Ketchum Mayor Ed Simon's announcement he'll seek a second term should prompt challengers to offer Ketchum voters an alternative to the last four years of dreary City Hall leadership.
Mayor Simon's record has been a staccato refrain of self-induced crises.
Morale of city staff is low, management has been iffy, and the mayor's impulsive forays into drastic personnel decisions have taken the shape of vendettas and unthinking snap judgments.
His recent attempts at contrition are hollow. They're a tip-off the mayor is covering his tracks before the election with I'll-do-better-next-time blandishments.
Mayor Simon's record needs to be recalled for voters as well as to remind others they could challenge the mayor at the polls with their visions of what Ketchum deserves in its senior elected official.
When Mayor Simon balked at the last minute on a lease agreement with the YMCA for the Park and Ride property, he lashed out. He accused his own city staff of poor workmanship, then threw in the Idaho Mountain Express as a contributing villain for allegedly not properly informing him and the community about the lease details—details the city itself had compiled and distributed. Huh?
Several gambits cost the city and its insurer dearly. He fired the police department's computer service contractor because of a Letter to the Editor critical of the mayor. Cash settlement and an apology were required to end that imbroglio.
In another ill-advised blunder, he ignored wishes of then-Police Chief Cal Nevland and went afield to hire an assistant police chief from the ranks of the Blaine County Sheriff's Department.
It was vintage Simon vindictiveness: Chief Nevland was his old nemesis from the 1990s recall that ended Simon's role as a councilman because of Nevland's firing.
Simon was forced later to cancel the hire, pay the aggrieved deputy $70,000 and allow Nevland to hire his assistant.
But the most worthless scheme was the mayor's politically inspired effort to undermine Council President Randy Hall. Simon claimed Hall violated Idaho law by serving as a council member and as a standby firefighter for the city.
After costly legal volleys that endured for months, the city paid Hall's attorney's fees and Hall resigned as a paid on-call Ketchum firefighter.
These events spread over four years suggest a pattern of poor judgment, a lack of restraint, and an incapacity to learn from one blunder before the next.
The time consumed on these detours from sound leadership meant time lost from advancing solutions for the city's needs and were an embarrassment to those who want better of their community leadership.
