Ryan Oelrich selected to serve on Spokane City Council through November
The Spokane City Council has selected Ryan Oelrich to serve as its seventh member until the November election is certified later this year.
“I’m ready to get to work,” Oelrich said Monday evening, shortly after getting out of a class where he was teaching conflict management to mental health professionals.
The council voted 5-1 in support of Oelrich’s appointment. Councilman Jonathan Bingle was the sole no vote and expressed concern about the depth of Oelrich’s experience, but welcomed him to the council dais.
Oelrich serves as the executive director of Priority Spokane, which identifies and works to address key problems in the county, and has worked as a commissioner, director and secretary for the Spokane Regional Continuum of Care board, which helps to coordinate federal resources to address homelessness.
“I recognize the challenges of the next three months,” Oelrich said in an interview with The Spokesman-Review. “And I recognize in my own career at the moment, especially with Priority Spokane, which just finished a community assessment on where Spokane was at, what we need, that it seemed like a good time to serve my community.”
Oelrich was one of nine applicants for the open council seat vacated in July by Lori Kinnear when she was appointed to temporarily serve as City Council president. Other candidates included Rob Higgins, Michael Adolfae, Barry Barfield, Kelly Brown, Debra Conklin, Cyndi Donahue, Mary Ann McCurdy and Hadley Morrow.
Kinnear was named City Council president on July 17, following the departure of then-Council President Breean Beggs, who was appointed to the Spokane County Superior Court bench. Kinnear already was term limited, and Paul Dillon and Katey Treloar are running to fill her seat for the next four years; once the November election is certified, the winner will replace Oelrich.
Several council members said they were impressed by Oelrich’s preparedness for his Aug. 24 interview with council members. Wearing a boutonnière picked out by his husband, Oelrich responded calmly and in detail to questions about the city’s budget, navigating a tense political landscape and his thoughts on a short-lived tenure in city government.
He said he had read through the entire 300-plus-page budget prior to the interview, noting he had managed budgets professionally but added that he’s been balancing his books since he was a child because his father required him to present a budget for his allowance.
He noted some of the tense conversations with constituents that council members face, pointing to interactions Councilwoman Karen Stratton had experienced, and said he felt prepared to bring together a divided public on controversial issues. He also highlighted his teaching of the conflict resolution class for mental health professionals in Washington.
He referenced some, at times tense, front porch debates about the presence of homeless services, particularly the Catholic Charities-run Catalyst Project, in the West Hills Neighborhood where he lives.
“I’ve been an advocate for the Catalyst Project, and I believe that our neighborhood and our city is safer, healthier, when folks are off our streets, out of our forests and in shelter and housed,” he said. “I had a lot of neighbors that disagreed with me quite strongly.”
Oelrich said he had been able to stay respectful of those beliefs .
“We left still recognizing that we were all human beings, recognizing that each of us had different points, and we were still able to be friendly and supportive,” he said.
Oelrich will start his first day as a city councilman on Wednesday.
Mayor Nadine Woodward’s re-election campaign in an Aug. 8 news release called for an “unbiased and transparent process,” and warned against a “tyrannical” liberal “power grab.” In a Monday statement through city spokesman Brian Coddington, Woodward stated she looked forward to working with Oelrich.
“We are in the middle of some important discussions so it’s going to be a quick learning curve,” she said in the statement.