Tensions Rise as Caldwell Councilmember Insults Recall Organizer and Mocks a Lawmaker During City Council Meeting

Caldwell City Councilmember Mike Dittenber used his microphone at last night’s city council meeting to call recall organizer Jim Hollis a coward.

Dittenber also took time to mock Idaho State Rep. Kent Marmon (R – Caldwell) by reminding the city council that Marmon was recalled as a city council member. Marmon was also a signatory on the recall petitions.

During the meeting, Dittenber, who is not up for re-election until 2027, praised people he met in person, saying they were kind to him. He told those at the meeting,

“I wanna say that, um, I appreciate the kind words, and the words of support from the community over the last several weeks during this recall. Because those of you I meet on the street were kind and gentle and were supportive.”

Immediately after that, Dittenber criticized other Caldwell citizens. Specifically, he stated,

“The cowards hid behind social media. And they said mean and nasty things, and that’s all they were, is cowards.”

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It’s unclear whether Dittenber was at the recall locations to speak with the people who signed the recall against him and whether he talked with them in person. An online Facebook group called “Caldwell, Idaho Crime and Community” has over 25,000 members and was often a forum for discussion about the recall.

But it was not just individuals who signed the recall that Dittenber went after. He laid specific criticism at Jim Hollis, the recall organizer, saying,

“The community should know that Mr. Hollis and his efforts to recall these great men up here came with no receipts. He didn’t even turn in his signatures, which is another cowardice act.”

Hollis said in a press release yesterday that, because they did not collect the required number of signatures to trigger the recall, he was afraid to submit the signatures, fearing that the citizens who signed would face retaliation. Additionally, Hollis said he did not want to burden the county with holding the paperwork.

Dittenber also appeared to take a random shot at Marmon. He stated,

“And so we should know that the person that still holds the title for being the last recalled person on city council, is our esteemed state legislature, Kent Marmon. He still holds the title as the last person, uh, recalled in this community.”

Marmon was recalled in 1988, along with two other city councilmembers.

Dittenber closed by saying it was time to put the recall effort behind them and come together as a community.

Idaho Dispatch contacted Hollis and asked if he had a response to Dittenber. He told Idaho Dispatch,

“The fact that a city council member used his bully pulpit to attack and malign private citizens, who were unable to respond to his criticism, is exactly why we did not submit the pages and pages of signatures.

Imagine if we had turned in the signatures, which contained people’s names and addresses. If a city councilmember is willing to attack his constituents openly like this, and mock them as he did, then what else could they possibly do behind the scenes with all of that private information?

Throughout this recall, I saw a ton of courage from Caldwell citizens who came to the recall table and stood out in the open to let the mayor and city council know that they were not happy with the direction of the city. For Dittenber to call them cowards is a disgusting display by an elected official.

I was attacked and maligned a lot during the recall, as were many of the recall committee members. Without the necessary number of signatures needed, I felt there was no sense in letting the thousands of Caldwell citizens face similar attacks, because once we submit those signatures, they would have become public record.”

Idaho Dispatch also asked Marmon if he had a response to Dittenber’s comments. Marmon responded by saying,

“My first inclination was to ignore the remarks made by Caldwell City Councilman Mike Dittenber at Monday’s (June 2, 2025) Council meeting as inappropriate, inaccurate, politically motivated and just downright ridiculous.

However, the district I represent in the Idaho Legislature as a State Representative encompasses most of Caldwell, and I believe my friends and neighbors deserve a response – one that I am providing in an effort to be completely transparent.

Our city is the 51st fastest-growing city in the entire nation, experiencing a growth rate of 21.5% (12,918 new people) during the four-year period from 2020 to 2024, which has increased our population to 73,088. Caldwell only had 19,500 people living here in 1988 – our population has grown by 52,440 since the recall that happened nearly forty years ago, which he mentioned during the meeting.

Truth be told, there were actually three of our six-member City Council who were recalled about a decade shy of a half-century ago. Durand Marcus, Jack Carter, and I were all members of the city’s Finance committee and faced a recall organized by the mayor at the time, in what was totally a retaliatory move on his part, and the voters all subsequently recalled us.

The circumstances surrounding the recall efforts of 1988 and 2025 are not even remotely similar. The 1988 recall was based on lies, sensationalism, and a mayor unhappy with the votes of the Finance Committee, and was entirely politically motivated. The effort over the last few months in 2025 was based on the dissatisfaction of well over 4,000 individuals who are extremely upset and who don’t believe that the Council is acting in the best interest of the city and its residents.

Reasons have included the failure to collect over $1.2 million in fees from developers; the ram-rodding of a give-away long-term lease for a motel on a piece of property that has been utilized for years for parking for the Canyon County Fair, Caldwell Night Rodeo and numerous other events; the long delay in getting the city pool operational and having it run $3 Million over budget; the Mayor and City Council shoving new downtown parking meters down the throats of Caldwellites and their refusal to listen to the people on the issue, only to have to turn around and remove them at a cost to the taxpayers of around $750,000; multiple lawsuits against the city that were simply paid off rather than seeing their day in court; and
the Council ignoring the recommendations of the Caldwell Planning and Zoning Commission regarding the building of new homes and apartment buildings without Response to remarks made by Councilman Mike Dittenber – 6/2/2025 – consideration to the infrastructure needs of the community (schools, expanded law enforcement, fire protection, etc.) to name just a few.”

