"Sinkings and sailings" debuts

A great choice for city manager; kudos to Community House; and downtown's look

Nearly 25 years ago, then-TDN editor Pete Ellis started a periodic editorial page feature called “Thumbs.”

The idea was to write,  in a single column, a series of brief “thumbs ups” and “thumbs downs” that praised or needled newsmakers, trends, decisions and … you get the idea. Anything that tickled the editor’s fancy.

I liked the idea because it allows the writer to cover a lot of ground in short spaces. So I’m reviving it for “Lower Columbia Currents.” However, in keeping with the nautical name of this newsletter, the items will be christened “sinkings”  and “sailings.”

Enjoy.

The numbers should have sparked community outrage and response long before this. 

About 5% of Longview school students and about 4% of Kelso students are homeless or live in unstable housing situations. About 550 Cowlitz County students were in those predicaments at the start of the 2021-223 school year, according to the state Office of The Superintendent of Public Instruction.

“A lot of high school kids are couch surfing, relying on the good will of the friends they have to get taken care of. Many are in even more dire situations,” Longview School Superintendent Dan Zorn told The Daily News of Longview last month.

Finally, someone wants to do something about the problem. 

Community House on Broadway, the Longview homeless shelter, has applied for a license to operate an  overnight shelter for unaccompanied youth 13 to 17 in several properties along 12th Avenue. They include an auto body shop and the  Carriage Restaurant.

The shelter will house up to 24  teens ages 13 to 17 who can’t stay at Community House without parents for liability and safety reasons, says Frank Morrison, chief executive of Community House.

Now comes he hard part: Raising $1.9 million to buy the properties from Phillip Lovingfoss (former owner of the Monticello Hotel); $3 million to renovate them during the next year;  and then another $2.5 million annually to operate and staff the shelter 24/7,  Morrison said.

Community House will apply for state grants and ask the county commissioners for money from document recording revenues, which can only be spent on homeless programs. Commissioners should  react favorably. But the shelter also will need to be — and should be — a communitywide project that gets churches, civic groups and youth involved.

Community House should create an “adopt a room” program to encourage community groups to raise and donate renovation funds — just as Community House did when it was first founded after the failure of a Bible college at that location. 

It should get church youth groups and high school clubs involved in raising money and —even more importantly —  supporting their homeless peers through tutorial and social outreach. 

Youth are little interested in theology and religious dogma, but they should and will respond to concrete opportunities to help their own generation. Doing so helps the cause and builds a sense of compassion, which is so lacking in political discourse these days.

The City of Longview spent millions of dollars in recent years to create new crosswalks, rain gardens and plantings in the downtown area.  The upgrades gave an immediate facelift to the retail core.

But many of the rain gardens have become tawdry accumulations of weeds and garbage. The city of Longview is responsible for their upkeep, but this should be a shared task with downtown merchants. 

Cleanups organized by the Downtowners merchant group do occasionally tidy up the area. And the group has sponsored summer flower baskets on some blocks. Nevertheless,  downtown still looks old and shopworn. It’s a stark contrast to the vintage charm of downtown Castle Rock, which explodes with flowers and cheer every summer.

I get it. Merchants are busy surviving. They pay their taxes and expect the city to do its job. Still, it seems like each merchant should take a little more ownership to keep the rain gardens and plantings attractive. As everyone knows, there’s never enough tax revenue to go around.

At its core, this is a leadership issue.  Many cities employ full or part-time coordinators to promote and advocate for their retail cores.  (Longview has not had such a position since Rosemary Siipola had the job decades ago.) Lindsey Cope, vice president of the Cowlitz Economic Development Council, has served this role on a de-facto, part-time basis. But she is going on maternity leave this spring, and it’s not the EDC’s role to commit so much of its staff time to downtown.

I’m not sure what the answer is here. It can start with a little bit more pride of ownership on the  part of merchants and a little more can-do cooperation between the merchants and the city.

Going back to Castle Rock, the city’s exuberant flower plantings are made possible through the fully voluntary efforts of nurserywoman Nancy Chennault and other volunteers. The city puts up the flower baskets and helps water the plantings.  It also helped merchants paint buildings and undertake other downtown enhancements, says Dave Vorse, Castle Rock public works director.

Cooperative efforts like these “always take a champion, and typically that person is (like Chenault) someone from outside of government,” Vorse says.

It also takes a healthy zeal for community improvement, which he says is possible in downtown Castle Rock in part because 30% of the business owners are Castle Rock High School graduates who have buy-in to the community, Vorse said.

“When someone comes to us with a good idea,  we find a way to say “yes” instead of first saying no.”

---

The Longview City Council expected to approve a contract Thursday night (Feb. 23) with Kris Swanson, who will be the city’s sixth city manager and the first woman to hold the position. The council could not have made a better choice.

Swanson is an indefatigable and honest worker who has excelled in multiple government positions for more than three decades. 

She has been Cowlitz County’s elections supervisor and auditor.  After serving a two-year stint in the Washington State Auditor’s Office,  she returned to Longview as administrative services director and was named  assistant city manager in July.  

In that short time she was instrumental in putting together the pallet home program to help clean up the blighted Alabama Street homeless camp.

Swanson is businesslike, sincere, honest and easy to work with. 

With one exception — the hiring of Ed Ivey to replace Walt Barham, the city’s first manager  —  Longview has found its new city managers from within its own ranks. For the most part, that strategy has worked well.  There is no costly and lengthy search process, no extensive break-in period and the new manager is a known quantity. 

Swanson starts March 1, and there is no doubt she will do a great job.