City Ready, Willing To Listen To You

You know the feeling. You’re reading about the latest exploits of city government and suddenly there’s steam coming out your ears.

Believe it or not, the folks who work at Spokane’s City Hall don’t lie awake at night inventing ways to make the public blow like an overheating teakettle.

They’d rather make decisions that reflect the community’s values.

But that’s tough to do unless the community explains what its values are.

Wednesday night, Spokane residents can do exactly that. From 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Ag Trade Center, city officials will be waiting to find out what you think. They’ll do it in a low-key open-house format designed for those who care about their community but don’t care to speak in front of an angry crowd. Citizens can visit any of 10 tables at which they can read proposed policy statements, leave comments about them, talk with staff people who work in those policy areas and sign up to serve on city task forces.

The result of this exercise, down the road, will be a comprehensive plan to guide city policy for the next 20 years.

What should the plan say about Spokane’s neighborhoods, streets and parks, for example? Draft documents already make some statements, which are the result of several previous public gatherings. But now the city wants to know if it has heard the public correctly. So it’s listening.

A comprehensive plan packs a wallop. It guides city officials when they decide, for example, whether your neighborhood is to be protected from traffic and undesirable development. It guides the city’s stewardship of its parks, its downtown core, its tree-lined boulevards. It can determine how welcome pedestrians and bicyclists are in neighborhoods and along streets. It can help developers and policy-makers by indicating where growth should go as well as where it shouldn’t. It also guides the city in matters related to housing, culture, social needs and governmental attitudes.

Growth is coming to Spokane. It might occur in ways we’d regret, such as suburban sprawl and a rotting core. Or it might occur in ways that could improve the city, such as renovation of historic buildings and neighborhoods.

State law requires Spokane to have a comprehensive plan; it also requires officials to heed it in many of those decisions that occasionally make people see red. Wednesday night, the city invites your comments on the values and visions that will shape the new plan. You can offer a constructive comment now, or you can stay home and blow your stack when it’s too late.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board