Paula Forney Interview

NARRATOR: Paula Forney INTERVIEWER: Brandi Burns DATE: November 17, 2010 LOCATION: Boise, ID PROJECT: Boise Mayor and City Council Members Project START INTERVIEW START TRACK ONE BB: This Brandi Burns of the Department of Arts and History. I am speaking with Paula Forney about her experiences on the Boise City Council at her home on 1403 Harrison Boulevard, Boise, Idaho. Today is November 17th, 2010. Now, I thought we could first get started by talking about your early experiences before the Council, so, if you grew up here or you moved here from somewhere? PF: I grew up in Fairfield, Idaho, and then I attended Boise State University and graduated in 1977. Then I moved to Washington, D.C., and worked for Senator McClure and ended up coming back to Idaho and worked for him for a total of eight years. And then I had a couple kids and just, you know, was a kind of stay-at-home mom, volunteer, that sort of stuff. BB: Yes, neat. So, could you talk a little bit about your experiences, I guess, in Washington. Did that help prepare you for the Council? PF: I think it did. Working for Jim McClure was, you know, a really great experience. He was, still is, a wonderful person, and, really, I don’t know how to describe him, but he, you know, depended on his staff a lot and if he asked us to do research on a project, you know, he probably already knew more about it than we did at the end of the project [laughs], but I think, you know, he demanded quality work and, you know, made us listen, and he did great constituent work with his constituents and so I think I did learn a lot and kind of used him as a model as to what a public servant should behave like. BB: Neat. Did you have any other jobs that might have, I don’t know, prepared you, or? PF: Oh, I had a special events business for awhile and, you know, I’ve done a variety of things. My degree was in education, and actually I never did teach but I think working with the senator and being involved in politics and volunteer work kind of showed me that, you know, to have a good community, people need to be involved and we need to always try to bring out people, you know, being involved in the community and we need to listen to them and try to get their input so we could help move the city forward is, you know, what we were kind of doing. BB: Great. Was there anything in particular that led you to be interested in city government at all? PF: No, not necessarily, other than, you know, I had been involved at the federal level and I guess when I was in college I’d done an internship at the State Legislature and had enjoyed that, and I’d always been interested in government, and in 1990 I had three kids and there was an opening on the City Council and at that time it was Mayor Kempthorne, he was looking for, someone had to resign, I think because of ill health, and so he wanted to appoint somebody, and I thought, “Well, gosh, that’s something I’d be interested in doing,” and so I put my name in the hat and was appointed, so, I didn’t really have a clue what I was getting into at the time. BB: Yes. I guess, was it different being appointed than when you ran to be elected? PF: Well, it was, and it was, you know, I appreciated Kempthorne appointing me. It gave me the opportunity to get in and get my feet wet, and then I had to run, I think, it was in two years. But, you know, at the time the city was involved with a lot of development and, you know, some huge, like Hulls Gulch and Castle Rock, some of those developments, and, you know, when I said I didn’t have a clue what I was getting into, boy, you know, that was a whole new experience for me and to really, you know, start learning about the whole planning and zoning process and the plats and conditions and conditional use permits and zonings, and, you know, I was totally unprepared for that but the staff was great and really helped get me up to speed pretty quickly. BB: Yes, wow. And you didn’t hold any other public office before you served on the Council, right? PF: No, no. BB: Okay. So, my next question sort of was dependent upon, you know, what it was like to be appointed and elected, but once you had served your first two years, was there anything that made you decide that you actually wanted to run for election? PF: Well, I felt like, you know, I’d invested a lot of time in those first two years of kind of learning the issues and learning the nuances of the city and, gosh, I went on tours of the sewer department and the airport and, you know, the department heads were all great to help get me educated, so I felt like, you know, then if I ran for election and was reelected, or to be elected the first time, that, you know, finally was valuable. I think that first year or so, you know, the learning curve was pretty steep. So I felt like, you know, after having learned that, I wanted to continue and see what I could do to help Boise. BB: Was there anything that, I guess in that learning curve period, that you thought was a little bit difficult or something that maybe came natural, or? PF: I enjoyed it all a lot, and I guess I was a little overwhelmed at the breadth of, you know, all the diverse things that the city was involved in, from, you know, the sewers to the airport to art to the library, you know, parks. It just seemed like it touched, you know, somewhere or some aspect of the city touched everybody’s life. And then trying to build relationships with the highway district and understanding that crazy relationship and the county and, you know, all those different nuances made it challenging and, you know, two days were never the same. And it made it pretty darned interesting. BB: I want to talk a little bit about that. I don’t know if I’d put it later. Yeah, I think I’m going to save these next two ones for later. I can never follow the questions exactly. I always have to skip around. I guess after, or if there was anything that you wanted to accomplish as a member of the City Council, were you aware of anything that you— PF: Well, I think one of the first projects I kind of brought to the forefront and thought we needed to proceed was getting curbside recycling going. And both Sara Baker and I were advocates of that. And so we, you know, really started educating ourselves and other members of the Council to try to show them the importance of why we needed to