Public Challenged To Draft New Lines
In a healthy family people give one another the gift of time, and the grace of good will. Talking, listening, helping, sharing, sacrificing, debating, compromising and forgiving. Sticking with it, in good times and bad. It’s an investment that pays life-long dividends.
The same goes for healthy communities. In Spokane, the community is about to reconfigure its city government. The success of the undertaking depends on the scope and spirit of public participation.
Last fall, The Spokesman-Review argued that the political system we are about to abandon was better than the system we are about to embrace. Today, we set that sentiment aside. Voters decided last fall to embrace a strong-mayor system and to elect council members by district. That decision must be respected. Let’s make it work.
If voters prefer the new system, their preference is in itself a good thing. They care about local government and want it to improve. Now, those who voted for change must help make it happen.
During the last few years, the toxins of cynicism and suspicion have poisoned local politics. The antidote is to involve people in addition to those whose combat provoked the disillusionment.
Public participation in designing this new system has the potential to replace the stale air with the fresh air of interest and empowerment. Change invites people from the community - those who felt left out and those who wanted no part of the negative chemistry of the past - to get involved and bring their needs to the table.
This does not mean all the players have changed. When a family enters a new home, mom, dad, the kids, the dog and the parakeet are still all there. Working respectfully together, though, they can organize housekeeping in a good, fresh way.
The first challenge is to divvy up the rooms. Spokane’s new government will divide the city into three districts, with two council members from each.
It is the public’s job to draft the lines.
The way the public draws these lines will affect the flavor of our debates and might even affect the outcome. In what ways will the lines divide us? Will the lines give an effective voice to the various elements in our community? Will they favor one over another? Will they promote harmony or discord? Differences are part of life, but can design balance these differences - encouraging good leadership and a positive spirit?
We hope so. As a public service, hoping to encourage the widest possible participation, The Spokesman-Review today prints a tool kit for drafting boundaries for the City Council districts. See the colored map, on page B9.
We do this, as an expression of our century-old commitment to progress for our community. That progress depends, as in family life, on a recognition that we need each other and must welcome one another’s participation to achieve our full potential.