Our view: Consider the future
Spokane County’s newest municipalities have one contested race apiece on their city ballots this fall. Our recommendations follow.
Liberty Lake mayor: The city of Liberty Lake is 6 years old and has known only one mayor, Steve Peterson. The comfortable community has landed important industrial businesses to go along with its affluent citizenry. It’s a hamlet that is the envy of municipalities across the state.
The question for voters is whether to reward Peterson with another term in office or to turn to an opponent with a similar vision and perspective. Wendy Van Orman also has been an effective leader, serving on the City Council since the city’s inception.
But being a council member is not the same as running a strong-mayor form of government. We see no reason to dump a proven leader, especially when that leader has been endorsed by the likes of Itron chief executive LeRoy Nosbaum and Telect founder Bill Williams Jr., successful businessmen who know something about guiding a complex organization.
Peterson and Van Orman agree on most of the substantive issues and both point to the same accomplishments. They’re proud of their work in building a governmental structure from scratch. They tout the gorgeous pedestrian bridge over Interstate 90, the purchase of Trailhead Golf Course and the legislation that will bring a traffic-relieving interchange at milepost 294 and continued improvements on Harvard Road.
They both think regionally, knowing that issues such as aquifer and river protection, transportation and economic development cut across governmental boundaries. They both look at growth projections – about 10,000 more people in 10 years – and advocate impact fees on development that can be used for the infrastructure and schools that will be needed.
That’s not to say they agree on everything. Van Orman wants a greater push to bring residents south of Sprague Avenue into the city. Peterson would like for that to evolve more naturally, noting that those residents turned down the chance to join the city at its inception and reiterated that position in 2002.
Van Orman thinks the growing city might need more workers and questions the wisdom of eliminating the city administrator position, noting that a chip-seal project that went awry could’ve been headed off with supervision. Peterson says it is more efficient to have department heads report to him and that it makes them more accountable.
Liberty Lake is fortunate to have these two solid political leaders, but the issues that divide them are not serious enough to warrant a change. Peterson has earned another term.
Spokane Valley City Council: The contest to replace departing councilman Mike DeVleming poses a difficult choice between David Crosby and Rose Dempsey. To no one’s surprise, growth – and how the community deals with it – figures prominently in the campaign.
In many ways, the rivals are closely matched, each having certain advantages and disadvantages.
Crosby, for example, has more experience with municipal government, having been a planning commission member and serving on the Finance Transition Committee during Spokane Valley’s incorporation as a city.
But he also has a string of state and federal tax delinquencies in his past, resulting in one instance in an IRS lien on his property. Crosby says his life has changed, those issues, plus some difficulty filing state public disclosure reports on time, raise questions about his suitability to govern.
Dempsey, meanwhile, seems to have more balanced backing, getting endorsement from both business and labor groups. Crosby’s strongest support comes from fellow Realtors and from home builders.
Dempsey urges protection of neighborhood character and what she calls Valley culture, and she thinks they are threatened by the kind of building and higher-density growth Crosby favors. She agrees with imposing impact fees to soften the overcrowding that sudden population increases create for the Central Valley School District. Crosby dismisses that idea, saying it wouldn’t be enough to pay for a new school – although he clearly wouldn’t support higher impact fees.
While Dempsey’s resistance to higher density is probably too rigid (incorporation itself is evidence that the Valley culture already has changed), it’s less worrisome than Crosby’s full-speed approach. In times of headlong growth, it’s probably better to have a foot closer to the brake than the accelerator. For that reason, we think Dempsey deserves the edge in this race.