In his statement to the Idaho Dispatch, Marmon criticized Dittenber’s decision to use the city council meeting to ridicule the recall organizers, saying,

“As for Councilman Mike Dittenber, I have provided ‘the receipts’ that he mentioned needing in his remarks on Monday evening. I’m saddened that he felt the need to deflect instead of accepting responsibility for the actions that led to the effort.

As for Mike’s calling the recall organizers “cowards” for not turning in the petitions on Monday, I applaud them for not doing so. They knew how many signatures they needed, and they also knew that they came up short. There was no need to put additional work on the hard-working County Elections Department by turning in signed petitions short of requirements. There was also no need to make the names of those who signed the petitions public so that they could be harassed, intimidated, or bullied by anyone else.

It’s too bad that Mike and the others who were targets of this recall effort can’t see that they’ve done anything wrong to warrant the attention they’ve gotten, even though more than twice the number of people who voted for them signed petitions to recall them.

As for “receipts” by those who organized and worked on the recall, they had a clear outline of their reasons for each one of the four, and those reasons were not conjured up – they were facts based on what has actually taken place in our city government. This effort was not the result of retaliation or any political agenda like the recall effort of nearly 40 years ago. The people of Caldwell have a right to be
heard and considered in the decisions of their elected representatives and mayor.”

Finally, Marmon gave his explanation 1988 recall effort:

“In the case of the 1988 recall, charges were created and sensationalized by the mayor and some of his closest friends to upset enough people to get involved in the movement. And much like that mayor’s campaign that got him elected as a write-in candidate, city employees from nearly every department went door-to-door getting petitions signed.

What were the issues in 1988?

▪ During his write-in campaign, the mayor promised city employees a 10% raise and the extension of full insurance coverage to members of their families. City employees went out in force to campaign for him based on that promise. As a Finance committee, we had no way of fulfilling his promise, and with the additional vote of Councilwoman Pat Mallea, he could not fulfill that promise unless he could get rid of three of us and appoint replacements that would carry out his promises.

▪ During the Nixon-era, grants were given to cities across the country to use in any way they felt would benefit their cities. During our budgeting process in 1987, we were told by the federal government that any funds remaining had to be spent or budgeted or returned. We looked for projects that needed funding that would benefit the entire population of the city to include in the budget for the next year and budgeted accordingly. Projects that surfaced included improvements of the sewage treatment plant, upgrading the O’Connor Field House, additional resources for the Library, and additional/upgraded equipment for the Police and Fire Departments.

The mayor wanted us to use some of those funds to provide the promised 10% raises and insurance benefits. I argued that if we did that, it would be unsustainable, because once the money ran out, there would be no funds available to cover those raises and benefits which would result in layoffs and the inability for the city to provide services. Recall organizers claimed that we were hoarding some $3.8 million instead of giving it to city employees, because we had set aside money for sewage treatment upgrades and fire department equipment that we could not fully fund with the federal revenue
sharing money.

▪ It was also at that time that one of the four irrigation districts in Caldwell faced complete failure. An earthquake at Hebgen Lake in 1959 had caused hairline fractures in the cement pipes that delivered flood irrigation to a portion of the city. Over the decades since, those fractures had expanded resulting in caved in piping. The city couldn’t keep up with the calls for repairs and an engineering study was called for to find answers.

J.U.B. Engineers conducted the study and provided us with a 4” binder of their findings and recommendations. I carefully studied that report and found that their recommendation to replace the system with pressurized irrigation to be the best and most cost-effective alternative to the situation. Repairs to the old system were impossible, and replacing the flood irrigation system would not provide water to all of the patrons. Some were upset that they would no longer be able to flood irrigate and complained about putting in sprinkler systems or “dragging hoses.”

The mayor and others wanted us to budget federal revenue sharing funds for the then-Caldwell Irrigation District to replace their system. I argued against that, saying that the money should be used for all the residents of Caldwell, not just one district from among the four.

The other three districts were all set up as taxing districts with board members elected from among the patrons of their districts. Their fees were collected and used according to the decisions of those independent boards.

Caldwell’s district, on the other hand, was managed by the City Council, which made up the board, and most of the Council members and the mayor lived outside the district. I felt that the people who lived in the district should be able to elect their own board and make the decision regarding the replacement of the
system to serve their needs, rather than having the City Council do it. In my plan, the newly formed district would receive all of the equipment, inventory, and funds held by the city so it could proceed with a plan.

▪ There are deadlines and other requirements set by the state of Idaho in the Code regarding the city budgeting process. As the deadline neared for completion of the budget, the city’s “negotiation team” had not reached consensus on raises for firefighters to be included in the budget. I asked for the best
estimate for an agreed-upon raise for the union members and was told by our council representative that it would probably come in around 1-1/2%.

Because we had to wrap up the budget, I recommended putting contingency funds in the budget to cover an increase of up to 3%.

