Cohesiveness? Well, Why Not?

For a month now, a special districting board and more than 200 participating citizens have been studying ways to separate Spokane into three city council districts. The overriding question, though, is not how to divide the city, which already is cleaved by political hostility, but how to unify it.

The three-member districting board’s work is almost complete. They have held six public meetings. They have received 59 citizen-drafted proposals and grouped most of them into five clusters of similarly placed boundaries. Now, at last, they will select three specific proposals which go to the City Council for the final choice. Those recommendations are due by Thursday.

Both the board and the council, which will have a month to make its own decision, would do well to adopt a criterion that members of the public expressed as they worked through the process. “They don’t want districting to be divisive,” reports Lunell Haught who has facilitated the public meetings.

Indeed, some of the people who submitted proposals said in support of their respective plans that collaboration between north and south Spokane was a major objective.

While the north-south divide, evident in the voting patterns seen in recent city elections, is not the only challenge to be addressed in the pursuit of cohesion, it is one of the most conspicuous.

Because of that there are worrisome risks associated with two of the approaches among the districting board’s five clusters.

One, labeled Option 4, would assure four council members north of the Spokane River and only two to the south. Option 5, meanwhile, would assure four council members south of Wellesley and only two to the north.

That kind of imbalance threatens to heighten existing tensions rather than alleviate them. The districting board could assist the cause of civic healing by making its recommendations to the City Council from among the remaining map variations - those that feature districts as bands running either north-south or east-west.

Other divides have to be bridged, too. Spokane’s considerable needy population must have a voice under the new council structure. The city’s emerging neighborhood council structure also should be respected as another expression of cohesiveness.

Cohesiveness? In Spokane? Why not? Some of the citizens at public meetings said they came because they’d voted for the districting initiative in November and wanted to back their votes up with participation. Others said they’d voted against the initiative but felt a duty to help see that it’s well-implemented. But there they were, shoulder to shoulder, an encouraging indication that combative Spokane can begin confronting community challenges with renewed trust and openness.

The point of nurturing harmony in Spokane’s public affairs isn’t to silence competing ideas. On the contrary, the best outcome would be one in which robust debate took place, but in a spirit of shared purpose and in the climate of trust and accountability that districting advocates promised.