The Battle for the Finley Road
A simmering local dispute over road quality, county spending, and bureaucratic transparency boils over in the press.
We believe the work recently done on the oiled road between Kennewick and Finley was started largely as a result of our persistent effort to impress upon the authorities that the road needed attention. Now that the work is done, others suggest we were merely complaining, but the record shows otherwise. When we first raised the issue, the road was in such deep mud that autos could barely get through, forcing drivers to use old trails over sand hills. We maintain that until the road is fully oiled, the repair is incomplete. We also question the distribution of $4,300 in state maintenance funds; specifically, we ask the County Auditor to clarify if a clerical error by a stand-in commissioner led to the entire sum being spent on the Euclid road, leaving the rest of the county without funds.
“Had he traveled it when the mud was so deep... that the autoes could barely get thru, he would have known why we were hollering.”
Infrastructure funding and the transparency of county maintenance budgets remain flashpoints in Kennewick’s local politics. This early 20th-century clash reflects the perennial struggle between rural communities demanding better roads and the administrative bottlenecks of the county seat.
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