Bravo Mayor, Bravo!
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It has only been a short while since Jared Furhiman took over the mayoral duties of our fair city, but I for one think he has done a very nice job. In a short amount of time he has been able to stitch closed a couple of bleeding wounds. By wounds I mean projects that had they kept being put off could have costs the city millions of dollars.
First off I was impressed with his attitude toward securing funding for the Sunnyside Road expansion, even though the last two mile stretch will not be completed in time for the interchange to open, he helped save millions of dollars due to rising construction costs. He kept on top of finding a way of securing the money needed, even going as far as to use city reserve funds, and hope to be paid back. Because he kept on top of the project and showed his willingness to use city funds, the state some how came up with extra money and allocated it for the project, which will begin in the spring. This saves us from who knows how many years of traffic problems on Sunnyside.
And now Mayor Furhiman has wowed me again. This time he gave us closure on the project known as Melaleuca Field. He sat down with everyone involved in the rebuilding of our minor leauge baseball field, something almost any other city our size wish they had, and came up with a way to get the project done.
To me he is a man of action, a man that when he sees a problem that know one else will fix or knows how to fix, he takes it head on and gets it done. That is my kind of guy. Hopefully he will continue to wow the citizens of Idaho Falls and the surrounding areas. I for one give my vote of confidence to Mayor Furhiman, well done sir, well done. Keep up the good work.
While these are the most notable things he has done so far, the things that really stick out, feel free to share anything else that you may know of.
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Comments
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0 I agree. I didn’t like his campaign, but he’s done a very good job thus far.
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0 0 While I haven’t seen anything negative with Jared Fuhriman’s performance as mayor, I think it’s still pretty much business as usual. After reading some of the other discussions on this site, I think there is a lot of nepotism, some dead weight at the top, and many other issues facing this city. There have been many improprieties by city employees addressed on this website but I haven’t seen anything change, and I won’t hold my breath waiting for it. For the most part anything controversial is ignored. If Jared Fuhriman is to become a truly great leader he needs to stop worrying about getting along with everyone and lead.
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0 0 What issues are you alluding to?
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0 0 Read the threads titled “Open Mike for City Workers” and all of the Kimball Mason threads. If you still want me to answer the question I will. But there were many issues raised in those discussions. I could backtrack through them and list them one by one if you need me to. Let me know if you want me to do that.
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0 0 With all the negative comments toward “elected” officials lately, I was hoping for a more positive approach to this topic. There will always be shady behind the scences deals and going ons when it comes to people with power. I however don’t believe that Mayor Furhiman is that kind of man. I look for great things in the future, including his focus on finding ways to make good things happen for IF.
Here is just another example,the revitalization of downtown would normally take years of saving money and planning and re-planning, but I think the mayor wants to see these things happen as well. He will find a way to get it done, I’m sure of it.
Mayor Furhiman isn’t just interested in his legacy, I believe he’s doing all of these things in the best interests of the city and its residents. I also feel he will trim the fat, so to speak, from the city and help it to operate more smoothly.
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0 0 I know furhiman personaly. And he is a real good man with good family morals. He was my boys group leader in church when I was a young man. He has always Done the right thing as far as I know. I think he is doing a great job. I support him. He is the best mayor Idaho falls has ever had. I really trust him. He also has compation and ambition.( i am a different guest not the same one above))))
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0 0 I don’t deny that Jared Fuhriman is a nice man and I also know him personally. I’m just saying that he hasn’t shown me anything to define himself as a “leader.” Granted, he did scramble to save the Sunnyside project funding but it was the city’s fault they missed the deadline in the first place.
I truly believe as dnix0112 says, that Mayor Fuhriman is not the kind of man to be involved in shady dealings. But I also believe that there is still a lot of that going on in various city departments and it is up to him to fix it.
For one thing, in my opinion Police Chief Livsey should be let go. But with Jared’s police background and friendships he has built I don’t believe he would ever stand up and do that even if he thought it was the right thing. And there are other divisions with their own problems, at least they appear to have problems.
I’m sorry dnix0112 that this thread isn’t all warm and fuzzy and positive but I am not going to lie to you about what I think. Jared Fuhriman is a great guy personally. As a mayor, he’s about average in my opinion.
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0 0 Guest — I hear what you are saying and agree 100%. A few good moves early on in his appointment are nice. But to really see what he is made of will take some time — and we will need to see how he handles a few other issues that may involve people he knows well and or has worked with and for — in the past. Your statements are not negative — as some believe. They are cautionary. Wise with such a newly elected leader.
