Amber Arrives
Published on December 29, 2009
With touches of humor and history, Community Building alumnus Amber Waldref becomes the youngest woman to join the Spokane City Council.
By Tim Connor
With her young daughter, Karolina, shouting encouragement from the front row, Amber Waldref took the oath of office Tuesday night as the newest member of the Spokane City Council. State Court of Appeals Commissioner Joyce J. McCown--a family friend--administered the oath shortly before 6 o’clock in front of a packed audience of supporters and city officials in the Spokane council chambers. Waldref succeeds Al French as one of two city council representatives for District 1 (northeast Spokane.)
Waldref is a fourth generation Spokanite who grew up in the Hillyard neighborhood and returned to northeast Spokane five years ago with her husband, Tom Flanagan, a Gonzaga Prep chemistry teacher.
For someone who’s barely into her thirties, Waldref already has a lengthy list of accomplishments and experiences, including several years on the staff of The Lands Council where, among other things, she’s worked to help clean up the Spokane River.
After thanking her family and supporters, Waldref confessed to writer’s block when it came time to write her first speech as a councilwoman.
Finally, she said, “it came to me today when I went on a jog with my daughter on the Centennial Trail. If you remember, it was a gorgeous day, the sun was shining brightly in the cold blue December sky. There was the Spokane River rushing next to me, ducks and geese alongside. There was the lonely whistle of the train as it made its way along the ridge on the other side. But there it was. The past, present, and future of Spokane, all wrapped up in that one moment with myself and my daughter. And Karolina said, ‘more! more!’ More ducks and more trains, and she and I couldn’t get enough. It was a beautiful moment, and that’s why I’m standing up here tonight. It’s the beauty, the people, the history, all these parts of Spokane that inspire me to service. And it’s our future, my daughter’s future, that compels me and that did compel me to be here tonight.”
Waldref was praised in her introduction by her friend and City Plan Commission vice president Karen Byrd for, among other things, her sense of humor. And the new councilwoman didn’t disappoint. After quoting Nelson Mandela on the importance of education in changing the world, she noted that far from aiming for world peace in her first term, she would “settle for a turn signal at Hamilton and Mission,” a notoriously gnarly intersection in her district.
She also added a touch history, noting that in the research she’d done that “as far as I can tell, I am the youngest woman elected to a city office in Spokane.” Waldref is 32 and, says Spokane historian Bill Stimson, he’s “virtually certain” that she’s correct. Stimson has closely followed Spokane government since the days of Margaret Leonard (1970 to 1977) who was the first woman to serve on the council.
Leonard, Waldref noted, lived only five blocks from where her family lives now.
“Margaret and I might not have agreed on everything,” Waldref said, “but in a Spokesman-Review article from September 1977, written about her unsuccessful race for Spokane mayor, she [Leonard] said, elimination of storm sewer overflows into the Spokane River would be her first priority as mayor. So here we are, 32 years later. 1977 was the year I was born, and we are just starting to get a handle on the sewage overflows to our river and starting to clean that up. Cleaning up our river continues to be a major challenge, something that has been delayed and passed on from one generation to the next. Now, I don’t want to pass this on to my daughter.”
She added that she also committed to finding ways to balance the economic burden that cleaning up the river would impose.
Waldref concluded by saying she was committed to aggressively reaching out to Spokane citizens to get the benefit of their critiques and insight.
“And in turn, I ask that you reach out to me and engage me, challenge me, help me identify the problems, and together I know we can identify the solutions.”
--CFJ (with thanks to Audrey Connor on the video editing.)