Idaho GOP Platform Responses

✓+  Strongly Agree ✓  Somewhat Agree O  Somewhat Disagree X  Strongly Disagree

Survey and Interview Responses

“How long have you lived in Ada County?

We’ve been here 32 yrs

How long have you been a Republican? Any prior party affiliation?

I have been a member for 43 yrs and have never been registered with any other Party

Have you been involved with any political organizations? (IACI, Idaho Majority Club, IFF, etc.)

No I have not been affiliated with any of these groups

Have you supported candidates from another party?

No, I have never supported a candidate from another Party.

Why are you running for this office?

Very tired of feeling ignored by ACHD and the Dist. 4 Rep.

Have you held elected office before?

No I do not

What makes you qualified for this role?

My understanding of all phases of construction specifically in the last 17 years inspecting and certifying installation of pipe, Soils, asphalt and concrete for acceptance. Again with all of these roles I gained a great knowledge of costs and budgeting.

If elected, what 2-3 actions do you intend to pursue in your first year?

I want better coordination of street closures. ie: cloverdale, five mile & lake hazel being closed at the same time should never have happened. Correct bike paths to connect the city. Work on better ACHD cooperation with home owners

How have you served your community (boards, nonprofits, etc.)?

I have worked with Nazarene Missions to construct a children’s learning center in Costa Rica and the first phase of an elementary school in mozambique

Do you consider yourself fiscally conservative?

I’m very fiscally conservative. In Construction you have to squeeze Lincolns to meet the budgets

Do you consider yourself socially conservative?

I am socially conservative. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I’m opposed to abortion except in the cases of rape, incest or where the mothers life is in danger. Freedom of religion period in all places

Share your one-minute elevator speech.

The reason I’m running for this is that I’ve really felt that District 4 has been ignored in the last eight years that I’ve been paying attention to it. My experience in construction and pricing and cost controls is more than satisfactory and more than enough to do this job and to bring some control and to stop closing so many roads at one time. We had Cloverdale, Five Mile and Lake Hazel closed at the same time. I made calls to Kent, and I got nowhere. That’s when I really put my feet on the ground and said, I’m going to do this.

What are your top priorities, and what would you act on first?

Top three priorities are better coordination with road closures. Obviously, we have so many roads that need to be worked on, but we can’t just shut down an entire section of the district. I ended up driving from Nampa through Kuna to come home at night when all that was closed. There must be a better way of doing that. These folks here have no way to get home unless they stack up in line on Maple Grove. That’s the biggest thing I really want to tackle. The second thing I want to work on is bike lanes. Eagle and Lake Hazel, that whole new development there, they’ve really stepped up and done the proper thing. By having widened sidewalks with an easement area there at the pavement, the stamped brick, the white line, paint line, doesn’t do anything. It just causes problems. And my concern is more people are getting on these e-bikes. We really need to step up and finish out these roads. We need to get a plan to finish and make it possible for somebody in my neighborhood at Victory and Cloverdale to go on e-bike and to come to my office over by St. Alphonsus. I’d like to have a safe route versus what I see coming over Emerald Bridge every morning with one or two people on a bicycle. You are fighting for their lives, so to speak, on that overpass. The third thing is, I really want to work on the betterment of attitude out in the field with the ACHD inspectors. I work daily with them with what I do currently, and there’s an arrogance that goes on. In fact, I was speaking with a gentleman that just retired from the West Boise School District, and he had the same complaint. The West Boise School District needed to do something, and It was just painful to get through ACHD’s planning and policies. But if ACHD came to the school district and said we want to do this, they’d be hat in hand and glad handing. It’s one-way communication as it appears to me. Here’s an entity that’s funded by all of us. Let’s do better at treating each other better. I am literally out there every day at my job, whether it be doing inspection on compaction for soils, trenches, or asphalt. I’m out there in the middle of all of it, and I deal with pretty much every one of the inspectors between Kuna to Middleton to Star and Eagle areas.

What is one current ACHD policy or practice that you believe isn’t working as well as it should, and what specifically would you change if elected

I question some of the decisions that the trucks, and all the jackets, and letterhead, and everything, changing the logo like they did. The slogan, ‘CONNECTING YOU TO MORE’, has never been more prevalent in my life, because I’ve been connected to more detours. I told Kent that, and said, thank you for the slogan because that’s exactly how everybody feels. Not really a policy, but it’s the fact that we didn’t need to spend the money for rebranding when everybody knew what an ACHD truck was.

Do you believe growth is paying for growth in Ada County today? If not, what would you change?

Growth should pay for growth. I think that’s an agreeable statement. When we have a developer build a section, and they have 2,000 feet of frontage, I don’t understand why they are not taking care of putting in all the full build-out for the full width expansion, which is planned to come sometime. Impact fees are one thing, but by the time the ACHD gets around to building something, those impact fees are just pennies on the dollar for the expansion. What should be done at Eagle and Victory? That was a full build-out on the southern side of the road. That was all in that subdivision. I think that really needs to be looked at as to why we’re not doing that. Developers are getting off easy.

ACHD’s FY2027 budget is approximately $261 million, including $133 million in capital projects. If you believe ACHD needs additional funding to address transportation needs, what revenue source would you support—and if you don’t support additional revenue, what projects or services would you reduce or delay?

