New Century Task Force Nails Down Goals

The New Century Task Force held the last of its strategy sessions Tuesday, establishing its goals for government and civic leadership in Spokane’s future.

“We will have a local government that is responsive, efficient, costeffective and that has a regional perspective,” is the group’s goal for government.

And, “We will have a region where leadership provides a pro-active approach to foster a partnership of business, government and citizens that makes a world class community in the 21st Century,” is its goal under the heading of civic leadership.

“I think these task force sessions went very well,” Tom Stevenson, the task force’s co-chair, said following Tuesday’s session. “We had a lot of discussion, and people coming at issues from opposite sides, and looking at solutions from opposite sides.

“But I think the process of having an diverse group, an all-inclusive group, to work through community problems was very effective.”

The task force is a group of 150 people from all walks of life in Spokane and Kootenai counties. They were brought together to formulate the New Century Plan, an outline for community economic development over the next five years.

The goal of the exercise was to form a broad-based consensus on economic development planning, rather than relying on traditional business and political groups which often operate separately from one another in pursuit of economic growth.

Earlier task force sessions addressed goals and strategies for achieving those goals in the areas of economic development, infrastructure, education and quality of life.

Strategies established Tuesday for achieving the group’s goals for government were headed by a requirement that government planning and growth management processes not thwart the task force’s goals of increasing average private-sector earnings per job to the U.S. average by the year 2000, and exceeding the national average beyond that.

The group wants government to develop “creative incentives” in the form of tax incentives, training incentives and “a pro-business attitude” to attract and retain companies.

Other strategies include:

Pushing for a repeal of constitutional and statutory restrictions to use of such incentives.

Revising the state business and operations tax so that it is assessed on profit, not revenue.

Reducing taxes as jobs and income increase.

Reducing government impediments to growth of business.

The group wants greater government efficiency. They called for reform of the civil service system; less intrusion by state and federal government; more funding of public safety, public works and education; more privatization.

The group also wants to see consolidation of “at least 50 percent of city and county services before 2005,” and a consolidation of city and county growth-management processes.

The group wants business to invest in programs to:

Support small business and aggressively develop an entrepreneurial environment.

Reduce the gap in salaries between executives and employees.

Help the community recognize that businesses must profit in order to make these investments.

The task force wants the business community to enter into partnerships with government, community groups and non-profit organizations to promote economic development, and to promote contributions to non-profit organizations that “creates social capital.”

The group wants to see a climate that encourages the best people to run for office, and encourages employees to vote and participate in civic activities. It wants to challenge civic leaders and business groups to devote time and money to antipoverty programs, child care and education.

And the task force wants more active programs to develop community leadership.

The New Century Task Force will meet again in April to review a draft of the New Century Plan. The project’s steering committee will work on writing and revising that draft during the week of March 25.

, DataTimes