have recycling made as easy as possible and as convenient as possible for our citizens. And so we were able to get the blue bin recycling program going, and so I think that was probably one of the first major things that I, you know, still see in place today that I can think, “Well, that was a good thing to have started.” [Laughter] And then I was, I had been involved a little bit in Beaux Arts and, you know, a supporter of the arts in Boise and, you know, started seeing the correlation and importance of supporting the arts and having a strong arts community in the city really helped all the city. I mean, it just helped us build a better city with more interesting things going on, and I felt that, you know, it was important that we all kind of, you know, helped with funding or helped in the ways that we could to help support them so the arts communities could grow. BB: Let’s see here. I guess let’s talk a little bit about any experiences that you had with the Boise Art Commission. PF: Well, I served on a lot of different committees to select different public art projects so that’s, you know, it was fun to do, and it was always interesting to get more acquainted with the different art projects and, you know, and usually it would be a really diverse committee that would be on the selection. And somehow we’d always kind of come to consensus, it seemed like. They were not very contentious, but it would be kind of like for this location this is the right project. And I think, you know, looking around Boise, we do have some great public art and I think it’s really helped, you know. It brings a different dimension to our city, and I’m really proud of that, that we worked on that. One of the projects I was on was the piece at the Grove Hotel. And, you know, that was kind of a crazy project and, you know, it’s still controversial. Just the other day, somebody said, “Oh--, couldn’t--,” were quite negative about it, and I said, “Oh, you know, I was involved. You know, I met the artist and, you know, was really involved in helping to get that project to go forward.” And so, you know, not everybody likes every piece of art, but it causes some discussion and that’s fine, that’s good, and I’m glad now to see that the city, you know, has even taken it further. Now there’s a Department of Arts and History, and I think that’s good. And I also, when I was on the Council, I did support the effort to, you know, all the public projects, a certain percentage of funding had to be set aside to go to a public art project for any construction project. And so, I think that’s kind of concretes the whole concept that public art will, you know, continue to go on and that there will be money available for it. BB: Great. I think that kind of brought up a quick question about what other department, is it department liaison? PF: Liaisons, yes, yes. Gosh, I was on the Council I think for almost thirteen years, so over that time, I started out being the liaison to the bus, the Mayor’s Transit Advisory Committee, which eventually was done away with, but that was interesting, you know, to really get it and understand the bus rider-ship and all the different pieces and parts of trying to have a successful bus system in the city and, you know, the correlation between the fares and rider-ship and so that was, it was interesting. Then I was liaison at one time to Public Works, and that was always fascinating because of just the depth and, you know, the whole sewer system being so complex and all the different federal regulations and water quality and just all the nuances of that. I found that interesting as could be. And I was a police liaison. And, I’m trying to think, for awhile I was for Parks and Library and so, you know, really, I think, had a pretty good overall experience with it. I don’t think I was ever liaison to the airport, but that’s probably about the only one I wasn’t. BB: Yes. I mean, they cover so many different, you know, their scope of work is so different, so it’s a difficult comparison, but was there any one that you enjoyed the most being on, or? PF: No, they were all so different, you know. Each of them, and every department head was so different and, you know, different staffs. I just found each of them really rewarding, and I felt like being a liaison really gave me the ability to kind of get down in the trenches of that department and learn so much more about the ins and outs of how things really come together. Like, with the Parks, you know, and the seasonal workers and the turnover and trying to keep them on, and we came up with a bonus system that if they stayed on for X number of weeks they’d get a, you know, some kind of bonus at the end of that. And, you know, we just tried different little things that seemed to help, but again, you know, by being the liaison of it and really getting in and digging into the departments deeper, it gave me the knowledge and, you know, a much broader base of information, and I think it made me a better Council member because I was more informed about, you know, sometimes if you touch A then you have to touch B and then C moves and then D, you know. Nothing was ever easy [laughs], you know, lots of different moving parts. BB: Since we talked a little bit about transportation, that bus committee, I’d like to talk a little bit about the transportation in general that was going on while you were on the Council and, you know, what that regional transportation plan or whatever came of trying to do that. PF: Well, I think, boy, transportation in Boise, it’s so difficult because the roads are controlled by the Ada County Highway District, and so for a portion of the time when I was on the Council, you know, we really tried to step up and have a better relationship with the Highway District. We had joint meetings and I don’t know if that still exists. I don’t think it does. [Laughter] But it was real hard for us approving developments and not having control of our streets and the road capacity. And, you know, especially where I live here on Harrison, you know, the traffic was horrendous and continues to be now. But, you know, approving all these developments up in the Foothills and, you know, those cars have to go down the streets. And they’re all public streets so you can’t say, “Wait a minute. You can’t go down this street. You’ve got to go down that street.” And