BOISE — When Alan Shealy was appointed to the Boise City Council in 2003, he worried that the barrage of government and other organizations he’d have to master would cause “death by acronym.”
He soon realized getting the acronyms down would be the easy part.
“We were drinking from a fire hose, with one scandal after another,” Shealy remembers.
Shealy, 58, who left the council last month, joined the city in a stormy era. Mayor Brent Coles had stepped down amid charges of questionable spending and travel and would later serve jail time. Top aides departed. Morale — inside and outside City Hall — was low.
Shealy and Councilwoman Maryanne Jordan were appointed at the same time in 2003, to openings created when Councilwoman Carolyn Terteling-Payne took over as mayor and Councilman Mike Wetherell became a judge.
Mayor David Bieter and council members Elaine Clegg and David Eberle were all elected in 2003 and took office in January 2004.
The five have served together ever since, helping to get the city to a point where a majority of respondents in recent surveys say they’re pleased with city leadership.
Now, says Shealy, he’s happy to have his Tuesday nights back.
“My learning curve had flattened out, and I wasn’t getting the psychic enjoyment out of doing the small stuff anymore. Staying up, talking about curb cuts is not what I want to be doing,” he said. “The key to being a good party-goer is knowing when to leave.”
Shealy, a self-employed investment manager who runs a hedge fund, is back to his old profession full time. But leaving the party may not mean leaving politics. He’s deciding what he wants to do next, and that could include a run for statewide office.
“Everything is on the table at this point, but I expect to be active in some shape or form,” he said.
The Connecticut transplant, whose wife, Laura, is a Boise native, says Boise is his home, and he’s here for “the duration.”
FIERCE INTELLECT
Council President Jordan has become Shealy’s close friend. She’s glad Shealy is contemplating a role that would keep him in the public sphere.
“Alan has talents, and people haven’t scratched the surface. Society can’t reject that kind of mind,” Jordan said. Shealy’s intelligence is tempered by a willingness to ask for advice, she added.
She lauds her friend for several accomplishments —including helping get branch libraries built.
When a 2006 bond election to build libraries fell short of the two-thirds necessary to pass, Shealy and his fellow council members wanted to find another way to get the branches built.
Shealy and Councilman Eberle came up with scaled-back plans to build the branches in existing spaces at Collister and Hillcrest shopping centers within the city budget.
“He didn’t care who got credit for libraries,” said Jordan, “just that they got done.”
Shealy, too, counts libraries as one of the council accomplishments he’s most pleased with. It’s been one of his “greatest satisfactions, when people were naysayers,” he said, to see the new branch libraries flourishing as gathering places.
Jordan said Shealy became known among developers as someone with high design standards. Builders would anticipate his questions, often pointing out design elements to him by name when they came before the council, Jordan said.
NOT ALWAYS SMOOTH SAILING
Shealy’s council tenure had its share of conflicts, too.
“We went through some intense experiences early on,” said Bieter. Besides City Hall’s credibility gaps, city leaders struggled with how to manage the city-owned Community House homeless shelter, and community opposition to — and a lawsuit over — removing a Ten Commandments marker from Julia Davis Park.
The new leaders at City Hall had no inkling that those issues would become so explosive. “Alan was so important in navigating all of that, and just so steadfast,” said Bieter. “He was looking to do the right thing in the long-term interest of the city. That’s his legacy.”
Shealy weathered a contentious relationship with the police union, being the sole holdout on the council to vote against salary increases in 2007.
Shealy, never known for verbal self-censorship, was a frequent source for colorful quotes. “You never really knew where he was going with his references. He always kept you a little on edge,” said Bieter.
And whether people liked or disliked Shealy, they liked the idea of someone who didn’t always tread carefully.
In the 2007 police union negotiations, Shealy infamously quipped that police demands were so unreasonable, the negotiators must be “on dope and dog food.”
Today, Shealy said he regrets “firing my mouth off” that time. He cites the recent agreement between the city and police and fire unions, in which the unions forgo a scheduled pay increase to avoid layoffs, as proof that the relationship between him and his former foes has evolved.
“I have great respect for the police, and their families, and I told them that before I left,” he said.
REBUILDING MORALE
Before his 2003 appointment, Shealy had never held public office. He got the job because of his financial expertise. There was an urgency, he said, to restore order to city finances.
City employees had purchasing cards, or “p-cards,” with which they made more than $1 million of purchases — some legitimate, some not — in 2002 and more than $700,000 in 2003.
“There had been a serial lack of accountability at the highest level of city government,” said Shealy. “It was like an episode of ‘Frontline.’ ”
The first order for the council and mayor was rebuilding trust in city leadership.
“We had one responsibility,” said Jordan, “to not screw this up.”
Today, city leaders say they got it right. They installed financial controls and an ethics panel. Jordan says she meets people now who are unaware of the scandals nine years ago.
“On the whole financial end of things, between Alan and David Eberle (who has a doctorate in economics), it’s like having our own in-house experts all the time,” said Bieter.
While Shealy’s presence on the council has been “vital,” he said, the nucleus of the city’s leadership remains intact.
Anna Webb: 377-6431
JOIN THE DISCUSSION | Register here
We welcome comments. Please keep them civil, short and to the point. ALL CAPS, spam, obscene, profane, abusive and off topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for taking part — and abiding by these simple rules. A thorough explanation of rules of conduct can be found in our Terms of Service. If you have any questions, including why your comment may not be showing immediately after you submit it, be sure to visit the commenting FAQ.