Eagle Council President Brad Pike is running for mayor. Is he prepared for the job? Let’s take a look at the last time he had the keys to a city and what he has done in Eagle so far.

Did you know that Brad Pike has run a city before? That’s right, in Hollister, California, with the same population as Eagle today but with seven times the density. Pike was a council member and even mayor of Hollister for several years.

It might be too much to say that Pike “ran” the city. Hollister is different from Eagle in a big way. The mayor of Hollister, at least 15 years ago when Pike was there, was little more than a figurehead, someone to run the council meetings and preside over ribbon-cuttings. The real work was done by a city manager hired by the council.

In 2008, after stepping down from the council, Pike remarked that “It’s not a full time job – it’s a chance for everybody to be a mayor.”

Is Brad Pike ready for the amount of work that the mayor of Eagle has on his plate?

California Politics?

Brad Pike seemed to have trouble managing the city budget. During his tenure, Pike oversaw a spending spree that led to a $3 million deficit which required huge budget cuts in 2006. The very next year, Mayor Pike supported a sales tax hike of 1%, even after voters rejected it in the polls! “Anything that will enhance public safety, I will push for, plead for, beg for,” Pike said at the time. What then was he thinking a few months later when he approved a 10% raise for city employees, in the middle of the Great Recession?

Brad Pike claims that Eagle needs to spend more on police, yet not once during recent budget hearings did he make such a request. Was he keeping it in his pocket to use during the campaign? That’s the sort of California politics Eagle can do without!

Back in 2006, Pike was the only council member to support a ballot measure in Hollister that would allow a developer to go hog wild, building way more houses than the law said they could. Does anyone want Eagle to be the next Hollister CA? Here in our town, Pike was the only council member to vote in favor of a 4-story building downtown, and he also voted to allow other jurisdictions to control land around Eagle. Had he gotten his way, density would skyrocket, just like it did in California.

Eagle needs a strong conservative mayor. Is that really Brad Pike? Let his time in California serve as a warning to Idaho!