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Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Boise Valley Chamber Exits Valley for Junket to S.V.


Valley Taxpayers To Fund Chamber Of Commerce Junket
by David R. Frazier (Boise Guardian)

For the 20th year citizens of Treasure Valley will be asked to fund a SUN VALLEY JUNKET for various elected officials and government staffers to learn about making Boise and the surrounding area more appealing to businesses and tourists.

The Chamber of Commerce website post says:
This year’s theme will be: “Building Livable Cities in the Boise Valley.” And what better location to begin the building process than 180 miles away in Sun Valley? Interesting how many folks follow each other to the “leadership” conference.

Sun Valley has benefited financially over the years as local officials leave their home territory to listen to a menu of speakers selected by the Chamber. They never seem to be able to have it in Boise, Nampa, or Meridian.

For years the GUARDIAN has written about the absurdity of leaving town in order to plan methods of promoting our towns. The event is funded by taxpayers, but taxpayers are generally frozen out of attendance by the $450 admission fee, $300 lodging, and transportation to get there. Such luxury is only affordable by executives, public servants, and those who own their own businesses.

The standard excuse for spending Boise area tax dollars in Sun Valley is to “gather leaders in an area where they won’t be tempted to leave or be distracted by other business.” That translates to kidnapping the deciders who hold the purse strings without having to account to the masses.

Another benefit of going so far away is the almost total lack of public scrutiny. Not only are citizens effectively priced out of attendance, the media outlets generally ignore the event as “not newsworthy,” especially as they struggle for financial survival.
 
Editor Note: It will be interesting to note how many Canyon County politicos will be attending this event on the local taxpayer dime.  THE GUARDIAN will be checking to see who will be attending from Canyon County on the taxpayer dime.

3-13-2013
1. Mayor Tom Dale will indeed be attending this event.  So far the Canyon Commishes are not scheduled to attend.
2. Mayor Garrett Nancolas is currently out of town in Washinton DC attending the National League of Cities junket. His scheduled is noting he will be out of the office on the dates of the Sun Valley Junket.  More on this when the Mayor's Secretary returns to work.
3. None of the Canyon County Commissioners will be attending this meeting.
4. Email from Mayor Nancolas stated he is not going on this trip out of town.  3/26/13.

3 comments:

  1. It's good to know Nampas mayor won't miss out on a hand out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. H'mm. Chamber of Commerce, special interest groups, high priced closed door meetings with expensive dinners, and entertainment. All this expense on the hard earned taxpayers dime. Doesn't sound to me that Team Tom and Company have the interest of the people on their minds.
    Maybe some of us taxpayers that have the means and a RV should go up there and scout around and see what they are doing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Does anyone remember the campaign material to renew the old North Nampa Urban Renewal program? One item listed was $9 million for a new library after the $5 million for the Market Place infrastructure, est. $16-$18 million for the King's RR overpass and est. $6-$8 million for widening of Guarrity Blvd. Another item after the library was an I-84 Robinson Road interchange. The urban renewal was soundly defeated.
    I have not heard from anybody that knew what happened next, but I know that Dale, who jumped into bed with Ada County's MPO COMPASS and promoted COMPASS to be the Metropolitan Planning Organization for the Nampa Urbnized Area, asked Clair Bowman, COMPASS Executive Director, to get gas tax funding from ITD for both the King's RR overpass and widening of Garrity from Lakeview Park to the I-84 interchange. Total failure - COMPASS could not deliver and Dale could not wait. Result: the $33 million GO BOND. Just think: $28 million property taxes for gas tax funded projects. Dale forgot to mention that this bond MAX'ed out Nampa's bonding capacity. That is why the public could never put forward a bond to build a new library.
    There is more to the story. Nampa will never, ever recover from Dale's legacy monuments.

    ReplyDelete

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