I think we all learned that, you know, everybody had to have some impact to the traffic, but we didn’t want any one area to end up with so much traffic impact that it affected their quality of life. So we tried to get into traffic calming and, you know, diversion of traffic, and then we did the Bench to Rivers huge transportation study, the Highway District and the city and COMPASS and everybody, and the county finally joined together and said, “You know, we’ve got to try to come up with some other routes.” And that’s when we, you know, we didn’t build it, but the Curtis—I can’t remember what it was called now--the Curtis Extension and the Orchard Extension and, you know, those different routes were approved to connect the Bench to the valley so that there would be better north-south movement in the community. And I think all those projects really were worthwhile. You know, at the same time, I was sitting on COMPASS—the regional planning board—and I think that’s, you know, we realized that, you know, Boise was being affected by traffic coming over from Eagle and we certainly are affected by traffic coming from Nampa and Caldwell and Middleton and, you know, so that you couldn’t just say, “Transportation is a Boise problem.” It was larger than that. And so we tried to approach it on a regional basis and, you know, the problem with it, I think the bottom line is, you know, it just takes so much funding to get it, like a successful bus system, going and to get a successful bus system working regionally, we’re dependent on federal money and the local governments don’t have much money to throw to the pot and the state government doesn’t participate and the state government doesn’t allow the local governments to have a local option tax. And so, you know, the hands are tied, and until we get a better funding mechanism, we’re going to continue to struggle with quality public transportation, you know, regionally or just city-wide. BB: So, since we talked a little bit about ACHD, you know, I’m always interested in the complexity of, you know, having your streets controlled by one entity and then, you know, the city government trying to plan for everything else. So, if you have anything to speak about that, I would love to hear it. PF: [Laughter] Well, it’s a complex issue, and I don’t know what the solution is. The voters chose to create the Ada County Highway District, I believe, back in the ‘70s. And once something like that’s set up, it’s really hard to do away with them. I think it might work better if the Ada County Highway District was a function of the county government and that the county commissioners controlled it because, you know, then you’d have at least one less political body involved in it. I don’t know if that’s realistic, if it would ever happen or not. We’ve, you know, had talks about it back then and I think those conversations still go on today. But it did make it difficult to say, “Okay, you know, we’re going to approve four hundred homes up the road,” and the Highway District would say, “Well, plan on four hundred homes, every home you’d figure ten car trips a day.” So, you know, where do those cars go and what roads and how do you try to divert them down this street as opposed to that street? You know, I think it’s imperative that the city and the Highway District have a very close working relationship, and in order, you know, to try to do the best they can with this system but, you know, it just sounds like, you know, everybody tries to protect their turf and it ends up with a bunch of political battles, and I think the staffs probably work better together than the elected officials do. And—at least I hope they do. It’s, I think this is the only, well, I know, the Ada County Highway District is the only highway district set up like this in the state of Idaho and I think it might be the only one in the country. BB: I think it is. PF: And, argh, it’s, you know, in my opinion, it’s really not the most efficient or effective way to have it, but so far we haven’t been able to get rid of it, so—just have to work within the, you know, the bounds of what we can. BB: Yes. PF: And, I don’t know, you know, really what the answer is other than trying to dissolve them and have it taken over by another body of government. So— BB: And while you were on the Council, you mentioned that, you know, the city tried to work really closely with ACHD, so was that relationship, I guess, how would you categorize that in, you know, the ‘90s. PF: Well, I think we started having all those joint meetings. And, because I think the community was frustrated, the neighborhoods were frustrated, and the neighborhoods—and the development community was frustrated, because the developer would take their project to the city and the city would say, “Well, we don’t like this, we don’t like that.” The neighborhoods would stand up and say, “Well, we don’t want all these cars coming down our streets.” And the Highway District would be saying, “Well, you know, this street’s engineered. It can handle this much traffic.” And the neighborhood people were saying, “Well, you know, we don’t care what the engineered capacity is. We want the quality of life capacity. And so I think as the developers were getting more frustrated and the community was getting more frustrated and the neighborhoods and, you know, the leaders, we finally said, “You know, this isn’t fair. We’re just sending everybody, and everybody’s pointing figures at each other, and we’re the leaders, we need to sit down and try to overcome some of this or try to make it a little more rational and reasonable for citizens.” And I think we did a pretty good job. We’d sit down and hash out different things, and a lot of times the Highway District would say, “Well, you know, if you want that study done, then you have to help us pay for it.” And so at that time we had, you know, a lot of development going on and we had, you know, developers had to pay fees and such, so we had a pretty good budget that we could say, “Okay, we’ll help fund this study or that study,” and try to come up with some solutions that will not just, you know, be against the developers or be against the neighbors but try to come up with some reasonable solutions to help make the process go smoother and to make our community more livable as it grows. And I think we did a pretty decent