MAYOR: A look at the candidates

The fact that the city council and mayor race is supposed to be non-partisan is a boat that has sailed and is never coming back. The candidates will hopefully have the decency to not put animals on their posters but it doesn’t really matter at this point. With Mr. Brannon doing a very smart thing and dropping out that leaves two realistic candidates for mayor, one far right, one far left.

Mary Souza www.maryformayorcda.com and Steve Widmyer www.widmyerformayor.com, looking at both web sites one is first overwhelmed by the normal gobble-d-goop all candidates must say by some unwritten law.

Let’s start with Mr. Widmyer. Being a trained accountant does not give one experience in “managing large complex organizations,” at least no large organization I’ve seen was run by the bookkeeper. In all fairness he does own two or three successful businesses. Next concern and it’s a biggie is in his core values statement he said how he supports LCDC twice; not a good start from someone who has a very big potential to benefit from the largesse of that tax-spending entity. Also being tied to two of the council candidates makes me think more of the same.

Now we have Mrs. Souza, who will first in my opinion have to get past bragging about being a member and supporter of “Reagan Republicans.” Next having a city audit at the beginning of a term is not a bad idea, but you don’t turn this over to a bunch of volunteers, you get it done professionally so there are no biases or ax to grind. Then she wants better sidewalks and streets, better police presence, a new library, and faster issuing of permits. I fully agree with all this, knowing full well it means hiring a lot more people (expanding government) but she also states she will “restrain taxes,” so just what gets cut? An oh by the way Mary’s husband is on the NIC team that wants to help LCDC spend about $10 million of our money, one has to wonder?

Don’t get me wrong, both of these candidates are decent, hardworking people but like in religion, truly think that their way is the only way. Hopefully some of the snags will be cleared up or removed before Nov. 5 so we don’t have to flip a coin.

MICHAEL TEAGUE

Coeur d’Alene