Spokane’s vital signs

To assess the health and welfare of Spokane County, a new civic organization recently gave it a thorough checkup. Complete results are published in a 36-page booklet, “Spokane Vitals: Working for a Measurably More Vital Spokane Region.”

Greater Spokane Incorporated conducted the exam. Formed about three weeks ago, the new group blends the Spokane Area Economic Development Council and the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce.

“Spokane Vitals,” its first major project, looks at 20 economic indicators related to business growth, education, overall prosperity, quality of life and residents’ basic needs.

The goal is to establish a baseline of measures, dubbed metrics, to articulate the county’s performance in several key areas and with which to eventually help measure significant changes over time.

More than a mere reflection of how things are going in the Inland Northwest, the report compares Spokane County’s performance against 11 “peer” regions: Albuquerque, N.M.; Boise City-Nampa, Idaho; Colorado Springs, Colo.; Madison, Wis.; Mobile, Ala.; the two-state metropolitan statistical area comprising Portland and Beaverton, Ore. and Vancouver, Wash.; Raleigh-Cary, N.C.; Reno-Sparks, Nev.; Salt Lake City, Utah; Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue; and Tucson, Ariz. And it shows how Spokane stacks up compared to Washington State.

The results paint both positive and sometimes unflattering pictures of how Spokane County is doing in such areas as average annual wages, educational attainment, child poverty, commute time, business growth, housing affordability, and so on.

About half the time, Spokane County ranks above its peers’ average performances—boasting more businesses per population, a lower cost of living and lower crime rate, to name a few.

Yet it ranks below its peers in the remaining categories—with fewer residents holding bachelor’s degrees, paying lower annual average wages and possessing a higher child poverty rate, for example.

“If intelligent policy and related actions are going to be undertaken to spur economic development, then beginning with a brutally-frank appraisal of where we are is imperative,” Shane Mahoney, emeritus professor of government at Eastern Washington University, wrote in an e-mail. He’s studied economic development in Spokane, Boise and elsewhere.

Like Mahoney, several area economists widely support the project, though they take some issue with the peer regions chosen for comparisons. State capitals and regions that house major research universities, for instance, may possess certain advantages. And Seattle definitely excels in some categories that Spokane may never match.

“I would have chosen different peers, but that’s irrelevant. I’m good to go with it,” Avista Corp. Chief Economist Randy Barcus said in a phone interview.

Marisa Maricich of Greater Spokane Incorporated was the lead research on the report. She said peer cities are those with whom Spokane competes or is compared to most frequently in business circles.

How does Greater Spokane Incorporated plan to use the report?

Rich Hadley, president and CEO of the new organization, hopes it will spark public dialogue, creative partnerships and action plans for positive change.

“In some cases, we may be the lead organization to affect, say, business growth. But there may be other categories where our role is to help support another organization or city or county government in addressing other indicators,” Hadley said.

Central to the initiative is increasing prosperity for all, he added.

Jon Eliassen, past president and CEO of the Spokane Area Economic Development Council, hopes as the community moves ahead.

Nearly 20 percent of Spokane’s children live in poverty, the report shows. That means the county is among the study’s four poorest and just ahead of Albuquerque, N.M.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Mobile, Ala.

Poverty is defined as an annual income of $12,830 or less for a family of two, $16,090 for three and $19,350 for four, according to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

Additionally, nearly 15 percent of Spokane County’s population struggles in poverty.

“We’ve have to attract the right growth in the right areas” to ensure high-quality jobs that pay much more than minimum wage,” Eliassen said.

As painful as these statistics can be, they’re crucial considerations, Maricich said.

“These indicators were chosen and then the results were measured. We didn’t find the data and think: “OK, what makes us look good?’” she said. “We really went out and thought about what we can affect and what’s most important to be measured over time. We didn’t do too badly. But it really does highlight what we need to work on as well.

“We’re not going to be able to improve unless we look at the big picture,” Maricich said.

To accurately track the trends, it’s critical the indicators and peer cities be tracked over time, said Grant Forsyth, associate professor of economics at Eastern Washington University.

“To really get a flavor for what’s going on, you have to look over a longer period of time. Otherwise, random events and fluctuations that don’t necessarily represent long-term trends” could skew trends, Forsyth said.

And it’s important to remember using metrics is not an exact science, he said.

“”You have to be careful about drawing big conclusions on how you’re doing. Rather than being the end, it should be the beginning of questions about how we’re doing compared to others and if we see differences, we need to ask why they are there and if they are of concern,” Forsyth added.

Patrick Jones is executive director of EWU’s Institute for Public Policy and Economic Analysis and the major force behind the similar Spokane Community Indicators Initiative. In the present report, for example, high school graduation rates are skewed because of a basic reporting flaw, Jones said. Up until just recently, figures have been based on the difference between the number of students in a senior class and the total number of graduates—rather than the difference between graduates and the total number of students who started freshman year.

As a result the report’s dropout rates appear significantly lower than they are in reality. Bret Mayborne is economic research director for the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, whose metrics initiative inspired Greater Spokane Incorporated.

He believes the practice is valuable. “Looking at things regionally, rather than parochially, has helped us create an awareness of the efforts necessary to solve some of the problems we have here.”