job with that. I’m sure now your budgets are a lot tighter. There’s not the development going on, you know, so in some ways that does relieve some of the issues that were associated with the traffic and transportation issues. But, you know, on the other hand, you know, you can’t have a stagnant community. It has to continue to grow and change to maintain its vibrancy. BB: I guess, would you like to talk a little bit about any plans for rail or other transportation systems besides cars, like in bike policies that are going on or--? PF: Well, I think Anne Hausrath—I don’t know if you’ve talked to her yet—but she was a real advocate for the bicycle community. And, you know, I think she really did a lot to get some bike paths going, and Boise’s now considered a very bike-friendly community. And I think that’s been good. Some of the weather makes it a little difficult in the winter months [laughs] for people to commute with bicycles. But as for the train and, you know, the whole rail concept, we, you know, I think got a little ahead of ourselves on that because we just don’t have the density to get people on the, you know, to support that kind of mass transit. And it’s very, very costly to build. It’s very costly to operate, and again, when we didn’t have a solid funding source and still don’t, it’s a little pie-in-the-sky to think that we’re ever going to get it. And it would be great to have it between Caldwell and Boise, I think, you know, commuters in the morning and night, and but, even so, I don’t know that there’s enough density of population that we could really make it viable to make it work. And I think, you know, this last couple years we’ve been talking about the streetcar and, you know, do we need a streetcar downtown, and now I own a business downtown, and, you know, I have real mixed emotions about it. I think if we have a streetcar, it needs to maybe go from the North End to Boise State, where, you know, there are parking issues in between and, you know, on both ends, and maybe people in the North End would hop on a street car and go downtown or go to Boise State. But just to get on a streetcar and ride around downtown, I don’t think that’s a viable use of money right now either. So, I think it has to serve a function and it has to, you know, help people solve a problem that they don’t have to park and they need to leave their car home. To drive their car downtown to pay for parking to hop on a streetcar to go, you know, ten blocks doesn’t make a lot of sense. But, you know, but it’s good that we’re talking about these kinds of things, and it’s good to keep things on the table and keep looking at different alternatives because, you know, air quality continues to be an issue here, and that goes right back to the automobile. BB: Could you talk a little bit about air quality, I guess, in the ‘90s? Was it a big concern then? PF: It was getting to be a concern, right, and with COMPASS, you know, we had the different tests and studies and, you know, I can’t remember all the different numbers but, you know, the numbers were trending in the wrong direction. And it was like, you know, we have to do something, and if we don’t, we’re going to lose federal funding. And it’s, you know, there’s so many different pieces to that. I mean, some people think that having cars idle at stop lights is part of the big problem. Other people think it’s the, you know, junker cars. And other people think it’s too many cars [laughs], and, you know, the list goes on and on. And, well, Boise has the—you know, you have to have your car tested for the emissions testing, you know, how many cars are coming here from Canyon County every day, and they didn’t have to have their car tested. So, you know, somehow that didn’t seem fair. But I think in the last couple years, Canyon County has been getting their emissions tested, because, you know, the air quality, it doesn’t just stop at the Ada County border. It certainly is a whole issue for the Treasure Valley, and I think, too, in this area, Boise and, most, you know, it’s a little more of an urban mentality and we’ve got people who’ve moved here from larger areas who’ve seen what happens when the air quality gets so bad. And yet out in Canyon County and Elmore County and Gem and some of the surrounding counties, it’s a little more of a rural attitude, and they don’t want the government telling them what to do. Don’t want, you know, don’t want to be testing my car, don’t want to be doing these things, and I’m not sure that we’ve done a good job of trying to educate everybody as to, you know, it’s going to hurt all of us if we don’t have good air quality. You know, it’s not just a city by city issue. It is truly a regional issue. BB: Let’s see here. How about any other planning initiatives that were taken during your time on Council? They can be anything. PF: Oh, boy. We planned and planned [laughs]. Let’s see, we did the parks’ comprehensive plan for the parks and then were able to charge impact fees, but we had to have a real, real solid basis as to what the parks were and where we wanted to go so we could show how and why we charge impact fees. And then we updated the Comprehensive Plan a couple times, and, you know, all the different regional planning and transportation planning we did. Sometimes it felt like we were planning and planning and planning, and a lot of money went towards that. We had, the Urban Land Institute came in a couple different times, and that was like experts from outside to come in and interview people and try to give us kind of an overview of, “This is what we see you’re doing right, this is what maybe you could do better, you know, these are some issues,” and I think having those kinds of analyses done of our city and of our processes really kind of helped us to be able to do things better. And I think everybody always had an attitude that we were always trying to make Boise a better place, a better livable community, and to use our resources wisely, but we all knew that we had to, you know, we just couldn’t be idle, and we had to be planning for the future because, certainly at that time, Boise was really growing and we weren’t sure, you know, how far we were going to go how quickly. But we were trying to stay ahead of the big problems that sometimes come along with that kind of growth. BB: I know I have a question about