Small Towns Are Off-Limits Merger Wouldn’t Affect Autonomy Of Area Cities

Merging city and county governments should matter least to the residents of Spokane County’s 10 small towns.

Drafters of the proposed city-county charter took pains to leave places like Spangle, Airway Heights, Medical Lake and Cheney out of the monumental shift they proposed for local government.

But as Cheney Mayor Al Ogden points out, even little things that affect Spokane’s city and county governments affect the surrounding small towns.

“Anytime there’s a big change, it’s a big impact on us,” he said.

Ogden supports the proposal, which will be on the Nov. 7 ballot for all county voters. The 13-member council, with members elected from districts of about 30,000 people, gives the small towns more voice than they have on the existing county Board of Commissioners.

“By the very nature of our size, we are not a high priority,” he said.

Other mayors are more skeptical of the charter proposal.

Deer Park Mayor Bob Dano suspects that the districts, which all stretch toward the Spokane city limits or the Valley, would be dominated by urban or suburban voters.

“I’m concerned about the small towns being out here as kind of an oasis,” Dano said.

Millwood Mayor Jeanne Batson is concerned those oases will disappear.

“Although (the charter) is written to leave us alone, it doesn’t mean they’re going to,” Batson said.

The charter specifically says towns will remain independent unless their population grows to 10 percent of the entire county’s population or their residents vote at some future date to join the consolidated government.

The first situation is not likely, said Ogden. Cheney, the county’s second-largest city, has about 8,200 residents or 2 percent of the total county population. He can’t imagine the kind of growth that would force consolidation.

The second scenario might depend on how good a job the new consolidated government does.

But Batson said the charter could be amended at some future date to absorb the towns despite charter supporters’ assurances that won’t happen. A new super-government might covet the additional property taxes generated by a town such as Millwood, which contains the Inland Empire Paper Co., Batson said.

The change Batson fears would require approval by voters county-wide.

The charter eliminates seats that towns have on the Spokane County Health District board and the Spokane Transit Authority board. If the charter is passed, those boards would become departments of the consolidated government, ruled by the city-county council.

The charter calls for an advisory Council of Mayors which would meet quarterly to discuss issues affecting the towns. It would include mayors or council members from each of the towns as well as representatives from the city-county government.

Freeholders who wrote the charter left the towns alone because they were convinced government is working just fine in them. They also knew the charter would be doomed if it threatened the Norman Rockwell image of village life.

That image is well-deserved, Batson argues.

“I just don’t think bigger is better. We’ve never been in debt. We have our own wells. We sweep our own streets. We plow our own snow,” she said.

Many towns do, however, contract with the county Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement services. Dano said he’s happy with that arrangement and doesn’t know what merging that department with the city police would do to Deer Park’s law enforcement.

“If we had to, we could provide our own police protection,” he said. “But I never have believed you should create upheaval when you don’t know what you’re going to have.”

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