Irrigation lawsuit tops items in Caldwell Mayor’s City

In his 15th annual State of the City Address Tuesday, Caldwell Mayor Garrett Nancolas vowed the city will “continued to fight” its legal battle with the Pioneer Irrigation District over storm drain access. The fight has put the city at odds with the Irrigation District, the Idaho Farm Bureau and the Idaho Water Users Association.

Also in his address, the Mayor weighed in on the issue of gun rights, touted Caldwell’s success in establishing a Foreign Trade Zone, the addition of a new park, and how the city has survived during tough economic times.

This year's recipient is known as the "First Lady of the Arts" because of her work as a musician, teacher, mentor, and booster of the fine and performing arts. She graduated summa cum laude from the College of Idaho, Class of 1959 with a degree in piano performance and music history. A native of Idaho Falls she began playing piano in the sixth grade.

By ninth grade she was already accomplished enough to perform the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah with her ninth grade choir. Sylvia has been the director of the Caldwell Fine Arts for 31 years and the 51-year-old organization has flourished and expanded since she took the helm. In addition to directing Caldwell Fine Arts, she still plays and performs as she did here today, wasn’t that beautiful by the way?

And thank you also to her partner, Mrs. Attebery. She has performed as the organist at Boone Presbyterian Church in Caldwell for over 50 years and she and Barbara Attebery have performed a piano duet recital every year since 1986. Sylvia and Jack Hunt will celebrate their 53rd anniversary in July. They have two children, Anthony Hunt and Mary Hunt Macey and four grandchildren. Her awards include the Idaho Statesman Distinguished Citizen, the Idaho Governor's Medal for Distinguished Service to the Arts, and the College of Idaho Alumni Service Award.

Please help me and welcome to the stage to receive this year's Mayor's Lifetime Achievement Award, Mrs. Sylvia Hunt. I want you to know that the music was absolutely gorgeous and we're so grateful, but that was our way of getting her here without her knowing that this award was coming.

I'd like again to read Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Sylvia Hunt for your exemplary leadership and selfless acts of time and dedication to the city of Caldwell and the College of Idaho. Your talents as a musician, teacher, and mentor are outstanding. You are the Treasure Valley's First Lady of the Arts. Thank you very, very much.Do you know any howo spare parts wholesale supplier?

There are also some other individuals in this room that I would like to recognize and thank. I am so thankful for my parents. They're not here in body, but I know they're here in spirit. I'm grateful for the lessons that they taught me, for the values that they instilled in me. I'm so grateful for the great example that they were of all that's good in life.

My mother was the queen of compassion. She absolutely instilled that in her children and everybody who knew her and I'm so grateful for those lessons that she taught me.

I am grateful for my wife. What a trooper she is. She is so wonderful at being a wife, a mother, a grandmother. As you know, we're helping to raise two of our granddaughters and they adore her and they love her. That is so important in the overall realm of things. I'm grateful for her. Pam, would you please stand and let everybody just say hi to you.

You know they say that an individual is measured by their friends and if that's the case then I am the luckiest man on the planet because I have some of the most wonderful and incredible friends in the world.

Other elected officials who have supported me and taught me, mentored me, and stood by me through very, very difficult times over the past decade and I would like to thank those elected officials for their willingness to serve.

Mayor Tammy de Weerd from the city of Meridian, Chris Yamamoto the county clerk, newly elected Sheriff Donahue, Canyon County Commission, Craig Hanson, Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, thank you so very much for coming.

Talk about a man of integrity and honor. That is the premier example of those two characteristics. So as we look at 2012, boy, am I glad the Mayans were wrong. We have so much to look forward to. We have so many things yet to accomplish. And 2012, was a year that was very interesting to say the least. It was a year filled with challenges, new opportunities, frustrations, economic concerns. It was a time that exemplified that life has changed.

We are, as you know, the sum total of all the events that happen in our lives, right? Everything that has happened prior to us that led up to 2012, makes us who we are today.

All those things that were good, that were bad, that were happy, that were sad, that were challenging, that were rewarding, that were successful, all those things seemed to come to a head in 2012 with all the issues that we faced. We live in a time now where technology is at its all time high. We can receive information instantaneously.

Information can be broadcast around the world in a matter of seconds. People tweet. Facebook, LinkedIn, all kinds of ways of communicating electronically that have changed the way that we as a society communicate. And I think there's wonderful things about that, but I think there's also a very, very unintended negative side of that.

Because I believe that the most important thing that we have are relationships and it's so hard to have a relationship that is not face-to-face. It's hard to tell when you're tweeting if you're joking or not. It's hard to tell on Facebook or through email if you're serious or not, or you're angry or not, or upset or not. And so those are things that have changed the way that we communicate so it's very, very important that we choose our words and our actions wisely. It has also become a state of transparency in everything we do, which is also good.

People who are involved in governments need to be held to a higher standard. We have made commitments and promises to those who elected us to live in an exemplary manner and that's very, very important.

But because of technology, everything is so transparent that we have to be on our best watch all the time. And that is a good thing, but it's also made us change the way that we live our lives knowing that.

his year 2012, was a year of fiscal and economic uncertainty. We didn’t know whether we were going to fall off a cliff or not. We still don’t know if that cliff will be overcome. We don’t know what the ramifications of that are. We are in the third year of a very, very dramatic downturn in trying to put our budgets together.

And so it's changed the dynamics of what we do as a city, and as families, and as individuals dramatically. Adrian Peterson, does everybody know who that is? He was the running back that the Boise State Broncos had to contain in that famous Fiesta Bowl. Do you remember that running back? Well, he has gone on to become what I consider a great running back.