growth here. Okay, yeah. How did you feel about the growth as a City Council member and as a citizen, and I guess where was everybody going? PF: Well, you know, it’s a two-edged sword. You know, people used to say in Boise, “Oh, my gosh, there’s no place to, you know, there’s no good shopping in Boise, there’s no good shopping in Boise.” Well, then, what was it, twenty-two years ago, we got the Mall and then it wasn’t too long before everybody was complaining about the traffic out at the Mall [laughs]. But, you know, they wanted places to shop, and as a community grows, new opportunities have to arise and we have to be able to provide good-paying jobs, and if you don’t have growth and don’t have a strong economic base, you know, your community gets pretty stagnant pretty fast. So, I think having growth, you know, having too much growth too fast certainly, you know, was challenging, and, you know, the impacts of the traffic, the impacts of the air quality, the crime, you know, the schools’ impact, all those different aspects were hard for—or, not hard for the community but, you know, it did require some work and some concentrated effort on a lot of people’s part to work together and try to, you know, stay on top of things as much as we could to make it livable and to continually make Boise a better place, and I don’t know. I’m trying to think, you know. It seems like years before I was on the Council, they weren’t sure where to put the Mall, you know, and that was a mess. Some people wanted it downtown and some wanted it out and, you know, back and forth, back and forth, and nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened, and that certainly wasn’t good for the community. And then it was Mayor Kempthorne who said, “Okay, let’s get the players in the room and decide what we’re going to do,” and they decided to put the Mall out there, and that certainly set in motion a whole lot of different changes, because now—When the Mall in out there, that was just a sleepy little residential area. And it’s hard to believe now, you know, how it’s changed, and the spin-off of the growth, the traffic, all that. But, you know, I think it was a good decision and, you know, lots of follow-up decisions had to be made because of that. BB: Yeah. How about, well, two questions. First let’s talk about the largest areas that were, or the areas that were experiencing the most growth during this time, if you remember. PF: Well, West Boise certainly grew rapidly. And, you know, then the development in the Foothills and Southeast Boise, the whole Harris Ranch came in, and, oh, Wood Duck Island, and, you know, all those different developments out there. Columbia Village with, you know, Micron, and just—the city was growing in all different directions. It was pretty amazing. And I think what we were—you know, another aspect of all this was trying, you know, allowing the city to grow and to grow in a reasonable fashion and yet not damage or destroy the, you know, existing part of it. And that was part of the debate in the North End. You know, here you have this wonderful part of the community that has so much historic value and, you know, we didn’t want that to be destroyed by new development coming in and then, you know, forgetting about the North End or the East End or the older areas up on the Bench. We were afraid, you know, if we didn’t protect them and watch out for them and make sure that they continued to, you know, have reinvestment in them, we didn’t want that area to start going downhill and become kind of the inner city slum, and I think we did a really good job with all those different older neighborhoods of funding different projects to help make internal improvements in them and, you know, we were always conscious of the relationship with the schools there and trying to make sure that the existing part of Boise was protected and wasn’t going to be denigrated because of the new growth. And, you know, the new growth happened quickly, and I think, again, you know, working with the Highway District and the schools and stuff, we were trying to make the best decisions we could and make sure that we had pathways to intersect and interconnect communities so that people didn’t have to always jump in a car to go drive to the grocery store. There would actually be pathways that they could walk from Point A to Point B to Point C. And, you know, having safe areas and open space for kids and for adults so that it made for a more interesting community and it built character and some unique characteristics in communities so that, you know, it wasn’t just little cookie-cutter subdivisions [where] everything looks the same. And I think for the most part we did a good job with that. BB: Do you happen to remember any of the policies or programs that helped, you know, encourage investment in the older parts of Boise so that they didn’t— PF: Well, there’s the Neighborhood Reinvestment Program, and I think that still exists today. And you would ask neighborhood associations, you know, “You guys tell us what you want in your neighborhood,” and the neighborhoods would come up with different funding—or, you know, different improvements that they wanted in their neighborhood. And then we had a committee that would rate them, and, you know, we tried to spread the money around town, but I think that was really a key component. It gave the citizens in the neighborhoods ownership, and we were putting money back into the neighborhoods to help do what they wanted to, you know, have done. And we also started doing a couple public art projects in some of the little community parks, the little neighborhood parks, and I think they, you know, the citizens appreciated that and felt like that they weren’t being overlooked and that we, you know, did care about what was going on in their community, and it made their park a little more interesting and it gave it some new character. And, oh, I’m trying to think what else we did, but, I think, you know, that probably was one of the biggest, you know, just helping to reinvest back in the neighborhoods was good. BB: Great. Now, backtracking just a little bit, and I wanted to talk about downtown development, because it was stalled for so long, and I’m not for sure, you know, by the time you came on the Council, if things were really happening or if they were still a little