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0 0 So today’s Post Register reported on Fuhriman’s first year report.
I liked “I’m proud to say I have personally dumped some of your garbage cans and patched holes in the road.”
That’s pretty awesome.
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0 0 Fuhriman has done a decent job officiating thus far with the exception of his leading the charge to buy into the proposed coal-fired electric generating facility in Central Utah.
I read that Pocy leaders are proposing bio-diesel run vehicles for their city fleet. That seems to be a step in the right direction. I wonder if our mayor and councilmen have given any thought to “green” energy. We see megawatt producing windmills on our southeast skyline. At $l.5M each, how many would we have to build to produce the power to offset the estimated shortfall the city is predicting? God knows we have enough wind here to make it work. Perhaps they could be used to electrolize H20 during off peak hours to produce enough hydrogen to convert over and run the city’s fleet of vehicles. With net metering, it should show a surplus at the end of a windy billing cycle.
Equity in a coal-fired plant in Utah could very likely become a huge liability in the not too distant future if proposed taxes on carbon emissions are implemented.
Idaho Falls has many qualified people who’s expertise should be utilized in the quest for clean renewable energy sources. We should tap into this pool of scientists and engineers and investigate alternative energy sources. Perhaps if we had shown a little initiative in this endeavor, we might have landed the $220M photovoltaic plant instead of Pocatello.
Visionary leaders are those who see the future as an opportunity to implement exciting new ideas. I would propose to our new mayor that he get a copy of “Internal Combustion”, by Edwin Black. It should be prescribed reading for any civic leader who cares a whit about global warming and our dependence on foreign oil; how we got this way and how we might get free of our fossil fuel addiction.
If military expenditures (the cost of keeping the Middle East oil spigot open) are factored in to the price of oil, it is estimated that, at todays prices, we will spend up to a trillion dollars a year at the pump! Oil is fracturing our world.
We need leaders with the ability to define problems and search out needed solutions, whether they be the president, congressmen or mayors and councilmen of small cities like ours.
Who knows, a Manhattan style project (which cost $1.89 billion in the 1940’s - $20B in todays dollars) to free us from our oil addiction, might even be courted for the hybernating federal facility in our desert to the west. That would really put us on the map and quite possibly put Fuhriman in the governor’s chair one day. Oh well, just a thought.
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0 0 I’ve thought a similar thing many, many times over the years.
If we have so many smart people around Idaho Falls (engineers, doctors, etc.), why don’t we see some of those benefits?
Perhaps Mayor Fuhriman could start an annual retreat, inviting a bunch of local geniuses in many disciplines, and they brainstorm for one or two days on the future of Idaho Falls.
First they identify what goals they have for Idaho Falls in 20 years, then they dream up infrastructure, architecture, urban design, and even facility systems to achieve those goals. Finally they create some sketches of how they see Idaho Falls in 20 years.
The sketches would certainly be reported on locally, and could be displayed around city hall for a couple months.
I think this kind of annual event would help Idaho Falls’ planning, help pool and match-up our local talent, and would open up the Mayor’s perspective to a whole lot of new ideas he probably had not considered before.
Maybe then we would see progressive investments in our future that would lure sexy industries (like Hoku) and would make our city better.
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0 0 I think the quality of a person’s character is a huge aspect of being a quality public servant/official as that person is in a position to set a good example for his/her constituants. I give our new mayor high marks for quality of character. At the same time, as the chief administrator of an entire city such as Idaho Falls, there are certain responsiblities that need be well attended to, that have absolutely nothing to do with character. I am glad Jared is a great man, but I need him to be a great mayor. There are a host of issues that have existed in Idaho Falls (long since the days of Mayor Milam) that are still waiting in lay, and have to this point received little if any attention from our new mayor. Every city must have a quality working infrastructure in order to survive, grow, and evolve. Idaho Falls faces a host of infrastructure issues, that if not attented to in the near future, will continue to further deteriorate and tarnesh the image and quality of living in our great town. First and foremost is the ever increasing burder of growing property tax rates for residential holdings. I have seen my property taxes on my home skyrocket over the past 6 years; these increases in property taxes have made a reasonable mortgage payment on my modest 1950’s built home almost beyond my capacity to afford on my budget. I could only imagine how such increases in property taxes keep some poor folks on a tight budget up at night, sleepless, worrying about how they can afford the $150/month increase in their house payments due to the unrelenting residential property tax increases. Why in the world are already established residential property taxepayers footing the bill for Idaho Falls’ extreme growth and increasing infrastructure costs. There is plenty of new construction of homes and businesses that are prompting the need for more money to develop the infrastucture needed to accomodate them; so it stands to reason that those entities should bear a higher stake in paying for those costs. If the mayor does nothing to address this issue - I can bet you there will be those folks that see the greener grass (and much cheaper taxes) on the other side of the fence, in say Shelley or Roberts, or even further down the line. I think it is already happening - and I think if you pay some attention you can see the proof of it.
