Boise Mayor Lauren McLean is looking to mold the city of Boise from a sleepy capital to a regional hub of art, entertainment, commerce, and, apparently, communism.
The details are in a report, "A more equitable city for everyone." The document, released by the mayor’s office in April, flew under the radar as Boiseans dealt with the Coronavirus-induced chaos. On Friday, the Boise Guardian wrote about the report and deemed the document as “worthy of discussion.”
Unfortunately for taxpayers and small business owners and ultimately customers, who would bear the brunt, McLean paints the picture of a Boise that looks something like Portland, Seattle, or San Francisco after she’s done with it.
Her plan calls for the Boise government to immediately address housing hardships, caused by the political response to the Coronavirus pandemic, by sticking it to landlords.
Her report highlights, among others, two steps to take now:
- Prohibit any evictions during the Stay-Home Order time period, and,
- Cancellation of rent and mortgages for all in Boise during the Stay-Home order.
- The document doesn’t outline how that would occur or who would pay the bill for the cancelled rents and mortgages. Interestingly, the report does not suggest canceling property taxes during this period.
Further down the road, the document proposes a number of left-wing initiatives to fundamentally transform Boise into a socialist enclave. Among the transition team’s proposals:
- Create a network of multi-racial, multicultural community liaisons to provide ongoing leadership to the city
- Ongoing equity and inclusion efforts, including but not limited to racial equity, white fragility and implicit bias training or book readings, especially for city personnel who do not identify being from communities impacted by marginalization. Engage in an ongoing assessment of impact of these efforts, e.g. were personnel policies reviewed and updated, etc.
- Announce the creation of the City of Boise Human Rights Commission which integrates restorative justice practices and processes that honor our Indigenous cultural ways of governance and processes for addressing harm
- End coordination and collaboration of localities (police, all city government) with ICE and end local practices of inquiring about immigration status, collect immigration data or share immigration data with any person.
- Commit the City of Boise to an ongoing and robust efforts to interrupt white dominant/white supremacist culture with a multi-layered strategy and designate a full-time City of Boise staff person to serve as Director of Equitable, Safer and Thriving City
- Practice spaciousness and welcome the whole selves of all City of Boise employees to foster creativity and nurture our collective humanity, e.g. consider more flexible working hours when feasible, reduce the number of work hours per week, etc.
- Provide free blood sugar and blood pressure screenings to members of our communities impacted by marginalization.
- Increase minimum wage to a livable wage that aligns with the local housing market
- A 30 percent increase in women in leadership positions and an 30 percent increase in leadership of people from communities impacted by marginalization.
- Integrate Universal Design as the standard for all city-owned facilities, including retroactively remodeling current city-owned structures to comply with universal design standards.
- Provide city-wide free Internet
- A cultural center with studios for people from diverse backgrounds and creative practices, performance spaces, rehearsal spaces all supported by city and public/private sources.
- Free contraception as defined by the CDC, abortion and reproductive health care.
- Collaborate with the Boise School District to establish sex education at pre-k level – 12th.
There’s much more to dislike about this report and its goals. The Idaho Freedom Foundation invites you to read the whole document by clicking here.
