3 familiar faces seek council seat

Familiar names will mark the Post Falls City Council election ballots this year.

Two-term Councilman Joe Bodman is being challenged by former council members Jackie McAvoy, who served one term that ended in 2003, and Joe Doellefeld, whose single term ended in 1997.

Mayor Clay Larkin and Councilman Ron Jacobson are running for re-election unopposed.

Both Doellefeld and McAvoy said Bodman doesn’t participate in the council and community as much as he should and said that’s part of why they’re running for his seat.

Bodman disputes those claims.

“My homework is done when I get there,” he said, by reading the agenda packet, which answers most of his questions. “When I think there’s something to say, I say it.”

As far as the community goes, Bodman said he’s involved in youth sports both as a coach and spectator.

Bodman said that if he’s re-elected, one of his priorities will be to create more ball and soccer fields in the city, especially to offset the closing of Quad Park.

“If you can keep kids involved in sports, you keep them out of trouble,” he said.

Bodman said he is different from the other two candidates because he represents the average Post Falls resident.

“I’m Joe Blow citizen that has no agenda except what the citizens want,” said Bodman, who is an officer with the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.

He gave as an example the time he spent four hours going door to door on Third Avenue to ask residents what they thought about development of that street, which was an issue before the council.

Bodman is concerned about annexing sections near State Highway 41 because some landowners don’t want to be in the city. He was the single opposing vote for some annexation requests as a result.

“I’m going to vote with the citizens because they’re the ones who hired me,” he said.

Doellefeld, who owns Stateline Speedway, said he has concerns about how the city is spending money, “and I think it’s time for someone to go in there and ask questions.”

For instance, when an urban renewal district closed in 2001, the consequent boost to the budget went toward building the new police station.

Doellefeld said he wonders whether that money could have been used to lower the levy rate instead or to maintain streets in the older parts of the city, as those residents were promised.

“What’s wrong with looking at both sides of the coin?” Doellefeld asked, noting that he’s not afraid to bring up issues like this.

In the same vein, Doellefeld said that the budget shouldn’t automatically increase every year just because the city is growing, because it also receives more tax revenue. To deal with greater demands, he suggested changing how services are implemented.

Doellefeld said his biggest achievement during his tenure on the council was streamlining the city’s spending. He pushed for a system in which only department heads carried credit cards and in which each department billed the city for expenses.

“I’m a big believer that city finance should be tightly controlled,” Doellefeld said.

McAvoy said she has contacts with many Idaho politicians whom neither of her running mates can claim, such as Sen. Mike Crapo, Rep. Butch Otter, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and Sen. Larry Craig.

“Those kind of personal contacts and relationships with those folks is invaluable,” McAvoy said. She couldn’t name specific Post Falls issues where it would come in handy but said that when something does come up, the connection could benefit the city.

As a longtime resident of Post Falls — she remembers when the town’s population was less than 1,000 — McAvoy said she can understand the opposing views regarding growth.

“Because I’m so familiar with the city,” McAvoy said, “I can weigh the old with the new.”

She said she believes the growth brings up several issues. One is that increasing demands for public services will require a bigger budget, McAvoy said, and residents need to understand that. She thinks the city has done well in using technology as a way to keep things manageable.

Another growth-related issue is transportation. McAvoy said she sometimes sits through five traffic light cycles before she can get onto State Highway 41.

The most important thing she did on council was study the matters of importance to the city by attending meetings and workshops, said McAvoy, who is a retired Louisiana-Pacific employee and past president of Idaho Women in Timber. “I didn’t vote on an issue I wasn’t fully aware of.”