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City Government

Mayor Hotline November 28 to December 5

 December 8, 2009 ⋅  Post a comment

MORE AND MORE ANTI STREET CAR, HOMELESS FIRE SAFETY, SMOKE FREE PLEA, TRASH TALK
Note–The GUARDIAN deleted one particularly rude rant aimed at the Mayor which was of a personal nature.

11/29/09
Jerry T. Fields
806 E. Riverpark Ln.
Boise, ID 83706
342-4478
Streetcar: In regards to the streetcar to nowhere and the proposal to have a special tax
assessment to pay, I’m adamantly opposed to it; it’s a misuse of funds and it’s not taking into
consideration the best interests of the people of the City of Boise. The federal grant of $60
million or whatever, is paid for by, duh, us the taxpayers. To spend money for something that is
not necessary, will not help the economy in downtown, will not help pollution, will not help traffic
flow, it’s a waste of time when you have so many people living in their cars without homes.
Let’s get our act together there, Mayor “egg” Bieter. Thank you.

11/27/09
Wendy Ripley
5709 Cassia St.
Boise, ID
344-8709
Curb It: I’m one of your taxpayers and I’m calling to report one of the most stupid things that
I’ve dealt with recently, but it begs the issue of the whole liability of your Recycle the Fall
curbside leaf collection. My paper bags full of leaves have been sitting on the edge of my
property off and on for three weeks because when you don’t pick them up we have to pull them
back off the street, then put them back out. Of course in the last three weeks we’ve had rain, so
the bags are becoming soaked. After calling once two weeks ago and being assured they’re
sorry they missed the pick-up and not having it occur, I called again today. Finally somebody
did come after several calls to both Allied and to the curbside number, finally somebody did
come and picked ours up today. I informed them at the same time that it would seem wise to
me for whoever is picking them up to also pick up my neighbor’s that has been sitting here for
three weeks as well. But, of course, that doesn’t fit into a bureaucratic system, so I just returned
to find that my leaves have been picked up but my neighbor’s leaves are still sitting there. So,
somebody’s got to spend more taxpayer money to come get the leaves that were still sitting
here a hop, skip, and a jump from my house, no more than five minutes worth of extra effort,
and let’s hope that somebody does pick them up before the 4th when your program is no longer
operable and then they would have to find a way to discard them themselves. But, you know,
it’s just stupid; this is stupid program with restrictions up the ying-yang and yet when you don’t
follow your own deadlines, the answers I’m getting from Allied is, “We don’t know what
happened, sorry we only work at the desk.” Even though I was impressed with Peter in the
other office, he even couldn’t give an answer, other than to say it was fallibility. Well, I’ve got
another answer for it; it’s call bureaucracy that doesn’t work, that’s more concerned about
getting paid from the taxpayer at the point of threat, but not delivering on this wonderful new
garbage program that we’ve got. None the less, I’m going to go on record as informing you that
if anybody does not pick up my neighbors leaves, I will make a big deal out of this because this
is absurd and it just kind of helps the cause for not having a stupid trolley car in the City of Boise
because it’s just bound to have more bureaucratic snafus and ridiculous cost to taxpayers with
nothing in return. So, just wanted to let you know that I’m pretty much fed up with the ineptness
of what’s going on here and will probably play as much of a role as I can in defeating the stupid
trolley idea as well. Thank you and feel free to call me back.
Action Taken: left msj

11/28/09
Frank Baldwin
Box 8353
Boise, ID 83707
353-9408
Community House: I’m calling from the lavatory in the Community House. I would like to
report some horrible conditions here, psychological conditions of this confinement. I’m living in
the Community House right now because I’m homeless; I don’t have enough money to live in an
apartment just yet and I’m working on some self-employment. Employees at the fire access
entrance/exit from the cafeteria open into a small courtyard and the only ingress/egress is
through a small passageway between a fence and the side of the building out into the alley in
the back west side of the Community House property. If the cafeteria were to catch fire, there
would be way too many people to exit safely through that bottleneck. I thought you would like to
know this. There are no windows in this building; it’s almost like being in a concentration camp.
It’s no wonder the homeless are feeling so rejected and persecuted. It’s almost like being in a
concentration camp like the Jews suffered in the sense that we don’t get tattooed, we get mostly
tattooed so our whole personalities are tattooed for the rest of our lives, and we’re scared to
dickens and we get caught and accused of crimes that are circumstantial and unnatural and it’s
false. The trouble is that more detail is unavailable to us; we’re poor people and we can’t get
jeopardy by …inaudible…Thanks, bye
Action Taken: left msj
BFD

11/30/09
Greg Loosley
891-1680
Christmas Decorations; Hello, I would like to complain about the Christmas decorations
downtown. The wreaths they hung up are all matted and have been in a box. When you take
those out of the box you’ve got to straighten the little fake pine needles and make them all fluffy
and pretty. I mean it looks like they got them out of the dump and put them up there. It’s been
this way for a few years and I think it wouldn’t take that much time to fluff them before you hang
them up. I mean, they make enough money they can fluff the wreaths.
DBA

