DOCKSIDE

Town Clarion – Goehner relishes role as communications specialist

By Craig Howard Splash Contributing Editor

When he signed on as Liberty Lake’s communication specialist last spring, David Goehner had no idea his most notable achievement in the job’s first 12 months would involve a stray feline at City Hall.

Yet there was Goehner, a former reporter and longtime public information officer, serving as the ad-hoc press agent for a cat who crashed a City Council meeting in late February during a tense public comments segment regarding the library. The cameo appearance was covered by local TV news as well as on media outlets in states like Texas, Florida and Kansas.

The unlikely story continued the trending of domesticated pet features that began shortly after Goehner started last April. His clever take on reasons why dogs don’t belong on local baseball fields – tied to concerns about wear and tear on the diamonds – quickly became one of the most popular public service announcements in the city’s history.

“We had some lines in there, like ‘Dogs don’t know which order to run the bases and they don’t know what a balk is,’” Goehner said.

Part-entertainer, part-PR virtuoso, Goehner has made a positive impact in his first year, according to colleagues like Mayor Cris Kaminskas.

“He’s brought a consistency in messaging,” Kaminskas said. “With his experience, he’s been able to get a lot more information out there than ever before and make it a little more fun.”

Before Goehner, the city had not included a full-time communication specialist on its payroll, parceling out duties to various staff members. Goehner brings a skill set that includes writing, photography, public relations, integrated marketing and graphic design. With the city ramping up engagement efforts over the past year or more – launching a podcast, City Academy and Community Engagement Commission –Goehner’s has arguably been the catalyst. He has also been integral to the city’s social media presence.

Goehner stepped up as the host of “The Liberty Lake Deep Dive” podcast that premiered last month while also taking on director and casting call duties.

“I want it to be fun,” Goehner said. “I want my personality to be there.”

Goehner grew up in the rural town of Dryden, Washington in Chelan County near the banks of the Wenatchee River. His family lived on a 20-acre orchard known for apples and pears. Pruning limbs, driving a tractor and picking produce became part of Goehner’s routine, growing up.

“I enjoyed living on an orchard but I didn’t like manual labor,” Goehner recalls. “It was arduous work.”

Goehner has fond family memories spent in the Upper Wenatchee Valley where winters meant motoring around on snowmobiles. The family dynamic changed suddenly when Goehner’s father passed away at 51 due to heart issues, putting his son in a leadership role at 16.

“I had to step up,” Goehner said. Goehner adeptly juggled his orchard responsibilities with school where he earned good grades, served as ASB vice president and ran track, specializing in distance events. He also emerged as a talented cartoonist and reporter. His comics appeared in the local newspaper while his stories on local high school sports ran in the same publication.

When it came time for college, Goehner headed to Lamoni, Iowa and Graceland College (now Graceland University) where he pursued a double major in Journalism and Graphic Design. After graduation, he returned to Drayden and latched on with the Wenatchee World as a part-time sports reporter.

“I just liked the idea of journalism,” Goehner said.

Before he signed on in October 2005 with Educational School District (ESD) 105 in Yakima, Goehner made stops at Lower Columbia College where he worked in marketing. He later served at Washington State in a similar role. Along the way, he went back to WSU to get his master’s in Communications.

At ESD 105, Goehner oversaw all promotional communication efforts for a state agency serving 25 public school districts and 21 private schools in south central Washington. He saw the opening for the Liberty Lake job last February and decided to throw his hat into the ring. The draw of living and working closer to his mother who lives in Spokane ended up tipping the scales.

Around the time he was being considered by Liberty Lake brass, Goehner came in on a Saturday and drove around town to get a sense of the community.

“There’s a sense of Mayberry here,” he said. “I saw people out

Goehner

Continued from page 2 walking. There was a woman carrying a birthday gift. Liberty Lake is quiet and nice. I saw some parallels to Dryden here.”

A visit to Goehner’s office at City Hall makes it quickly evident that Batman and other comic heroes are part of his personal culture. He is a regular presenter at Adam West Day in Walla Walla, an event that celebrates TV’s version of Batman from the late 1960s who grew up in Whitman County. Goehner has also presented at Lilac City Comicon and been attending such events for over 30 years.

Fans of shows like “Star Trek” and would find a kindred spirit in Goehner who has met every member of the original program as well as each subsequent version. He is also an aficionado of the M*A*S*H TV series and quite possibly the world’s leading expert on the obscure spin-off, AfterM*A*S*H.

Q: What did growing up on an orchard teach you about the value of a good work ethic and also what direction you may want to take your own professional journey?

A: The biggest thing from my dad was the philosophy of putting in the time it takes to get the job done and to get the job done right. That translates into “persistence” – not in the sense of being pushy but in the sense of continuing to find whatever way is needed to get the goal achieved. And, from both my mom and dad, there’s also the ideal of going out of one’s way to accommodate other people whenever reasonably possible. That translates into “customer service.”

Q: You were writing professionally by the time you were a high school student. What did you learn about the field of journalism from that early experience?

