A tribute to former Kuna Mayor Greg Nelson, who loved and championed his adopted hometown
The city of Kuna last week lost one of its greatest champions and dedicated public servants.
Former Mayor Greg Nelson, who served as the town’s top official from 1984 to 2003 and then was pressed back into service for one last time in 2011 to help pull Kuna out of a notably dark time, died last week at the age of 83.
Nelson loved his adopted hometown of Kuna and wanted only the best for a city that he saw grow from a sleepy farm town of 500 people in the 1960s to the bustling boomtown of 22,000 it is today.
But he was more than just Kuna’s mayor. He led an interesting life before landing in Southwest Idaho.
Nelson was a veterinarian and went to Vietnam to establish a sentry dog training program for Vietnam’s army. When he came back to the U.S., he was the veterinarian in charge at Fort Meyer, Virginia, where he was responsible for the Army’s ceremonial horses, including Jacqueline Kennedy’s horse, Sadar, and Carolyn Kennedy’s pony, Macaroni.
Nelson was born in Lewiston and eventually made his way back to Idaho in the ’60s, settling in Kuna, starting a veterinary practice and then serving the state in a number of roles.
He was the director of the Idaho Department of Agriculture, the state veterinarian for the Idaho Division of Animal Industries, and the assistant chief and then chief of the Idaho Bureau of Animal Health.
Nelson also served in the Idaho National Guard, from 1979 to 1997, rising from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general.
And he was Kuna through and through, a loyal servant and fierce defender of the city.
He helped to start Kuna Youth Baseball, and I recall him getting choked up as I was talking to him after he had thrown out the ceremonial first pitch of the Little League season the same year his grandson started playing.
He was a charter member of the Kuna Lions Club and was a member of the VFW and the Kuna Historical Society.
He served on the Kuna City Council from 1964 to 1968 and on the Kuna school board for a time before becoming mayor in 1984, the start of a two-decade run. He lost in a bitter, divisive election in 2003.
That was just before I arrived in Kuna, in 2006, when my wife and I purchased the Kuna Melba News.
It was still a divisive and tumultuous time that included a building moratorium, a failed sewer bond and the creation of a fraught local improvement district to build a $30 million wastewater treatment plant.
Once the Great Recession hit in 2008, the treatment plant and improvement district threatened to bankrupt dozens of local landowners who had put up their land as collateral to help out the city. The matter landed in the courts, when the landowners sued the city and the city sued back. There were seemingly constant fights about city policy, development regulations and the city budget. The economy was hurting everyone, and city officials continued to maintain a combative attitude toward the landowners, dividing the town.
The 2011 mayoral election was consequential.
By that time, Nelson had been running his business, the Creekside Restaurant and Bar (which is now City Hall), for several years, but the recession was hurting everyone. He would be there on Sunday mornings manning the buffet table himself for brunch.
Nelson ran on a platform on making city government more responsive to the residents and to solving the treatment plant dispute. He also vowed to make sure the city was welcoming to the commercial development that had been promised and in the works for years. He made good on all those promises.
As I drove through Kuna last week, I recalled something Nelson said often during his mayoral campaign in 2011. Before there was so much commercial development in Kuna, when the land at Deer Flat and Meridian roads was just bare ground, Nelson promised that he would do everything he could to attract retail development, “some place you can go and buy a pair of dungarees.”
Ten years later, that came true and more. Now that area has a Bi-Mart, a Ridley’s, Tractor Supply and a D&B Supply store. If you had told Nelson in 2011 that it would also include a McDonald’s, a Starbucks, a Wendy’s, a Taco Bell and a Panda Express, he probably would have laughed you out of his office.
He said he would retire after just one term, and that’s what he did, in 2016. He left Kuna in a way better place.
In 2019, the city dedicated the Kuna Greenbelt to Nelson, a fitting tribute. He got the pathway started in his first stint as mayor, and his house sat along a stretch of it, between his Creekside Restaurant and Indian Creek Elementary School.
So much of what Kuna is today is because of Nelson: the city ball fields, the city park, the Kuna Senior Center, even the widening of Meridian Road into Kuna well before its time. There are probably dozens of other amenities that are the result of Nelson’s efforts that I’m not even aware of.
One thing is for certain. Nelson loved Kuna, and he did all he could to make it a better place to live, work and play. He’ll be missed, and he deserves to be remembered for all he did.
