Three vie for Cheney mayor role

Three candidates are running for the job of Cheney mayor in the August primary election. The part-time position pays $10,500 a year.

Mail-in ballots will go out July 29 and are due back Aug. 18. The two candidates drawing the largest number of votes will advance to November’s general election.

•C. Allan Gainer: The incumbent mayor said he has accomplished much in the last four years, making it possible for city customers to pay their utility bills online, changing the culture of City Hall to make it more accessible to customers, getting the business park organized and working on a project to install radio-read water meters to streamline the collection of meter information.

Gainer, 47, has a bachelor’s degree in radio and television management, a master’s degree in management and has served in the Navy. He owns the Tree of Knowledge Bookstore in downtown Cheney and is a member of the Cheney Merchants Association, the Historic Downtown Cheney Partnership and the West Plains Chamber of Commerce.

If re-elected, he plans to continue a rewrite of the city’s comprehensive plan and to help find ways to make it more functional for the city, he said. He also wants to push for development of a new 50-acre park on the north side of the city, saying it will benefit Cheney by providing a place for citizens to celebrate events like the Fourth of July.

Gainer has received some criticism from other candidates, who say he doesn’t have the time to be mayor. He argues that he does – the position is part time and much of the mayor’s work is delegated to city staff. He also says a mayor needs to be easily accessible to citizens, and he feels that he is.

“If the voters like what I’m doing, then vote for me,” Gainer said. “I think we’re on the right track.”

•Curt Huff: He has been on the City Council longer than anyone else – 16 years as a council member and eight of those as the mayor pro tem. He is a retired associate vice president of Eastern Washington University and has lived in Cheney since 1974.

He decided in January to run, he said, because he believed Gainer didn’t have much time to spend on the job since his bookstore is doing well.

“The mayor needs to be on the job more,” Huff said. City Administrator Arlene Fisher is doing a great job, but she needs help, he said.

Huff, 64, also said that employee costs over the past four years have increased by more than $2 million, or 36 percent. He wants to increase accountability and rein in spending.

If elected, Huff wants to find permanent locations for services that were displaced by the collapse of the Wren Pierson Building in January – the museum, Cheney Outreach and the food and clothing banks. He said that the downtown area needs to be cleaned up – there are too many buildings boarded up and empty.

Huff would also like to see the parks better maintained and said that recent upgrades were done in some of the parks only after they were declared unsafe.

“We should have been doing that all along, in my opinion,” Huff said. He said he hopes the city can build the new 50-acre park because parks are important for a strong community, but he would never vote to tax the citizens of Cheney without their approval.

“I’m in favor of anything the people vote on,” Huff said.

•Tom Trulove: He has been the mayor of Cheney before, elected first in 1978 and then three more times. He resigned in 1986 when he was appointed to the Northwest Power Planning Council by Gov. Booth Gardner. He’s been serving on the City Council since 2005.

He’s worked in the economics department at Eastern Washington University and has been the chair of that department since 1996.

“I think I surprised a lot of people,” Trulove said about his decision to run.

He said he believes Cheney is in great shape considering the economic downturn afflicting the rest of the country, but the city needs to manage its budget conservatively in the coming years.

Trulove, 65, wants to attract more retail business to Cheney and he wants more single-family homes in the area, rather than apartments. He said he’d like to find grants to help the city with its projects.

“We need to fill up our business park with light industry,” Trulove said.

He said he’s happy with the direction Cheney is going, but thinks his leadership experience will help the city in the coming years. He noted that his 30-year career in government has helped him work well with leaders from local, county, state and the federal government.

Trulove also said he’d focus on city planning, and the comprehensive plan could help citizens get an idea of what the future could hold for Cheney.

“I don’t want to come back to Main street in 20 years and see what it is now,” Trulove said.