The Spokane City Council passed a resolution Monday to begin holding quarterly meetings with the Board of Spokane County Commissioners. The action attracted no significant attention, which may prove to be exactly what it deserved.

Or it may – the tentative tone is deliberate – turn out to be a seminal moment for community progress.

The first gathering is expected to be May 25, and it’s doubtful that the maiden undertaking will be overly structured or deal with the most troublesome issues that divide City Hall and the Courthouse. But if the elected officials all persevere, there is a lengthy list of conflicts for them to tackle in time.

Land-use issues offer a striking example. Wastewater treatment and transportation questions warrant agenda time, too.

With those and other matters on the table, it’s no wonder that city-county tension has been a concern for years. It’s what Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin, a relative newcomer to elected office, calls “definite rub.”

As the region grows, however, it’s imperative that the rub be soothed. Throughout Spokane County – and North Idaho’s Kootenai County, for that matter – residents cross political boundaries regularly and have multi-jurisdictional interests. If the street they drive changes abruptly from smooth to rutted, it’s no consolation that different traffic engineers are in charge.

More and more, we’re a community of people who live in Spokane Valley, shop in Spokane, work in Liberty Lake, dine out in Coeur d’Alene, and fish, bike, sail and ski at a host of locations in and around all those cities – or some other combination of the above.

Sooner or later, civic leaders have to give up their long-standing turf rivalries and adopt priorities based on regional betterment.

Easier to say than to do.

City and county governments carry out their obligations with tax revenues based primarily on the property values and economic activity that exist within their boundaries. Competition over revenue sources puts them in unavoidable conflict and leads to contests like that in the past year using gambling tax rates to lure specific businesses from one domain to the other.

But the biggest issue involves the population patterns that distinguish urban from rural living. Deciding which land belongs in the various cities of Spokane County and which should remain unincorporated will determine how the scope of all the governments must change. As everyone knows, change causes discomfort.

And that’s where views can get clouded if government leaders are confused about whose interests are paramount, their own or the public’s.

Various attempts have been made in the past to strengthen relationships among elected leaders in different local governments. Indeed, County Commission Chairman Todd Mielke and Spokane Mayor Dennis Hession have initiated regular get-togethers. Except for formal, interlocal agreements around specific enterprises – the airport, the Health District – the overall record is spotty.

As imperative as it is to achieve stronger city-county cooperation, it’s also challenging, not only because of the stakes but because of structural differences between the county commissioners (higher paid, full-time officials with both executive and legislative roles) and City Council members (technically part-time citizen officials with only legislative authority).

Barriers aside, a cooperative enterprise is critical if leaders from both city and county (and eventually the county’s other municipalities as well) are to put the public’s interests first.

Dramatic results won’t happen right away. But the citizens shouldn’t have to wait forever to see evidence that officials from both governments are dedicated to solving stubborn problems.