The Post Falls City Council on Tuesday approved the addition of a meeting invocation, removed Juneteenth as a city holiday and added Columbus Day.

The invocation and holiday action items were approved in four to two votes, with Samantha Steigleder, Aaron Plew, Jack Mosby and Marc Lucca voting yes and Joe Malloy and Nathan Ziegler voting no. 

“My proposal was to add a very brief non-sectarian invocation to the beginning of the meetings to ask for the divine assistance and wisdom in the very weighty matters that we deal with. I think it’s sorely needed these days,” Mayor Randy Westlund said.  

After framing his personal beliefs as those of Christian values, Council Chairman Joe Malloy received laughter after putting on a tinfoil cap to briefly state a theory about authoritarian forces taking control.  

He then returned to the matter at hand. 

“There is significant ambiguity as to the legality of these issues, leaving the door wide open for costly legal challenges on constitutional grounds,” Malloy said.  

Malloy said his concern is keeping the city safe fiscally and legally. 

“Whether one worships Jesus Christ, Buddha or no god at all, all want roads that are well-maintained and intersections that function efficiently. The vast majority of what a city government does is literally supported by everybody regardless of ideology,” Malloy said. “I think the conservative approach as a city is to stay in our lane and stick to our primary objectives.”

Steigleder mulled over the invocation possibilities, including potentially bringing in a chaplain.  

“I think that every other path is too much or not allowed, so what remains, I think, is to allow the mayor to do an invocation that is modest, limited and practical,” Steigleder said. “I don’t think it’s the perfect way to do it, but I think that’s reasonable, it’s legal and if it turns into something we don’t like, we just vote to take it off the agenda.” 

Mosby agreed with the addition of an invocation to future meetings. 

"Surely there can be some perceivable risk and I think with anything important thing worth doing, that’s applicable,” he said. 

After the 4-2 vote to approve an invocation, Council moved on to the repeal of the mayoral proclamation policy.

Westlund said that within state law, proclamations fall to the person running the meeting, for council sessions, that falls to the mayor. 

“It’s a ceremonial thing that can be used to express values of a community,” Westlund said. 

Although he didn’t see a direct conflict with proclamations he would like to implement and the policy as written, Westlund said he believed he should take on the purview, rather than staff, of sorting through potential proclamations and save taxpayer dollars. 

Ziegler challenged that whether the mayor or city staff waded through proclamation requests, it was still taxpayer money being spent. 

Suggestions cited for potential mayoral proclamations include, “celebrating the value of human life at all stages, the unique contributions of mothers and fathers when raising children, the legacies of our great American heroes and the unique history and cultural festivals.”     

Malloy asked council members to consider the behavior of future mayors and not remove the guidelines established along with the policy in 2021.  

“While unlikely, it’s certainly possible for a future mayor to proclaim June to be Karl Marx month in the city of Post Falls,” Malloy said. 

At Westund's suggestion, Steigleder made a motion to direct staff to review the language of the mayoral proclamation policy. The motion unanimously passed.

Council members then turned to the mayor’s proposal for city-recognized holidays, including the removal of Juneteenth as a holiday and the inclusion of Columbus Day instead. 

“I believe it’s a more appropriate holiday honoring our American heritage,” Westlund said. 

Malloy said Juneteenth’s inclusion as a holiday is an important piece of American history. 

“Juneteenth celebrates the actual end of slavery in the United States and the abolition of slavery is one of the crowning achievements of Western civilization and is certainly worthy of celebration,” Malloy said. 

He also asked whether the city couldn’t alternate between celebrating Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day. 

Westlund said alternating would be too confusing to keep track of and challenged the purpose of Juneteenth as a holiday. 

“My own view is that Juneteenth is something that nobody had heard of until five years ago and it was pushed for political purposes and so I'm not in favor of having that in,” Westlund said. 

Lucca said that he felt Martin Luther King Jr. Day reflected the winning of civil rights for Black Americans and spoke of discrimination of Italian-Americans like his family experienced in the 1930s and 1940s. 

“It’s important to note that Columbus Day was not initially a holiday just because of Christopher Columbus. It was a civil rights movement in response to a very dark time of persecution against Italian Americans,” Lucca said. 

    Post Falls Council Chairman Joe Malloy dons a tinfoil hat to laughs during a discussion of the proposal to add a mayoral invocation during future meetings.