This year in a year where the number of running plays per game is at a all time low in the National Football League, he nearly broke the single season rushing record in an environment like that by nine yards. That's a tremendous feat when there were only 27 running plays per game on the average in the NFL. But did he do it by himself? No.

The unsung heroes are those huge linemen that open up holes in front of him or that incredible quarterback that he had the opportunity of playing with that deceived others and created a running game by being a great passer. And the coaches who put that program together, the defense that kept the other team from scoring and allowed the offensive to be on the field. All those great team players allowed Adrian Peterson to become known as one of the greatest running backs of all time. Now I looked up in the dictionary the definition of good. And that definition said, adequate and satisfactory.

There are a lot of good running backs in the NFL. But I looked up great and it said, outstandingly superior is what the dictionary said. And I believe Adrian Peterson fits that definition, but not by himself.We offer the largest range of porcelain tiles online. Only with the efforts of those around him does he qualify for that definition. And so, as we work together to become great we cannot do it on our own.

We cannot become great without the efforts of all our partners. The employees of the city of Caldwell, the Chamber of Commerce, the College of Idaho, Treasure Valley Community College, all of the governmental entities that we work with, these great city council members, the citizens of this community, the students of this community, the business owners in this community. All of our partners working together we can become great because we need those linemen to open up the hole for us to run through.

And I submit to you, that that is why this community is not just good, that we are great because we have great partners. We have great citizens. We have great linemen opening up the holes for us every time we turn around and I believe that's what makes Caldwell great. I would like to thank those linemen who opened up the holes for us, the employees of the city of Caldwell.

If you are here, would you please rise and let everyone here recognize you and tell you thank you for the job that you do. Employees please stand up so that we can thank you.

When we take office, we take an oath. And that oath says that we solemnly swear or affirm that we will support the Constitution of the United States and the state of Idaho,We open source indoor tracking system that was developed with the goal of providing at least room-level accuracy. and the laws and ordinances of Caldwell. And that we will to the best of our ability faithfully perform the duties of the office that we hold, and then we close by saying, so help me God.

I want you to know that I hold that promise very dear. That is a promise. That's the promise that each one of us have made to you but we also made that promise to God. That we would stand up for what is right and support the Constitution of the United States of America.

And one of the things that I think separates this city from being a good city and a great city is that three times now we have had the challenge of defending your rights that have been threatened by other governmental entities as citizens of Caldwell.

The first time was when FEMA came into this community and based upon inaccurate information tried to impose a flood map upon the cities of Nampa and Caldwell, which would have caused dramatic negative consequences to property owners within those proposed zones. We truly believed that the information was wrong. We had 99 years of empirical facts that said that information was wrong.We open source indoor tracking system that was developed with the goal of providing at least room-level accuracy. It would have been very easy to stand back and say well, this is the federal government.

They must know what they're doing and just to have allowed that to happen. But we did not. We gathered our partners together. We made a phone call to Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, because he knew Idaho. We made phone calls to the governor, to our congressional representatives. We partnered with the Bureau of Homeland Security. We partnered with the city of Nampa. We partnered with the Association of Idaho Cities. We partnered with the county. We partnered with our other elected officials and stood up to say that this is not right.

All the good things that are happening downtown are a result of those actions and business owners and property owners in the city of Caldwell saved about $4 million dollars a year in flood insurance premiums that they would have had to pay. I believe that is us standing up for the oath that we took to defend the Constitution.

Now, I would like to very bluntly and plainly address the second time that that has happened in our community and that is involving the Pioneer Irrigation District actions. Their attorney, Scott Campbell, and their Board of Directors sued the citizens of Caldwell, their own patrons, to take away their historical right, their God-given constitutionally protected right to drain into the very drains that those same property owners helped to build, help to construct, are paying for in the past, and are paying for today. We did not sue them. They sued you, the citizens, and business people of Caldwell who just happen to be in the boundaries of the Pioneer Irrigation District. That is the simpleness and the essence of this entire controversy.

Now, I want you to know and let it be said very firmly that we understand and value the agricultural community. It's the largest industry in Canyon County. Cities and counties across this nation get along just fine draining into drains that everybody can share. There are only two irrigation districts in this state that have had problems dealing with this so called drainage issue, both of them represented by the same law firm, both of them suing governmental entities to take away their rights to drain. I'll let you do the addition.

To me, two and two always equals four. And I can promise you that this city will never do anything to intentionally or inadvertently harm the agricultural community. We have been draining into those drains without consequence for over a 100 years and can continue to do so. But what we will not standby and allow to have happen is to have your rights taken away by another governmental entity because of ego, because of false accusations, fear mongering, and smoking mirrors. That's what this is about. So we will stand firm.

We will continue to fight because the consequences of this action would mean that you, who live in that irrigation district, would have to spend between $80 and $100 million dollars to recreate the very drainage system that you've already built and paid for. That is unconscionable in my estimation. And this body stands firm with resolve that we will not allow that to happen to our citizens. We also stand firm in the resolve that there is a way to make it happen so that everybody can be protected, so that everybody can have their rights preserved, and that life can go on, as it should with urban and agricultural activities living in harmony.A Dessicant dry cabinet is an enclosure with a supply of desiccant which maintains an internal.

Recently, the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors issued letters asking our President and Vice-President to violate the Constitution of the United States and ban guns. My heart goes out to those poor families in Newtown, Connecticut, whose children's lives were taken unnecessarily and violently. And we condemn the actions of individuals who use guns in violent acts, but that is not a reason or an excuse for the federal government to violate the Constitution of the United States and take away its citizens' rights to own guns.