Seattle Transplant Goes To Bat For Mariners
Seattle transplant Sue Grant lives in Spokane now but she’s still loyal to the Seattle Mariners.
To her, the bonding that occurs around a community’s - or a state’s - sports team is akin to what happens in a neighborhood around a school.
“It can help increase the level of community spirit, togetherness, connection,” she said.
Not surprisingly, Grant thinks it’s appropriate for state government to help build the stadium Mariners owners say it will take to keep the American League club in Seattle.
“My children often get taken to Seattle. My sister, who lives there, buys season tickets and she flies them over or we drive over for the weekend, and we have a good time with the Mariners. We’ve come over here to Spokane to the baseball games a couple of times but now that the Mariners are having winning seasons we for sure really want to keep them.”
Questions, answers and decisions
As the vote nears on a city-county charter, John Hill of Greenacres has one question: “Are the Valley real estate taxes going to go up, stay the same or go down?”
Meanwhile, Patricia Bories of Spokane has not a question about the consolidation plan, but an answer:
“One big positive going for unification is every district has equal representation. A criticism I heard from the Valley GOP meeting was the downtown will run the whole thing. Not true. We will all have our equal say. Combining Spokane city with Spokane County makes sense to me. I’m 70 years old. I was born here. I’ve raised two children in the Valley and lived in the city.”
Wrote C.F. Brenton of Spokane: “We just want to drop one layer of government, not have a greater imposed upon us.”
Jim Nelson grew up in North Spokane but has lived briefly on the South Side.
“No,” he says, “the people aren’t different physically, but occasionally that South Side feeling of superiority will surface. The majority of the time it’s in jest, but occasionally it’s very real, especially among the younger individuals.”
School Board candidate Rocky Treppiedi of Spokane, who has raised representational balance as a campaign issue, wrote: “A board that is not close to balance can lose credibility when dealing with issues that are near and dear to a neighborhood that has no representation on the board.”
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