Stephen: You sound like you are a fireman. If the Fire District did all the things you say they did (and I believe you) they certainly were not very effective. They only got 10% of the people who came to the polls because they WANTED TO VOTE. I can’t believe 90% of the people voting didn’t care about fire protection or a tax increase.

I was astonished to hear about this election yesterday (Wednesday). I drive by the Floating Feather firehouse frequently. I listen to local radio most of the day, watch at least one local news channel every day, I subscribe to the Statesman, the Idaho Business Review and Valley Times, and I read all three pretty thoroughly. At no time was my eye caught by any notification of this special election. I expect I would have voted in favor but this is just ridiculous – just a sign at the other polling places would have been helpful, or a reminder from a poll watcher.

The appearance is that this was a sneaky deal and I don’t like it. This should have been on the ballot at every polling place.

Eagle should have done more than just announce it in the newspaper and they owe it to their citizens to do a better job of getting the word out.

With newspaper subscriptions declining at an alarming rate nationwide, it is time to re-think the notification standards we’ve relied upon for years. The old timers who set up those standards were of a different period of time when most of the population relied on their newspapers for the news. They knew if they put it in the paper, the word would get out. Sadly, those days are quickly fading away.

Anymore when I hear that I should have known because it was announced in the newspaper, it tells me right off that person is out of touch. Today, many quality professional jobs aren’t even announced in the newspapers, it just isn’t like it once was…

There isn’t a newspaper in the nation that wouldn’t like to go back to those days and many are trying to keep up by changing formats and including Internet coverage, but for many it has been too little, too late.

Hopefully, we’ll have the Statesman around for a long time yet, but it’ll need to continue to make changes to survive. Meanwhile, don’t rely on them or any other newspaper to be the only source for important public announcements. It doesn’t work like it used to.

I talked to one person who was mad when we talked about this. He later admitted when we talked that he had been handed a brochure at his house by a fire man, but threw it away without reading it so “probably missed seeing where to vote” (even though he had a chance to find out when he was contacted). Instead, he felt they should have called him personally to remind him and give directions! Is that what the 90 percent who didn’t vote in the primary election felt also? I agree that having signs put up at the voting locations in the District would have been helpful, but people would still have had to go there to see them.

The intention was obviously to keep the election well below the radar. Only “friends of Friend” were invited to vote. I read the Statesman cover to cover, and never saw any notice. No posters, flyers or any form of notice was present at the regular polling places. And firemen visiting their friends with flyers doesn’t make it. Shame on Chief Dan Friend, and Commissars Steve Guerber, Gary Stillwell and Bill Stone.

Yep, OK, so what the Eagle Fire Department did was legal.
So what?
There are a lot of things you can do that are legal that still aren’t nice.
From simple things like letting a door slam into the face of the person behind you, standing there laughing while a woman with two children and three bags of groceries in her arms struggles to open a heavy door, sneezing directly toward someone’s face to bigger things such as allowing (or doing) development of housing projects in flood planes, hitting a pedestrian crossing where there isn’t a crosswalk, or failing to do everything you can to let your constituents know about an upcoming election, or … well, take your choice from among things our gov, prez, lawmakers etc. do …
Well, you get the idea.
Just cuz it’s maybe legal doesn’t necessarily make it right.
As someone once said, “There are a lot of good ways to be bad and a lot of bad ways to be good.”
Likeways, there are bad ways to be good (legal), and there may be good ways to be bad (Say, such as breaking into someone’s locked home while they’re away, to extinguish a fire, just for one).
I wonder about the person who threw away the brochure — did the fireman just hand it to him and say, “Here’s a brochure.” Or did he hand it to him and say, “This will tell you about the bond election you might want to vote in” or somesuch?
Could make a major difference in readership, I suspect.

\

Whynotski –
Obviously you approve of misleading or limiting voters knowledge.

I hope no one takes down any of the signs where you ski, you might have problems figuring out you’re options … as the voters did.

Seems the Eagle Fire District borrowed a page from the same playbook that Meridian Schools and Boise Schools use for their bond elections. Do something questionable, but be sure to keep it (barely) legal. As the Statesman advocated in an editorial today (6/1/06), it’s time to change the law.

Guardian readers should consider contacting their legislators before the November election, and again afterward, and ask that they introduce legislation to change the law so that Fire District election polling places are the same as the primary and general election polling places. This is a statewide issue. It’s not limited to Eagle.

Phone calls and emails to follow up on your original request should help keep the issue high on your legislator’s priority list. Friends and family can pitch in also. The more the merrier. Send your legislator, family, and friends a copy of this Guardian article to bolster your case.

Also, don’t forget to ask your legislator to allow, maybe even require, cooperative election cost sharing agreements between the various election groups (county, fire districts, etc.) to help keep the cost to us taxpayers down.

As to legal notices, publishing in the local general circulation newspaper is fine, but maybe it’s time to change the law on this also. Maybe readers can suggest to their legislators that the legal notice also be required to be posted on the agency website – if the agency has one, of course.

And Eagle Fire District residents, you might want to elect a new group of Fire Commissioners when the opportunity presents itself.

Nothing like turning the heat up right?

JQP

Perhaps Mr. Gerber should have been enthusiastic in his TV appearance? Or did he have have a right to be somewhat offended at the request of a small group of people that aren’t happy with the effort made to inform them of an election that the three Commissioners now deny the voting rights of the 300 people who actually voted, thus violating both the Idaho and the U.S. Constitutions? How many people should have voted to make the legal process that the District followed “really” legal? 500 people? 1,000 people? How much visibility is enough? Seems like this isn’t as simple as some would have us all believe. Should the District actually declare this vote null and void and start over again as demanded? Is this something that we should expect everytime a group of people are unhappy with the outcome? Think about it. I agree that this needs to be solved by changing the rules if they are inadequate, but not by changing the outcome after the fact beause the existing guidelines didn’t work.

The Eagle Volunteer FD (funny that they are dependant on full-time, paid staff, but still called a “volunteer” FD) continues to exercise good judgement (not!). Now they are in hot water over their “nut feed” ads. What is going on over there? Being in the media in a negative light twice in a few weeks is not such a good plan to gain & maintain the respect and loyality of the community.

Seriously huge amount of whining on this page.

“Stealth” election? Seriously? 300 people voted, information was handed out door to door, public notices were posted, television appearances were made…that’s your definition of stealth?

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

If they followed the letter of the law and that’s not “good” enough for you…make the necessary adjustments to the law, don’t bitch and moan about the results.

EDITOR NOTE–Doubt if it ever happens again, thanks in part to the “whining.” It was confusing and simply wrong to have a single precinct for one issue and 7 precints for the other issues on the same election day. Do YOU think 2,700 people who took the time to vote that day made conscious decision to NOT VOTE on the fire station?