Flip Kleffner Interview

NARRATOR: Flip Kleffner INTERVIEWER: Brandi Burns DATE: December 1, 2010 LOCATION: Boise, ID PROJECT: Boise Mayor and City Council Members Project START INTERVIEW START TRACK ONE BB: This is Brandi Burns from the Department of Arts and History, and I am speaking with Flip Kleffner on December 1st, 2010, about his experiences on the Boise City Council. Flip Kleffner is at his home at 1011 Virginia Avenue, Moscow, Idaho, and I am at City Hall in Boise, Idaho. This oral history is being recorded over the telephone. Well, I thought before we got started about your Council experiences, we could talk a little bit about what you did before that. You know, where you were born and where you grew up at and things like that. FK: Okay, do you want me to just go through it, or— BB: Yeah, just start wherever you’d like. FK: Okay, well, I was born in 1933 in Lewiston, Idaho, and eventually, in 1937, moved to Boise, where my father started a sporting goods store, Sib Kleffner Athletic Supplies, and so then I went to Boise public schools and eventually graduated from the University of Idaho and had a nice career there. And I played professional baseball after that and for a couple of years with [unclear at 1:14], and then at the same time then I started working at Sib Kleffner Athletic Supplies, and my brother Bob and I eventually owned the store, and we spent the next twenty years in the store, and I traveled throughout the state during that time [unclear at 1:32] high schools for athletic equipment. Plus the retail stores, we had five outlets in the Boise Valley when we finally sold the store in 1974, which is the end of my Boise City Council career was 1972 to 1974. So that’s kind of a pretty loose kind of an interpretation to it, but that’s kind of where it was. After the City Council, then I ran and was chair of the Ada County Commissioners in the next term and so, and eventually ended up at the University of Idaho for seventeen years as alumni director at the University of Idaho and retired there in 1997. And I’m retired in Moscow now and it’s just a beautiful place to live and I hope everybody would get a chance to see northern Idaho. Sometimes it just doesn’t end at McCall. BB: Yes. FK: So, anyway, that’s kind of where I am. BB: Well, neat. Great. So, could you tell me a little bit more about how you came to Boise and what led to that? FK: Well, my father—of course, I was very young at that time, I was four or five years old when we moved to Boise—he started a store next to Blue Lattermer’s drug store. And that’s kind of where we all started. And then my dad was known widely and dearly loved by anyone that was around him, and so was my mom, too, so they made a great, great pair with those two, my brother and I both. So, and then, so that’s kind of how we got there was that move. He had coached at Lewiston for a long time, and that’s why I was born in Lewiston where he was coaching. BB: Neat. FK: How’s that? BB: And so, let’s see here, I’d like to try and start, especially with anybody who served on the Council in the ‘70s, to talk about what Boise was like, if they remembered it before urban renewal, and sort of how it was, you know, what the town was like then and how it began to change after urban renewal was instituted. FK: Well, when we first were in Boise and went through high school and that, Boise was a charter city and so it stayed at 35,000 forever and ever and ever until they finally voted their charter out and began annexing around the city, all the parts that were a part of the city. So that was the initial part of making Boise grow from 35,000 to 70,000 in just about two years. So, the urban renewal part was, it was just barely coming in about that time. Just before I was on the City Council, they had an urban renewal Model Cities kind of a panel of Boise people, and somehow they invited my dad to do it but he couldn’t do it so he sent me and that’s kind of how I got involved in the politics of the whole thing. But the model cities then was the first was down in Pioneer Street, which is now the old warehouse district and all through there was a Model Cities project. So, to do that. And then there were others around at different parts of the city, too, as well as the government-financed program. And then—the federal government, that is. And then the urban renewal was, everybody at that point felt like we could make the urban renewal work downtown. We needed, all the big people who wanted to come in had said we had to have a connector road, and that was coming from the highway around the city, which was I-84, to get it to, back to, so they could get into the city from the outlying cities. So that became a big issue and so there was a lot of people who thought they were going to do it. I think the last were the Oppenheimer Group. Then before that was the Dayton-Hudson, and, let’s see, well, there was another, Bob Hansberger’s group, I don’t recall the name of that one, but they thought they could do it, and everybody thought they could, but they could never get enough anchor stores to put it together, so they could get one or two. Dayton-Hudson was, of course, a big store, a chain, out of the Midwest, and they thought they could do it, and they had an enclosed mall downtown and they had some beautiful architectural plans and the whole thing for that, and so even that City Council that I was on that year really wanted to do, to make the downtown viable. And because we already a viable downtown but it was, if the mall moved out, then we felt like it might not make the downtown viable. And during that