Tim Snead to take city council seat

A former three-term Grant County commissioner who moved to Grand Coulee five years ago will be the city’s next council member.

Tim Snead did not take his seat after the council voted him in on Tuesday night, but he will be sworn in and ready to participate for the next meeting.

Snead also served as city administrator of Quincy for 13 years, including during the server farm boom years.

“We went from an assessed value of $700 million to $2.4 billion before I left, but I will tell you: Growth is a pain,” Snead said, to laughter around the room. “It is not cheap.”

The council interviewed three candidates for the position made vacant when Ruth Dalton was selected as mayor. Janet Christy and Kerri Kruis also interviewed. Christy, a retired USBR employee, spoke of her 27-year career in military logistics. Kruis said she was “pro law enforcement” but responded to many of the council’s interview questions by saying she didn’t have an answer.

The fourth candidate, Kimberly Christensen, sent an email titled “Letter of Interest recision,” to all council members and blind-copied a Star reporter. She expressed dissatisfaction that the city clerk “does not date stamp in coming [sic] letters of Interest for a legislative position within our Government.”

After brief interviews, the council spent little time deliberating: Mark Nash made the motion right away. But Councilmember Tom Poplawski raised the possibility of a perceived conflict of interest: Snead’s son, Sam Snead, is an owner of SJ Environmental, which currently has the contract for wastewater facility operations with the city.

The consensus was that Snead, the father, would be expected to recuse himself from votes pertaining to the contract, even though he does not directly benefit financially from it.

“My key thing is to get in and see how the city operates, because every city has done it a little differently, and as long as the state auditor’s happy, that’s great,” Snead said. “I don’t want to come in and start changing things, or anything like that. I want to learn about it.”