11/30/09
Betty Murdoch
508 S. Phillippi
Boise, ID
345-0585
Streetcar: I’m so against the streetcar. It’s going to tear up the streets up there; it’s going to
cause a lot of problems for the businesses. Those streets are not that wide. It will raise the
property taxes. I have talked to so many people; I have not talked to one person who is in favor
of this and yet you ignore when they take a count on this or people call; you just seem to ignore
this. I don’t understand. I hope to goodness that this doesn’t go through because I can’t afford
any more property taxes and neither can my friends. I don’t understand…you talk about it as a
business…I guess maybe that’s what it is, but they can’t afford it either; they’re not hiring
because they have problem. Please, please don’t do this. Thanks.
Action Taken: contacted

11/30/09
Kathryn Tuhkanen
502 S. Phillippi St.
Boise, ID 83705
Streetcar: I am a homeowner, taxpayer, and citizen of Boise, Idaho. I am calling to state that I
think the trolley system downtown needs to be scrapped for now. The economy is too
precarious. There is a very good bus system that works better downtown, even as close to
downtown as I live on Phillippi St. It’s not, in my opinion, a wise choice, and definitely there
should be no unnecessary taxes, anything like that being done right now when people are
unemployed, citizens are being laid off, state workers employment is precarious; the Governor
has ended insurance for retired state workers. It is not the time to be spending money on things
such as that, and thank you for the opportunity to leave my opinion. Good bye.

12/1/09
Kris Stroh
440-4333
Collections: I own a small property management firm and I’ve just gotten off the phone with
Jenifer Watkins who, I’m sorry, I’m a little upset. BFI has just picked up my dumpster in an
apartment complex so I have tenants who don’t have any place to put their trash. I have proof
of payment from the bank that the check has been – I guess there’s a lock-box system in your
system since the 20th. Jenifer Watkins is saying that they won’t put the dumpster back until
there’s a payment and a deposit paid. Like I said, I’ve got proof from my automatic bill-pay that
the check has been…or not proof, I’ve got the printout from the payment from my website that
says you’ve had the check since the 20th and I don’t know if I’m hitting her at ten minutes to five
on a bad day; it just doesn’t seem fair to me. So, can you please call me in the morning?
Again, this is an issue for the Foothills Apartments over at the corner of 5th and Ada, and I am
going to email these three printouts of proof of payment to Jenifer Watkins. So hopefully,
maybe we can get this straightened out tomorrow so I don’t have stuff piling up all over. Thank
you.
Action Taken: contacted

12/2/09
Dian Berger
5639 E. Gateway Dr.
Boise, ID 83716
383-0075
Smoke Free Boise: I’m calling the Mayor’s Office to ask them to pass a comprehensive smokefree
ordinance and protect all workers in our community and Boise. Thank you.
Action Taken: left msj
12/2/09
Anonymous
Holiday Parade?: I was just trying to get hold of somebody to find out some information about
the city parade but let me try another couple of places. Thank you.
12/3/09

Anonymous
Streetcar: I have a comment about the streetcar. The downtown area right now has enough
problems trying to keep small businesses and people there. It seems like the city would try to
do more to lower the amount businesses have to pay or property taxes or so on rather than
trying to put a streetcar in and put this excess amount of money and have businesses pay for it.
I’m a business owner and it seems like every time you turn around all the city is trying to do is
put tax on top of tax on top of tax. People don’t want to even go downtown any more, you
know, there’s very few things that you have to go downtown for. You can go about any place
else; you can go out to Meridian, you can go to the malls to buy the same things that you can
get downtown. You start putting the excess taxes and taxing businesses on this streetcar issue,
you’re just going to start losing more businesses, then what’s going to happen? You’re going to
sit there with a streetcar that’s going to look nice and pretty and who’s going to pay for it? The
people will have to pay for it because you’re going to have a default on what you need to pay.
Just like everything else, what you need to do is improve the bus service and do different type of
buses or trolleys or something else, and improve that instead of trying to add something else.
You haven’t been able to get your bus line service organized and work as well, and now you’re
trying to do something else. It’s time the city opens their eyes and realizes that the city and
government seems like every time they turn around and do is a losing proposition and it costs
the people money. We turn around and the economy is not growing and the taxes keep going
up, yet people didn’t get any raises on their social security because of the economy but we keep
getting taxed more and more and more and the utility bills and everything keep going up, and
the city wants to raise rates. So, who’s benefiting from these types of things? I think what we
need to do is just clean house, get rid of everybody on the City Council, get rid of the Mayor,
even though I voted for a lot of these people, but so far you guys haven’t shown us a thing. You
need to start thinking about the people and the city instead of yourselves.

12/3/09
Kathleen Criner
2152 Pebbleside Wy.
Boise, ID 83709
Streetcar: Hi, I think that the Boise streetcar is a lousy idea.

12/3/09
Ed Ramey
10562 Foxridge Dr.
Boise, ID
362-2092
Property Taxes: I was wondering why the property tax bills are always due right before
Christmas. Thanks.
Action Taken: left msj

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