DEVELOPMENT
Spokane County Commissioner Al French wasn’t happy with the city’s historic preservation officer — so he blocked appointments to the Landmarks Commission.
Politics of Preservation
YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
Why Spokane’s Landmarks Commission has found itself in a tug of war between city and county officials
as more of an accounting headache than a useful sum. The city contributes $155,000. By March, the gears at the county and city were moving again, and today the open slots have been filled. While the city and county are moving toward restoring funding to the Historic Preservation Office, the tactics the county used against the Landmarks Commission spotlights an ongoing divide between the two governments. “It speaks to the underlying tension,” Stuckart says.
BY DANIEL WALTERS
FARMHOUSE FRACAS
F
or the first two months of this year, the joint City/ County Spokane Historic Landmarks Commission was paralyzed. Instead of reviewing nominations to the local historic register or helping property owners take advantage of related tax credits, the commission could do nothing. It didn’t even have enough members for a quorum. Five of its 11 seats were vacant, waiting to be filled by the city and county. Plenty of applications had been turned in for those openings, but months went by without new appointments. The city of Spokane blames “staff transitions” for leaving its positions unfilled. On the county’s part, the backlog was intentional. County commissioners wanted to send a message, an expression of their displeasure. Their intended target: Kristen Griffin, then the city’s Historic Preservation Officer who provided support to the Landmarks Com-
mission. County commissioners have complained about everything from Griffin’s performance, to the lack of historic preservation outreach to unincorporated areas, to a case involving a small farmhouse. Griffin, who quit in February amid frustration, says the county never told her the delay was a pointed message or attempted to communicate its meaning at all. City Council President Ben Stuckart says the county’s purposeful foot-dragging “to teach a lesson is really an example of bad government,” and Councilman Jon Snyder calls the tactics a “ridiculous politicizing of the historic preservation process.” “There are a lot of folks that are really mad that they tried to manipulate this process,” Snyder adds. It wasn’t the first blow to historic preservation. In 2012, the county slashed its funding of the Spokane Historic Preservation Office from a peak of $40,000 to only $5,000 — a number the city of Spokane complains serves
A toy dump truck, celebrating the county’s success in attracting a Caterpillar manufacturing plant, is parked on a shelf in County Commissioner Al French’s office. It’s a coup that French is particularly proud of. A former developer and architect, French has fought intensely to attract developers and manufacturers to the region and protect their interests. Case in point: The city council recently raised French’s ire with an ordinance restricting the expansion of certain utilities to developments in areas still open to legal challenges. Despite Mayor Condon vetoing the ordinance, French drew on hardball tactics, firing off a 36-point records request, requiring councilmembers to cite evidence for their arguments and even asking the city to send over Snyder’s oath of office. Last year, the Landmarks Commission became part of another land-use fight. The Sarsfield farmhouse in the West Plains, constructed in the Craftsman style in 1905, ...continued on next page
MAY 1, 2014 INLANDER 13