Today on Inland Journal, we spend an hour with the candidates for Spokane city council president. Ben Stuckart is leaving office, as mandated by the city charter, after two terms, and running for mayor. Four people have filed to replace him.
They are, in alphabetical order, Breean Beggs.
Breean Beggs: “I’m really the go-to person if there’s conflict. They send me to talk with all parties and get them together on something we can agree on. As city council president, that’s what I would be doing, first with my other council members and then with the administration and then, frankly, Spokane County and other governments.”
There’s Mike Fagan.
Mike Fagan: “This council, over the last five years, ladies and gentlemen, in my opinion has been more agenda-driven than they have been priority-driven, especially in the arenas of public safety, as well as human services. We’ve definitely seen the rocky road.”
Phillip Tyler.
Phillip Tyler: “We are running because we think we want to bring back a productive equilibrium versus this political oscillation we see going on. Right now we see our council legislating from an agenda-based standpoint versus what truly our citizens in our community want.“
And Cindy Wendle.
Cindy Wendle: “It’s a non-partisan race for a reason. There are things that need to be done that our citizens has priorities for and when I looked at who was in the race already, my gut was that there was so many politics that are being played out on the stage at city council. Two of the people are on the council already and so you can look at the experience and what they’ve done on the council. I thought that’s not the way to lead.”