Talbott Takes The Edge Off Mayor, Critics Adjust To Activist’S First Half Year As Mayor

John Talbott’s road from in-your-face activist to man-of-the-people mayor is like the streets of the city he leads. Some smooth stretches, some potholes.

He doesn’t feel bound by his City Hall office. He visits community centers weekly and drops in on neighborhood meetings regularly. One day he’s lecturing community college students about their civic responsibilities; the next he’s in jeans and tennis shoes, scrambling along the Spokane River bank to peer at the concrete underside of the Monroe Street Bridge.

“I didn’t volunteer for the job I got,” he said. “I didn’t think it was going to be like this. But it’s the best job I’ve ever had.”

After a half-year in office, he is still working to understand his role as a “weak” mayor in a government run by a city manager. There is less power than he thought. More boards and commissions to reckon with. More data to grasp for a man who admits he is not fond of researching details.

He talks constantly about finding ways to fix roads, making the city run more efficiently and increasing neighborhood representation in city government.

Meanwhile, there is a City Council to lead. It’s essentially the same council that Talbott, the outspoken activist, once said should resign.

“I don’t even remember what the issue was,” Talbott, the softer-spoken mayor, said recently. (He called for mass resignations over a vote to vacate Post Street for the River Park Square downtown redevelopment project.)

“Even then, on the broad range of what (council members) were doing, they were doing their best,” Talbott said.

Some friends and former foes are pleased with his transformation, giving him high marks for representing neighborhood concerns and a better-than-expected willingness to listen.

“John’s reputation was, he wasn’t going to listen to anybody. I see him as trying to build bridges, trying to allay fears,” Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers said.

“He’s really maturing as a politician. I think he’s got some diplomatic capacity,” said Don Higgins, director of the West Central Community Center.

Some foes and former friends are less pleased, wondering whether his use of a city car and hints of new taxes for road repairs run counter to his populist roots.

Onetime compatriot Dick Adams is so angry with Talbott’s voting record that he no longer talks to his former friend - and won’t even discuss why.

“He’s doing an OK job, everything seems to be working, but he’s certainly abandoned some of his activist role,” said council-watcher Steve Thompson. “John Talbott the candidate was never an advocate of tax increases.”

Of roads and reviews

In his search for money to fix city streets, Talbott supports the Coalition for Good Roads’ proposal for an outside review of city management.

But the mayor and the coalition seem to see the review as the same means to different ends.

To coalition chairman John Stone, a downtown businessman and property developer who was one of Talbott’s major campaign contributors, the review could assure a restive public that the city properly handles the money it gets now. Voters might then agree to raise gas taxes to fix the roads.

Talbott suggests a more complicated way to get money: Convince the Legislature to drop the state’s share of sales tax by 1 percent, then let cities and counties raise their taxes by a like amount.

Talbott believes the management review could lead the city to one of his campaign promises: an independent auditor to act as a check on city departments.

The council’s recent approval of the management review was a victory for Talbott. It will provide a road map for the city, he wrote in a “Six Month Report to Spokane.”

“An old saying holds true today,” Talbott wrote. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

City Manager Bill Pupo bristled at Talbott’s suggestion that the city and its staff are directionless. He quickly responded with a memo to Talbott and the council, noting the plethora of policy-setting documents, from the budget to the City Strategic Plan and the Comprehensive Land Use Plan.

Talbott acknowledged Spokane has a seemingly limitless supply of plans and reports. In his office one recent afternoon, he waved dismissively at a shelf full of reports.

“Show me where we’ve ever taken those and done anything,” he said.

100 percent support

In his six-month report, Talbott also noted that “River Park Square is in progress.”

Some critics found that an odd item to list, and suggested he’s trying to have it both ways on the project: Voicing support while voting no.

The $110 million redevelopment was one of the biggest issues in last November’s election. Talbott repeatedly criticized the partnership between the city and the developer, Citizens Realty Co. and Lincoln Investment Co.

Talbott now says he supports the project 100 percent. But he also has voted against the city’s approval of a loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which will be reloaned to the developer, and remains part of a lawsuit over a portion of the project that is seeking a U.S. Supreme Court review.

“John Talbott has never been supportive of River Park Square,” said Betsy Cowles, president of the development firms. “I’m disappointed that he continues to be a roadblock for progress in downtown Spokane.”

Talbott said he wasn’t trying to take credit for the project by mentioning it in his report.

“Is it an accomplishment of me? No, absolutely not. Is it an accomplishment of our city government, the private sector and the City Council that was involved in it? Absolutely.”

Caught in the trees

Relying on city staff for guidance does not come naturally to Talbott. Some days he seems to be fitting the square peg of his man-of-the-people populism into the round hole of what could be called City Hall’s let-our-experts-do-it progressivism.

Typical of that clash was a recently proposed ordinance to give the city clear authority to remove problem trees in public rights-of-way, and to have final say on what kinds of trees could be planted there.

Progressives thought the plan made sense. The city could remove diseased trees that become hazards, and steer property owners away from species that attract pests and push their roots through sidewalks.

Populists referred to it as the “tree Nazi” ordinance.

A few days before the council was to vote on the proposal, Parks Director Ange Taylor went over it with Talbott.

It needs more citizen input, Talbott said. It was drafted by the Park Board, which is made up of citizens, Taylor said.

Yes, Talbott replied, “but they’re close to the problem.”

The ordinance may be unnecessary, the mayor said. The City Charter already gives the city “supervisory responsibility” over trees. If it’s the supervisor, it already has the authority.

Three separate times, Taylor told Talbott that the city’s legal staff disagrees, and believes the city needs the ordinance to have the authority to exercise that responsibility.

Talbott said he’d have an independent attorney research it.

The ordinance was later pulled from the council agenda. A pending lawsuit may eventually determine the extent of the city’s authority over trees.

After only six months, it’s impossible to tell whether Talbott’s populist peg will become more rounded or the City Hall progressive hole more squared.

But Higgins, community center director and co-chairman of the Citizens League of Greater Spokane, suspects Talbott’s neighborhood populism represents the future for city government.

“Neighborhoods are going to accumulate power,” Higgins said. “He understands the special concerns of neighborhoods and his visibility is going to bridge the gulf between neighborhoods and city government.”