Letters

Apology for behavior at council meeting

This is an apology for losing my temper at the council meeting (Tuesday) night and accusing Mayor Munson, Councilman Denneny, Councilman Taylor and City Manager David Mercier of lying to the citizens at the meeting. That was not quite true, although I believed they were misrepresenting the facts and I allowed myself to become very angry, which I should not have done. Mr. Mercier was answering questions presented by the council and did not respond with any answers that were not accurate and I should not have included him in my statement.

The discussion centered around the purpose for hiring the consultant to study the City Police Department and the Sheriff’s Office. Although the purpose of the study was to study “the positive and negative ramifications of renewing its contract with the Sheriff’s Department versus establishing an independent Police Department” as presented by Mr. Mercier at the beginning of the meeting, the discussion took a different tack. It did seem to me that the discussion was trying to convince the citizens at the meeting that the study was really just to study the operation of the Sheriff’s Department to see what improvements could be made when the contract does come up for renewal. If that were true I am sure everyone would support that proposal.

The “Project Understanding” as submitted by ICMA Consultants on page 4 paragraph 2 states … “The PRIMARY objective of this project is to present to the City with an unbiased review of the positive and negative ramification of renewing its contract with the Sheriff’s Department versus establishing an independent police department. The city also has an interest to introduce performance measurement and to establish current levels of performance and workload in police and identify opportunities for improved performance.”

The proposal failed, with Councilwoman Wilhite, Councilwoman Dempsey, Councilman Gothmann and Councilman Schimmels voting it down.

Dick Behm

Spokane Valley