City by the Break

COEUR d'ALENE - The city is divided, and so is its council.

During a politically charged week that saw the launching of a recall drive against four Coeur d'Alene incumbents, counter demonstrations, and a City Council meeting which members described as "tense," where frustration levels "reached a boiling point," Mayor Sandi Bloem said the council must set the example of respectful behavior if the city's division is going to begin to mend.

"The number one responsibility for the council today is to set the example how to make it better," Bloem said Thursday, two days after the meeting she said reflected poorly on the city. "We have differences of opinions on the council. If we, the seven of us there, can't figure out a way to discuss those differences in proper fashion, we've let this community down."

"I will be honest. I was embarrassed for us as a council Tuesday night," Bloem added.

The three-hour meeting took place hours after news broke of the citizen group RecallCdA's attempt to remove Bloem and Coeur d'Alene City Council members Mike Kennedy, Deanna Goodlander and Woody McEvers from office. It ended with a vote on whether the city should look into keeping the boat trailer parking lot where it is in the redevelopment plan for McEuen Field - the topic that's divided the council all year and the primary reason RecallCdA's effort is under way.

In the end, the council voted against keeping the boat trailer parking lot where it is - basically in favor of keeping the current plan the same - four votes to three.

But not before frustration levels boiled over, council members later admitted.

"It's getting old," said McEvers, who argued with Ron Edinger on Tuesday, about the ever-increasing fighting over McEuen Field on the council. "I feel like I'm losing it."

The meeting also saw a somewhat unorthodox motion to post city council member cell phone numbers on signs at the Third Street boat launch, closed on an experimental basis, so angry people trying to park their boats can call the officials and say what they think of the rerouted plan.

"I think that was self-serving on their part," Goodlander said of the motion that died four votes to three - the split every McEuen Field topic has had since January since Dan Gookin and Steve Adams took their seats. "I think there's a lot bigger things than whether I put my cell phone number on a sign."

Edinger closed out the meeting by saying the ones who voted against keeping the boat trailer parking where it is lacked "common sense," a remark Bloem thought was a personal dig.

"Everyone has the right to express their views," Edinger said days after the meeting. "And I expressed mine."

Before that, however, he and McEvers went tit for tat.

Edinger argued that placing boat trailer parking away from the boat launch in the park's redevelopment plan wouldn't fulfill an equal or better pledge the city promised should it displace facilities on McEuen Field. If the city's going to take something off the field, it promised it would provide an equal or better replacement.

"Who's the judge of equal or better?" Edinger said. "Anybody have an answer for that?"

"You," McEvers responded, saying Edinger has acted as the judge since the beginning. "If you're against it, you're against it, for the same reason we're for it. What's right?"

McEvers said later he regretted the back and forth.

"I'm sorry I went there; it was probably idiotic of me," he said. "That was just one of those irritated moments I guess ... It's just the same stuff over and over again, you know? Maybe I need to learn from him. Maybe I need to repeat the same stuff over and over again."

But Adams said the disagreements are discourse, and after the split votes the members get along well. He likened it to friends who fight and make up, and also said that the McEuen Field issue very likely won't come up at City Council for a while.

"I don't see there's much more we can do," he said of the minority fighting the park's current plan. "We thought maybe one of them would make a concession, but obviously they're not going to."

Gookin agreed. Both he and Adams said they'd continued to fight the topic because they were elected to - have received congratulations from citizens for doing so - but not much more can be done.

"To me that issue is addressed," Gookin said. "it's over, it's done, it's settled."

Adams and Edinger requested the trailer parking discussion go to council. During the discussion, parks staff wasn't asked any specific questions. Adams said that would have been the next step, should the motion have passed, but it didn't get that far. The first step was simply discussing it, he said.

Parks Director Doug Eastwood told The Press that change would essentially have taken the whole plan back to the drawing board. Proposed lighting and irrigation infrastructure locations as well as elevation changes would have to be redone. He said scheduling a council agenda topic before talking to park staff showed "some pretty serious communication problems."

Which is why Kennedy called it a stall tactic, although the council members who proposed it said it was a serious attempt at reaching a compromise on the polarizing park topic.

As was Gookin's motion to temporarily close the boat launch while rerouting traffic to the City Hall parking lot with signs explaining the trial basis closure and giving council member cell phone numbers, he said.

"That wasn't grandstanding," he said. "It was just an idea and I didn't think it would get anywhere."

The trial-and-error parking proposal would have given the city a good idea of what to expect should the park plan go through. The first-year councilman said it's his duty to explore all avenues of scaling back the McEuen Field plan's momentum.

"We have to try because the people who elected us want us to do that," Gookin said, adding: "The community is divided and the council does reflect that."

All the council members said the McEuen Field topic has come to a head. Coupled with news of the recall effort - which sparked counter protests of its own - this week's meeting reflected that. The signature gathering to get the recall election on the Nov. 6 ballot has started, so a serious deadline looms.

What happens after 75 days will be seen, but Bloem said the council will have to lead by example if the community is going to engage respectfully - or disagree civilly.

"I'm sorry we have to go through this as a community more than anything," Bloem said. "And I am sorry to see the division that's happening.

"The idea that people can sit down and have a civil discussion, discourse, come away with compromise and still have differences of opinion - it's difficult to find today," she said.

For more info

• Contact the Stop the Recall effort at www.savecda2012@gmail.com, or visit its Stop the Recall Facebook page.

• Contact RecallCdA at info@RecallCdA.com or call 704-1596.