City Council Candidates Committed To Serve ‘There’s Unfinished Business,’ Holmes Declares

The winter Phyllis Holmes’ first husband was dying of cancer, a voice spoke to her through a wilderness of grief and uncertainty. It belonged to Scarlet O’Hara.

“One of the things she said has stuck with me all my life: ‘I will never go hungry again,”’ Holmes said.

After Don Holmes died in the spring of 1965, Phyllis had to manage with no money and two small children. A few months later, her 3-year-old son died in a freak accident. ‘From then on, I set about a path of managing my life so that I would never feel like I was a victim.”

Today, if Holmes is a victim of anything, it’s her own ambition. Working a minimum of 60 hours a week, she’s a real estate entrepreneur and successful insur ance agent. She was elected to the Spokane City Council in 1993, beating three challengers. Last year, she was telling friends she wouldn’t run for re-election. But last July, she kicked off another campaign, saying, “There’s unfinished business.”

“When she commits to getting something done she gets it done,” said friend Carol Darby, whose calls Holmes a “pit bull.”

It’s a drive Holmes carries in her political and private life. One of her hobbies is water skiing. Eight miles on one ski is her personal record. She would have gone farther, but the boat stopped.

“Phyllis is one to be driven to do her damndest,” said outgoing Councilman Mike Brewer.

Holmes entered the 1993 council race after seeing an armed guard in a Safeway parking lot. “This isn’t the Spokane I want,” she said at the time. “All those things we only thought happened elsewhere are ours to deal with now.”

Over the past four years she’s been heavily involved in the creation of the city’s neighborhood councils. But the councils are still fragile, and Holmes wants to see them strengthened.

“It was much easier to form neighborhood councils because the neighbors were ready,” Holmes said. “Where we have perhaps fallen behind is making sure we are as flexible at City Hall as the neighborhoods need us to be.”

Holmes has “absolutely been a defender of neighborhoods,” said Sheila Collins, a member of the Cliff-Cannon Neighborhood Council.

Over the years Holmes has voted to stop a developer’s plan on Five Mile Prairie, voted against widening Indiana Avenue and voted for a moratorium on subdivisions in Indian Trail - votes where she sided with the people living in those areas.

Collins also credited Holmes with “having the voice of a lot of people. People are comfortable approaching her and being dead honest.”

Holmes learned to be personable from her father, who spent years traveling the Inland Northwest as a salesman.

“Learn as much as you can about everything,” was his neatly packaged advice, Holmes recalled. “So when you meet a person, you can talk to him about what he does.”

She grew up managing mining properties in Ferry County, studied English and history in college and minored in music. She loves to dance and study ancient Egypt. She and her second husband, Bob Voris, grow enough vegetables at their southwest Spokane home to last a winter.

She believes one of the city’s goals should be strengthening communications with other elected officials, from the commissioners of Spokane County to those of Kootenai County in Idaho.

That communication will be necessary to develop a coherent transportation plan, Holmes said.

“One of the things I hope we seriously look at is the potential for light rail - for an east-to-west track in the county,” she said. “We have a real opportunity there. Some would say we are way ahead of readiness, but I would say that’s the time you get on it.”

To Holmes, a successful future for Spokane is to be found in a dominolike stack of actions.

“You can’t pave the streets unless you’ve got the money, so you’ve got to create new revenues and they come from commercial development,” she said. “But the commercial development won’t come unless you’ve addressed your transportation and infrastructure needs.”

To top it all off, Spokane needs to have a healthy, safe environment to attract new business, Holmes said.

It sounds like a daunting task, but to Holmes “the cup is half full, we just need to fill it up the rest of the way.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Previous stories are available on The Spokesman-Review’s Web site, www.VirtuallyNW.com