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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Council hopefuls a diverse CdA trio

One candidate is a former city employee with first-hand knowledge of how Coeur d’Alene works.

Another is a business owner who serves on the city’s Planning Commission.

The third challenger is a family man with five children and experience running statewide political campaigns.

The one thing Dan Yake, Mary Souza and Mike Kennedy have in common is they want to win the open seat on the Coeur d’Alene City Council in the Nov. 8 election.

The seat is being vacated by Councilman Ben Wolfinger, who isn’t seeking re-election.

Kennedy, 36, thinks Coeur d’Alene needs a representative to speak for young, working families. As a father of five who works for the software company XDimensional Technologies, he thinks he fits the description.

His top priorities are protecting children, managing the town’s skyrocketing growth and preserving access to open and public spaces such as Sanders Beach and Canfield Mountain.

“The challenges facing this town are significant enough that we need some new voices,” said Kennedy, who is a member of the city’s ad-hoc Open Space Committee and helped lead the recent Coeur d’Alene library bond election.

Kennedy said his strength is his professionalism and connections to the Idaho Legislature. He said the city should lobby the state to increase impact fees, the amount charged to developers to cover new infrastructure costs such as roads and sewer connections.

Several members of the Idaho Legislature have contributed to Kennedy’s campaign. As of Sept. 30, he had raised $13,445 – a near record for a Coeur d’Alene election.

Besides increasing impact fees, Kennedy wants the city to plan for how it wants to look and feel in 20 years. To him, that means revising laws for subdivisions and landscape grading.

Souza, 52, has been on the city’s Planning Commission for four years and is chairwoman of the ad-hoc Open Space Committee. She agrees the city’s planning laws need revision so they’re more clear and specific, letting developers know up front what is expected.

“In Coeur d’Alene today it’s easier to do a shoddy project than a great project,” Souza said.

She prides herself on the work she did getting the developers of Copper Ridge on Canfield Mountain to collaborate with neighbors. The result is a housing development that leaves 24 acres of public open space on the face of the mountain.

Souza said her priority is to ensure that new housing developments have open space along with bike trails and pedestrian paths that connect to other trails throughout the city.

She also wants the city to limit spending so property taxes don’t increase too rapidly. She said she’s not an “extremist” who wants to cut services, but the city must make smart choices with tax dollars.

Souza, a former critical care nurse, owns the conference planning business Design Events with her husband. They have four children.

Yake, 53, is the city’s former growth services director and most recently helped create Coeur d’Alene’s storm-water utility, which costs residents $4 per month and provides the city with money to protect Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River. Prior to working for the city, Yake spent 20 years in the U.S. Army and is married with two children.

He calls himself the most conservative candidate, saying his main goal is to restrain Coeur d’Alene’s growing $66.6 million budget. One way to cut costs, he said, is for the city to adopt medical savings accounts. That means that employees who can get medical insurance through their spouse could opt to put $2,000 into a medical savings account instead of participating in the city’s insurance program, which costs the city $6,500 per employee per year. Yake contends that if just 10 employees opted for medical savings accounts instead of full coverage it would save the city $45,000.

“I believe we need to empower citizens to do things they want to do instead of having government do everything,” Yake said.

He also opposes the numerous studies over the years to help officials shape the look of the city, like the McEuen Field and Four Corners studies. Yake said these projects are studied, but money is never available to carry out the ideas.

He also would like the city to streamline its staff by not replacing department heads when they retire. Yake believes that the “worker bees,” or city staff, need to be empowered to make more decisions and have accountability to the taxpayers. He said it’s a common concept in the military.

This isn’t Yake’s first attempt at seeking elected office. He ran unsuccessful campaigns for the Idaho House in 2004 and Washington state Senate in 1980.