Valley Visions

The Spokane Valley is a growing, dynamic community.

At a recent town hall forum, The Spokesman-Review asked Valley residents to write about what they like about their community, and their vision for the future. Here are three of the responses.

Future is bright if we promote tech industry

By Martin Burnette

My vision for the Spokane Valley covers many topics: increased economic growth; more affordable housing; increased wages; education that empowers young people; industries with bright futures; roads, sewers and other infrastructure.

But a vision without a plan to bring about meaningful change is wishful thinking. My plan would recognize the critical role of business enterprise. Business provides jobs, and pays a significant amount of the costs for public services.

The Valley has struggled to build and maintain roads, sewers and other infrastructure without the revenues usually created through commercial and industrial growth. Without business dollars to shoulder the costs of growth, citizens are left to juggle these horrendous costs. Because of this, some residents are pessimistic about the Valley’s future.

But it also is true that visionaries such as Bill and Wayne Williams of Telect, and Bernard Daines of World Wide Packets, have shined a light down a pathway that leads to economic growth and prosperity.

These businesses have brought high-paying careers, and industry that is environmentally sound. They offer economic opportunity, while challenging our community to respond to the needs these fast-growing companies have for getting buildings built in a timely fashion. In the time it could take to go through the cumbersome building processes of Spokane County, many of these companies could have doubled or tripled in size!

The inefficiency of our planning and permitting process also adds to the construction cost of commercial building, making some projects unfeasible.

The added costs of home construction are passed on to the homebuyer.

Driving up the costs of housing makes homes less affordable. Coupled with our low median income, you see why so many massive apartment complexes have been built for families who may never be able to own a home.

Lastly, my vision emphasizes education. The strongest natural resource we have is in the developed minds of our young people.

The future vitality of the Valley depends on their education and training, partnered with an opportunity to prosper in jobs and careers.

Intelligent planning will keep area livable

By Martena Peterson

It was a bleak February day about 81/2 years ago. I had been following my husband in the van with the two boys, assorted toys and those items too fragile to be entrusted to the movers, for three days now.

“Look, trees!” I shouted. “We must be almost there!” As we headed down the Interstate 90 hill into Spokane, I wondered where all of the tall buildings were. This was a city, wasn’t it?

Having been raised on the East Coast and living on the West Coast, my expectations of the people here surprised me even more. One of the complaints I’ve often heard is about how bad traffic is.

If I can get from one side of the county to the other in under 25 minutes, what are folks complaining about? Even a comparably sized city has more congestion than we do.

I also couldn’t believe how easy it is here to contact anyone, politician or poet, school official to company president. Most people have listed numbers and answer their own phones. This is liberating. If I have a question, an idea or project, I can call the person in charge.

One of the concerns I had moving here was leaving a rich and varied cultural scene. Again, I was pleasantly surprised. The art, music and theater scenes here are quite rich when you consider the size and population of the area.

After all of this, I do have a beef about the schools. Mead and Central Valley districts are the ones to live in, newcomers to the area are told.

Why is that? Don’t the folks who live here realize how good all of the area districts are? That you have the choice to change schools or even home-school if it’s not a good fit for your child? Try living somewhere else in the country where you have to send your child to the local school whether you like it or not. Or moving across a state line from your job because that state’s school system is better.

Moving to the Spokane area was a gamble that, I think, paid off for us. It’s small enough for us to feel that we can make a difference in the community, yet varied enough in opportunities for us and our family to grow.

As this area continues to grow, I am hopeful that the attractions it has for us will continue to exist. With intelligent planning and dialogue among all members of the region, we can honor our history and embrace the future.

Quality of life is high let’s push tech expansion

By Lorraine Halverson

“Spokane — a Great Place.” This is the logo on a cup I own. To me, it speaks of the way I feel about this Eastern Washington region, and especially its jewel of a city, Spokane.

Spokane is a terrific family area. I have seen some of our own family members return here (after going to universities in California, Pullman and the East) to enjoy the activities as well as the amenities of life in the country (Liberty Lake) and yet, only 20 minutes from a big city. We can swim or ski by day and then attend a great Broadway musical downtown that evening.

I am especially proud of the leaders of the Spokane Valley and their accomplishments. The parks, Valleyfest, and now Mirabeau Point are fantastic places for the family. We have watched in awe as the YMCA at Mirabeau Point has evolved. Just wait until CenterPlace and the Universally Accessible Park are built — right next to the Centennial Trail! Much has been accomplished because of the efforts of the Spokane Valley Rotary and other civic groups.

Liberty Lake, where I live, offers boundless family fun for water sports, golf, bicycling, hiking and skiing. Its beautiful Pavilion Park, patterned after the original Pavilion on the lake, is a remarkable achievement of community donations that were matched by state funding. Beautiful bike trails are being constructed which will tie into the Centennial Trail.

Leadership for these projects in Liberty Lake occurs because people want to leave a legacy for future generations and they are not afraid of the challenge.

That’s why I heartily encourage high technology businesses coming into the Spokane Valley. We need to think of the next generation of kids and the jobs they are seeking if we want to keep the best and brightest.

My engineering husband has calculated that, for every primary job in a company such as Agilent, there are three to five secondary jobs created. (A primary job brings dollars from outside the community. A secondary job trades dollars around inside the community or sends them out of the community.)

With an average of 2.5 members per family, each primary job puts food on the table for about 10 people in Spokane. (And each primary job we lose takes food off the table.) It is thus essential to have primary jobs in Spokane if we desire to keep our economy strong and our young people here.