NIC FORUM: All six should have been there

I attended the NIC candidates forum where three of the applicants wanting a job as an elected official, specifically a board member of North Idaho College, failed to show up for the interview. Bad form.

As an elected official myself, and a former county clerk and school board trustee, I have attended many forums as well as being a participant in many more. Candidate forums and debates are the closest things that voters (who are the boss of all elected officials) have to take the measure of their prospective elected representatives. Slick full-color brochures and websites and even the best of resumes are no substitutes for an actual in-person job interview. The other three candidates who didn’t attend failed their first critical test. If this is how they would treat a job interview, I can only imagine what kind of attitudes and work ethics they might have.

By blowing off the forums as a group, they showed total disrespect for all the local chambers who sponsored it, and the many people who came to watch in person or expected to be able to watch the video of them later. That wouldn’t be acceptable in the real world of work and people, and it for sure isn’t acceptable for people thinking they should be chosen as trustees for NIC. I don’t want them as my trustee.

We’ve seen what poor board leadership looks like since the election of 2020 and we want no more of it as a community. I can only think these folks somehow believe they are politically entitled to these important positions of trust in our community, and that the election process is just a cumbersome formality.

DAN ENGLISH

Coeur d’Alene