City, developer discuss concerns
A major Spokane Valley developer and businessman has backed away from a threat to lead a third drive to disincorporate the city.
Rob Gragg, of Crown West Realty, said he was persuaded in meetings with Mayor Rich Munson and city Community Development Director Kathy McClung to work with them on his goal of making the city more “business friendly.”
“It was the first time I had spent one-on-one time with the mayor, and I was very impressed with him,” said Gragg, who is vice president for asset management at Crown West, which owns the Spokane Business and Industrial Park at Trent and Sullivan.
Gragg said he was similarly impressed in a subsequent meeting with McClung, and he promised to abandon threats of disincorporation.
“I’m certainly willing to give everybody time to try and make this thing work,” he said.
His complaints involve difficulties in obtaining building permits as well as pressure to improve fire safety at the industrial park, which is a former World War II naval supply depot.
Munson said he “made it pretty clear” to Gragg that “I didn’t feel threatened by any attempt by him or anybody else to disincorporate.” Others have been unable to get “even half the number of signatures they need to get it on the ballot,” Munson said.
State law requires City Council consent or a petition signed by a majority of registered voters to place disincorporation on a ballot. Spokane Valley’s critics fell far short of the necessary signatures in 2003 and 2005.
They needed 23,865 signatures in 2005, but mustered only 9,988. Today, a petition would require 22,421 signatures.
“I get the feeling most people are pretty happy with what we’re doing, and the city is working out the way they thought it would,” Munson said.
He said city officials have taken the position that construction and development rules must be enforced equally, “and sometimes people that are as big as he (Gragg) is kind of feel they shouldn’t have to follow the same kind of rules.”
Still, Munson said, “The industrial park is a pretty important part of the city and we don’t want anybody who provides that many jobs to the city to be unhappy. If we can make things better, we’ll do that, and that’s exactly what I told him.”
In preparation for his May 23 meeting with Munson, Gragg sent an e-mail calling for support from 15 of his fellow movers and shakers. He asked for examples of problems he could discuss with Munson and for backing should it become “necessary” to threaten disincorporation.
“I want to hold the mayor accountable for correcting the growing and unreasonable issues imposed by the city,” Gragg told Dick Vandervert, Barry Baker, John Miller, Dave Lindquist, Steve Smart, Pete Thompson, Dave Black, Jeff Johnson, Tom Quigley, Dean Stuart, Tim Stulc, Jim Bonuccelli, Matt Ewers, Jim Ewers and Craig MacDonald.
“I do intend to discuss what I know about disincorporation and let him know there is a groundswell of dissatisfaction and that I have support in this regard,” Gragg wrote.
He said in the e-mail – copies of which were passed to city officials and The Spokesman-Review – that Crown West had obtained the Internet domain name “Disincorporate.com.”
“If we cannot fix the city, then we need to disincorporate and return to the county,” Gragg said.
He said the mayor and city council “have been no help to us,” and he wasn’t optimistic about his meeting with Munson.
The city’s form of government empowers “the unreasonable bureaucrats,” Gragg said. The council sets policy and hires the city manager, who is in charge of day-to-day operations.
Gragg said building permits often take too long to obtain and come with unreasonable requirements.
“I’ve received many e-mails from many large and small developers, and only one of them had anything good to say about the city,” he said.
Developer Dave Black got permits to build Lowe’s and Kohl’s stores in the 16000 block of East Broadway Ave. in 6 1/2 weeks, “and that’s excellent for that size of project,” Gragg said.
But, he added, “It’s taken us sometimes 6 1/2 months to get small projects.”
After meeting with Munson, Gragg said he plans to give the mayor “the benefit of the doubt.” The disincorporation Web site won’t be set up, he said.
Gragg said he supported the 2002 vote to create the city, and Crown West gave money to the pro-incorporation campaign.
He said he commented at the time that the city needed to hire a manager who was “very business friendly and yet would take care of the community.” But, “pretty much, that hasn’t been done,” Gragg said.
“Business-friendly is like beauty,” City Manager Dave Mercier said. “It is in the eye of the beholder. It’s not a very well-defined term.”
However, he said, city employees are “geared to perform the functions that have been assigned in the most reasonable, up-front, open process that we can design.”
Mercier said city officials try to process building permits as quickly as possible, but many factors – including developers’ readiness – affect the time it takes.
Gragg said he found McClung “very receptive” when shared his concerns with her. Previously, he had been less complimentary of the woman who oversees the city’s Building, Planning and Engineering departments.
Gragg said in his e-mail that he had heard the city recently had “assembled a trio” of women from Western Washington, including building official Mary Kate Martin and two department heads.
“These three ladies all from the west side are once again reunited and excited to be together and in control,” Gragg wrote. “This can only mean things will get worse for our collective businesses.”
Martin, who joined the city in January 2007, and McClung, who was hired last September, had worked together in Federal Way, Wash.
“I’d be very curious to know who the third one is,” McClung said, noting she is the city’s only female department head.
Gragg acknowledged he had only “hearsay” information, and wasn’t able to identify anyone other than Martin.
He said his comment wasn’t meant to be sexist: “If it was three men, I would have said three men.”
McClung said she was “pretty upset and hurt” that Gragg would make such a comment before meeting her. But she felt her subsequent meeting with Gragg “went fairly well. He has some concerns and I am looking into those, and I am hoping that from this point on we can have a positive relationship.”
McClung agreed with City Manager Dave Mercier that Gragg’s e-mail comments seemed “more in the line of venting” than a personal attack.
McClung said she and Martin overhauled a building permit process in Federal Way that “had a very horrible reputation.”
One thing Martin brought from her work in Federal Way is an ongoing series of meetings to hear builders’ and developers’ concerns, Mercier said. Early morning forums were conducted in June and September last year and in April.
Gragg said he didn’t know about the meetings.
He said he was unhappy about city code enforcement officer Chris Berg’s efforts to persuade Spokane Business and Industrial Park tenants to make changes suggested by the Spokane Valley Fire Department, an autonomous fire district that provides fire inspections for the city.
Gragg declined to elaborate, but said Berg used “threats and innuendoes” that were “basically almost to the point of harassing the tenants.”
Berg said tenants sometimes asked what could happen if they didn’t comply, but no threats were made and no enforcement action is anticipated.
“I believe upward of 90 tenants that have been inspected, and 70 percent of them are already in compliance,” Berg said. “We’re very pleased.”
Fire Marshal Kevin Miller said Berg is “very friendly” and didn’t make any threats as part of a three-member team that inspected the industrial park.
Miller said he and Berg are pushing for voluntary agreements that provide short-term improvements in materials storage and eventual upgrades of sprinkler systems.
Although the sprinklers have performed well in some recent fires, they weren’t designed for the intense heats produced when plastics and other modern materials burn, Miller said.
“Today’s fires will quickly overwhelm those sprinklers,” he said.
Miller said some industrial park tenants have been asked to change their storage practices to reduce concentrations of flammable materials.
McClung said Gragg didn’t bring up the fire inspections in his meeting with her, but focused on a building code issues and a particular permit that was issued before she was hired.
She said she is investigating Gragg’s complaints, including the conduct of city employees.
McClung and Mercier declined to comment on the possibility an employee may be disciplined, but didn’t rule it out.
“If someone was acting inappropriately and we felt it was intentional, I think, yes, we would resort to that,” McClung said.
For his part, Gragg said, “Pretty much, I’d just like to move on peacefully and do a good job and help be an employer and an employment base for Spokane Valley and the region.”