DOWNTOWN: CDA wants your vote, not your business
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 2 weeks, 3 days AGO
On June 19, a Coeur d’Alene Police supervising officer told my employees they could not leave our business by vehicle after their shifts ended during Car d’Lane. No warrant, no suspicion, no alternate route. When I asked if they were being detained, the officer called it “a poor choice of words” and refused egress anyway. The City had no liaison, no protocol, nothing. I got my employees out by personally calling a private nonprofit director’s cell phone.
Records I obtained afterward show this wasn’t an accident. Two straight years of City-approved operation plans designate emergency vehicle routes in detail but contain zero provision for business or employee egress. The City plans for everything except the people who support downtown.
I filed a civil rights notice, a tort claim, and a public records request. The City missed its own seven-day deadline to even confirm it would preserve evidence. Eleven days of silence followed from the Mayor, the City Council, and our state legislators, all of whom were copied (the silence continues today).
When I asked my own state representative for help, her reply was to ask what, exactly, I wanted from her, despite three specific requests already spelled out. Then silence again.
This is the part every Sherman Avenue business owner and every Idaho taxpayer should sit with: doing everything right, on the record, with deadlines and statutes cited, gets you nothing. We’re now escalating to state legislators, the Attorney General’s office, and federal civil rights attorneys.
Government isn’t coming to help you. We the people are on our own. Document everything. We have receipts, and we’re using them.
RANDAL HILDEBRAND
Post Falls