First Town Hall forum a success! But why?
On Saturday, September 7th WREN hosted our first Town Hall inCheney, WA
Sue Lani Madsen
Not a surprising headline, right? Every organization declares success after an event. What matters is how success is measured.
One measurement is having to set up more chairs than you expected. Somewhere north of 80 people joined the WREN’s first event at the Wren Pierson Building on a Saturday morning in Cheney, WA, home of Eastern Washington University and a hub for agriculture.
The most satisfying measurement by far is the number of people who said “we need to do more of these” as they slowly drifted out. Lingering is a good sign.
People spoke, listened, ate muffins, drank coffee, and made connections while discussing contentious issues. It’s a proof of concept on the eve of a presidential debate – Americans are hungry for substantive conversations reaching beyond partisan talking points.
When asked when the next one would be, I told a couple of attendees we might try a virtual meeting for our second event and they were crestfallen. In-person events are a lot of work (thanks, volunteers!), but the benefits of meeting people face to face instead of keyboard to keyboard are unmistakable. On the one hand, virtual events can overcome time and distance barriers but on the other hand run into issues of unreliable broadband as well as missing literal human touch. There’s always trade-offs.
Tradeoffs in land use and development pressures in rural Washington were the theme of the day, and balancing the triple bottom line of people, planet and profits. Legislators from the 4th and 6th district attended to listen to updates from local government officials (mayors, a county commissioner) and questions and comments from citizens. After the event, they shared …
Rep. Jenny Graham (6th Legislative District):
“Thank you for doing this. It was time well spent – discussing and discovering points of view from people from all walks of life. I enjoy learning and striving for accurate information to solve issues:) Good job.”
Rep. Suzanne Schmidt (4th Legislative District):
“I thought the format worked great. I really appreciated being able to learn by listening. I felt the atmosphere was civil and open. It seems people felt free to voice their opinions in a non-partisan manner. We need new (old fashioned ways) to be informed.”
Airway Heights Mayor Larry Bowman and Medical Lake Mayor Terri Cooper gave updates on the West Plains issues of water infrastructure, wildfire response, disaster recovery, and the burgeoning population growth impacting small communities. Mayor Cooper said afterwards that a format designed to break down silos on issues was refreshing.
Cheney Mayor Chris Grover and the City of Cheney were a great host and we are grateful to the two young people, employees of the City, who came in on a Saturday to open the Wren Pierson Community Center.
A question about PFAS cleanup on the West Plains was a good opportunity to discuss the WREN goal to support better decision-making. With the best of intentions there were tradeoffs taken years ago to use a powerfully effective firefighting chemical foam that turns out to linger in the environment forever, with powerfully negative health impacts. We didn't ask about the trade-offs at the beginning. Now we have to deal with the fallout.
It's a lesson in humility we need to bring to discussing other tradeoffs, like how we site industrial wind and solar development and the positive and negative impacts of industrial energy production on long term agricultural uses, farm finances and community cohesion.
Spokane County Commissioner Al French joined us to give an update on Spokane County’s timeline for facing into planning for the industrial wind proposals coming to rural areas of Spokane County. Global energy companies have already taken options for leases on land in southern Spokane County, and the zoning ordinance needs updating. Citizen comments have already been coming in objecting to the disruptions.
Lincoln County started the same journey late last winter, and the final draft of our ordinance just cleared the Planning Commission on Monday and will come before the County Commissioners in October. It takes time to include meaningful community input in a transparent process to get it right. Commissioner French ran through about a six-month timeline with many opportunities for public input. An accelerated timeline is also being considered, which Commissioner French said he rejects.
Based on our experience in Lincoln County, I advised taking time to bring in more community voices. There isn’t a reason to rush, the energy companies have to collect 12-34 months of meteorological data from test sites before they can make their go/no go decisions and apply for permits to site wind turbines.
It was an easy segue to Pasco Mayor Pete Serrano, civil rights attorney and Republican candidate for Attorney General. Mayor Serrano spoke to his own community’s struggle with siting of the Harvest Hills industrial energy project in the Tri Cities area, the history of the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, and alternative energy policy in Washington.
Although both candidates for Attorney General were invited, Democratic candidate Nick Brown had graciously declined due to conflicting campaign engagements on the west side. Serrano took the opportunity of a civic minded audience to engage in follow-up Q&A about the roles of the Attorney General and local government in land use policy. It was American politics at the grass roots.
Batting cleanup was Brian Heywood from Let’s Go Washington. He was delayed briefly on the sidewalk by KXLY reporter Alex Coenjaerts. We are grateful for the story posted on KXLY covering Brian Heywood describing the background and impact of the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) and Initiative 2117 to repeal it. The price of fuel is a big deal in rural communities, or as Heywood put it, the demand is inelastic. For the working class, not driving to work isn’t an option and rural work patterns often mean long drives.
Heywood pointed out the CCA was designed to raise fuel prices. The same legislation Gov. Inslee touted as adding no more than pennies to the price of fuel was predicted to add 40 to 50 cents per gallon by two of his own advisors. It did. And as Brian pointed out, those who wrote the bill knew it would or they wouldn’t have had to write in an exemption to protect agriculture from the cost impact. I wrote about that issue in a recent Spokesman-Review column. Heywood took questions from a few naysayers in the audience, and closed with his plea to Vote Yes, Pay Less.
Another measure of success is finishing on time, and we did. I had my favorite prop with me as a moderator, my shepherd’s crook, a cleaned up one and not one that’s been in the barn all year. It’s like having a gavel in my hand. The speakers up front and the audience had all been jokingly put on notice that if they went too long or things got out of hand, I might use it. In all the events where I’ve carried it, no one has checked me on it!
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WREN would like to thank Larry Andrews of Andrews Mechanical Inc. for helping us to promote this event.
