Last term for council member

After three terms in office, Kalispell City Council member Bob Hafferman is calling it quits in January. Now in his 80s, Hafferman said his failing ears are the reason why.

Hafferman is one of the council’s most gruff and outspoken personalities and a dissenter sometimes on even the most routine of votes. He’s always called Kalispell home and ran for a Ward 1 seat in 2001. 

He didn’t run for the seat to “give something back.” Whenever he hears a politician offer that tired phrase he wonders what they took.

“I just started watching some of the meetings on television and some of the stuff that was going on just graveled the hell out of me.”

Kalispell was “cheating a woman on (a special improvement district),” running water and sewer lines to the Four Corners with taxpayer money and pursuing annexations that made no financial sense, Hafferman said about some of the issues that bothered him.

He wasn’t getting anywhere watching TV and got tired of cussing at it. He was sounding off about the city’s foolhardy annexation initiatives at a meeting in Evergreen when someone said, “You gotta run.”

“I had never thought about it,” Hafferman said about running for the city council. “But I had opened my big mouth about being opposed.”

Hafferman and his wife went knocking on doors. They promised the people who answered that they weren’t trying to save souls or sell soap and then offered them a handout on city issues and Bob’s positions. 

He defeated an incumbent and has been in office ever since.

Hafferman was a licensed engineer and surveyor for his professional working career. He spent 13 years as an engineer for the National Park Service working in Montana, Florida, Arizona, Utah, California and Alaska, but he got fed up with the department as it changed. There wasn’t enough work to keep a body busy. Decision-making was centralized in Washington, D.C.

“I don’t think it was Kennedy’s fault. I think it was just the bureaucracy that had grown up there. You could sit and fiddle around with paper and get promoted and all the rest of that crap. Hell, I like to smell that earth being turned, so that’s when I quit.” 

Hafferman also worked for St. Regis Paper Company and Koocanusa Marina. He spent many years working as a private engineer in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Utah and Arizona. As Kalispell’s public works director from 1980 to 1983, he was no stranger to city issues when he ran for office.

Hafferman routinely draws from that engineering background on the city council bench.

With the city administration proposing to boost property taxes for street maintenance, Hafferman questioned some of the newly unveiled plans to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment over the next five years. 

He also questioned the city’s decision to mill and overlay his street. A simple chip seal would have done the job and saved the city money, he said. And if there’s savings to be found in front of his house, what other savings are out there? 

Such questions and observations have marked Hafferman’s time in office. City staffers know going into every meeting that he’ll be a tough sell and question any information they present. 

If the city wants to spend some of its tax increment finance district money, he wants to know how it will build the tax base. If the city wants to go into debt, he wants to know if it can afford to pay cash.

Hafferman insists he’s not a contrarian. He just calls the issues as he sees them and tries to keep an open mind. That’s what he’ll continue to do for the next six months.

“You have 10 percent who agree with you thoroughly. You can hold hands all you want, but you’re not going to learn anything from them,” Hafferman said. “You want to listen to the 10 percent against you because some of them probably have a good idea you never even thought about.”

Hafferman must be doing a decent job of keeping his mind open all these years. 

He’s been voting the same way as 25-year city council incumbent Jim Atkinson on a number of issues of late — most recently against a proposal to allow events with alcohol in city parks. 

Atkinson has taken note of the trend, too. 

The two men respect each other but often have opposing views on the role of government. With a recent redistricting of council wards in Kalispell, they would have had to run against each other for re-election. Never intending to run for more than one term, but agreeing to run for a second and then a third to help keep a check on a “trouble-making former mayor,” Hafferman looked forward to their campaign but can’t run because of his failing ears.

With Hafferman not running for re-election, Atkinson faces two other challengers for the seat. “It’s like I told Jim the other day, he must be running again because he keeps voting with me,” Hafferman jokes. “There’s been several times now.”

A lot of people like to put council members in boxes, Hafferman said, adding that he doesn’t always fit in those boxes. And he’s not the quiet middle-of-the-road type because he always has an opinion and he’s not afraid to share it.

“The Republicans think I’m a Republican and the Democrats think I’m a Democrat. If it ever goes the other way around, I’m in trouble,” Hafferman said. “I don’t really know what I am. There’s certain elements of the Democratic party I just can’t quite handle and there’s things about the Republican party I just can’t handle.” 

Hafferman figures he doesn’t have much of a political career to look forward to. 

“Now with my hearing, the only place I could go is Washington because they don’t listen to people anyway.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.