After the budget was approved, the union that represented the firefighters claimed that the city had not bargained in “good faith” by capping the potential raise at 3%. We had to go to mediation, and regardless of the deadlines set by state law, the mediators decided that we had not negotiated in “good faith.” The problem was really with the team that was negotiating with the union on behalf of the city, not getting their work done on time, but the firefighters didn’t see it that way. They blamed it on the Finance
Committee. Subsequently, they worked hard on the recall effort against us.

The fabrication of the facts and outright lies won the day, and the three of us were recalled. What happened after the recall?

▪ The mayor only got to appoint two new members. The governor had to appoint a member to bring the Council up to a quorum of four in order to approve the mayor’s appointments. Although he was able to stack the council with two new members, he had four who would vote the way he wanted them to.

▪ The mayor and his “new” council went on to raid funds set aside to at least partially fulfill his promises to the city employees who had worked so hard to get him elected and to make the recall successful.

▪ The residents of the Caldwell Irrigation District ultimately got the issue to create a new district independent of the city on the ballot, passed it, and their new board decided to move to a pressurized system after hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent trying to repair the old one. Prior to that,
the mayor had used several hundred thousand dollars to build a small pressurized system that served some residents near the hospital. The new board had to sue the city to get the equipment, inventory, and funds from the city and formed the Caldwell Lateral Irrigation District.

▪ The EPA came in and threatened the city with closure of the sewage treatment plant because it was not up to standards. The mayor left office at the end of his one term with the city in serious financial straits. Another served one term. After him, one of the recall organizers was elected mayor after serving a
term-and-a-half as an appointed city councilman (replacing one of us). The city was in so much financial trouble at that point that he had to work overtime to fix it.

He was able to convince the council that the only way out of the sewage treatment problems was to lease it out to a major corporation that had the resources to fix the plant, then recoup their “investment” through fees collected from the residents. They did that by doubling the assessment. What had once been a utility billing every other month became a monthly billing at the same rates. It took years to get the job done, and it was just in the recent few years that the city was able to restore city management to the sewage treatment plant.

He and his council were finally able to get Caldwell back on a sound financial footing about a decade after the whole mess had begun.

We were ultimately vindicated of all the lies and charges made against us that had made the recall successful. That is why it is so hard to understand why Mike Dittenber would bring that non-issue up a Council meeting nearly four decades after it happened.

If I were to go back to 1987 as a member of the Caldwell City Council, I wouldn’t do one thing differently. I would work just as hard for the people of Caldwell as I do now as a Legislator. I am extremely proud of the work I did for the people of Caldwell over the 1-1/2 years I was a member of Caldwell City Council:

▪ Shortly after being sworn in, a representative from the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) came to a Council workshop and told us that they were going to drastically cut the promised funding for our airport. He claimed that the Graham-Rudman Act (an Act that was an attempt to balance the federal budget) forced the cuts. I knew that that Act had nothing to do with dedicated funds collected through aviation, and I went to work to get the funding restored, working with then-Senator Steve Symms who was chairman of the U.S. Senate Transportation Committee. Before I was off the Council, over half of the funding was restored, which led to the beginning of the expansion that is today’s Caldwell Executive Airport.

▪ As the liaison to the Airport Commission, I helped secure and write some of the first commercial-expansion leases at the airport (including War Hawk Museum) that began the expansion of business operations at the airport that now are a vital part of the economic and business community of our city.
As the liaison to the Golf Commission, I helped create the mechanism to raise the money necessary to build a new clubhouse and cart storage at Purple Sage Golf Course, to remodel the Caldwell Municipal clubhouse and build golf cart storage there.

▪ I fought hard to gain back city control of the Caldwell Events Center from a lease holder so that we could invest in upgrading the facilities that included a new roof and insulation at O’Connor Field House, the replacement of outdated heating, and the installation of air conditioning. We also hired a full-time
person to manage the Events Center that now sees multiple events throughout the year including rock and gun shows that bring a lot of visitors to Caldwell who patronize our businesses and support our economy.

▪ Although my efforts weren’t completed until after I was off the Council, I worked hard to solve the problems of the Caldwell Irrigation District by encouraging the patrons to take control of their district and secure a board elected by them.

Several years after the recall after I was totally vindicated of all the charges made against me, I stepped up as a candidate for mayor. To further show that the whole thing had been a complete travesty, those heavily involved in the recall effort (including the mayor who became an appointed Council member after our recall) all supported me financially in my campaign. It was a three-way race that, in the end was won by Garret Nancolas who went on to serve about a quarter-century in that position.

As a life-long resident of the City of Caldwell as was my father before me, along with my paternal great-grandparents who homesteaded just west of Caldwell back before Idaho became a state, I do not apologize for standing up and fighting for the people of Caldwell on issues that are important to all of us.

Today, I am honored to be serving the wonderful people of Caldwell as a member of the 68th Idaho Legislature. My work ethic hasn’t changed – I still put in the long hours reading and researching potential legislation and voting as I promised I would when I ran in 2024.”

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Tags: Caldwell, Jim Hollis, Kent Marmon, Mike Dittenber, Recall

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