Leadership Needs Long-Term Vision

The nation’s mayors gathered in Seattle one week ago for a convention filled with inspiring stories of political leadership and progressive community transformation. Boise’s mayor gave a speech about “The New American City.” Tacoma won honors for a recycling boom. Pasadena, Texas, for neighborhood planning. Gadsden, Ala., for resurrecting its dead economy and culture …

Meanwhile, Spokane’s city government was paddling deeper into the backwaters of internecine conflict. Yes, there are bright spots here. Local entrepreneurs have begun investing downtown, reversing a dangerous cycle of decay. But political leadership is troubled. People watch City Council meetings for the same reason people slow down on freeways when they pass some horrible wreck.

Success in other cities results from leaders who develop vision, win consensus and deal with setbacks in a style that produces winners rather than losers.

Here in Spokane, it is time for people to ask if they still want the style and direction of leadership that they empowered last fall.

Decisions made by City Hall’s new majority have been expensive. Moody’s downgraded Spokane’s bond rating and could do so again. This will cost taxpayers millions of dollars, for years to come. Litigation over the River Park Square garage promises to make very costly a situation that also could be defused.

Let’s be frank. When the local family that owns this newspaper set out to renovate River Park Square with help from federal urban renewal programs, they looked for the best possible redevelopment plan, both for their business and the community. This $110 million plan passed muster with the City Council, bankers, and downtown development experts.

Overall, the project has created nearly 800 new jobs and by the end of 2000 will have added $4 million in sales, property and construction taxes to the city treasury. In the future it could add more than $1 million per year to the treasury.

But one piece, the parking garage, has so far disappointed everyone, including the developers. In the months ahead as the second phase of River Park Square opens, financial performance of the garage should improve.

The City Council’s majority, however, has become focused on the costs of the garage - which was less than one-third of the project. The council needs to see the larger picture. The benefit to the city’s treasury from the entire River Park Square development will exceed the cost of committing parking meter revenues to the garage, even if that commitment extends over the next 20 years. Despite two court rulings, the council has not honored its legally binding commitment to use some parking meter revenue to support operating costs of the garage.

Several weeks ago, Avista CEO Tom Matthews wrote the City Council a letter urging a negotiated solution and warning that even his own company - one favorably inclined toward Spokane - may find it financially unwise to locate its growth enterprises here, given the current instability. Other firms may feel the same way about Spokane. There lies the greatest cost of all.

A solution hinges on members of the Council’s majority - John Talbott, Steve Eugster, Cherie Rodgers and Steve Corker. It would be refreshing and courageous, an act of leadership, if one or more of them worked in good faith for a settlement rather than the sort of “victory” where everyone loses.