Future projects ranked

Just a few weeks after its trial run, a new workshop meeting format is taking giant steps toward becoming the way the Liberty Lake City Council conduct its business.

Tuesday’s discussion topics ranged from traffic congestion at the Harvard Road interchange to whether the council felt a fish hatchery would be a worthwhile project. To Mayor Steve Peterson’s disappointment, fish didn’t make the cut.

Tuesday’s workshop, under the direction of Councilwoman Judi Owens, began as others have with dozens of sticky notes stuck to the wall. The notes contained ideas for projects that council members would like to see in the city’s future.

After organizing the information into categories, Owens wrote the topics onto larger sheets. Council members would then rank the importance of the topics on a scale of 1 to 3.

In addition to interchange improvements, a new library, schools, infrastructure, burying power lines, establishing a river-front park, improving roads and planting trees all got high marks from the majority of the council.

The process of identifying potential funding sources got near the halfway point when the meeting’s two-hour window was reached. It was decided to keep the process going and let absent council members David Crump, Joanna Klegin and Brian Sayrs have their say.

Councilman Neal Olander is a big fan of public recreation and ranked those projects accordingly.

“The community is lacking public recreation,” he said. “Fortunately there are many people who support public recreation. We have a baseball field group; we have a skate park group. Personally I’m supporting swimming pools. A nice public outdoor pool would be great.”

“The function of these meetings is that it gets all the council to sit down and consider what is important,” said Councilman Patrick Jenkins.

As the meeting neared adjournment, Jenkins asked, “What are we going to do with this great list?” He went on to suggest that what was accomplished “will be a roadmap that will guide us over the next few years.”