Disagreement over public involvement in Spokane Transit CEO search
How much public input will go into picking a new leader for the Spokane Transit Authority is still up in the air.
At a special meeting Wednesday, STA’s search committee gave an update on its meeting with a hiring consultant.
All four members agreed that community groups and members of the public should weigh in when it comes to creating a job description and qualities they want in a new STA chief executive.
However, they disagreed on what, if any, role community engagement should play in the end of the search process.
For Spokane Valley Mayor Pam Haley, a potential loss of confidentiality by having the public meet the final candidates was a concern.
“Nobody has, like, public comment or has the public come in and decide who to hire,” Haley said. “But they also mentioned that when that has been done as rarely, I guess there's a couple states that it's required, in that the people who were not hired did lose their jobs. And I think that was a big red flag for me.”
Haley said having public commentary on a matter like this isn’t typical.
Spokane City Councilmember Zack Zappone disagreed.
“It is very common practice to get community feedback on final candidates,” he said. “The school districts do that, even when they're hiring building principals. The health district had an opportunity panel to provide feedback on executives. So, this is very irregular for our community to not be able to engage with that.”
The board will continue to finalize its list of organizations for community input on the job description and will vote on that list at its next meeting, September 19.
Spokane leaders want kids to engage with life beyond the screen
Spokane education and community leaders want young people to put their phones away and go out and do things with their peers. Wednesday, they introduced a new campaign designed to convince students and parents to participate in out-of-school activities.
Spokane school Superintendent Adam Swinyard says Engage IRL, or Engage In Real Life, is a response to what he thinks is a disturbing trend.
“What we’re seeing kids are spending an excessive amount of time on personal devices, on screens and not just one or two hours a day. The research is showing that kids are spending five, six, seven, eight hours a day, just the sleep deprivation alone should have us really concerned with the welfare of our kids,” Swinyard said.
Engage IRL is sponsored by Spokane Public Schools and Launch NW, part of the Innovia Foundation.
“We want every kid, every day, doing something in real life. The research is really clear that participation in activities in real life has a positive impact on social domains of development, academic domains of development, physical domains of development. It’s good for kids,” Swinyard said.
The campaign’s website offers information for families about clubs, sporting events and other things for students to do after school.
Summer heat climbs to near-record levels
For the purposes of keeping weather records, summer ends on Saturday. And the summer of 2024 has been among the warmest on record in Washington, Idaho and Oregon.
In a briefing this week, Oregon State Climatologist Larry O’Neill said widespread heat in the Pacific Northwest rivaled the heat dome of 2021 and pushed monthly average temperatures to near-record levels.
“If you look at the state temperature rankings for the month of July or for the start of summer, June and July, which is start of summer, it was definitely one of the warmest in the region for each state,” O’Neill said. “If you look at July by itself, both Oregon and Washington experienced their second warmest July on record.”
O’Neill noted last month was Idaho’s eighth-warmest July. Washington and Oregon experienced their second-warmest month of any year dating back to 1895.
A heat wave July 3-10 set new records for daily high temperatures at 243 weather stations in Washington and 103 stations in Idaho.
O’Neill said the intense heat also drove moisture out of the soil, expanding and deepening the region’s drought.
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Reporting was contributed by Owen Henderson, Doug Nadvornick and Brandon Hollingsworth.