Indecisiveness dulling city’s image

While Spokane Valley’s City Council deals with broken street-light bulbs, the city of Spokane has a St. Patrick’s Day parade.

While some Valley citizens insist the reason a 70-cent increase in their Comcast bill is directly related to the City Council, another really cool business sets up shop at River Park Square.

And while Liberty Lake is expanding like crazy, here in the city of Spokane Valley the disincorporation backers are on a quest to end city status.

What concerns me is that eventually this quest will create a sticky wicket that will hinder city government, the community, businesses and our economic future.

In time, this type of indecisiveness will project a negative image. Instead of moving forward, the city of Spokane Valley will be sitting knee deep in disincorporation theatrics, while surrounding cities will be reaping the benefits.

Potential new residents would be reluctant to make Spokane Valley their home once they learn the city is not really a city … or is it? Questions about tax structure, police, schools, fire department can’t be answered because we don’t know. “Thanks but no thanks,” will resound throughout the land.

To add to the quandary, the Inland Northwest is ripe for a new butt of City Council jokes now that Spokane’s council has mended its fences. The Valley is a prime candidate.

But what’s even more embarrassing is the paltry voter turnout of three years ago when this issue was voted on. I’ll admit my attention span was limited – I didn’t take note of the fact that out of about 47,000 registered voters only 19,883 bothered to vote on the incorporation issue.

Personally, incorporation made sense to me. It was the next step in charting our own course. The much-touted fear of Spokane taking over the Valley wasn’t part of this decision because I felt it outweighed the reality.

Instead, I based my decision on what I saw and that the Valley, with its large population base and beginnings of expansion, needed a voice in deciding how this area should move forward.

Since that election, the disincorporation pundits have made noise about reversing the decision and scooting back under county jurisdiction. With the low voter turnout, they have a solid reason to believe the vote was not representative of the Valley as a whole.

If the last two presidential elections and Washington’s gubernatorial election are any indication, we don’t like to admit defeat, particularly when the numbers are a scrap of a percentage point apart.

Still, despite the low voter turnout and the fact this issue passed only narrowly, it’s my understanding that a majority vote equaled a “done deal” or so I thought.