Comments on: New ACHD HQ Building In The Works

By: Yossarian_22

Yossarian_22 — Wed, 24 Oct 2018 21:32:07 +0000

Whatever they decide, it should be an efficient selection (yeah…I know…good luck with that) of a vacant building with adequate parking that won’t cost an arm and a leg, as a brand new fancy building would. With all the vacancies piling up of commercial property that I see, there has to be something out there. How ironic in a fast growth county. No one wants “old” anymore. Part of the problem is that these bureaus tend to get too big and expect too many bobbles and shiny things attached. I’ve been to the current site many times and it doesn’t need to be any fancier than that. Warm and cool enough and quiet enough, yes….but not a castle. They are not supposed to be rulers, but county servants.

By: A Non E Moose

A Non E Moose — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 23:19:40 +0000

Garner & Co. needs another building project – end of story.

Bribe the local officials and complain if they don’t get the contract they go under they most certainly will.

Moving state services to the HP campus voids a lot of rental property the state has been using for years. I doubt they have room for ACHD in their plans.

They are buying the bar because they vacated their old Police Officers club in Military Reserve and needed a spot with a liquor license to replace it. The city has the property already on 17th St. and it’s near the river for a police substation. Buying a bar makes sense since the BPD association used to have one. Only time will tell what will really happen there.

City/County/State admins think the average person (taxpayer) is very gullible. George Carlin said it best: Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy. If honesty were suddenly introduced into American life, the whole system would collapse.

EDITOR NOTE–The GUARDIAN will try to make a tasty salad of your “apples and oranges” in a post later today.

By: frank

frank — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 18:02:08 +0000

Am I the only one wondering why Boise’s elected public servants didn’t consider the vacated fire training facility on the greenbelt as opposed to the Lucky dog Bar? For a downtown police sub station? We were told that our public servants learned something from the fire bond issue were the cost doubled on construction? Maybe chief Bones didn’t get the memo. We need to question the commonsense of our PUBLIC SERVANTS

By: Erico49

Erico49 — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 00:18:05 +0000

East..that woukd give the BOCC something else to do. Maybe they would actually earn their money.

By: Easterner

Easterner — Tue, 16 Oct 2018 17:35:39 +0000

Best Model is a county-wide road effort, BUT managed under the existing COUNTY, not a separate commission, and all the extra BS that goes with it.

Like the County Sheriff.

There is an economic advantage based on economy of scale to do a county-wide effort.
There is a consistency advantage of being county-wide. Even though ACHD is NOT consistent (other than consistent FUBAR).

There is no advantage by having ANOTHER public relations dept., another legal dept., another HR dept., another everything that is duplicated.

City planning would only have to align with County and not county and ACHD planners.

Too many layers in govt is like too many cooks in the kitchen- not good!

AND the advantage is when the bums don’t represent the people, you can vote out the County Commissioner instead of the having to remove both County Commissioner AND the ACHD Commissioners.

County-wide, just not in the current form.

By: And the Answer Is?

And the Answer Is? — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 23:08:19 +0000

I am curious – – – if ACHD is not the best model what is? Letting a spend, spend, spend, control the world and tax like h_ll mayor and council do it? Does not sound very good to me!

EDITOR NOTE–The model is OK, but the same petty politics that costs us cash in the city, county governments, CCDC is the killer. The GUARDIAN has tried to create interest and awareness at the local level, but it is nearly impossible to find candidates or citizens in significant numbers to insure a level of quality governance.

By: ACHD Begone

ACHD Begone — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 21:30:52 +0000

Dave Bieter controlling our roads would be far worse than ACHD. We would have our roads turned into 20 lane bike ways that would restrict vehicle access to non daylight hours at best. Moreover, Bieter would place anything that might be objectionable to the public in an Urban Renewal District and use his puppets in CCDC to do his bidding by funneling tax dollars through the district to his pet projects.

However, ACHD is not much better. They are as narcissistic as Bieter and control more area. All you have to do is look at actions like the proposal detailed in the above article or Jim Hansen starting a gofundme for his legal expenses due to the alleged open meeting violations. This righteous mindset seems to be pandemic at ACHD (and arguably at Boise City too) where no matter what anyone objects to it falls on deaf ears. I think they realize the elections for their leadership are not well followed, and while people complain when something occurs, they don’t follow up with a vote or any political movement to improve or change the situation.

The answer is that there needs to be better coordination between highway agencies and city or municipal planners so that we are not outrunning our resources for transportation. Moreover there needs to be a valley wide movement for actual viable alternative sources of transportation that will handle our already sprawling growth pattern, and that does not involve adding bike lanes between Boise and Caldwell so that one person can use it, or adding a bus that takes two hours to fight traffic that will drop you off 7 miles from your home.

EDITOR NOTE–Willie Nelson may have the answer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_6-8AE7Cao

By: Frank

Frank — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 19:47:48 +0000

You know how when you decided to sell something you stop investing in it! That is how HP treated the property that the State purchased from them! Could you imagine if Dave Bieter controlled repair for YOUR ROAD?

By: ACHD Begone

ACHD Begone — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 19:39:37 +0000

This is yet another reason that ACHD should be nullified. Publicly funded corporations such as this as inefficient as the rest of government, and even less accountable. ACHD like others subversively reaches out for public comment yet considers none of it. This headquarters is just another example of their wasteful spending.

As for their mission to build and maintain our roads, they fail miserably. They are both inefficient and ineffective with their projects. They do as much to destroy our roads as they do building them. We stop at nothing to serve a few by spending millions on expanding bike routes, yet create bottleneck after bottleneck for each newly approved subdivision that sprawls or even leapfrogs city boundaries. The whole system is a shamble and yet as always they want a few dollars more… I hope everyone gets their act together that comments on this page and makes sure that people know about this through social media, and hey Dave, how about a call to the news media and a couple of newspaper reporters on this one. Lets hope we can get this out so that people can vote down this registration hike and start the process of removing this component of waste of citizens hard-earned money.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 18:08:53 +0000

GEO: ACHD is many things, but they are definitely not fiscally conservative, nor do I think they do good job of building and maintaining our road system. I don’t fault them for this, however, as they’re not very different from every other road-building & maintaining agency in the USA. The problem is we build our roads and cities in a financially unsustainable way – the layout of our city is itself unsustainable in the long term, at least by the measurements that ACHD acts to spend money on. For example, the stated reason for the registration fee increase ‘ask’ is to fund the capitol improvements plan, which will, among other things, rebuild & expand many busy intersections and roadways in Ada county – the bulk of these are widening 2/3-lane roads to 5-lane roads. Roadway level of service on these roads drives the spending, in an attempt that it will reduce congestion. This reasoning financially irresponsible because ACHD (and every other road building agency in the US) knows that expanding capacity doesn’t permanently reduce congestion, it’s an unrealistic goal. In turn, the temporary relief in congestion that it provides allows and encourages further traffic-adding development, that is most usually built in a similarly financially unsustainable way. ACHD appears to do better than other places only because it’s ‘newer’ than other places.