Trump appoints Meridian’s mayor to ‘key administration post’
President Donald Trump says he will appoint Meridian Mayor Robert Simison to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
The council is a federal agency charged with promoting preservation of historic properties and resources. It also reviews projects by other federal agencies and evaluates their effects on nearby historic properties. The agency operates with a yearly budget of about $7 million.
“As mayor of Meridian, Idaho, a fast-growing midsize city in the west, I understand and support the importance of preserving our history locally and across the nation in ways that make sense from a practical and policy level,” Simison said in a news release.
The White House called the role a “key position in his administration,” a phrase it regularly uses to describe positions across the varied branches of the federal government.
Simison was appointed as the council’s mayor member, a position which has been vacant since 2016. He will serve a four-year term, as long as he remains mayor.
“The mayor position on the ACHP provides a vital perspective on the impact of federal historic preservation policy on local communities,” said ACHP Chairman Aimee Jorjani in the agency’s news release. “If appointed, Mayor Simison will be invaluable as we do our part within the national preservation program to engage at the local level, thanks to his expertise and through his networks with other mayors.”
Much of Meridian is, in fact, new. With an estimated population of 114,680, the Boise suburb is more than 10 times the size it was in 1990.
The oldest part of Meridian is its downtown, which includes a few buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They include the Spanish colonial-style one-story building at 815 N. Main St., the former home of the Mountain States Telephone Building, which gave Meridian its first telephone line, and the E.F. Hunt House, 49 E. State Ave., a bungalow-style home of a Meridian businessman who sold produce and poultry.
A spokeswoman for Meridian did not immediately return a request for comment.
