DALTON GARDENS, Idaho — The fate of Dalton Gardens, Idaho is up in the air Thursday night, as it remains unclear whether the city will have a single working employee by Friday morning.
Animosity between city council members and the mayor have created an environment so dysfunctional, longtime staffers have started resigning.
Tensions between Mayor Dan Edwards and three council members – Robert Wuest, Ray Craft, and most especially Carrie Chase – have been brewing since not long after they each took office. The fourth council member, Aaron O’Brien, has attempted to maintain neutrality, but he too has had disagreements with the mayor and other members.
KREM’s news partners at the Coeur d’Alene Press report the bickering has been ongoing for a while.
"This has been boiling over for well over a year,” said Press staff writer Craig Northrup. “Calamitous… it’s been a tire fire. There's no other way to describe it."
The divide amongst city leaders isn’t purely political, or even easy to describe. Northrup says the arguments have become personal and ubiquitous.
"Personality conflict that can best be described as death by a thousand cuts,” he said. "Who can get away with the most post shots at one another. That's really what it is.
There's been debate on everything from a hot-button issue on whether trained archers should be allowed to hunt deer within city limits, to typically standard city policies like a hazard mitigation plan.
“That should be something that should've been resolved months ago,” said Northrup, referring to the mitigation plan, which the city must have to be eligible for FEMA funds. “[These are] issues that most city governments would consider pedestrian."
The dysfunction took a toll on city staff. Over the last few months, retirements and resignations trickled in. Now, the city planner, engineer, and clerk are all gone.
"Almost all of them said they weren't paid enough to justify the wear and tear the acrimony within city hall was leaving them,” said Northrup.
That all left only one employee basically running the whole city. The deputy clerk Teresa Janzen became responsible for running meetings, helping citizens with permits and other requests, paying the bills – literally keeping the lights on in city hall.
Then she too announced she was resigning her post; her last day would be Thursday. That would leave Dalton Gardens without a single employee, meaning the functions of the city would effectively shut down Friday.
In a last ditch effort to prevent that, the council considered offering her a promotion to city clerk. That effort became a symbol of all the chaos leading up to it.
At Monday night’s meeting, the Press reports nearly 300 people attending in person, and even more online. Dalton Gardens has a population of just under 3,000 – meaning roughly 10 percent of the whole city showed up to the meeting. For reference, 10 percent of Spokane’s population would fill up Joe Albi Stadium. In Dalton Gardens, it filled up the council chambers as well as an old fire truck garage on the other side of the city hall parking lot.
Many called for the resignations of council members, others of the mayor. None of that happened.
Now, some citizens are talking about a recall effort.
“Recall is really a last resort, and it’s ironic that these three [Wuest, Craft, and Chase]… came into office [following a 2019] recall on a stance of less government, and they’re actually overreaching their government privileges,” said Julia Petersen, who says she’s begun talking with other concerned citizens about organizing a recall of those three members. “The best case scenario would be if they changed their tune, and leave their politics at the door, and maintain their positions as working for the public, as civil servants, and do the right thing rather than blocking everything that they don’t agree with. Because that doesn’t represent any community.”
On Monday night, Craft left the meeting citing a health problem, according to the Press. Wuest and O’Brien voted in favor of offering Janzen the promotion, Chase voted against.
However, Edwards told KREM late Thursday night, three yes votes are required to offer such a job. So the mayor says he’s calling an emergency meeting on Friday at 4 p.m., where he expects Craft will join the two in favor of the promotion, which he says he expects Janzen to accept.
If that does happen, city hall will open once more on Tuesday – Janzen is on vacation until then, and given she’s the only employee, the city won’t be operating while she’s away.
But even if everything goes smoothly, which is far from a given in Dalton Gardens, their problems are far from over.
Wuest, Chase, and Craft did not respond to requests for interviews. Janzen and outgoing city planner Rand Wichman declined our requests.
O'Brien was not available for an interview, but provided a statement reading: "I hope the community understands that city council is not a unit, but made up of individuals. I have and will continue to listen to the voices of our citizens and follow the advice of experienced professional staff. My voting record and conduct reflects this approach. I will continue to serve the people of our beautiful city to the best of my ability."