Former MHS graduate John D. Tovey III "J.D." recently added “FAICP” to his credentials, which is an impressive accomplishment.  “AICP” refers to the American Institute of Certified Planners, and on April 27, JD was inducted into the College of Fellows and is now entitled to place FAICP at the end of his name. The addition “confers an expectation of professional standards including ethics and community mindedness” on those who carry it.  The College of Fellows are only selected every other year, and this year, he was honored to be one of 55 out 15,000+ AICP planners nationwide that were selected for induction. 

Tovey has a Bachelor's in Landscape Architecture from the University of Idaho, focused on rural development and large landscape planning.

Tovey, who holds a Master of Urban Planning and Certificate of Urban Design with a specialization of Land Development Code development of rural and exurban communities, and has completed everything but his dissertation for a PhD from the University of Washington with a research focus of traditional knowledge transference, historical village patterns, indigenous resource planning is currently the Executive Director of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Prior to that he was Deputy Executive Director for 17 months, and the Planning Director for 9.5 years.

In his current position, he serves approximately 3,200 tribal members, most of whom live locally, and oversee a workforce of about 600 employees in the government and about 1800 employees in our other entities. “We have several important projects underway, including new housing and apartment developments, as well as a wastewater return system that will allow us to reuse greywater for non-potable purposes,” he says.

Tovey graduated from Malad High School in 1996, and notes that “other than my ¼ Cayuse and Nez Perce side of my family, the rest of my family has been in Malad for generations.” 

As a community planner, Tovey works to balance the many issues that go into creating a successful community.

“Structured decision-making—especially around land use—is essential to ensure a shared vision and a clear roadmap for a community’s future,” he says. “Planning is often viewed as something that happens in cities. While cities do a lot of planning, it’s not cities that are urbanizing, rural areas are. That reality makes planning even more critical in rural communities.”

Speaking to some of the issues which are confronting the Malad Valley, he notes that “each year, thousands of acres of farmland, rangeland, and forest are converted into housing and roads. Small towns often fear a loss of identity due to increased density, smaller lots, and more diverse housing types beyond single-family homes. However, the true loss of rural identity comes from the permanent conversion of resource lands—for example, turning 10 acres of prime farmland into five 2-acre residential lots.”

Speaking even more specifically about Malad itself, Tovey says, “I love Malad. It will always feel like home, even though I haven’t lived there full-time in years. When I visit, it’s striking to see how the valley has changed. In college, driving in at night, there was a cluster of lights around Malad, a few in Samaria, a scattering in St. John, and darkness everywhere else. Today, the valley is covered in a blanket of lights. That shift reflects a deeper trend: over the past 30 years, population growth in unincorporated Oneida County has been 2.6 times higher than in Malad City itself. This slow, incremental change is a death by a thousand cuts and is what is truly reshaping the valley’s identity.”

As far as advice to those planning for the future in Malad, he says, “in land development and land conversion, it is easier to get it right the first time, but nearly impossible to fix mistakes later. A second piece of advice is to avoid being distracted by short-term opportunities that may cost the community dearly in the future.

Using development as an example, the real challenge is not the construction of a house or subdivision, but the long-term maintenance that follows. If you build a five-unit apartment complex on a former single-family lot within town, it typically requires no new roads, water systems, fiber, or other infrastructure, while increasing tax revenue to help maintain what already exists.

In contrast, when a new subdivision is built, the developer installs and pays for the infrastructure, as they should, but it is then transferred to the city for long-term maintenance. In a community the size of Malad, it is highly unlikely that the tax revenue from those new lots will ever cover the full cost of maintaining that infrastructure. The result is that the broader community subsidizes those costs, while the developer captures the profit.”

Asked what parts of his youth in Malad affect him in his current role, he recollects that “I remember being about seven or eight years old when our neighbors, Heidi Hess and I, rode our bikes with our brothers, Kelley and Mike, sitting in a red Radio Flyer wagon tied to our bike frames. We went from 700 North 400 West all the way to Roice’s for penny candy.

We could make it there in about an hour, but it often took five hours or more to get home and back up the hill. Along the way, we stopped for popsicles at someone’s grandmother’s house, visited the library to return and check out books, played at the elementary school playground, explored an old barn, and raced candy wrappers folded into crude boats through irrigation culverts. The entire time, our parents knew we were somewhere in the valley and trusted we were safe because it is a safe community. The town will change and more people will move back, but creating places and a sense of community that foster memories like that is what rural development means to me.”

We congratulate JD on his outstanding accomplishment and wish his the best in his career!