Board to consider amendments at May 23 meeting including giving cities without a vote ex officio status
The cities on the West Plains, as well as Liberty Lake and Millwood, will have more of a presence on the Spokane Transit Authority board of directors.
At a special April 23 meeting, the STA board voted 5-4 to amend one of its bylaws to change the composition of the board.
While the STA board will continue to have nine voting members as it has in the past, the amendment allows the board to have three elected officials selected by the small cities in Spokane County in a three-year continuous rotation in the following order: Liberty Lake, Medical Lake, Millwood, Cheney and Airway Heights. Prior to the change in bylaws, small cities only had two voting members.
Cheney Mayor Tom Trulove, one of the small cities representatives on the board, explained that STA is required by state law every four years to determine any changes to the composition of the board or the borders of the Public Transportation Benefit District. The board suggested increasing voting membership for small cities by one vote. As a result of the change, the city of Spokane went from having three votes on the board, to two. The rest of the board is comprised of two representatives from Spokane Valley and two Spokane County commissioners.
“By state law you are only allowed to have nine voting members on the board so we had to reduce membership,” Trulove said. “It made sense to reduce Spokane’s membership from three to two votes.”
The Public Transportation Improvement Conference voted 7-2 to approve the proposed amendment and sent it back to the board. The rotation of voting members will start with the cities currently serving as voting members, Airway Heights and Cheney, while the next city in the rotation, Liberty Lake, shall designate its voting member of the board.
“These bylaws are designed to help make the new board operate better,” Trulove said.
Trulove added that cities proposed several other changes to the bylaws, which the new board will vote on at the May 23 meeting. One of these amendments proposes weighted votes on the board. Each of the small cities would have a .83 percent of a weighted vote while the city of Spokane would get a weighed 1.25 percent vote. Another amendment suggests allowing the other two smaller cities that do not have votes — Medical Lake and Millwood — to act as ex officio directors.
“They won’t be voting members but they will participate in discussions,” Trulove said. “The hope is that there will be a presence of all five small cities at the table. I think it will work well.”
Al Stover can be reached at [email protected].
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