limited? PF: They were moving along. You know, we had some public parking garages and there were, you know, some vacancies. The street had been torn up and, you know, new infrastructure put in there. But there were some good projects going. It was long before BoDo and all that, but it seemed that people were starting to, you know, feel better about downtown, and the Downtown Boise Association had been formed a few years beforehand—I think it was in the early ‘80s—and, you know, they were making a concentrated effort on, you know, making Boise clean, safe, you know, fun, trying to help recruit new businesses in downtown and then support the ones that were there, and helped provide a little better streetscape. The CCDC was working on, you know, putting some money into art projects and better lighting, and I think those dollars, those public dollars, really helped pay off. And, you know, downtown still struggles and I think, you know, it was devastating last year that Macy’s closed. That was a tough blow to everybody downtown. But, you know, things seems to be, you know, kind of—they continually change [laughs], and I think that’s okay, you know. It seems like we’re coming along and I think, you know, BoDo’s been an interesting new component and, I think, we’ve worked really hard—and that was another thing we were working on when I was on the Council, was trying to get more housing downtown. It seems like we were able to get some housing downtown, but most of it’s in the higher end, and so then trying to get more affordable housing downtown and that’s difficult because the land is more expensive and the developments cost more to do on a small space, and again, a lot of the Idahoans like roomier things. They want a big backyard. They want to have their dogs and stuff. And, you know, living in a downtown urban community, there’s some things, you know, that change with that. And so it’s going to be slow catching on. I think it’s a little slower than we’d hoped. But there are getting to be more people living downtown, and I think that’s really a key component of all this, is we’ve got to get more people living in the downtown to help support the downtown businesses and restaurants to really take it to the next level. And with the economy the way it is right now, you know, that’s tough, and, you know, some of the downtown projects that looked like they were just going to be gangbusters haven’t worked out as well because the economy just dropped out. And I feel bad for the developers that, you know, tried. It’s been tough. BB: Let’s see, real quick. I guess we covered that—what was downtown Boise like when you were on the Council. How about we talk a little bit about open space and the Foothills Levy in 2000? PF: Right, the Foothills Levy. That was, you know, a big deal. And we weren’t sure if the voters would go for it or not, but I think we kind of had the right mix of people involved in it and it was kind of the right time. People were doing pretty well. The economy was pretty strong. And I think people were starting to really understand that something was special about Boise, and the bike paths, the Foothills, the different paths, and I think a lot of people with vision could see that, you know, we need to protect this, and if we don’t step up and be willing to pay for it, it could go away. And a lot of the people who owned land in the Foothills had been very generous and very nice about allowing people access, you know, to walk through and, you know, have a path up in the Foothills, but, you know, the developers and landowners started saying, “You know, we don’t have to do this and it may not be like this forever.” And so I think people started understanding that and were willing to go out and vote to support the levy. And that was a great thing that that passed because we were able to purchase different lands and have a lot of connectivity that otherwise we wouldn’t have had. You know, I don’t think in this day it would pass just because the economy is so much slower, and I think probably people, some of the people in the county, thought we were crazy, but it worked, and I think, you know, we all had made a commitment. You know, we knew how important it was to have parks for kids to play in and, gosh, we had the Optimists’ football, and that’s the other side of all this. I mean, we have so many different groups in Boise that have been so generous, and the Optimists came to us and said, “Well, if you guys, if the city will buy this land, then we will pay for all the improvements to have the Optimists football move out there,” on the old Highway 55— BB: What is Optimists’ football, if you don’t mind me interrupting real quick? PF: Oh, it’s a young kids’ football program, and on Saturdays it’s just packed. And they used to always play their games at Capital High on Saturdays from, you know, they’d be there from seven in the morning till seven at the night, just running little kids through there, and now it’s up on Hill Road and old Highway 55 and it’s a phenomenal park. And, you know, but what a great partnership that we had with the Optimists and that whole community. And, you know, then the same thing with the Kathryn Albertson Park and the Julia Davis and Ann Morrison [parks] and then the Simplots donated land for the Esther Simplot Park, and to have a community that was so generous and so willing to give has been, you know, Boise’s very fortunate. And, I’m trying to think, there were other partnerships that we had with the other, like the Optimists. I’m not thinking what they all were right now, but, you know, a lot of it wasn’t just taxpayers’ dollars. It was using the taxpayers’ dollars, and we could use that as leverage to get money from the community or from grants or something so we could do more with less, and I think when you look at Boise now, you know there’s a pretty darn good park system and bike and pathway system, whether it be the Greenbelt or the Foothills, but the connectivity has made it a much more livable, healthy city than it could have been without that. And just thinking back at the Greenbelt, I mean, when that first was proposed back in the ‘70s, I think, you know, people thought that was a Communist plot or something. You know, it’s like, “What are you going to do with this?” And now that’s probably the most popular recreation in our city is, you know, on