Census data from American FactFinder of the U.S. Census Bureau
Dear Group,
Government: the action or manner of controlling or regulating a nation, organization, or people.
Ever wonder how the small population centers in Spokane County (or anywhere) are organized and governed? The answer is pretty interesting, and, it turns out, accessible to anyone with the time, the interest, and an internet connection. I’m going to present selected information I’ve researched for Spokane County. I recommend this as a useful exercise for anyone anywhere who is interested in how we as humans organize ourselves. All politics is local (as is governance) and fear many of us (including me) have been sadly un-informed, distracted a we are by the national news.
A good place to start is Wikipedia. I looked up Spokane County, WA. There I found the list of Cities and Towns in Spokane County displayed above. So what about Four Lakes, Chattaroy, Tyler, or even Fairchild Air Force Base? They’re all “unincorporated.” The roughly 150,000 folks living in these areas with place names familiar to all of us are represented in local government only by Spokane County, not by any municipal (city or town) government. (I’ll come back to that pointedly in a later post.)
My tendency has always been to think of local government structure as pretty much unchanging. Of course, we elect local officials, the names change, the jostling goes on, but that’s just “politics,” isn’t it? And “politics” is just something other people do, right? People with some sort of axe to grind. We elect them in the hope they’ll do the right thing, but we’re always suspicious of their motivation and actions. That is true only if we allow it. It turns out at a local level government changes in a time frame and under rules we can understand and appreciate if we dig a little.
Within Spokane County there are just thirteen “incorporated” municipal governments, the ones listed above as Cities and Towns. [The rest of this post comes from two sources: List of cities and towns in Washington in Wikipedia and the Municipal Research and Services Center‘s webpage Washington City and Town Profiles. I encourage my readers to visit and bookmark these pages. If you live anywhere in Washington State these are great resources with which to orient yourselves. I expect similar resources are available in other states.]
These thirteen incorporated municipalities in Spokane County come in a number of different governmental flavors, each specified in one way or another by Washington State law. The flavors are First-Class, Town, and Code. (There are a couple other categories found in some other WA State counties, but not here in Spokane County.)
The only one of the thirteen municipalities in Spokane County that is a “First Class” city is the City of Spokane. (There are only ten such “First Class” cities in the Sate of Washington.) A “First Class” cities each had a population over 10,000 at the time of reorganization and each operates under a “home rule charter.” Hence, the City of Spokane is distinguished in part from other municipalities in Spokane County by having its own City Charter, its own “constitution.”
First-class City: “A first-class city is a city with a population of ten thousand or more at the time of its organization or reorganization that has a charter adopted under Article XI, section 10, of the state Constitution.”
On the other end of the classification of municipalities are Towns. In Spokane County they are Fairfield, Latah, Rockford, and Waverly. They do not have charters.They are organized under the Revised Code of Washington Chapter 35.27, specifically, RCW 35.27.070 with a mayor, five council members, and a treasurer, all elected. Considering the current populations of the five towns it might be a bit of a challenge to find seven eligible adults willing to serve…and the presumption must be that everyone knows everyone, a far cry from most of the cities (with the exception of the City of Spangle, estimated population 307), Consider this: In the town of Fairfield, pop. around 610, each council member represents only 122 people (including both adults and children)!
Town: “A town has a population of less than fifteen hundred at the time of its organization and does not operate under Title 35A RCW.” [Title 35A, the “Optional Municipal Code” is the part of the Revised Code of Washington, i.e. the state laws of Washington State, that describes “Code City” municipal governance, see below.]
Here’s where it gets interesting and a bit complicated. “Code Cities” came into being by Washington State law passed in 1967. All the eight “cities” in the table above, including the City of Spokane Valley, (but with exception of the City of Spokane) are “Code Cities.” They may organize under there own charter or they may simply follow “Optional Municipal Code” of Title 45A of the RCW. [I was unable to easily determine if any the eight code cities actually went to the trouble of establishing their own charter.]
Six of the eight Code Cities in Spokane County have a Mayor-Council form of government.(Chapter 35A.12 RCW), with an elected executive mayor and an elected City Council. The two other Spokane County cities, the City of Spokane Valley and the City of Airway Heights, operate until the Council-Manager form of government (Chapter 35A.13 RCW).
Hold on to your seat! Guess what? The Council-Manager form still has a position called “Mayor,” but the Mayor in the Council-Manager form is elected by the City Council from among the Council Members. This “mayor” is part of the legislative branch, unlike the executive mayor in the Mayor-Council form. Hence Rod Higgins, the “Mayor” of the City of Spokane Valley is a member of that city’s City Council. He votes on the City Council (at least as a tie breaker). Council-Manager cities, as the name implies, have a Manager, answerable to the Council, who performs the executive functions that are assigned to the Mayor in the other form of municipal government, Mayor-Council form.
So what are the take-homes from all this?
1) In the State of Washington the rules by which counties and municipalities govern are mostly prescribed by the Revised Code of Washington, the compendium of law enacted by the legislature. Some municipalities have a charter with some rule variations (like the City of Spokane), but most local government forms itself and governs by the RCW.
2) There are only thirteen incorporated municipalities in Spokane County, and two of them, the Cities of Spokane and Spokane Valley, contain 3/5 of the population (around 300K) of the county. 50K reside in much smaller municipalities, and 150K only vote in and are governed by Spokane County.
3) You need to look at the specific rules of governance for the municipality in which you live to determine how it functions, Each has its nuances, Council-Manager, Mayor-Council, Town, First Class City and Code City, and within the latter, charter v. non-charter,
May your eyes not have glazed over. Before they do reflex for a moment on which, if any of the municipalities you live. Visit the sources noted above. If you have any doubt about how to place yourself, go to MyVote.wa.gov.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry