Council member says traffic, transparency top public concerns

MOSES LAKE — When he sits down two days every week at the Red Door Cafe to meet with constituents from across the city, Moses Lake City Council Member David Eck said one issue dominates the conversation more than any other.

“Typically, it’s about something that’s been in the newspaper that relates to either traffic, or traffic, or traffic,” Eck said. “We get lots and lots of comments about traffic.”

A semi-retired financial advisor who was elected to the city council in 2019, Eck, 75, has been sitting down at the Red Door Cafe on the corner of Third Avenue and Ash Street in downtown Moses Lake nearly every Monday and Wednesday afternoon from 1 to 2:30 p.m. and holding “Coffee with a Council Member” to talk with constituents, listen to complaints and suggestions, solicit opinions and information from the residents of Moses Lake and try to foster a better sense of how government works.

It’s something he’d hoped to start early in his term in 2020, but the lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to delay the meetings.

“It was a good year and a half before I could actually begin the process,” Eck said.

Eck said he spends a lot of time explaining how city and state governments work, particularly the long and sometimes complex process of public hearings to discuss proposed projects and get feedback from the public.

“It might be a roundabout or new intersection or narrowing or widening a street or anything they've seen,” he said. “And typically I will help them understand how the Department of Transportation handles part of it. We have our responsibility.”

Eck said the council members do their best to oversee a rapidly growing city where the interests of differing groups — landowners, developers, business people, current residents — collide in ways that sometimes conflict. For example, he noted that recently, someone wondered if the city could put up a stop sign someplace, and Eck said he explained about state regulations requiring a certain amount of traffic at an intersection first before a traffic study can be done to determine if a sign is warranted.

There’s a lot of careful work done beforehand, Eck said, and it takes time for all of that work to be completed.

“It's not a slam dunk, and we're not just pushing it down someone's throat. It's quite the opposite,” he said.

Eck said he was most surprised about the nature of small town politics — what he called the rumor mill — and the difficulty members of the council have faced in dealing with the city’s Comprehensive Plan, which was passed last fall but came under criticism earlier this year for failing to plan properly for future growth.

“Special interest groups attempting to say, because they have money or background and influence they expect you to vote this way, and they push the issue hard,” he said.

Eck said, however, that his intense faith in God helps him stay focused on what’s important as he sits on the Moses Lake City Council.

“I like the fact that I can sit up there with a smile on my face and represent the Lord,” he said. “To me, it’s joyful. And it’s not stressful. I’m always wondering, OK, what’s next?”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.