‘Valley Mike’ raises ruckus

Paul Revere has nothing on “Valley Mike” Wolther. Except that the British really were coming.

Wolther, a real estate agent whose nickname is his trademark, inadvertently lit up the Internet this week with an old-fashioned paper handbill that dubiously warned a jail might be coming to Spokane Valley.

“Our city will be known as the ‘Prison Town,’ just like Walla Walla is known,” Wolther said in a handout at a meeting of some 45 business people.

Only three of those people knew that one of three possible sites for a new Spokane County jail is in Spokane Valley, Wolther said.

“That’s how ineffective the message system was,” he said.

Wolther’s warning – largely accurate if a bit lathered – was picked up and embellished in e-mails that blew through the area Thursday like another unseasonal snowstorm.

It became difficult to tell who was saying what in the e-mails, which got rolling with help from one of Wolther’s colleagues and a Central Valley School District principal.

District spokeswoman Melanie Rose said Greenacres Elementary Principal Terry Ellifritz sent messages to some of her fellow principals, but the district has taken no position on the jail project.

“This is certainly disturbing news,” Ellifritz wrote. “Please read and pass on to anyone that lives in the valley.”

Pass it, they did. Someone in the Spokane Public Schools got a copy and forwarded it to dozens of people on a distribution list. Some of those, in turn, forwarded copies to friends and spouses, and county officials’ telephones began ringing.

By that time, Wolther’s “jail facility” had become “a new maximum security prison in our neighborhood.”

Never mind that it’s probably not going to be in Spokane Valley or that it’s a replacement for the county’s minimum-security Geiger Corrections Center, not a maximum-security state penitentiary.

“Does it walk like a duck and quack like a duck?” Wolther asked. “Whether it’s a prison or a jail doesn’t really mean too much to me.”

He said he was alarmed to discover a county Road Division gravel pit on Tschirley Road, east of the Spokane Industrial Park, is Spokane County’s third-ranked location for a new jail. Wolther’s fears grew when he attended a final hearing Tuesday in which he was the only Spokane Valley resident to speak.

Wolther persuaded county commissioners to extend the period for written comments until April 29, when commissioners may select a site for the new jail.

County officials took issue Thursday with Wolther’s assertion that Spokane Valley residents weren’t properly notified and that the jail would house about 3,500 inmates of “all criminal levels.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Sparber, the jail project manager, said the new lockup would have about 1,708 beds. He said the county’s most dangerous offenders generally would be assigned to the 462 beds that would be retained in the existing county jail.

“We have done our very best to get the information out to the public,” Sparber said, noting he has addressed Spokane Valley groups on several occasions.

He said county officials have conducted four public hearings and a public “workshop” meeting since Oct. 21. There also have been numerous stories in The Spokesman-Review and other newspapers, and broadcast coverage included a call-in television show.

The Tschirley Road site is unlikely to be chosen, according to Sparber and County Commissioner Mark Richard. It’s too valuable as a gravel pit, they said.

Also, the first- and second-ranked sites have a major transportation advantage.

The No. 2 site is private land at the intersection of White Road and State Route 902, just west of the Medical Lake interchange on Interstate 90.

Better yet, from a transportation standpoint, is county-owned land behind the current jail – which is behind the Spokane County Courthouse where dozens of prisoners make court appearances every week.

Richard said Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich has opposed the courthouse campus location because of the parcel’s relatively small size. Knezovich feared there might not be enough room for future expansion and that that a jail with multiple floors might be more expensive to operate than a compound of one-story buildings, Richard said.

However, Richard said a team of consultants recommended the courthouse site and believes a jail could be operated there for about the same cost as elsewhere.

Sparber said Knezovich has agreed to support the courthouse site on condition that the new jail be designed to meet the county’s needs for 25 years and to allow for phased expansions.

“Hopefully, I’ve sounded an alarm with no good cause,” Wolther said.

He acknowledged hearing at the commissioners’ meeting Tuesday that the Tschirley Road site probably wouldn’t be selected. But he also heard the concerns about the courthouse site and noted that “15 to 16” people spoke against the Medical Lake site.

“You never know how fast our site might have looked a heck of a lot better since nobody was pushing back,” Wolther said. “At least somebody’s talking about it now.”