time there was the Eastman Building controversy. If anybody remembers those, in those days they were going to remodel the Eastman Building, which was virtually impossible. There was no heating. The stairways, everything was almost rotted away inside, but some people thought they could do it, so there were those, several buildings like that, in the urban renewal area that were being remodeled, and so there’s a lot of old buildings were left the facades up and put new buildings in behind them, and so it really became kind of a nice downtown. And that’s why we really wanted to make the shopping downtown. And soon after that then, the next group of City Council people said, “You know, let’s”—we had turned down several, Price was one and I don’t remember others, who wanted to build shopping malls in the outskirts and so that didn’t happen. But then the next City Council, next mayors, people decided that they were now, now’s the time to do it, so then the city mall which I’m not quite sure what it’s called out there, but the mall outside the city then was built and became very successful and Boise downtown suffered but then it regained itself and got right-ended, and I think it’s a very viable downtown. And every time I visited, it seems like it’s alive. So, but it was a strenuous process. There was a lot of controversy. There was a lot of emotion. There were people who wanted to save everything. There were people who wanted to tear everything down. So, and then there’s people who wanted the mall outside, they wanted people downtown, so there was never a very peaceful thing, the whole urban renewal. And some people didn’t want the federal government involved. They didn’t want the state. Others liked to do it when we could match the money from the city, so it was a very complicated and the issue, we had an urban renewal agency that was in control of that, was appointed by the City Council, and Chuck Newhouse was on that and some of the Day family and so that was a good, an exciting time in the city, let’s say that. BB: [Laughs] Neat. I want to trace back just a little bit. If you can tell me anything that you remember about the charter and why, you know, it was repealed and things like that. Because I was just recently doing some research and I couldn’t find a lot about it except that it had been repealed. FK: Well, I think that the, when the state was formed, there were two charter cities and school districts. One was Boise and one was Lewiston. So the Boise City school district was chartered and they couldn’t take in any schools into their district either. They couldn’t annex schools, so there was Franklin High School and out there at Franklin Road, which is practically downtown now. And so all those, there’s other schools, a junior high that couldn’t come in, so the school district voted, their school board voted to disband the charter so they could do that, and in 19—whew! It must have been 1947 that the school district did that and Franklin High School then became a junior high and the Franklin High School people moved into Boise High, and that was kind of an earth-shattering people thing for out there because once you take somebody’s school away, they get pretty excited, so, it was kind of a, I was just barely in junior high at that point, and I’m just like you. All I remember is that I think it probably took a vote of the City Council and maybe, I don’t know what, who else would have approved it, maybe the county, that we could, that the city could give up the charter. The fact was that the city was just, the county was growing up helter-skelter. You’d drive out in the county, you’d realize that there’s streets going which way and nowhere and there was gas tanks out by St. Alphonsus that were leaking into the water system, and still do, I understand. And so there was, there were all kinds of things were happening in the county and the city had no control over that and they were trying to give those people in the city and needed more money for taxation, for property taxes, and so when they gave that up, then the annexation process began and it was still going on years later as things were annexed into the city, but it was important in terms of raising property taxes to run the city because the city was then providing services for people who didn’t live in the city because the city was not growing but the county was growing dramatically after the war so although services were being provided we couldn’t get, in other words, you couldn’t do your sewer projects, you couldn’t put in roads, there was all kinds of things like that. And in 19-, speaking of roads, in 1970-71, I guess, in the election of 1971, they had started the Ada County Highway District, and the Ada County Highway District then became the street and roads and bridge administration for the whole county, and so that became a benefit, too, that, I guess, in a way, because it put all the roads in Ada County, which included the city of Boise, then under one jurisdiction. So that made it a little nicer, I think, for control and for people to have a recourse to see if their streets and everything was done correctly. So, it was, the City Council was a little disappointed when I first came on, but they soon realized that they didn’t have that much to worry about because the Ada County Highway District then became on it, and eventually, I think, just about that same time, ACOG got started, which was the Ada Council of Government—you probably have other history on that. But the Ada County Highway District became a member of that as well as the sheriffs and the police and all the