KID voters elect new board member

A retired federal engineer has been picked by Kennewick Irrigation District members to join the KID board.

Raman Venkata of Richland received 1,113 votes and John Trumbo, a Kennewick city councilman and retired Tri-City Herald reporter, received 24 votes.

The board canvassed votes from the Dec. 12 election Monday.

Venkata will be sworn in for a one-year term at the board’s Jan. 2 meeting. He will take the seat that Patrick McGuire held before his retirement from the board in the spring.

The board appointed Jim Holmes, a charter member of the Red Mountain American Viticulture Area, to Position 2 on the board, but he chose not to run for election this month.

Venkata brings engineering and regulatory experience, he said before his election. He was a DOE structural systems oversight engineer at Hanford and now teaches senior engineering students at Washington State University Tri-Cities.

He is among an elite group of engineers named a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

He grew up in a small town in India and said he wanted to serve on the board as a thank you to a country that has given him “a wonderful education and a wonderful professional experience.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2017 at 3:02 PM with the headline "KID voters elect new board member."