Wenatchee Mayor Requests More Seats on Link Transit Board

City of Wenatchee Mayor Frank Kuntz requested for three more seats on the Link Transit board for his councilmembers Tuesday.

The board held a special meeting to discuss the idea of redefining the amount of board member seats.

This concept is reintroduced every four years.

Kuntz suggested that he and his city council receive more than one vote due to the city largely depending on Link Transit’s services versus some of the other government agencies.

He also used the bus driver retention bonuses, and increased bus service on Sunday, as examples where three additional seats for Wenatchee would have resulted in different results.

“I want to make sure that the board members that sit on this board, believe in Link, believe in its mission, believe in all the things that it's doing that's great for our community and I want them to participate, and sometimes I think there are members of this board that don't believe in what's due,” Kuntz said. “That's just personal opinion.”

Douglas County Commissioner Marc Straub said he felt the board was fine as is and that all of the board members have an equal vested interest in Link Transit.

Multiple board members noted that the more seats the board gets, the more unwieldy it would become.

Chelan County Commissioner Tiffany Gehring said she was not on board with a 15-member board, but was open to the idea of looking into how the board may look in the future, including one that was based more on population.

East Wenatchee Mayor Jerrilea Crawford brought up the idea of reducing the number of county commissioners from two seats to one.

Chelan Mayor Bob Goedde said that Link Transit already provides more service for Wenatchee and East Wenatchee and that seems to be an issue of funding more than representation.

“My concern is, is it disproportionate that the smaller cities get a better, bigger percentage of the services than Wenatchee and East Wenatchee do? I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that the massive amount of services are related in the two bigger cities,” Goedde said. “What else do they want if they're already getting their percentage dollar-wise and service-wise over the representation, whether they do or don't have it. ”

Ultimately, the board decided to keep the same number of seats they have had for the last four years.