cities, the county, so it became a very large, slow-moving body but the whole thing was to try to manage the growth of the whole county, so and each city, so that we weren’t duplicating and it was growing in a logical manner and sewer and fire and the police protection and everything was all available as people became, were, as they were annexed or lived in the county. So that’s kind of a long-winded answer there. BB: No, those are great. You did say something that caught my attention. You said that the Council was disappointed when you came on? Did I hear that right? FK: When I came on, they weren’t, I hope they weren’t disappointed in me. BB: [Laughs] Okay, I just, I wasn’t for sure. FK: It was the city. I was the only new person, so there’s five people that were still on there—Elmo Orr, Sherm Perry, Marge Ewing, Dick Eardley, and Fred Kopke were still all on the City Council. And they had been dealing with all the street problems and everything like that, so it took up a lot of their time. So they were disappointed that they had lost control of the streets because they thought they could do a good job of maintaining them. So that’s the sorry part for them. BB: That makes more sense. [Laughs] So, I wanted to ask you if you had any jobs or experiences that you felt helped to prepare you for the Council? FK: Actually, the Council prepared me for a lot of things after I was on it. I was really new. All I had been doing up to that point is come back and was running the store with my brother and we were, and I traveled a lot, and so it was really not a, so I guess, well, I’d been in a political office at the University of Idaho, student body. At that point I had done some of that. But that was no comparison to what this was about. So, no, I didn’t have any real previous experience, just dealing with people all the time. BB: And was there anything in particular that led you to become interested in city government or--? FK: Well, I’d always had kind of an interest in it, and I just, things like that, the government had always been an interest to me, so Fred Kopke is a friend of mine that lived, known all through high school and at the university and we’d stayed friends, and he said, “You know, you got to do this,” and so he just got me into it, and so that’s why I got started. Excuse me a second, why don’t you turn that off while I clear my throat. BB: Okay, yeah, I’ll pause it for you. It’s turned back on now. FK: All right. BB: Okay. Let’s see here. FK: Well, anyway, Fred was very influential. And Fred was, I don’t know if you want to get into the administration or anything else, but Fred then was, he was the president of the City Council. So, well, go ahead. BB: Oh, yeah. It’s really anything. It includes—of course, I haven’t been able to speak to Fred Kopke because I think he passed away just last year, if I remember correctly? FK: Right, he did, yeah. BB: Yeah, so even anything that you can remember, you know, second hand about him is helpful towards the project, too. FK: Well, Fred was a dynamic leader. He was a very, very smart guy. And he was an engineer. And then his folks were in the real estate, surprisingly, but then he developed Lakewood, all the property out there eventually, too. After he was with the City Council. But Fred was just an instigator of developing inside the city and not having new developments arise but infill in the city with development and houses. So that became—the reason for that was, then you could put in a new sewer and you could put sewer everything and as unappealing and uninteresting as sewers are, it’s very important in a city to have good sewers. And so Fred was dramatically involved in that, and we put in the Bench Sewer District, which you would know nothing about, but that was a, they sewered that whole Bench District, you know, the first bench, which was a major project, and they put in a new, then eventually the new sewer plant went out and I always thought we should have called it Fred Kopke Sewer Plant because he was so instrumental in getting it done, but somehow having your name on a sewer plant isn’t that wonderful, so— BB: [Laughs] FK: But he certainly deserved the credit for getting that done. It was just, he was really, and everything, he was just, he was so firm and fair and he had a good sense of humor, so we had a good time together. We, all our lives, we were together, and so it was really, he was always a friend and always a leader wherever he was. Boise at that stage owed him a great deal for where it is today. BB: Could you tell me when this Bench Sewer District was put up in there? When you guys finished it? FK: Oh, gosh. It went in probably in the early ‘70s, right at, maybe, early, just about that time, seems to me. BB: Okay, great. FK: It could have been the late ‘60s, but early ‘70s, you know, it took several years to do it, so. BB: Yes. Great. FK: And we were in part of that, so it was just great to get off a septic tank that kept overflowing with our six children all the time. BB: [Laughter] FK: So, it was a fun Council, just for a little bit of that. Dick Eardley had been a news anchor for Channel 2 News forever, and he ran and was on City Council. Marge Ewing was a wonderful, bright person and her husband was the veterinarian out on State Street. Sherm Perry had a furniture store downtown. Elmo Orr had a roofing business. And Jay Amyx, the mayor at that time, had run for the mayor with the promise that he would make sure that every parking ticket was paid, that he was going to run and knock on every door and make sure that everybody who owed parking tickets was