Hayden Chamber chief resigns

The embattled president of the Hayden Chamber of Commerce resigned Wednesday, following two weeks of infighting related to $130,000 still owed to creditors from a 2004 air show.

“It’s in the interest of the chamber for me personally to step down,” Robbie Canfield said Wednesday afternoon. “Paying off the debts has been my agenda all year…as a result of trying to do something good, I’ve come under attack.”

Thunder Over the Prairie, an air show at the Coeur d’Alene Airport, drew favorable reviews from attendees, but lower-than-expected attendance and lack of sponsorships left the chamber deeply in debt.

Last month, Canfield floated a plan to pay off the 27 air show creditors by transferring the debt to a shell company he owned, and starting up a chamber-backed newspaper in Hayden. Within two years, he hoped to generate enough income to retire the debt and even plan a 2009 air show.

Canfield ran afoul of other chamber board members by telling the Coeur d’Alene Press that a private donor might be willing to pay off the debt. He later said the donor was him and another, unnamed person, who has since withdrawn the offer.

The article gave false hope to creditors, and further deteriorated the chamber’s credibility in the community, said Mark Trail, a Hayden chamber board member and vocal critic of Canfield.

“These folks have been waiting for their money for a great deal of time,” Trail said. “I think it does them a great disserve.”

After several confrontational board meetings, three members of the Hayden chamber’s five-member executive committee resigned. Canfield had refused an earlier request to step down. But following a Tuesday meeting with Scott Jamar, the chamber’s past president, Canfield also tendered his resignation.

“It’s very sad because Robbie’s passion was the chamber, but he understands that sometimes things just don’t work out,” Jamar said.

Chamber leaders are working on a reorganization plan that includes a committee to address the air show debt, according to Jamar. A board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, and the recommendations will be discussed at the general membership meeting at 7:30 a.m. May 24 at the Avondale Golf and Country Club.

If the board agrees, Jamar said he’ll recommend that other executive members who left the board be invited back.

Jim Walsh, who resigned from the executive committee earlier this week, said he didn’t have the time to devote to the chamber’s board, given the recent turmoil.

“I certainly would hope that the remaining board members could pull it together, because I think that’s the only way for the air show creditors to be paid back,” he said.

Walsh said he couldn’t support Canfield’s plan for a chamber-backed newspaper. However, “at least it was a proposal, and I can’t fault him for putting together something he believed in,” he said.

Among the chamber’s creditors are Larry and Liz Booher, the owners of Southfield Aviation. The couple had to take out an interest-bearing loan to pay off more than $8,000 they’re still owed for fuel they supplied to the air show, Larry Booher said.

“We’re a mom-and-pop operation, so it does affect us,” he said. “It takes a while to recover from a hit like that.”

From time-to-time, Southfield Aviation has received checks for several hundred dollars each from the chamber. The money came from chamber-sponsored fundraisers.

“It looks like the current chamber is making an effort to take care of things, but bake sales and yard sales aren’t going to cut it,” Booher said. “It will take 20 years at that rate.”

It would have been fairer to creditors, he said, if business people in the chamber had taken out a loan to pay off the debts, then paid themselves back through the fund-raisers.