Endorsement: Our pick in contentious race for Caldwell mayor | Opinion

Caldwell Mayor Jarom Wagoner is facing challenges from two candidates who are both critical of how they say Wagoner has managed the city.

Current City Council member Brad Doty and former Caldwell Police school resource officer Eric Phillips say communication is lacking and Wagoner hasn’t done a good job of managing the city administration.

We admit there is a lot of smoke: At least three former city employees have filed lawsuits against the city, one police officer faced criminal charges this year, and there’s been a federal investigation of the police department, all while Wagoner has been mayor.

But we’re not convinced there’s a fire at City Hall, and we don’t believe that all these problems can be laid at the feet of Wagoner. And we’re not convinced that his challengers would be an improvement.

While we’re sure Wagoner has made mistakes in his first term as mayor, he has shown an ability to learn from them and the demeanor and temperament to continue to improve as mayor.

The Idaho Statesman editorial board endorses Jarom Wagoner for another term as Caldwell’s mayor.

Many of the problems over the past four years stem from the police department under the leadership of Police Chief Rex Ingram. We are reminded that Ingram was not Wagoner’s first choice and that City Council members overruled Wagoner and selected Ingram.

Yet Wagoner has worked with Ingram to try to resolve these issues and continues to publicly support him.

We are also reminded that Wagoner asked the City Council for a city administrator position to help with some of the day-to-day duties of running the city, similar to what the city of Nampa has. The City Council declined.

Caldwell is no longer a sleepy little city. It has an estimated population of more than 77,000, and the mayor must do more than just show up at ribbon cuttings and read to schoolkids. He must also manage a city of 500 employees.

Wagoner also had to deal with turnover in city departments when longtime Mayor Garrett Nancolas retired.

Wagoner has experience as a city planner, including with the city of Caldwell, which serves him well in setting a vision for what the city should look like in these times of rapid growth.

He also served as a Republican state legislator, valuable experience for a mayor who needs to convey to state legislators how laws affect cities.

Wagoner said he’s learned from mistakes made in his first term, perhaps most notably the decision to put parking meters downtown.

After the controversial installation and subsequent removal of parking meters, Wagoner said he learned the city should have created a downtown parking advisory board first and to hire a third party to conduct community outreach.

Wagoner also worked to resolve an issue with the Golden Gate Irrigation District to get payment to the district early to take care of some maintenance and replacement issues.

Doty and Phillips are not without valid points and have their own positives.

Doty, a retired Idaho State Police officer, is engaged in the right areas, focusing on budget setting and urban renewal.

We are particularly impressed with one of his priorities to divert solid waste from the landfill, which costs the city hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, and converting biosolids into pellets. We’d like to see him continue to push for this solution as a City Council member.

But we are concerned about Doty’s temperament. He admits he didn’t handle the situation well, but he lost his temper and called a fellow City Council member a name that included foul language. We don’t think this is behavior becoming of a public official.

Phillips raises legitimate concerns, including crumbling streets and sidewalks and out-of-control weeds in public spaces.

Phillips was a school resource officer for seven years, and his last title at Caldwell School District was director of safety and emergency operations. He notably stood up for student privacy when he flagged an issue of federal “welfare checks” conducted by the Department of Homeland Security seeking information on unaccompanied migrant students in Caldwell.

Phillips advocated for strong privacy protections for student data and questioned federal motives, according to Idaho Education News.

Phillips says he wants to restore trust in the process, but we’re not sure how much of what he’s concerned about is rumor, gossip, hearsay and conjecture. Phillips ran a community Facebook page, which now has 30,000 members, and the page often contains such conjecture, rumor and coarse discourse that feeds into that lack of trust.

We’d like to see Phillips continue to work on solving problems in a constructive way.

In the meantime, we think Wagoner deserves another term, and we expect him to work on fixing some of the legitimate problems raised during this campaign.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.