Parks, Jobs Are Priorities For Candidate Stan Smith Runs For Cda Council

The fate of city parks and the future of jobs prompted logger Stan Smith to step into the City Council race.

“I represent the loggers, construction workers, the mill workers - your general working class and small businessmen,” said Smith, who insists such people “are getting the short end of the stick.”

“I would like to see more $10- to $20-an-hour jobs - preferably,” he said.

“I’m pro timber and pro mining, as long as it’s done in an environmentally-sensitive manner.”

Smith also worries that a downtown revitalization plan will make another assault against city parks. McEuen Field and Memorial Field are rated as “under utilized” in the revitalization plan.

“They wouldn’t have put it in there as under utilized if there wasn’t something going on,” he said. Last winter, for example, Coeur d’Alene businessman Duane Hagadone offered to help fund a library at the site of McEuen, a popular softball field, if the fields were replaced by a botanical garden.

Smith also disagrees with the portion of the downtown plan that declares large swaths of the city “deteriorating.” Giving the city such a slum-like label cannot be good for the community, he said.

And the plan to use tax-increment financing and other elements that come with the revitalization effort aren’t sound investments. “I’m not sure the failed social schemes of the Great Society should be tried in North Idaho,” Smith said, referring to a sweeping program initiated under President Lyndon B. Johnson to rebuild inner cities and make other social changes.

Smith also worries about “seeing Coeur d’Alene go into the next century without destroying our way of life and the culture we love so much.”

“This election may decide which direction we go in the next 10 to 20 years,” he said.

Like many of the other candidates, Smith believes the fight over access to Sanders Beach could be resolved with a “win-win” situation. As it stands, it’s not fair to the property owners, who are paying taxes on what has become defacto public beach - a place where both he and his mother learned to swim.

Smith likes the idea of buying the beach or negotiating an easement for public use.

He has broad-based support, he said, pointing to the variety of people who signed his candidate’s petition. That list includes Coeur d’Alene Honda owner Kathleen Sims, Coeur d’Alene Mines chief executive Dennis Wheeler, and local environmental activist Art Manley.

Smith grew up on the south end of Lake Coeur d’Alene. His family owns timberland in the Plummer area.

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