I would like to see what their mainstream project planning is, where are they focusing that $130 million? There are so many roads that have been neglected, and everything that I’ve read says that the change of direction has been troublesome to me. It’s hard to say how many projects they have for the $130 million. In my background, I’ve been doing construction for over 40 years. I have a degree in construction engineering. In one year, two years, I’ve managed $100 million in projects between three states. I’m more than capable of doing that. That may have to come from some of the field staff on the inspection side, because there’s more duplicates that I’ve seen. But that’s not going to pay for a road. Taxing people right now is not a popular event. I did not dive into their budget to see where it all was. That’s a tough question. When the $200 million budget is taking care of so much, I don’t have an extensive answer on that, I’m sorry.

Where does ACHD need better coordination with Ada County, cities, and ITD, and how would you improve it?

They need better communication between the city of Meridian, where I used to be a chief Inspector there for the Public Works Division. The ACHD would come in and just say, okay, suddenly, we’re going to repave Pine and rebuild it. The city had planned for implementation of reclaimed water piping, new drinking water piping, and increased sewer flow. It caught the city flat-footed at the time it happened. There was a rush to try to make it happen. The reclaimed piping was left off to the side. That’s becoming a big issue for people. Where’s all the water going to come from for irrigation? And that reclaimed water was the irrigation and it’s not there. The purple piping was left out, because the long-range forecast was not shared with a municipality. We need to know who the project managers are for Boise, Meridian and Kuna and get together with them. And say, what is your 5-year master plan for this? What are you looking at as your major builds? What do you want? There needs to be a better meshing of that. As I stated earlier, the coordination between closing so many continuous roads.

ACHD invests in bike lanes, multi-use pathways and other bicycle infrastructure. What criteria should ACHD use to determine when a dedicated bike lane is appropriate, and when road space should instead be devoted to vehicle capacity, parking, or other uses?

ACHD knows the traffic patterns. They know the traffic flow. Bicycles are going to be doing the same thing as all the cars are. So those are the main lines that need to be looked at. Victory and Locust Grove Roundabout. The bike lanes and all that was, built out in that. But when it goes into grassland, there’s no contiguous availability of somebody to go. You started at this point, how come we’re not going this way? Do we have easement issues? How long down the road was that planned on being expanded? The main pathways really need to be looked at; the main traffic flows. I never let my kids go out on Victory to even ride their bike to Maverick because there is no sidewalk. Victory has been ignored for the 30 years that I’ve lived on it. It gets closed for things like the roundabout, and it gets closed for a bridge improvement, it gets closed for lots of things, but when you have a full shutdown, why are we not taking advantage of that and taking care of the roads all the way down in that timeframe. Just my thoughts.

ACHD has a 5 year plan for capital improvement projects. How will you prioritize which projects make the list?

I would like to see what the drivers are for the number one project, I’d like to see if it’s a traffic pattern, or if it’s a congestion point or if it’s something that’s dealing with the traffic signal timing. There’s lots of things that go into making the roads work. If we have a pinch point of traffic, and we’re causing a backup, say, from Curtis and Fairview all the way down to Chinden, we need to do something about that. I don’t know what their list is, their primary list is of where we’re starting. It needs to be the project managers and the designers and everything has already gone through all this, it is where we need to start. I would like to see where that is, specifically, if it’s going to be in one end of town. There again, you’re going to end up with those lane closures that nobody knows about. I don’t say that lightly, because I’ve run across it. I drive over 500 miles a week in my job, and I run across more non-disclosed, multiple day road closures. If you’re going to focus on the northeast end of town, you need to look at how bad you’re going to impact that. Why are we not doing one project here, and a project in the northwest, and a project Southeast? Let’s spread it out versus clogging up one area. That’s my thought on that

ACHD is responsible for serving motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, and other users. When limited road space forces a choice between adding vehicle capacity and adding bicycle or pedestrian infrastructure, what factors should determine which gets priority? Should maintaining or increasing vehicle capacity generally take precedence on major transportation corridors? Why or why not?

Well, we’re a driving town, and there’s no doubt about that. Everything’s spread out 5, 10 miles down the road. I’m not getting on a bicycle. The vehicular traffic and the bus traffic need to be looked at first. Bike lanes cannot be ignored in the long run. We have lots of things, lots of areas where we end up having bicycles. Right on the lane lines, and we have two cars coming. We need to figure out that expansion, to allow for the cars first, and then figure out where the bike lanes can be added onto to be contiguous. Same thing with pedestrians. There’s a lot of areas where it’s just not safe for people to walk beside the road. We are traveling with vehicle society in this area because nothing’s close. So the cars and buses are the first thing, cars, buses, and motorcycles.

Should maintaining or increasing vehicle capacity generally take precedence on major transportation corridors? Why or why not?

We do have our designated transportation corridors. Those are the first things that get plowed if we have any more major storms in our life. I’m just joking. But every time we saw snowmageddon, we had all the main roads taken care of. All I heard and all I read, everybody’s just complaining about the fact that we’re not taking care of the roads? Well, they are. They’re giving you your main paths to get to and from. The main corridors are important.

What question do you wish voters were asking candidates that they aren’t?

Do you have the background to understand road and construction and all the parts and pieces that go into it? That’s what I would like to know.”