Latimer, Meadows Lead Charge For New Cities

The polish, money and visibility of past incorporation elections are gone.

But energy and enthusiasm still flows from the leaders of separate efforts to form the cities of Evergreen and Opportunity.

Vivienne Latimer, Evergreen’s chief proponent, and Ed Meadows, leader of Opportunity’s effort to incorporate, each have played supporting roles in past incorporation drives. But both are new to the leadership duties each assumed for the current efforts to form separate cities.

In the Valley’s incorporation movement, the two have succeeded the likes of Joe McKinnon, Howard Herman and Sue Delucchi, the local political veterans who had led Valley-wide attempts at forming cities earlier this decade.

McKinnon and Herman, both Democrats, ran unsuccessfully in 1964 for the same seat in the state House of Representatives. Delucchi ran unsuccessfully in 1988 as a Democrat for a seat in the state House.

The Valley-wide incorporation campaigns the three led attracted large donations and a lot of attention. The current incorporation fights Latimer and Meadows are waging are much smaller in scale, but no less important, Meadows said.

“Our people are less polished, but no less dedicated,” he said.

This time, donations to the respective campaign funds are measured in hundreds, not thousands. A grass-roots campaign has replaced newspaper ads as the information vehicle of choice.

“We are just people,” Latimer said. “None of us are politicians.”

That doesn’t mean either is new to the issue, however.

Latimer, a 60-something semi-retired paralegal, has followed every incorporation attempt closely since moving to the Valley more than 20 years ago. She volunteered to answer phones for the Spokane Valley incorporation campaign in 1995.

When the weary leaders of that group stepped down, Latimer stepped in for Evergreen.

Latimer said that watching green spaces yield to crowded urban areas in her hometown of Fresno, Calif., was enough to convince her that incorporation was the way for Valley residents to prevent the same thing from happening here.

“I really have the people’s interest at heart,” Latimer said.

Like his counterpart, Meadows, the 68-year-old retired airplane inspector who is guiding Opportunity’s run at incorporation, is familiar with the workings of a campaign.

Meadows helped gather signatures and pass out fliers for past incorporation attempts, and worked on the Spokane Valley incorporation steering committee in 1995.

In between incorporation drives, Meadows also has been active in campaigns for several Democratic candidates, including House Speaker Tom Foley.

“I’ve always been more active than the average voter,” Meadows said.

Meadows got started in politics when he lived in Santa Clara, Calif., where he ran unsuccessfully for a school board seat in the mid-1970s.

By 1990, Meadows and his wife, Lois, a Central Valley High School graduate, had had enough of California’s high cost of living and bought a house in the Valley.

After keeping his finger on the Valley’s political pulse through visits with his brother-in-law for years, Meadows got involved in the Spokane Valley incorporation movement in 1994.

“I just fell right into it,” Meadows said. “It was a very natural thing to do.”

But Meadows said his political interest ends with the campaign.

“At this point, I have no intentions of running for any office in the city of Opportunity,” Meadows said. “All I want to do is enjoy the benefits of living in an incorporated city.”

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