Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this series outlined how the City purchased a precast concrete structure to be used occasionally as a public safety substation in City Park.  If you have read the earlier posts then you might ask (as the agencies, Mayor, Council, and LCDC should have), “How could this project have been administered to better benefit the public and agencies while reducing the cost to the taxpayers?” I’ll try to answer that in this, the last in the five-part series.

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In Part 4 of this five-part series, I will try to explain how the City normally plans for and funds projects like the precast concrete structure in City Park.   Then I will show what the City did to circumvent the normal funding process.  The circumvention has an unintended consequence.

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In Part 3 of this five-part series, we will suggest who will benefit most and who will benefit least from the City’s putting a precast concrete building in City Park, a building being promoted to inrease police presence in the Park. You may be surprised and you should be concerned about who really won and who really lost. You may want to read Part 1 and Part 2 first.

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Part 1 of this series of five posts provided an overview of why putting a precast concrete building in Coeur d’Alene City Park to be used as a public safety agency staging point is a bad idea. Part 2 will reveal the City’s flimsy explanation of why the building is needed.  You may begin to wonder why the City Council and the LCDC didn’t demand more information before voting to spend $50K to $60K of your money on this project.

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It’s difficult to imagine that putting what is touted to be a public safety building in Coeur d’Alene City Park would be a serious misuse of public money, taxpayer dollars.  You need not imagine it.  It will be happening within about 90 days.

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The agenda for the June 3, 2014, Coeur d’Alene City Council meeting notes the Council will be asked to approve “…the funding and authorization of staff to negotiate a lease agreement with Eastlake, LLC. and expenses for an East Sherman Police Sub-station.”  The staff report (at online Council packet pages 40/61-42/61) presented to the City’s General Services Committee lists the address as 1424 E. Sherman Avenue in the body of the report.

According to the Secretary of State’s website, there is no “Eastlake, LLC.”  However, the website does list “East Lake, L.L.C.” with a business address of 1424 Sherman Avenue, Ste. 300, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814.  Here is more information about East Lake, L.L.C. from the Secretary of State’s website.

Long-time readers may recall that in April 2008 OpenCdA raised strong objections to the City’s ill-conceived and wasteful Public Safety Substation in the Park.  Some of those objections came from the unwillingness or inability of then-Chief Wayne Longo and Captain Steve Childers to provide satisfactory answers to some fairly basic questions we thought Council should ask so it could determine if the proposal could successfully achieve the Mayor and Council’s objectives for public safety.

We think those questions and others still need to be asked by Council and answered by the present project’s proponents.  (more…)

Long-time readers of OpenCdA may recognize the photo to the left.  It accompanied our April 21, 2009, post entitled Closed for Your Protection?.  It’s a photo of the City of Coeur d’Alene’s police substation that sits in City Park just behind the North Idaho Museum.

There was another photo, a more recent one, of Coeur d’Alene’s police substation in the news yesterday.  Taxpayers in Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai County who read the companion article from yesterday’s Spokesman-Review headlined WSU to look into CdA peeing complaint and today’s Coeur d’Alene Press article headlined Drinking and disturbing will observe in yesterday’s photo that the police substation was still closed for your protection.

Given the theme of yesterday’s photo, it’s ironic that in April 2008 we ran a five-part series of posts entitled Toilet Not Included. There were other companion posts as well, and all had the same theme:  This alleged public safety building in the park was a gigantic boondoggle, a waste of money intended to allow the City of Coeur d’Alene to put public money in the pockets of some of its favorite contractors.  (more…)

Event organizers and citizens who attended the April 15 Tax Day Tea Party at Independence Point in Coeur d’Alene had an opportunity to personally see how the City of Coeur d’Alene had wasted about $50,000 of our tax money.   The 10′ x 26′ Coeur d’Alene Police and Fire Public Safety Building, so vacuously foisted on taxpayers by Police Captain Steve Childers and City Finance Director Troy Tymesen in March 2008, sat locked and unoccupied at the very kind of event for which they had avowed it was so desperately needed.

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On April 1, 2008, I posted the first in the five-part series titled Toilet Not Included.  The series explained how the city of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, had decided it needed a barren, precast concrete structure in City Park to serve as a public safety substation during summertime events there.   Already, names for the structure have been suggested:  Longo’s Lounge; Boopsie’s Bunker; Sandi’s Shanty; Ron’s Smokehouse; Charlie & Tony’s Royal Flush.  You get the picture.  (more…)