Editorial: Valley council moves toward transparency in baby steps

Spokane Valley, a city of nearly 90,000 residents, is taking steps toward ending its distinction as the largest municipality in Washington that doesn’t telecast its council meetings live. Last week the City Council authorized the staff to move ahead on a purchasing agreement for the necessary equipment.

Such viewing fare – which in the beginning would be on the Internet rather than cable television – won’t bring most of the city’s residents rushing to their computer screens every Tuesday. But citizens who want to keep up with their local government’s business will have a more convenient way of doing it.

City Councilman Bill Gothmann, a 73-year-old electrical engineer, has been pushing for almost three years to take advantage of this technology, which, he notes, was modern in a previous century. He even invested about $3,000 in personal funds to launch a makeshift operation by which the local cable channel Community Minded Television now records Spokane Valley council meetings and airs them a week later, though not always at the scheduled time.

Residents of Spokane Valley deserve better.

There are many reasons some citizens can’t go in person to council meetings – weather, physical limitations, work schedules and child care. Those circumstances shouldn’t prevent them from watching the way their elected representatives handle the public’s business – in real time.

It’s been more difficult than it should have been to reach this point. Gothmann, for instance, shouldn’t have had to bankroll part of the startup arrangement with Comcast, which used $150,000 in PEG (for Public, Education and Government) funding to underwrite the equipment acquisition. The modest annual cost of $7,700 to operate a video system is as reasonable an investment in civic participation as turning on the heat and lights for a public meeting of the City Council.

Gothmann and others on the council think the Internet option is appropriate for now. They’re not prepared as yet to set up a city-operated cable channel like the city of Spokane’s Channel 5, although that could come later.

If the Internet option will move Spokane Valley in the right direction, so be it. But in time, the city needs to move to television, as Congress, numerous state legislatures and so many of Spokane Valley’s sister cities in Washington already have done.

And leaders such as Gothmann deserve recognition for their perseverance.