Friday Quote II
A new year. A new perspective.
On Tuesday, we had the pleasure of attending the swearing-in ceremony for Spokane City Council's newest member Amber Waldref. We were there amongst 80 or so friends, family, colleagues, citizens and council representatives to celebrate with Amber and to wish her luck in her new endeavor. And we'd be lying if we said we didn't daydream a little ways into the program about the wonderful potential us environmentalists and Spokane in general is being afforded with three strong environmental leaders now sitting on City Council. Speaking of course about Amber, Jon Snyder, and Richard Rush.
After taking the oath of office, Amber gave a wonderful speech where she dialed up some history that really got us excited. She talked about being the youngest woman ever elected to City Council, and also talked about the first - Margaret Leonard (1970-77). “Margaret and I might not have agreed on everything,” Waldref said, “but in a Spokesman-Review
article from September 1977, written about her unsuccessful race for
Spokane mayor, she [Leonard] said, elimination of storm sewer overflows
into the Spokane River would be her first priority as mayor. So here we
are, 32 years later. 1977 was the year I was born, and we are just
starting to get a handle on the sewage overflows to our river and
starting to clean that up. Cleaning up our river continues to be a
major challenge, something that has been delayed and passed on from one
generation to the next. Now, I don’t want to pass this on to my
daughter.”
Read more about Amber's swearing-in ceremony from a story published on the Center for Justice site on Wednesday, and written by the wonderful Tim Connor. And watch video footage below.
