Consolidation committee discusses next steps

So what's going on with the effort to consolidate local towns into one?

A group of local business owners and residents who have that goal met Thursday at the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce to discuss the logistics of the ambitious task.

The Coulee Area Consolidation Committee consists of people from Electric City, Grand Coulee, Coulee Dam and some outlying areas, and those present discussed wanting to bring in someone from Elmer City for the committee as well.

The group discussed where the goal is at now, and what the next steps are.

A survey in 2016 revealed that 79 percent of those polled were somewhat or strongly in favor of consolidation.

The group wants to pay $20,000 to consulting firm SCJ Alliance, which specializes in city planning, to answer some of the questions that need to be answered, such as how to legally combine two or more cities, how the government would work, how to get the issue on the ballot, how to establish a continuous border between the towns to be merged, and more.

SCJ presented a graphic outlining "The Path to Consolidation" at a public meeting held at The Wine Bar in 2018.

It was learned then that if the people in each of the cities in question vote to consolidate, the towns would be forced to, with or without the support of the city councils, bringing in the state's attorney general to enforce it if needed.

The group discussed that it would seemingly be easiest to merge Electric City and Grand Coulee, both in Grant County, and whether to do that first before bringing in Coulee Dam and Elmer City later, or to do it all at once.

When Coulee Dam and Elmer City come into consideration, the question of how complicated bringing in other counties and an indian reservation comes up, as well as whether or not the Columbia River or the state highway could count as the continuity between towns needed to merge them.

Ian Turner, who works as a project manager at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, spoke about the need to get a sense of what the citizens think.

"I feel like this committee's purpose," Turner said, "would really be to decide what is going on the ballot, and so there'd have to be a pre-vetting before the ballot to see [if] we [are] just going to take on two cities first and get a victory under the belt and capitalize on the momentum, or try to do the whole thing with more roadblocks, see how it turns out. I feel like we get one decent shot with the little bit of momentum we've got going."

Turner mentioned the learning process of starting with two towns could make adding more towns easier farther down the road. "You learn so much from combining two," he said, "and five years later you bring on a third, bring on a fourth."

The group discussed wanting to get more information to the public and get more opinions on the subject from the public. Town hall meetings were suggested as a method of accomplishing that, as well as letters to the editor of The Star, and a new website that committee Chairman Ben Hughes said he would start working on.

The group collectively felt that concerns of those opposed to consolidation need to be addressed, and that many of those concerns can be addressed simply by providing the right information to quell those concerns.

The group agreed that the need for SCJ to answer a lot of questions was a priority in moving forward.

Jack Madsen, who owns local gas stations, feels that raising the money for SCJ won't be that hard. "We're going to need to get that, and then we can do the deep dive into some of the things that are certainly huge stumbling blocks to moving forward," he said.

Peggy Nevsimal, executive director for the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce, said that the committee does have a bank account for the cause with about $2,000 in it so far, and that the Grant County Economic Development Council was interested in the cause and a potential donor towards it.

She said August 30 is the deadline to get the issue on the November ballot. The group talked about the need to meet much more regularly if they wanted to aim for that goal, or that they could otherwise aim to put a ballot measure together for 2020.

Nevsimal also said that the issue only needs to pass by a simple majority - at least one vote more than 50 percent - and not by a supermajority of 60 percent.

To get the issue on the ballot, the group discussed the need to petition citizens, needing just 10 percent of the number of citizens voting in the last general election to sign, which in the case of Electric City would be about 50 signatures.

Grand Coulee's city council already voted to put the issue on a future ballot, and so doesn't need the citizen signatures.

The group discussed wanting to make the benefits of consolidation clear, benefits including a better functioning city government, being able to have a city planner type of position within the city government, being able to accomplish goals benefitting the whole community (a health and wellness center, community center, community pool, etc.), and possibly qualifying for more grant money.

The Coulee Area

Consolidation Committee

• Ben Hughes is the patient access manager at Coulee Medical Center and a commissioner on the Coulee Area Park & Recreation District.

• Cheryl Hoffman is president of the Grand Coulee Dam Senior Center.

• Tom Poplawski is a Grand Coulee council member and a Loepps Furniture employee.

• Ian Turner is a project manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and co-owner of Centerline Development, LLC.

• Nic Alexander is a construction contractor, owner of Coulee Construction and part of Centerline Development.

• Greg Behrens is a geologist retired from USBR and developer of the Columbia Springs area.

• Bob Valen is a commissioner for CAPRD.

• Jack Madsen is owner of Jack's gas stations in the area.

• Peggy Nevsimal is executive director of the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce.

• Kim Christensen is owner of The Popcorn Shoppe.