City Manager Deserves Salute

Here we sit, in a beautiful region with the blue summer sky arching high above our heads, a spectacular river at our feet and a community budding with renewal. We are blessed. So why on earth do the people of Spokane tolerate a style of local-government politics that bears a striking resemblance to a junkyard catfight? Is this really the best that our community can do?

City Council campaigns are about to unfold. And the city manager has announced his intention to resign. This makes 1999 a pivotal year, a chance to choose between the hiss-and-scratch crowd and those who offer to enhance the vigor and beauty of Spokane.

Leadership is the issue. Leaders can persuade us to undertake tasks more beneficial than clawing each other’s eyes out. Secondary to leadership is the attitude we all harbor toward those who represent and serve us in government.

The imminent departure of City Manager Bill Pupo, therefore, is an occasion for reflection.

Pupo is a hometown guy. He grew up here. He’s a genuinely nice fellow. Starting as a college kid who mowed the lawn around the trees in Riverfront Park when it was new, Pupo has worked in city government for 23 years, winding up at the top. He has had a hand in some of the best things our community has done, and he has pulled some boners, too. He is not the strongest leader our community has had, but he has solved some thankless problems, pointed us to a constructive agenda in spite of toxic opposition and he has, overall, left a legacy in which he takes justifiable pride.

For all this, he is being reviled and clawed and demagogued against by local cranks who have not implemented a single constructive proposal in their entire time in the spotlight.

Sure, this goes with the territory. Every town has cranks, and some of them have good ideas from time to time. Every city manager, and every mayor, has to expect abuse.

Still, let us consider the achievements of Pupo’s years in city administration. Let us consider the possibility that the constant yowling about City Hall might have distracted us all from a quiet record of progress.

Streets are in the midst of aggressive citywide repairs. Neighborhood councils are maturing as a representative force, teaming with community-oriented policing and making City Hall more responsive to important outlying interests. From automated solid-waste collection trucks to Y2K-compliant computers to a major update of our sewage treatment plant, the city’s basic infrastructure is improving steadily. Old city garages where crews once shoed horses are being replaced by a consolidated, moneysaving operations complex. Albi Stadium is being refurbished and the land around it will become a North Side recreation center. A $110 million project is revitalizing downtown and construction’s under way at Northtown, too. The city has a new long-range capital improvement plan and audits have declared it efficiently run with vast bonding capacity for the future. The new libraries, the new Arena and the Ag Trade Center are a success and plans are under way for a new Convention Center.

That’s quite a record. Pupo helped make it happen. He deserves a salute from his community. And, looking forward, all of us need to work at choosing strong, positive, consensus-building leaders who will make those spitting cats a mere sideshow.