going to pay up. And that appealed to people because they had gotten a little lax, so, anyway, I don’t remember. That was a couple, four years, before I was on the Council, but I remember that part of Jay Amyx that he was the developer. So, but those were great people. We used to have a pre-Council, but maybe they mentioned that to you before. But we had each Monday when we met, we met at three o’clock and went from three to six and then had dinner and then went back to the Council meeting at seven. And so we spent three hours in discussions which were off-the-record kind of thing. We never made decisions illegally or behind closed doors or anything like that. Everything, there was nothing ever voted on and that, but we got, always got to express opinions and concerns without, and ask questions of each other, so that the issues were so much better understood. So it was really kind of a filtering out time, and it was probably the most defining time for the Council because, even though we didn’t take any votes, you began to form your opinions through those, and from the public input as well. We often got a lot of public input but you kind of had some basis for understanding, so those were great—Tim Woodward, the columnist from the Boise Statesman, was cub reporter for the Statesman. He covered those meetings, and that’s how I got to know Tim for a long time. So, anyway, that was kind of how that all, that all worked out, was that’s where the Council themselves really worked through those issues. And there were some pretty hot issues and people got a little hot under the collar, too. It wasn’t all just peaches and cream by any sense of that, because they had some real strong opinions. And so we had some arch-conservatives and some pretty good liberal kinds of people on the Council, so that way, and that was good, it was a good mix, because we could, finally we could find compromises that would work. And often compromises, everybody loses instead of no one wins or everybody wins. So, but the compromises we came up with seemed to make sense and even to the people that were involved in it. The Planning and Zoning meetings, the Planning and Zoning Commission would bring their recommendations, and the Planning and Zoning recommendations were always an issue because almost every time there was a winner and a loser. And so it was just the way it shaped up when there was development somewhere. Somebody was going to, they’re building a store in their neighborhood, in their backyard, you know, or they build a house and it’s just those issues were real volatile for everyone, and it was, those were tough issues because you tried to do the best you can for protecting a neighborhood but at the same time allowing things to happen. So it was a, I don’t remember the exact ones, except I remember that your stomach always knotted up when you, when you, when you went to those kinds of hearings. When those showed up on your agenda, why, that was not a fun time. BB: Yeah. Were there any major issues or particular events that really stand out to you that you can remember from then? FK: Well, you know, just after I was on the City Council, we were talking about, it was in January and we were saying, you know, looking at the year, “Well, what do we really want to do? What are some long-range things? What are some things that happened?” So I happened to mention, which I really believed in and I still do and that was eventually it came about but the idea was to have a fall celebration day for the city, you know, kind of, school starting back—not just a fair but a real celebration, social events, and athletic events and just all kinds of, a real Chautauqua almost as it were. And I said, “Well, you know, Munich has their Oktoberfest.” Well, first thing that came out then was “Flip Kleffner says we ought to have a beer bust for the city” [laughs] in October.” And so I have a misnomer but the idea.. so I took over I think on that one, but eventually they did the, remember the lake float or the river floats and things like that, that kind of began, I don’t take credit for that, don’t get me wrong, but, you know, those are the kinds of things that people in the city finally really do want to do, they want to have kind of a celebration of the city, of the people, and a chance for everybody to just have a wonderful time in some kind of a celebration so, and they found ways to do that, and almost every city has some kind of a day, you know, a celebration of their day even in little small towns, they all do, so. Anyway, that’s kind of, that was kind of a, one of the fun things. I can remember Fred Kopke and both Marge Ewing at one point in the thing walked out of our pre-Council meeting, they had had enough of each other, so they, at two different times. So anyway, everybody else was in amazement but, so, gosh, that was some time. Those were, you know, they were wonderful people. You just really bonded with those people, and one other thing that did happen was, during that time, and I don’t know the financial crisis, exactly what it was, but Fred was saying that being president of the City Council was very involved and the finances and the treasury of the city and what was happening, and so he was so concerned and we were having the city treasurer at that time was not doing the job well, which we all thought he was, and so I can remember Dick Eardley and Fred and I going down to the Big Bun there on Eighth, Capitol Boulevard there, after those meetings at eleven or twelve o’clock at night, just sitting in there talking and talking on how to do and what to do, and I