think you’ve gone on record as saying you’d do away with us if you get the right number of votes, haven’t you?” After Gookin responded, “Yes, I have,” Patzer finished: “OK, that’d be a landmine.”
Huckleberries
Poet’s Corner: “Remember this lesson/wherever you are:/if you want a long life/then don’t steal a car” – The Bard of Sherman Avenue. (“Health Advice”) … Forget spring. The first mosquito of summer landed on the arm of River Journal Publisher Trish Gannon while she was fixing a fence-hole digger on her Clark Fork porch last week … In a back-to-the-future move, Jeff Selle is semi-retiring his BBQ tongs for another reporting stint with the Coeur d’Alene Press. Jeff has come full circle after handling PR for the Spokane Regional Transportation Council and then, last summer, operating Bent’s Pitchamps Bar-b-que trailer on Best Avenue.
Parting shot
Those railroad ties dug up last week as part of the McEuen Field upgrade hark back to a time when trains bisected downtown Coeur d’Alene, servicing the old Rutledge mill. Steve Sibulsky remembers the railroad that cut across what is now the front lawn of the Coeur d’Alene Resort and out to the mill, where the resort golf course now sprawls: “In the fall of 1979, I had just moved into an apartment near 11th and Mullan. I knew the tracks were there, of course, and that the mill was still in operation. But the sight and sound of that first afternoon train lumbering down the middle of the street, shaking my windows, was quite a shock!”