Saturdays and Sundays you can’t even hardly get on there. And it goes clear out to Eagle, you know, it’s just fabulous, it’s a wonderful amenity that helps make Boise what it is today. And, you know, you’ve got people clear back in the ‘70s proposed it and felt it was the right thing to do, and, you know, everybody bought into it all along and it’s been great. But, I think, you know, we really have to credit those people back then for having some vision and sticking to it. But it made it a whole lot easier for us and our roles when we were serving on the Council, you know. BB: Yeah, great. Let’s see here, now, this one kind of falls almost a little bit, almost at the beginning of your, on the Council, it was the Boise Visions Plan, and so I didn’t know if you really came into that a lot or— PF: Well, Boise Visions I think was, yeah, kind of going on in the ‘90s— BB: Yeah, because it was like ’89 to ’92, and you got on on ’91, so— PF: Yeah, I think, it was in the works and that, but that was a good base. I mean, I was able to learn a lot from that, and I really didn’t have a lot of input into it, I don’t think. I mean, the committees had all been set up and stuff. But I think that was a good review for us at that time to kind of understand kind of what our baseline was, that this is where we are and this is where we’d like to take the city and community. And it would be interesting now to go back and read some of their recommendations and see how many of those we really accomplished, but—not just the Council that I served with, the Councils that I served with, but even, you know, on down now, but—And I think the Comprehensive Plan is being updated again now? BB: Yeah, I think it’s gone through a draft phase. PF: Yeah, I think so. BB: And probably up for public comment pretty soon, yeah. PF: But I think that’s part of the process. I mean, you know, the whole thing has to continually be evolving, because we can’t just, you know, sit there on old plans and say, “Well, this is the way it was and this is the way we need to do it,” because situations change and funding changes and so, you know, sometimes those are new opportunities and sometimes doors are closed, and so it makes sense to continually be reviewing and updating all those plans. BB: Great. Yeah. Okay, let’s see here, I wanted to talk about the dynamics of the Council, you know, under Kempthorne and then again under Coles, and just sort of, you know, how you guys worked together? PF: Well, they were different, you know, and the different personalities, you know, again, that was always changing and that was good. Kempthorne was, he was very good and inclusive and he, I think, wanted to, he came into office at a difficult time and, you know, he wanted to see things, he wanted to see the players get together and compromise and move forward and make some decisions instead of just arguing all the time. And I think he accomplished that and he was good to pull in a Council member or two on certain issues, and he had a way of kind of reading people and reading who was interested in what and who could come to the table and maybe help influence some decisions. Mayor Coles was like that, I think, at first. I think he’d learned a lot from Kempthorne; he’d worked with him for a long time. Brent had been on the Council a long time. And then, over time, as Mayor Coles brought in some of his advisors, that was a very difficult time at the end of my last couple years. He, you know, I think every member of the Council had gone to Mayor Coles and told him at different times he was getting bad advice, and, you know, the Council had been pretty much isolated and it was an entirely different working situation at the end of Mayor Coles’ term as when he first started. And that was really too bad, I felt. You know, I think when he first started he really tried hard and he really wanted to work with everybody and had some good ideas and, you know, certainly I give him a lot of credit for the Foothills Levy. I think that he really spearheaded that and got some good people involved with it. But, as things went on, he just became much more exclusive and much more, well, he was manipulated and then he manipulated. And it’s too bad, because I really look at that and it was a real black mark on the city and on, you know, each of our, each of our time of service. I think a lot of people look back and say, “Oh, she was there when Brent Coles was there,” you know, like, as if, you know, any one of us could have done anything much differently because we were all given different information at different times. And when we kind of went through it and unraveled it all, it was a pretty big mess. BB: Yeah, yeah. This project is about giving, you know, what everybody remembers about their whole Council time. And so I try to stay away from the controversy, but then again I still have to ask some questions, like, what was it, you know, like maybe under Mayor Terteling-Payne, you know, how was that situation that one year? PF: I think, you know, Carolyn had been on the Council and had, you know, been, you know, aware of the problems of Mayor Coles and of his chief of staff and had been a victim of a lot of that—as all of us had been. And the lack of communication that had taken place. And she had a real good handle on, I think, how the city employees felt betrayed and how, you know, everybody felt betrayed, and nobody knew who to trust or who, you know, who was lying to them and who wasn’t. And so she really opened up some great communication roads that she—I remember the first, I think, week she was in as mayor, she sent out a weekly e-mail to the city employees that basically said, you know, “This is what’s going on this week, these are kind of the highlights, these are the lowlights, this is what we’re anticipating,” and I can’t tell you how many city employees just felt like, “Oh, my gosh, this is so refreshing, to finally be kind of back in the loop and to be treated as if we are part of the team and that our input is important and that we are valued here,” because I think morale had sunk pretty darn low. And it was a very difficult time, and a lot of deception had taken place and a lot of, you know, just some really good people lost their jobs and some not-so-good people lost their jobs [laughs], but it was a very difficult time, and I hope, you know, at some