was more of a listening probably than a helper but finally those things began to straighten themselves out and, too, that was where Fred Kopke was so strong at being a leader because, and Dick was good, too. And so they managed to pull the thing back together and so it was, just like I said, I don’t remember the crisis exactly except that it wasn’t working, and so they made Fred—so anyway, they made those changes and helped the mayor make those decisions for him. BB: You learn so many things that no one ever thinks about. FK: [Laughter] Oh, yeah, that’s what’s in everything, you know, even in your life. BB: Yes. FK: There’s an awful lot that, they’re little things that change history kind of a thing. Well, I’ll tell you, you said was there anything that prepared me for City Council and I could tell you that there really wasn’t but they interviewed me at the Statesman, they interviewed all the candidates for the City Council, which there was probably six or eight or something, I suppose, and so there was two, Elmo Orr and Sherm Perry were running for reelection and Buck Jones, who had been in that place, who had been a City Council fixture for years and years, had decided not to run, so that’s when they got me to run. So they interviewed me. I did such a lousy job. You know, I didn’t have any idea what was going on, and they were asking me questions I had no idea what they were even asking about because I just hadn’t studied anything. You know, I just thought it was going to be a fun time helping the city, helping the city run and they were really direct and so they didn’t endorse me. [Laughter] So, it was all right, so they didn’t. As it turned out, it worked out just fine. As time went on, it became okay, because I did, I was the only, I was the leading vote getter for that whole election. And so that was [laughs], anyway, just what a good name will do—from my dad probably—but it got me in anyway. So, it certainly wasn’t my ability to answer questions for the Statesman. BB: It’s funny how things like that happen, but like Eardley said that he was afraid he won because he’d been the news anchor for so long, so everybody knew his name. [Laughter] FK: Well, we accused him of that. [Laughter] So that, well, Dick Bieber ran the campaign for Ed and myself and for others, I think, too, and he was a political kind of a guy and he said, “It doesn’t matter why they vote for you, as long as they vote for you.” [Laughter] They know your dog, it’s okay, they’ll vote for you, but so. He was a fun guy. He still lives in Boise, Dick Bieber. He might be an interesting character for you to just ask a couple questions of. BB: Yeah. FK: It’s Dick Bieber. I don’t know where exactly he lives. I have his phone number here if you ever need it. I don’t talk to him but his daughter lives up here so occasionally he comes up. BB: Neat. I’m making a little note here. Let’s see here. So, there’s so many things that were going on at that time, and I wanted to ask a couple, especially one about the Greenbelt. I believe that it was in the ‘60s that Atkinson and Associates recommended a Greenbelt in the city, and I was just wondering, by the time you got on the Council, where did the Greenbelt stand and what kind of work was being done? FK: Well, it was really just kind of in the beginning stages, and that was one of the questions I think I answered right for the Statesman was, “Are you in favor of the Greenbelt?” And I didn’t know what the Greenbelt was but I said, “Yes, I am.” [Laughter] Sounded good. So it must have been at that time that it was coming on, and the, it was such a good thing and, as it turned out, what they’re afraid that might happen was, and we weren’t at that time necessarily, but that there would be the crime kind of thing that some other cities who have those kinds of things experienced, you know, crime scenes in those areas. So it was a concern. But anyway, it turned out very nicely and they patrol it nicely and they still do and should. So it’s a beautiful walkway all the way for everybody. An addendum to all of that was when I was then with the Ada County Commissioners. We extended the Greenbelt and that walking system clear out to Barber Park. We bought the property out there at Barber Park, put in the air station and the parking, all the ground that’s parking, I don’t know if you’ve been out there or not but there’s a big parking area and it’s a park scene where you can get in your rafts and head down the river, and so when I was with the county then we bought the land almost all the way back to the city and there was some land we couldn’t buy at that point so, but eventually they did. So that was, so that extended clear out to that area. So it was great to be able to do that, you know, for the city and the county both because it turns out to be just a wonderful pastime for the city. BB: That’s great. Let’s see here. FK: You know, the other thing was we built the library. We moved the old library and put it into where it is now, and during that time we authorized the City Hall to be built, which became, the City Hall became just after, the next year after I got out, they moved into the new City Hall, and so that was one of those things. I guess those are the two major city things that, and the sewer plant that got built out there. Eventually in the county we were able to put the juvenile center together, the law enforcement building and the EMT thing, which was just off of the Connector coming downtown. And off of, what, off of Cole? Maybe now it’s off Curtis, somewhere in there. And then we also had to, put the county building and