SPOKANE VALLEY, Wash. – After a brief, contentious debate, the Spokane Valley City Council repealed and replaced their Governance Manual with over 20 revised sections.
The manual changes were discussed at length during a council meeting in March, but freshman Councilmember Al Merkel had concerns that the actual changes didn’t match what they’d previously agreed on.
“We adjusted the language in chapter one about the presiding officer being able to rule comments as ‘not pertinent.’ I thought that the adjusted language we had suggested was ‘As per Robert’s Rules (of Order),” Merkel said. “But what we got in here was ‘As determined by the presiding officer subject to appeal by the Council body.’”
To Merkel, the distinction was important, and was agreed upon according to the Spokane Valley Minutes from March 12.
“I don’t believe we ever came to a consensus on changing that,” Mayor Pam Haley said.
“The changes you see in the document are what you discussed last meeting and staff viewed the video – we went through this in detail – and what you have in front of you is what you agreed those language should be,” City Manager John Hohman said.
After some back-and-forth, Councilmember Rod Higgins – one of Merkel’s most vocal opponents – called a point of order accusing Merkel of being argumentative.
“What we started out in this procedure was that this had been approved and that generally speaking we are taking this as a group – as an item to either move it or not move it and what’s happening here is we’re going to pick it apart, which is being argumentative, and we’re not going to change much, I don’t believe, as we get to a final ruling,” Higgins said.
“We’re not going to pick it apart, because we already did this at a previous meeting, there’s not point in doing it again because there’s not a consensus then, nor will there be a consensus now,” Mayor Haley said.
The changes were then quickly passed, which Merkel took umbrage with.
“I have a lot of comments about this governance manual that is very clearly directed specifically at me, in almost every section,” Merkel said right after the passage.
He went on to cite changes to the internal investigation process, which added language saying “If a subject Councilmember refuses to participate in the investigation or fails to timely deliver
documents requested by the investigator, it will be understood that the subject
Councilmember does not dispute the complaint.”
This comes just weeks after Merkel said a meeting between him and the investigator looking into his workplace harassment allegations was cut short by the investigator, after telling him he would not be allowed to have a civilian witness in the meeting
The updates also include a new, hefty section on responsible social media usage, a subject Higgins brought up at against Merkel at the first meeting of the year.
After the meeting, Mayor Haley said Merkel’s concerns are unfounded, and that the manual has been in the works for three years, before Merkel becoming a City Councilmember was even a consideration.
“It’s not personal,” she said. “It may feel like it, but it’s not. We’ve been working on it for a long time.”
