Candace Vumm leaves a lasting mark on the Spokane city council

After nearly two decades serving the City of Spokane – and 40 years attending city council meetings – Candace Vumm is ready for a break.

Your colleagues on the city council say it is a well-deserved respite.

Vimes is leaving the city council after two full terms as representative of District 3, which comprised northwestern Spokane.

During her tenure, Mumm has earned a reputation for having a keen understanding of the city’s finances and a penchant for developing policies with long-term effects.

“Candace is a genius when it comes to budgets and numbers, and Candace is being driven to a point where she won’t give up,” said Karen Stratton, councilor and seatmate of District 3.

Mumm has been in local government since she was a 19-year-old news intern for KJRB radio covering city council meetings in the old town hall downtown.

“I can still remember how long, hot and boring these meetings were. I would have to drive several miles back to the South Hill recording studio to edit stories for the morning show, ”Vimes said.

Mumm entered politics in 2013 after a decade as a volunteer on the city’s planning committee, including two terms as president. She played a key role in developing the city’s first comprehensive plan, which paved the way for the city’s development and growth for decades to come.

She had been asked several times to run for the city council, but Vimes always turned down the offer. As a former radio and television journalist, she had covered elections in three states and was never very interested in running for one. In addition, she simply didn’t have the time between work and family.

But finally she took the plunge.

“When my children grew up and we were able to get other people to run the company, I was able to fully commit myself,” Mumm said in a recent interview with The Spokesman Review.

Mumm describes itself as politically moderate, but promised as a city council candidate to review and weigh up the office of mayor.

“I got in the ring and realized that I was a moderate and could potentially work with a rainbow of political styles just to get things done,” said Vimes.

In the end, she won a city council race, which was extremely expensive for the time.

Though new to the city council, Mumm came into office with a solid understanding of how the city council works, largely thanks to her time on the planning committee and years of advocacy and work in her neighborhood.

Eight years later, looking back, the city has invested a lot in its streets, schools and parks, said Mumm, looking to the distant future.

“I think Spokane became a really great place to live because of the choices we made,” said Vimes.

Money money money

Colleagues respect Mumm’s encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s budget and finances. Mumm, who has a master’s degree in business administration and who owns a real estate company with her husband, was chairwoman of the council’s finance and administration committee for several years.

She was instrumental in building new city reserves and parameterizing their use so that they are only drawn in an absolute emergency. The careful and deliberate build-up of reserves in recent years has allowed the city to enter the COVID-19 pandemic with relative confidence.

At the end of her senior year in office, Mumm was a member of the council’s three-person working group that helped prioritize potential projects to be funded with the city’s $ 81 million stake in the US rescue plan.

Vimes has long been a vocal critic of the city’s spending on overtime pay for police and fire departments that routinely exceeds budget. She was instrumental in calling for a study on overtime pay, which the city is expected to complete in 2022.

The city’s money is ultimately taxpayers’ money, said Mumm.

“I’ve always respected that and paid close attention to where I can help the city save money,” says Mumm.

Land use, public infrastructure

Because she played such a direct role in drawing up the city’s overall plan, Vimes often points it out – especially when she feels the city is not following its template.

She warned of the consequences of haphazard development and preferential reluctance, even if pressured to approve new housing proposals and zoning changes to alleviate the city’s housing shortage.

Councilor Lori Kinnear was one of those who pushed guts to run and “I haven’t let go of it,” she said. If it were up to Kinnear, the tenure limit on Mumm, which she described as “very methodical” and “very clever”, would not apply.

When Vimes ponders a request to change the zoning of a parcel or allow access to the city’s water supply system, she ponders the precedent and the implications for the city’s future, according to Kinnear. And when she makes a decision, she explains the reasons.

“It’s one thing to say ‘just trust me’ and another thing to say why this will work,” said Kinnear.

A central concern of Mumm was to offer the children a safe way to school.

“What I learned was that children who walked to school learn better,” said Vimes. “One of the best things you can do is make it easier for children to get to school.”

A Five Mile school warned parents it was unsafe to walk children to school.

Vimes’ first big bill in 2014 was a bill urging the city to install more crosswalks near schools, parks, and other high-traffic areas.

transport

Vimes also played a key role in shaping the regional transportation system and served on the city council on the board of the Spokane Transit Authority.

When she left office, Vimes said that STA’s finances are stronger than ever.

She has campaigned to make bus rides free for people under the age of 18, which she believes can help young people find a job outside of their immediate neighborhood.

The interface between planning and traffic was important to Mumm, who worked to create incentives to promote development around public transport stops.

“We’re really careful to connect people to the important places they need – hospitals, schools, colleges, and yes, downtown and shopping,” said Mumm. “The ability to use local public transport is a critical factor in people’s personal finances. That saves them so much money. “

Institutional knowledge

Mumm headed the city’s Gender and Race Pay Equity Task Force, which published a number of recommendations in a 2016 report.

And it is thanks in large part to the work of Mumm that the town hall has diaper changing stations in public toilets.

Mumm worked to ensure the name of the renovated square in front of the town hall as a “meeting point” in honor of the Indian tribes that historically gathered nearby.

Stratton and Vimes didn’t always have the same approach to government, but both cared a lot about the district, Stratton said.

“I learned so much from her

With guts on the way out, said Kinnear, the city council is losing an enormous amount of institutional knowledge.

“It’s hard to get back, it’s hard to replace,” said Kinnear.