point we can all look beyond that. But, you know, that was, that was part of what we went through, and it was really too bad because Brent had a lot of good qualities and he did a lot of good things for the city, and I don’t know if he let his ego or greed or pride or, you know, what get in the way, but he allowed something to overcome him to where he really was no longer effective and really was—you know, I certainly didn’t trust him the last, you know, the last year or so that he was serving, and that made it real—a lot of tension and, you know, and then that created the atmosphere the Council members, you know, you weren’t sure if you could trust and believe, you know, it just made the whole situation between Council members and Mayor’s staff and everybody much more difficult, and it really took a lot of the fun out of the job. BB: What a great—like, from ’91 up to that, I mean, it seemed like a great time to be on Council. PF: Oh, yeah, it was great. BB: And it’s sad that it ended that way and that that’s what everybody remembers— PF: Right, right. BB: --Is just those last few years there. PF: Yeah, and that’s really too bad. And, you know, because up until that point, you know, anybody could disagree on an issue or disagree on what they saw as the solution or, you know, vote, one person voted “Yes,” one person voted “No,” explained their rationale, and we still respected each other as Council members and as individuals. But a lot of that I think got swept under the table as, you know, all the other stuff happened. The environment was just so filthy that it really tainted everything and everybody, and it was too bad. BB: Well, hopefully we can end on some positive feelings here [laughter]. These last couple questions I hope will be good. What did you feel were some defining moments for yourself during your time as a City Council member? PF: Gosh [laughs], I’ve kind of just have put all of this out of my mind, but I think I was respected when I was on the Council. I think people knew I’d do my homework and that I would, you know, do an honest job, and if I voted one way or the other, I could always explain why I voted the way I did and defend the way I voted, whether you agreed with me or didn’t. And, you know, like I mentioned the recycling program, another project, well, another partnership that we did that I still kind of get involved in, but the West “Y” and the Boise City pool, the city pool out there. We had a group of citizens who came to us and said, “We need a 50-meter pool in this city,” and I agreed, but we didn’t have the funding to do it and then I was on a committee for the “Y” and they said they wanted to build a “Y,” and so a bunch of us got our heads together and said, “What if we had a partnership?” You know, “Is this something we could accomplish?” And it took us, you know, a lot of years, but again, you know, citizens in Boise were so generous and they donated money to move the “Y” forward, and the city, we were able to finally, you know, get some money budgeted so we could move forward on that pool, and so that was one of the first YMCA-city projects in the country. And, in fact, I had an e-mail yesterday from Jim Everett asking if I could meet with a group of, a delegation coming from DesMoines, Iowa, that they’re looking to do something like that, and they want to come and meet with the people who made that happen. And, I mean, over the years, I can’t tell you how many different communities have come to Boise to look at that as a model. And, I think, you know, by having the attitude, “How can we accomplish this?” as opposed to, “Oh, my gosh,” you know, “What are we going to have to overcome to make this happen?” You know, and a lot of people look at things that way, that, well, “We can’t do it because we don’t have the funding. We can’t do it because,” you know, “we can’t, we can’t, we can’t.” And I usually tried to have the attitude that, “Okay,” you know, “if this is something the community wants, how can we get the right people involved and the right dynamics going so we can move this forward?” And I think that paid huge dividends for me personally and for the community. It, you know, just having a good attitude and always trying to find, “Okay, that’s a roadblock, well, then, how are we going to solve that problem? Let’s see if we can’t solve the problems along the way and continue down the road to accomplish what we want to accomplish.” BB: Yes. PF: So that was good, and then one other thing I think that I kind of pushed everybody on was, we had some dark moments with our police department and some shootings and, you know, it was pretty bleak in there for awhile, and we had part of the community calling for like a citizens’ advisory board for public safety, and I wasn’t sure if that was the answer, to have a citizens’ review committee. We didn’t think we needed citizens really involved in telling us how to run the police or fire department, but, you know, I just couldn’t let go of that thought. I kept thinking, “Something’s got to change here.” And finally, one night at a Council meeting, I just said, “It’s time for us as a city to look at doing things differently in this arena, and I think we need to consider having a public safety committee,” where I’m not sure I ever would have supported a public safety committee, but by saying that in public, it kind of helped generate more support that, “Yeah, we need to be reviewing how we’re doing things,” and then I went to Mayor Coles and said there was a conference, I believe it was down in Long Beach, about, you know, police oversight and how, you know, different types of oversight and how are we going to do this, and I don’t think the mayor was very happy that I wanted to go to this conference but he supported it, and so I think two police officers and I went to that conference and came back with a lot of different information, a lot of different contacts, and one of the models that we looked at there was the ombudsman. And so, you know, different people of us, we explored different possibilities and then we ended up with the ombudsman, which I think Pierce Murphy’s done a fabulous job for the city of Boise, and, I think, you know, some changes took place and it was a real positive thing. So when I look back, I’m pleased that I was involved in that. BB: Perfect. I just need to pause this. END TRACK ONE