McLean said Bieter should quit Boise’s urban-renewal board. Call me, he said. She did.
Former Mayor David Bieter is still on the board of Capital City Development Corp., Boise’s urban renewal agency. He appointed himself for the first time in 2013, and his term comes to an end in October 2022.
Mayor Lauren McLean plans to appoint herself to the same board, a departure from what she said during her campaign. “If a Boise mayor is sitting on CCDC, it should be Boise’s current mayor,” she said in a statement to the Statesman two weeks ago.
She’d like Bieter to be off the board, but he hasn’t resigned. Talking to a Statesman reporter, he said that if McLean wanted him to step down, “she can give me a call and tell me why she’d like me to do that.”
So McLean called him. Twice, she said Wednesday during a news conference.
According to McLean, he told her he doesn’t do business over the phone.
“It surprised me, given his statement to the press,” she said. McLean said she has done business with Bieter over the phone in the past.
In a voicemail left for a Statesman reporter Thursday, Bieter said that he tried to set up meetings with McLean but that she declined to meet in person.
A seat on a city’s urban renewal agency offers a mayor direct access to one lever of power in shaping a city’s future, because the agencies have the authority to collect tax revenue and use that money to spruce up struggling neighborhoods. Mayors appoint members of the agencies’ boards with city council approval — and may appoint themselves.
Many Boise leaders, including Bieter, have credited urban renewal with fostering downtown Boise’s rise. The central downtown urban renewal district, Boise’s first, expired in 2018. Five other districts survive, with new ones are being considered on the Central Bench and along State Street.
Around the Treasure Valley, mayors have appointed themselves to their city boards. That includes Eagle Mayor Jason Pierce, who recently appointed himself to the Eagle Urban Renewal Agency, and former Meridian Mayor Tammy de Weerd, who was on the board of the Meridian Development Corp.
McLean is interviewing applicants interested in being on CCDC. She interviewed three candidates Wednesday, she said. She said she hoped to have made her decision by the end of the week. The Boise City Council would have to approve the appointments.
There are three open positions, and a fourth will open in May when Commissioner Ben Quintana’s term ends. It’s possible Bieter’s term could be cut short anyway, thanks to a bill making its way through the Idaho Senate — if passed, it would force people appointed to urban renewal boards as elected officials to leave the board when they lose or leave that elected office.
The CCDC board deferred its leadership elections in January and canceled its February meeting. Its next meeting is scheduled for March 9.
This story was updated at 1:52 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 27 to include comment from former Mayor David Bieter.
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 4:47 PM.
.jpg)