moved the county building over to the City Hall and reestablished the new county offices over there. So there’s, you know, a lot of things went up like that during that time. So there was some major issues that were being solved, and most of the time those are pretty popular to build, get a library that worked and those kinds of things. BB: Yes. Do you remember where the library moved from? FK: Well, yeah, you know, on Eighth Street, you know where St. Michael’s is? The church? BB: Yes. FK: Well, just up in the block on the left, there’s a gray building in there. It used to be Carnegie Library. BB: Oh, okay. FK: It turned into law offices. In fact, I think Chuck McDevitt was the law offices in there at one time. He later became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, but anyway, Chuck ended up being the first public defender on a pay, where there’s total public defender office in any county in the state, but anyway, that’s where his office was, at the old Carnegie Library, which is across from the Boise High School gymnasium there. BB: Okay. I know where that is. FK: Well, that’s the old public library. –growing up, he used to go up on Saturday and read and made plaster of Paris models and painted them and things down in the basement. It was a great, great addition to our city. BB: Yes. Wonderful. Let’s see. I want to find another question for you. Was there much going on with parks while you were on the Council? Building parks, planning? FK: No, we had an excellent parks director, though. A city forester and a parks director. He was—all of a sudden I can’t think of his name right now—but he was they were, they had just done Ann Morrison Park, I think, at that time. And so he was involved in all those kinds of things. As the development went, one of the city things that we did do is we required developers if, depending on the size of the parcels they were developing, that they had to leave open space and if they had enough then they had to leave room for a school or/and a park. And so there’s a lot of little parks throughout the city that were part of that zoning process to make sure that we did have open space and we did have parks. The park that’s south of Grove in that little area there, that was part of the City Council’s move in the urban renewal area. But after that, why, I think people realized that they needed those kinds of parks for kids, so. The one person we did have was Bill Everts, who was our city recreation director, and Bill could get five more dollars ever after every dollar we gave him at the City Council, and he’s the one that built the ski program for all the juniors. He made skiing affordable for the kids in the city, which skiing is almost not affordable for so many people now, but at that time the Statesman newspaper had their ski school on Saturday for the kids. The buses took them up, and it was just a, but he was in charge of all the recreation and started all kinds of wonderful things for the city. And he was such a wonderful man and such an asset for the city during that time because his character and his integrity established how Parks and Recreation should be run, and so he was just, it never varied from that standard that I know of. BB: Yes. Interesting. Let’s see here. Well, we can talk a little bit about the growth of the city, and could you tell me if, like, was it mostly residential or was it commercial? FK: The growth? BB: Yeah. FK: You know, what has grown is both in everything. It didn’t get very industrial particularly but the growth I think basically was just people moving into the city and the business after the war. Every business started to really boom for the next ten, fifteen years. The small businesses became large businesses, and there weren’t the big chain stores at that time, so C.C. Anderson was about a big a chain as you were going to find, J.C. Penney. And so they were all in town. But the growth was so much in the city, the Bench really, particularly really, began to grow, because once, and that’s why they had to have the annexation so they could get sewer to it and things like that. But that was, you know, it was just an enlarging. Actually, the growth was overwhelming the city and the county. They had to really act prudently and fast if they could to set the standards for development and the requirements and the landscaping criteria and all those things that you don’t think about as growth happens. So, setbacks from the highways and those kinds of things. It just didn’t really exist in the county before, and so all that new annexation was all a part of that. It made that eventually as they developed right, it made it possible to provide sewers, streets, lighting, fire, police protection. So that was, but the growth, I don’t know what, Boise must be a little over two hundred thousand now, I suppose. BB: Probably at least that. FK: A lot of the state’s population lives in the Tragic Valley there, so, I mean in the Treasure Valley. BB: Yes. And I, you know, just know that the Bench was mostly farms before, so was that part of the growth? They were beginning to sell those farms and subdivide them or? FK: Right. The county didn’t , up to that time, didn’t care if you built one house or two houses or five-acre lots or one-acre, there was no, they didn’t have any dryline sewers where you could put a dryline in, if you didn’t have the sewer you had to prepare for a sewer, which is called drylining, and so it was just, it was so helter-skelter out there that it was pretty nearly impossible to do that. And so out there you could have a nice home and next door would be