Richland picks its newest council member. 10 applied for the vacant seat
Safety is the top item on Richland residents’ minds, says the city’s newest council member.
Ryan Whitten, a U.S. Navy veteran and Energy Northwest technician, was unanimously picked to replace former Councilman Michael Alvarez.
Alvarez stepped away from the spot after winning a position to become the newest Benton County commissioner. Ten people applied for the position, and the council interviewed the four finalists in a nearly three-hour session Friday.
The four were Whitten, Eileen Griffin, Ben Griggs and Andrew Rice. All were asked the same set of questions.
The six other applicants for the spot were Carl Sarrazolla, Clancy Waldron, Courtland Frauenkron, Justin Raffa, Roni Gunnoe and Todd Shepard.
The position comes with $1,253 a month salary. If Whitten wants to keep the seat, he will need to run for election in November.
Whitten, who grew up in Prosser, has lived in Richland for six years and works as an instrument and controls technician at Energy Northwest.
He lives in central Richland, which he described as ethnically and economically diverse.
“There are a lot of people who may feel they’re left out of representation on the city council,“ he said during the Friday interview. “I want to get involved in the governance of the city to make sure that we are remaining a safe and prosperous area. I want to serve my community and maintain what I love about this place.”
He said the top concern of Richland residents is safety, and that everything else grows out of people feeling secure to live and work in the city.
A lot of his leadership experience came from his time in the Navy. His work supported the Top Gun program at the Naval Air Station in Fallon, Nev.
He found it was important to show that he could and was willing to do the work next to the others that worked for him.
The city’s greatest strengths, he said, are the Columbia River, the technical knowledge of people in the area and Richland’s parks.
The council position is nonpartisan but he was asked during the interview about the role of politics on a city council.
“When you’re talking about government, politics is always going to play a big part,” he said. “One of the things that city councils is responsible for is ordinances. A lot of what we have to work with is dictated to us by the federal government and by the state, so we’re going to have to be involved in communicating with those representatives to make sure that our opportunity to pursue our interests are not taken away from us at those levels.”
It’s also necessary to work with those organizations to secure funding, he said.
Among his Facebook friends are several elected officials, including Republicans state Sen. Matt Boehnke and newly elected Rep. Stephanie Barnard, in addition to Richland School Board members Semi Bird and Audra Byrd and Kennewick School Board member Gabe Galbraith.
The Richland council is scheduled to vote Jan. 17 for its new mayor.