Widmyer admits error in NIC board decision
Jeff Selle | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 11 years, 9 months AGO
COEUR d'ALENE - Steve Widmyer was elected to the North Idaho College Board of Trustees in 1997. He was seated in January 1997 and resigned in June that year after the controversial removal of NIC President Bob Bennett.
When he resigned he sent a letter to the board, and now that letter has resurfaced in the campaign. One of the quotes was:
"To be a public official, it takes a certain type of individual and I'm not one of those types," Widmyer said in the letter. "However, this is a critical point in the health of this college.
"Students and residents of Kootenai County must put all of their angry feelings aside and move forward."
While Widmyer can't disclose exactly what happened, he did acknowledge it was a mistake.
"And I own up to that mistake," he said. "Myself and Sue Thilo resigned our positions because we had lost trust in the board."
Widmyer said he and Thilo trusted information they were given at the time, but it turned out the information was not trustworthy.
"I learned a lot from that," he said. "I especially learned 'trust but verify.'"
That issue along with two others are posted on a website called Opencda.com, which was started by Mary Souza, Dan Gookin and Bill McCrory. McCrory clarified on his website Wednesday that Souza and Gookin are no longer associated with the site.
McCrory is also calling attention to what appear to be special parking privileges that NIC tried to give Widmyer's restaurant, the Fort Ground Grill.
He points to Widmyer's recent appointment to the city's parking commission, and the fact that the college put the signs up on city-owned parking signs to help Widmyer's business.
Widmyer said the college did that on its own accord as a "goodwill gesture" because his business had suffered from months of road construction in the Fort Grounds area.
When the city was trying to find out who put the signs up, Widmyer sent an explanation to City Finance Director Troy Tymesen to explain. That email read:
"Troy, the college put up those signs as a goodwill gesture because of the pain I had to endure during construction and to help keep students and NIC employees from parking there all day," he wrote. "I guess the City doesn't share that goodwill. The signs didnt (sic) do any harm whatsoever."
Widmyer said there was nothing nefarious about it.
"After I sent an email, I moved on," he wrote to The Press.
The McCrory piece also insinuated that Widmyer's campaign literature, which identifies him as a "trained CPA," is misleading because Widmyer let his CPA license lapse. Widmyer said when he decided he wasn't going to practice public accounting anymore, he didn't see a need to renew his license.
"So simply put, I did go through all of the education, passed the exam and earned the designation as a CPA," he said.
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