City employee’s wife supports Sprague-Appleway plan

Some of the most enthusiastic support for Spokane Valley’s proposed Sprague-Appleway Revitalization Plan at a March 13 public hearing came from the wife of a city employee.

No one pointed out that relationship when Anngela Wakan addressed the city Planning Commission.

“I really like the plan,” Wakan testified. “As part of the young working class, this is something that would bring our family to Spokane Valley.”

She said she would consider buying a condo in one of the proposed urban mixed-use areas.

At the back of the auditorium, her husband, Duane Wakan, was working on a three-dimensional computer graphic he prepared as an intern in the Spokane Valley Planning Division. The graphic illustrated some of the buildings the plan envisioned.

Duane Wakan said he was so busy he missed most of his wife’s testimony, but she had told him she wanted to comment and he told her to “go ahead.”

“I think I had a right to express my own personal opinion,” Anngela Wakan said.

She said she spoke as a biologist with environmental concerns, including a desire to reduce urban sprawl. No one asked her to testify, she said.

Senior planner Scott Kuhta, manager of the revitalization plan, said he hadn’t met Anngela Wakan, but “when she said her name, I was putting two and two together.”

Kuhta and Community Services Director Kathy McClung – who oversees the planning, building and engineering divisions – agreed that anyone is entitled to speak at a public hearing.

As for disclosing a relationship that some might consider a conflict of interest, McClung said, “I think it’s probably always better to reveal that, but she doesn’t work here.”

Duane Wakan said he could see how people might consider his wife’s indirect connection to the plan a conflict of interest, and he probably would ask her to disclose such information in the future.

But, he said, “I’m an intern. I had barely been with Spokane Valley for a month and I’ve never had a municipal job. I’d been working for nonprofits, and this is kind of a new thing for me.”