A: Honestly, the central skills that define my approaches about writing all came during classes in college. There really wasn’t much I learned about journalism from when I was 17 and covering my high school sports each week. Except: Don’t consistently call the basketball coach on Sunday nights for details about the past week’s games when he’s wanting to watch

“60 Minutes.” Because then he’ll bring that up to everyone in March during the winter sports awards banquet.

Q: How did you find your voice as a writer?

A: The heart of that is the strict adherence to the standards of accuracy, objectivity and relevant facts that got drilled into me during college reporting class. That’s then wrapped into my package of word choices, interesting approaches and especially the opening sentences to grab an audience’s attention. Ray Bradbury’s books showed me the impactful power of poeticallycrafted words in conveying ideas. In sixth grade, I also started buying up all the records I could find from one particular comedian and those routines developed my style of humor. Then I added to that the value of David Letterman’s art of doing the unexpected oddball thing. If you saw the YouTube video I did last spring about why dogs shouldn’t be in the baseball fields, that was totally a Letterman influence!

Q: You went away to college but returned to Dryden, at least for a while, after graduation. How would you describe the importance of hometown roots in your life?

A: There’s a comfort zone thing for anyone to go back somewhere and help take on some of the mantle of responsibilities there. But I’ve also discovered that “hometown roots” really require “current family roots” or at least the comfort of other familiar people still being there in order for the familiar geography and locations to keep up their significance. I still had lots of that back in my home area initially after college. But the appeal of hometown roots will keep diminishing every time another family member is no longer there – or each time whatever female former classmate gets married off! On the plus side, I’m at least still able go to Wenatchee to get the lunch buffet at Godfather’s Pizza.

Q: What were the most rewarding aspects from your years at ESD 105 in Yakima?

A: I’ve always been a big fan of helping people reach their best potential and to me there are fewer ways to do that than through helping support others’ education.

So, it was rewarding every day to essentially be the “one-person advertising agency” on staff and help meet the promotional and publicity needs of a really wide range of education areas at the ESD. Some specifics were promoting the annual Regional High School Art Show, since I’ve been drawing since I was 2. Another was coordinating the Regional Teacher of the Year selection process, since I think teachers are memorably heroic people. And, I’m fortunately still coordinating my favorite thing there: The “Unleashed” teen journalism program that publishes students’ articles and photos each Sunday in the Yakima HeraldRepublic newspaper.

Q: More than 2,500 newspapers have gone out of business in the U.S. since 2005. As someone who has spent part of his career in community journalism, what do you think we lose when those publications close shop?

A: Without a local community outlet, the public misses out on a lot of the types of local information, a lot of details of local information and a lot of accurate sourcing about local information. A locally sourced post on some social media site is going to be rushed, not detailed, probably not professionally done and maybe not even correct. And here’s a hugely big thing: Local journalism is able to reflect a local community’s own standards and values -- not whatever story priorities and values that get driven to people from a national or outside big city source. You also lose a lot of local history – even the ability to clip out and keep something like a lengthy writeup and photos from last week’s high school sports contest.

Q: Why did the opportunity to become Liberty Lake's first fulltime communications specialist appeal to you?

A: Since this was a startup effort for the city, I liked being able to come in with my full gamut of experiences in writing, advertising, design and media interactions to help build some new, impactful and interesting things here for the city. And I was hoping to do this in something different than the education field this time. The joke I keep using is that I was looking for a setting that would be far less one-sided politicized as some aspects of education have become, which is why I took a job at a city government. Plus, after I saw that the City Council here actually starts its meetings with an opening prayer, I knew this would be a pretty good match for me!

Q How would you characterize your first year working for the city?

A: I keep making this comment: Liberty Lake’s city staff is filled with nothing but great, regular and real people. As a “M*A*S*H” fan, I can honestly say that I have not encountered a Frank Burns anywhere in the whole group. The staff is thoroughly helpful and supportive of each other – no ego-centered or uncooperative personalities anywhere. That all makes for a staff of very servantoriented people who are there to help the city’s residents. And that makes it an easy setting for me to interact with in obtaining and relaying the city’s work and information. The people on the staff are as refreshingly and exceptionally ordinary as the people who live here are. Also, you can’t beat getting national publicity by taking photos of cat in the ceiling that interrupts a City Council meeting.

Q: Between the new podcast, the City Academy and Community Engagement Commission, the city is clearly raising its game to inform and engage residents. What do you hope will result from all of these efforts?

A: When I was the editor of the newspaper in college, we had a student who wrote a letter that ripped into the members of one of the student organizations on campus. The coordinator of that program told me, “I wish people would first try to find out about the program before creating an opinion about it.” That line has always stuck with me. As a communications guy, I’m always wanting people – anywhere – to be well-informed. By receiving more information, by having more outlets for outreach and by having expanded opportunities for people offer their thoughts to city leaders, both the public and the city staff will have a more complete bag of knowledge in their heads and know what’s going on. And then they can create a better opinion about it.