Candidate interest declining

Back in 2002, when Joan McCurdy campaigned for Spokane Valley City Council, the primary election was a political free for all with 49 candidates vying for seven positions.

Each seat drew at least six contenders. Vacant lots were so crowded with campaign signs, they eclipsed the knapweed as candidates made their case for election to the newly incorporated city’s first council.

This primary’s ballot is nothing like that first one. There are only three candidates competing for one position. Real estate agent David Crosby, taxicab driver Joseph Edwards and church music director Rose Dempsey are competing for the seat vacated by Mike DeVleming, who isn’t seeking reelection. The race is nonpartisan.

Two other council members up for voter approval this year, Bill Gothmann and Steve Taylor, aren’t listed at all because no one is challenging the incumbents.

Although candidate interest has declined, voters continue to go to the polls in about the same number that voted in the 2002 incorporation vote. Roughly 19,900 voters cast ballots that election, with 51.4 percent endorsing cityhood.

Some voters say there was a missed chance for an upstart candidate to challenge the incumbents on city zoning issues and get elected, but no one filed for office.

“That issue is a hot button that really needs to have a lot of thought put into it,” McCurdy said. “I think really if we had some people who really had some strong opinions about it they might have a chance to succeed.”

McCurdy, 72, a part-time bookkeeper, never sought election again after 2002. She made it out of the crowded primary field of eight candidates to challenge Richard Munson in the general election, where the ballot gap between the two ballooned from roughly a thousand that September to 3,500 in the November general election. The time and money required for campaigning discouraged the one-time candidate from trying again.

Other past candidates contacted by last week by The Spokesman-Review gave similar reasons and also suggested that City Council paychecks didn’t reflect the amount of work the job requires. The council job pays $750 a month. The mayor makes $975.

Several also said there might be more interest in running, if the City Council seats are elected by district with one member elected solely by residents of Veradale and another by neighbors in Greenacres for example.

Voters seemed to like a district-elected City Council.

“I think it would be more equitable. I think there would be more balance,” said Pete Miller, whose rural north Greenacres neighbors have been very vocal about the number of homes the City Council allowed to be built on an acre of land. “We have several neighborhood councils, and several people involved who could run.”

Two weeks ago, Miller was at a City Council meeting where neighbors had shown up in force after the city proposed allowing six to seven homes per acre to be built in most Spokane Valley neighborhoods. Many of those neighborhoods now have only one or two homes per acre and residents weren’t pleased about the suggested change.

Frustrated that two City Council members were running for re-election unchallenged, one of the witnesses at the meeting stood and suggested that when the general election rolled around, voters just write their own name opposite the incumbents’ and vote for themselves.

“We’ve encouraged everybody to write in their own name as a sign that we’re against (the incumbents),” said Mary Pollard, also of Greenacres.

A leader on growth and development issues affecting her neighborhood, Pollard is one voters concerned about zoning point to as a potential candidate they’d support. Miller has taken her advocacy one step further; she’s working on Pollard, trying to get her to run in 2009.

Pollard said she considered running for office this year, but with a daughter undergoing a difficult pregnancy and her own battles with home developments that have adversely affected her property, she didn’t have the time.

“I might do it in two years,” Pollard said. “There should be more people this year. Truthfully, there are 87,000 people living here. There have got to be people qualified. Even if they have no experience, they can be brought up to speed.”