“How can you really make an informed decision if you don’t actually talk to somebody and find out who they are?” Spokane Valley resident Marchauna Rodgers asked Spokane Valley council members at their weekly meeting Tuesday.
Rodgers had applied to be appointed to the city’s powerful planning commission, but had been rejected without any correspondence, she told RANGE in an interview earlier that day. No one had contacted her to either interview her for the role or to tell her she didn’t get it – and even the applicants who were chosen had no contact from the city either. When she made that comment, the council was preparing to vote to appoint three other applicants whom Mayor Pam Haley had nominated.
Rodgers was one of eight applicants for the planning commission, a seven-member body that has a say over the physical aspects – width of sidewalks, what kinds of roads require speed bumps, where to put different kinds of buildings – of everyday life in Spokane Valley. According to its website, the commission reviews Spokane Valley’s “comprehensive land use plan, development regulations, shoreline management, environmental protection, public facilities, capital improvements” and other city code that governs land use, according to its website. It makes recommendations to the city council based on those reviews. The council does not have to affirm the commission’s recommendations, but it generally does.
For most of the Spokane Valley City Council, Tuesday night simply represented the way things had always been done.
Each year, the mayor reviews applications from planning commission aspirants. The mayor selects candidates and brings those recommendations before the city council to be voted for or against. Unless a council member is willing to make a motion to change the roster, the council makes a single vote on the entire slate of proposed commissioners.
Haley, explaining at Tuesday’s meeting how she had selected nominees, emphasized the diligence she and Council Member Tim Hattenburg had exercised when they “went through applications. … And then we went beyond that and looked at who was actually interested in our planning commission and building and land usage and things like that. And then we talked to people who knew these people, and so that was how my decision was made.”
She didn’t speak to any of the candidates, and Hattenburg was at peace with that.
“I’m going into my fifth year under two different mayors, using the same process,” Hattenburg said during the meeting. “And I know I’m not going to beat it to death, but the process has been in place.”
But there was a fly in the ointment this year before any vote could be taken, a fly in the form of freshman Council Member Al Merkel.
Merkel says he called each candidate with five questions on Monday to inform his own vote on the slate. When the candidates picked up, they seemed surprised to hear from him, Merkel told RANGE, because no one had called to vet them before he did. He was the first person from the city to reach out since their applications had been filed in December.
Merkel asked Haley during Tuesday night’s meeting if she had attempted to contact the candidates. She said she reached out to “several of them,” and they did not return her calls.
So she didn’t interview any of the candidates.
RANGE spoke on the phone on Tuesday before the meeting with each of the seven candidates who provided phone numbers on their application. They all answered their phone on the first call. (An eighth candidate only gave his email address. RANGE did not reach out to him.) Two of Haley’s three selected candidates, John Robertson and Justin Weathermon, declined to comment. The other five confirmed that they had never received any communication, via email or phone, from anyone from the city for an interview or even to say they had been selected. Merkel’s call was the first they’d gotten.
Haley did not return a request for comment before Tuesday’s meeting.
Hoping it’s not a ‘clown show’
Vadim Smelik, a project manager for Moher Construction, was the third nominated candidate and will serve on the planning commission. Smelik told RANGE Tuesday that he had not heard he was selected until Monday’s call from Merkel. He expressed concern about two aspects of this lack of communication, the first being that he has no idea what planning commission work is like and has not received an orientation.
“Historically, I think Spokane Valley operates a bit more inefficiently in that aspect,” Smelik said. “But it’s like the last thing I want to do is become part of a commission that’s just a clown show. … I hope whatever’s going on in the city council doesn’t trickle down.”
Smelik has some experience with city zoning – a central focus of the planning commission – because he works in the construction industry and has presented one time before the commission. Outside of that, he has no experience in local government. Which is the reason for his second concern: if the city is selecting people for important public positions without interviewing them, how does it know it’s getting quality candidates?
“If I’m getting accepted without an interview, who else is getting accepted, and how qualified is this planning commission?” Smelik said.
Matthew Hurd, another applicant who was passed over, was also perplexed about the lack of communication. He said planning commission candidates should be vetted with the same rigor as applicants for paid jobs because the work is just as important. (Commission members are unpaid volunteers.)
“As a functional operating committee that informs the city council on actions related to zoning and building as you would do with the planning commission, I think it would behoove the city to approach filling those position roles in much the same way that they would if they were going to hire a member of staff on to be paid to do similar processes,” Hurd said.
‘It’s the mayor’s appointment to make’
In an interview Tuesday, Merkel attributed Haley’s not reaching out to candidates to laziness rather than any nefarious motive.
“This isn’t like some sort of corruption thing where it’s like she’s just picking up her cronies or anything like that,” Merkel said. “In fact, this is a little bit worse. I think it was just sort of like, ‘Oh, whatever. Top three.’”
He also told RANGE former Mayor Ben Wick had conducted interviews with planning commission candidates before making nominations.
But Merkel wasn’t the only council member slinging accusations: Council Member Rod Higgins attacked Merkel Tuesday night for doing that due diligence, saying Merkel had broken the rules by reaching out to the candidates.
“‘Members of the planning commission shall be nominated by the mayor,’ I say again, ‘nominated by the mayor, confirmed by a majority vote of at least four members of council,’” Higgins insisted. “Nowhere in here does it say that council members should be interviewing people. It’s the mayor’s appointment to make.”
Haley agreed, saying, “I believe that does violate our rules,” Haley said before formally ruling that Merkel was out of order.
It’s unclear what rules Higgins and Haley are referencing here: there is no rule that states a council member cannot interview candidates in the planning commission section of the Spokane Valley Municipal Code, which lays out how commissioners are to be appointed.
Higgins was not done: “Are you trying to purposely undercut the mayor here, make her look bad?” he asked Merkel. “Please cease.”
Merkel told RANGE earlier that day he was simply trying to inform his vote, rather than undermine Haley, as Higgins would later suggest at the meeting. He said he approached the appointments so carefully because the planning commission is where a lot of extremely important – if unappreciated – work happens.
“Land use issues are not simple,” Merkel said. “The decisions that come with them are not simple. You have to understand a lot of really heavy code, and you have to understand map reading, and what is the history of the city, and what is the history of the state. It’s just very complicated stuff.”
In the end, the council approved Haley’s nominations on a 5-2 vote, with Merkel and council member Ben Wick dissenting.
Haley encouraged applicants who did not receive a post to apply again in the future.
