Study proposed: Should cities unite?

If you've ever found yourself wondering if it might be more efficient to have one city instead of four to govern the local area, you're not alone. The local chamber of commerce offered Monday to head up efforts to look at the question of consolidating at least two local cities.

Their overture met with encouraging words from the mayors of both cities - Chris Christopherson, of Grand Coulee and Jerry Sands, of Electric City.

"I'm encouraged by this," Christopherson said.

"I think it would work," added Sands.

The exchange came at Monday afternoon's regular monthly meeting of the Regional Board of Mayors, an organization whose existence arose out of the need to invent a way for Grand Coulee, Coulee Dam, Electric City and Elmer City to jointly govern a common interest - the Delano Landfill, now the transfer station.

Three chamber board members presented the idea. Bob Valen said the chamber had been approached by elected officials from each city, who asked that chamber take on the issue as a neutral party.

The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce formed in the 1970s from a merger of a Coulee Dam chamber and a Grand Coulee chamber.

An economic development committee within the chamber has met with a consulting firm that has had experience in examining the joining of aspects of municipalities around Joint Base Lewis-McChord, SCJ Alliance. (This writer serves on that chamber committee.)

Kevin Porch said the effort could make for a better business environment and eliminate some of the current difficulties between the two towns, which currently bills each other, and sometimes argues over, services provided to each other.

Debbie Starkey said businesses researching opportunites are sometimes confused by the fragmented community, finding statistics on towns of about 1,000, instead of a community of 4,000.

She said the group was hesitant to include only Grand Coulee and Electric City in the initial study, but SCJ said several factors would make it more complicated to extend it further, including a lack of a contiguous boundary between Grand Coulee and Coulee Dam.

Merging two towns has happened only once in state history, Starkey said SCJ Alliance found. In 1957 Chelan and Lakeside joined.

Starkey passed out an outline proposal from SCJ, estimating they could facilitiate the process for up to $30,000, which could be cut in half with enough volunteer effort. That's a sum the city council's would have approve of spending with community support.

The mayors invited the group to present the idea at their city councils. Each stressed it's an idea that would only work if voters were in favor, but their initial openness was markedly different than the attitude that eventually ended a similar study a couple decades ago.

"I think we're in a different age," Mayor Christopherson said, even as he predicted a merger might well lead to better service to the people, but likely no cost savings.