a feedlot. So there was, you know, there just wasn’t zoning out there to take care of that. So eventually, and when I was with the city that started that and by the time I was in the county we finally got a land-use plan going and established zoning in the county and that was a little controversial, too, so, but the idea was that we, it just had to have something like that happen. Otherwise we’d have just nothing. There’s still cities that don’t have zoning and they’re still a mess, so, it’s just it makes some people angry to have somebody tell them they can or can’t do things but, for the best of the public good, sometimes you just have, that has to happen. And so that’s not very satisfying if it’s happening to you, so. And I think everybody understood that, too. They’re [not] trying to hurt anybody, it’s just that sometimes there’s a greater good. BB: Well, we’ve got about, I usually pause this recording in about twenty, not even twenty minutes, like ten or fifteen. And so, that’s usually when I stop, but I just wanted to let you know that we can either go on a little bit longer or we can schedule for another interview, too, but I’ve still a couple more questions to try and get through for you. FK: Okay, so I’ll shorten my answers, how’s that? BB: Oh, no, no, no. The more information, the better. [Laughs] FK: Okay. BB: I’m entering the part in urban renewal, and as we’ve sort of already touched on it, we can just move on, too, it’s not a big deal. In some of my other interviews it was said that a lot of the downtown had already been torn down by the previous City Council and mayor? And so, by the time you were on it, there probably wasn’t a lot of tearing down of buildings and whatnot? FK: Well, yeah, there was and there wasn’t both. They were still, for the Eastman Building first and it was finally came down later even, I think it might have been down even at the end of my time. So there were still renovations going on and they were still tearing down, but a lot of the things that came down were impractical to restore. There just wasn’t any, you know, they weren’t level. They were narrow. You couldn’t get any, the public access to them was bad. The stairs were wood, there was no fire escapes, I mean, there’s all kinds of violations in the city code they have today. So some of those things should have come down regardless of urban renewal, but, yeah, there was, they were still going on but it had, it had already been determined that they were going to do those things. A lot of that didn’t come to the City Council. It came from the city leaders, you know, the people who were also leaders in the city who were not on the governments but were very respected kinds of leaders in the community. Chuck Hummel comes to mind as a matter of fact, you know, some of those people were just really, knew what was good for the city and would influence any decision-maker, you know, because they were respected and they, because they were smart and had good opinions and knew what the score was, why, you listened to those people, too, you know. So it wasn’t the, the eye of the Council didn’t operate in isolation there. You always got plenty of advice and some of it was pretty good. BB: Yes. The other thing that I wanted to ask about, too, was that there seems to be varying stages of support for urban renewal, and I was wondering, while you were on the Council, exactly what kind of support there was or, you know, what was the situation with the, your sense that the Council was getting from the people around? FK: I think the Council was, I don’t, maybe a couple members, maybe one or two weren’t really that thrilled with it. On the other hand, in trying to make the city happen, it was kind of one of those things, it was either that or going on with nothing, you know, that you would just be overwhelmed, so it became an avenue, and one of the few avenues, that you could actually, you know, people thought, “Well, private enterprise can do this.” Well, as it turned out, they couldn’t, you know, because we tried to do that with all the urban developers downtown, so it just didn’t—the private sector is profit sector, so they needed to be profitable to do those things and if, you know, it was not a goodwill kind of thing to, for them, and obviously they’re good people but they, you know, they had to, they couldn’t just throw in and lose money and go out of business by doing those things. So, the private sector was, just couldn’t come up with it, and that’s why you have governments that can do the things that individuals can’t do, so, and small groups can’t do, but it’s for the good of the people and good of the city that you could do those things. So that’s how, that’s kind of what urban renewal was all about was that there was so much to do after the wars, particularly and now we’re talking after the Cold War almost, but there was so much to do and not enough money to do it, and the federal government was involved but they had restrictions and people didn’t want the federal government running your programs. Well, in fact, they weren’t. All they needed to do was, you took the money under, with obligations and with requirements and you met those and they were not so restrictive. They didn’t help the government. They were just protecting the people that we’re doing the business for, or doing the work for, and developing the city, for those requirements were not handcuffing or at all. You just had to go through a lot of hoops to make sure that the money was being spent correctly, that we weren’t abusing the financing of it and things like that, so it took, and