Moses Lake council, school board candidates discuss issues at forum

MOSES LAKE — Candidates for the Moses Lake City Council and Moses Lake School District discussed school and city finances, trust and water at a forum sponsored by the Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce. Joel Graves, running for city council, said Moses Lake has some challenges to address.

“These aren’t problems that we can keep kicking the can down the road on,” he said.

Council candidates Deanna Martinez, Graves and Jeremy Davis, and school board candidate Mike Nordsten, answered questions submitted by the forum’s sponsors. Council candidate Jim Perez sent a statement, saying work commitments kept him from attending. Chamber Manager Debbie Doran-Martinez said school board candidate Lila Baker had declined to attend, citing her withdrawal from the race due to health reasons.

Water

Moses Lake gets most of its drinkable water from a deep underground aquifer that’s gradually declining, and all council candidates said the city needed new sources of water.

“We have been talking pretty much since day one of (her term) about how do we address this bigger issue of our water source,” Martinez said. “It takes a lot of people, a lot of partners, a lot of organizations to give us permission to access different water sources.”

She cited Moses Lake as an example. The city doesn’t have rights to use water from the lake, she said, and the city is working with state and federal agencies to explore the lake as a possible source.

Council members and city officials have worked to get funding to improve existing water sources, she said. That includes one of the city’s wells near Grant County International Airport, which the city is trying to rehabilitate using state, and possibly federal, funding. Martinez said she was one of the council members working on that project.

Davis said he thinks city officials should move quickly to obtain water rights and look at surface water as an alternative. He also cited the city’s lack of access to water from Moses Lake.

“We need to figure out how to either get the water rights, which would be my primary goal, or we need to work with the Bureau of Reclamation to acquire water either directly out of the canal (system) or directly from the Columbia River, to some degree,” he said.

He said he would support reductions in water fees to Moses Lake residents. In his opinion the fees are too high.

“To me, that’s unsustainable for a vast number of our citizens,” he said.

Graves said the city needs to do a better job communicating with its residents about water, citing the continued construction of housing while at the same time asking residents to reduce water use. He said he would support reconsidering water fees.

“We do have water supply issues – there’s no doubt about it,” he said. “I’d like to see us look at additional sources of water supply. We have plenty of water around, a lot of it comes down to access and infrastructure.”

City finances

City council candidates also were asked about finances, specifically a question about the status of the city’s audits. The city has fallen behind on them, which has affected its ability to submit capital bond requests to city voters.

Graves said any concerns expressed by auditors should be a focus of attention, and the auditors have had some concerns in the past.

“Nothing egregious that was discovered, but there were some significant improvements that needed to be made to the way our city operates financially that need to be addressed with a little bit more urgency,” he said. “There is a tendency in city government to become complacent and to lose a sense of urgency.”

Martinez said part of Finance Director Madeline Prentice’s job is to make sure the city is hitting its audit targets.

“The audits are a priority for us. Madeline is working as hard as she can, along with her team, to catch us up, and to acknowledge whatever the audit has required us to do, and we are making those changes,” Martinez said.

The problems started prior to her time on the council, Martinez said, but city officials are working to ensure the city is in compliance.

Davis said the city, and the council, need to address any issues that are identified in an audit as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

“We need to hold our city staff much more accountable,” Davis said. “We need to be very responsive when it comes to audit findings.”

School finances

Nordsten said he plans to serve one term if he’s elected to the school board.

“I really feel like these positions on the school board are community positions and we should have as many people as we possibly can running for these positions,” he said.

School district voters approved a four-year educational programs and operations levy earlier this year, which came after a double rejection of an EP&O levy in 2024.

“(That) tells me that the patrons of the school district are beginning to trust the school district more,” he said. “We need to keep working on that – we need to keep making things transparent.”

The EP&O levy rejection was followed by the news that accounting errors had drained MLSD’s reserves. One of the changes that followed that disclosure is a monthly review by board members of the district’s finances.

“There have been errors that have been picked up and caught before they’ve actually been a big problem,” he said. “We also need to make sure we are spending within our means.”

He said one of his considerations when looking at spending proposals will be its long-term as well as its short-term financial impact.

“What it means is, down the road, do we have other things coming up that we need to hold on to some of this money for?” he said. “We need to make sure we’re never in the position again where we’re wondering if we can make payroll.”