NIC trustee candidates talk civility, taxpayer dollars

Civility was a highly talked about topic Thursday at North Idaho College; not only at the civility conference, but at the NIC Board of Trustees candidate forum as well.

Todd Banducci, Zone 3 incumbent and president of Falcon Investments and Insurance, is being challenged by Greg Gfeller, director of operations in North Idaho for Avista Utilities.

Also at the forum were Judy Meyer, the incumbent for Zone 4 who is running unopposed, and Brad Murray, the recently appointed trustee who is currently filling Ron Nilson’s old seat for zone 5.

Two senators from the Associated Students of NIC, Jimmy Soderberg and Connor Harris, moderated the forum, asking each candidate similar questions and reading written questions from the audience.

Gfeller was the first to respond to an audience question that asked candidates to define civility in their own terms. He said civility is listening to and respecting the opinion of others, whether or not you agree with them.

“It’s about listening and learning,” Gfeller said. “To me, we operate as professionals and operate with a high level of decorum on the board and we treat everyone with respect.”

Murray and Meyer had similar answers about treating people with respect and the board needing to work together as a team.

Banducci chose to direct the question to “governance” and how the board aids the college’s president in decision making.

“We’ve talked about shared governance; I like to use the word participatory governance because I think it’s a little bit different,” he said. “President’s cabinet needs help making those decisions and getting information… we work together, you have a chain of command, everyone contributes and in the end, you have someone responsible for making that decision.”

Throughout the forum, Banducci spoke a lot about managing NIC’s budget and taxes.

He said the most important roles NIC Trustees play is managing taxpayer dollars.

“People think some of us don’t want to spend money; we do, just pragmatically,” he said. “We just need to be smart with it.”

Banducci received a question specifically for him, asking why he is the “fiscal hawk” if the college administration hasn’t recommended tax increases in the four years he has been a trustee.

His response, along with a comment that he does not recall referring to himself as a “fiscal hawk,” was that things aren’t always straightforward. He said there are discussions behind the scenes and different board members have different interests which tug the budget in different directions.

“Some of us were just working to keep taxes from increasing and keeping the budget balanced,” he said. “Not everyone has the same philosophy on funding. I’m not necessarily one to get every dollar we can nor spend every dollar we got. I look at every line item and see the money we spend as taxpayer money.”

Gfeller spent a lot of his talking time addressing the importance of the board working together as a team and listening to students, community members and the college administration.

When talking about his qualifications to be a trustee, Gfeller spoke about his experience working with large groups of people as a director of operations at Avista Utilities.

“I work with my customers, employees and regulators and get everything done with collaboration,” he said. “I have to do that with the many, many, many managers I have.”

When asked why he wanted to be a trustee, he said “...in my opinion, a higher level of decorum should be held on the board.”

All trustee candidates agreed the Career and Technical Education building is one of the college’s greatest feats.

They also agreed that raising property taxes was probably not the best solution to get money for the school, but rather should approach the state of Idaho for more funding.