it took people to do that. You had to have, you know, a team of people who were financially involved to make sure all that didn’t happen, that we were in compliance and so, it’s just like when we used to get the city unemployment. There was an unemployment time in there, so the government, you know, the state and the federal government both are involved in unemployment, and so, you know, and you could only get money from the federal government some of these interests if you had at least a four point, four percent, unemployment rate. And so we were going pretty good but there was areas where that was just four point, four percent was how much we were unemployed in that area so that’s how you get urban renewal in some of the areas where there isn’t any, there aren’t very many, they need the help, I guess, like, in the urban renewal areas there wasn’t any, there was unemployment and yet there was a need, so that’s how—so unemployment was one of the criteria for that as well. BB: Great. That’s great. Let’s see. FK: Does this make sense to you? BB: It does. I love the urban renewal stuff. [Laughs] FK: There was a lot of [laughs]. You know, when they tore old Chinatown down, there was a lot of, lot of talk about that and about the caves underneath and the tunnels and all the Chinese people that had to move out, and so, you know, there’s an outcry about people having to lose their homes and things like that and, you know, you felt for those people, too, you know, but there was a point in there where, you know, that if you’re going to do that, the people were compensated, you know, we didn’t just take money or take things away from people, you paid for them and made them, some of them, it was a pretty good deal for most of them, I think they generally got more than their property was worth. BB: Yes. I do ask everybody that came remember the urban renewal if there was any spots in town that, you know, that you would have thought, that you were sad to see go or particular spots that you were kind of glad that they had to go or you had any specific spots in Boise that stood out to you like that? FK: I’m trying to think if there’s—you know, during that time, there was The Mode. Is The Mode still there in town? BB: I think—I don’t know. I think the building might be there.. FK: Anyway, there was The Mode, JCPenney. Those were some of the bigger stores downtown that were, that people went to, you know. Then C.C. Anderson became Crescent, I think, and then it became Macy’s and I don’t know what-all they’ve gone through but, you know, there was some, those kinds of things were kind of sad. You know, the old, there was a church downtown that my friends and I used to go to for Boy Scout meetings, you know, and all of the sudden it turned in to be the employment office for the State of Idaho. All of a sudden. I’d be gone to school and I’d come back and there would be a whole ‘nother block torn down, a whole new building I’d never seen before, and so, like on Thirteenth Street where the Sears building is—are they still there on Thirteenth Street? BB: I don’t think so. FK: I don’t know if they are or not. I think it’s now something else. That used to be the Sears building—great big building, you know, and it took up the whole block virtually. And so that was, you know, speaking of old history and so forth, I can remember when the Little Giant grocery store was on the corner of Sixteenth and State, and at that time Joe Albertson started his first store right there. And everybody were really, really mad at him because he was taking and driving the Little Giant out of business. [Laughs] And because he had such a big store. BB: Yes. FK: That was his first store and the first—so that was, boy, that goes back a long ways, but I can still remember that just as plain as day. So, yeah, there was some wonderful things that happened. Of course, Joe Albertson, of course, in his success, was wonderful for our state and city, but, and Morrison-Knudsen went across the street from their little yellow building to that great big building. And everybody was proud of the world headquarters of these people that were here. You know, that was big stuff, and Morrison-Knudsen was worldwide and well known and that was a real beautiful thing for Boise to have that. So those, the Albertson people, I don’t know, it seemed to me there was others that, Boise Cascade, remember, now it’s what? Just Boise now, and they aren’t even in the lumber business. So, John Fery, the president at that time, started the Idaho Community Foundation. Now it’s Hennessey who’s the director for that, so, you know, there’s so many things that get lost in history. The people who have done so many wonderful things for us that it’s really neat to know. It’s just like my dad was involved in saving the professional baseball in Boise. It used to be the Boise Pilots. It became the Boise Braves. And I think they still owe us money. [Laughs] He ended up having to give them the uniforms because they never made any money. BB: Yes. KF: So there’s just those kinds of things. The public schools and how they developed. Later it turned in to be East Junior High and so, you know, there’s an awful lot of changes in my lifetime in that out there. There used to be two bridges across the Boise River. So, and I don’t know how many there are now, but there’s more [laughs]. I used to walk underneath the old red bridge, across the river underneath the bridge, got on our hands and crawled through there. If my kids ever done that, I’d have killed them. BB: [Laughter] So neat. Let me pause this one real quick. END TRACK ONE