Another issue pertaining to IF’s infrastructure that has been far overlooked for many years, is the quality of the roadways in and around our city. The fading lane markers/lines and the huge potholes and abrubt lane edges in some parts of town make the roads a mechanic’s best friend. The snow removal in IF also is very subpar. Clearing the roads on the west side of town is at least a week in coming, if at all. I can honestly say that driving in IF at night presents quite a challenge to staying within your lane as the painted lines on about 70% of IF’s roads are so faded or nonexistant, and the roads so slowly and poorly cleaned of snow that it presents a huge safety issue. The same could be said of the road sufaces and those issues. These are just a couple of line items that I can explain in short order to illustrate my point. I know that the mayor is not responsible directly for having to go out and put patches in the roads or drafting the tax tables for property taxes - but he is responsible for identifying and attending to the major issues that face his city and its residents. I would really like to see him take care of the town and its problems as they exist now, and attent to making it bigger and better and more fun to live in after the primary issues have been covered. I may just suggest to Jared if I could talk to him directly, that he take a drive around town and take a good look at it - I bet he will see a lot of things that need his attention.
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0 0 We see megawatt producing windmills on our southeast skyline. At $l.5M each, how many would we have to build to produce the power to offset the estimated shortfall the city is predicting? God knows we have enough wind here to make it work.
While I’m all for increasing the proportion of green energy that IF uses (including the hydropower from Bonneville and that generated locally, it’s already in the 90% range), local wind power is definitely unsuited to providing the additional base load required.
First of all, we don’t have enough wind locally to make it work - the wind doesn’t ALWAYS blow, and demand doesn’t go away when it’s calm. So IF would have to purchase power from a stable source (i.e., coal) in any case.
Second, even in high-wind areas, the average expected production is about 33% of capacity. That means that to provide for the 25MW projected shortfall, there would need to be approximately 75MW installed wind power, or 50 of the 1.5MW turbines like you see in the foothills. At $1.5M a piece (I’ll assume your figure), that’s $75M, not including the cost of the transmission lines. I suspect substantial additional capacity along major feeders would have to be purchased or leased as well, assuming it’s available, to be able to sell excess power when the turbines were producing above needed requirements. Plus the cost of leasing the ground for 50 towers.
That’s far more expensive than the IPP3 project.
IF Power had at least two wind companies come to town to investigate the possibility of providing part of the solution, and both concluded that wind would be inappropriate for the base load requirements of the city.
City Council has been working on this for 4 years or more. They and the mayor, with the advice of a lot of smart people, chose the lowest cost, most stable option for the city. Would it be nice if we could build a green nuke plant? I think so, but IF Power can’t do it, and nobody else will either for at least a decade. Would it be nice if wind had enough installed capacity and geographic diversity that it could provide a stable base load? Sure, but even with a 1/3 federal subsidy, it’s still more expensive than the alternatives.
And that, in my estimation, means that IF, a flea on the tail of the power dog, can’t take the lead without risking substantial price increases (such as happened during the Enron debacle), and the absolutely devastating consequences that would have on our poor and those on fixed incomes.
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0 0 John,
I stand corrected…as always your post is most informative.
You mentioned Enron. A precursor to Enron, Bonneville Pacific, a Utah based energy company, taught the big boys how the scam could work. They took Portland General and many smaller investors for millions. I would hate to see I.F. invest in another Utah scam. This seems especially worrisome when ground hasn’t even been broken on the proposed site.
I changed a computer chip every month for over a year on an anemometer that we installed on a peak just behind Kelly Canyon Ski Resort. We fed the data to Aerovironment, a company that evaluates wind resources. They showed ample wind for a wind turbine project…of course that was in a different locale than our nearby hills. I would be interested in seeing a P & L statement on the existing wind generating company on our SE skyline. It’s hard to imagine those folks would invest that kind of $$$ if it weren’t going to work and make a profit.
Thanks for you post, I always look forward to reading what you bring to the table.
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I agree, I think Idaho Falls is in good hands with Jared Fuhriman leading us. He had his misstep with missing that deadline on Sunnyside, but it’s telling that his “honeymoon” period with our city continues.