Champion Business Leader

Loren Searl - City of Spokane Water Department

Loren is the Superintendent for the City of Spokane, Water Department, which employs 165 employees.

Loren believes promoting CTR at the worksite benefits both the employee and the employer. Employees save money by using commute options and since most employees work a compressed work schedule, that allows them a greater work/life balance. The employer benefits by being able to recruit and retain quality employees by offering strong CTR program elements, such as transit subsidies, preferred parking and offering compressed work schedules.

Recently, the City sold the property adjacent to their building which was used for employee parking. Their team quickly engineered an interim solution, but Loren made sure that preferred parking for carpools & vanpools were still available to employees.

Karrie has been working on getting an in-house vanpool program set up for the last couple years. When the previous Superintendent retired, earlier this year, this program could have come to a halt. But Loren saw the benefit in offering this program to their employees, and they’re currently finalizing all the details to get the van on the road.

Loren believes the success of their CTR program is because of the hard work and dedication of their ETC, Karrie Diana.

His words of wisdom to other Executives/Managers, “Find out what you CAN do at your worksite, what the parameters are and how to capitalize on it”.

Congratulations Loren!