Welcome to CIVICS, where we break down the week’s municipal meetings throughout the Inland Northwest, so you can get involved and speak out about the issues you care about.  

Some things that stick out to us this week include: 

• Tonight’s the night for all things budget at the Spokane City Council as they consider a new parking tax, a new utility tax, two different modifications to the budget and the budget itself. 
• Unrelated to the budget, Spokane City Council could also approve a ban on algorithmic price fixing, now with harsher penalties for those who violate it. 
• Cute co-op news: the Finance and Administration Committee could declare 2025 the year of the co-op! And even cuter, the legislation developed out of our second annual PolitiCrawl!
• Spokane Valley is hosting its final public hearing for next year’s budget, which projects a $1.5 million deficit.
• Police in Spokane Valley might be working overtime over the holidays to combat an expected increase in retail theft.

Important meetings this week:

• Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
• Finance and Administration Committee
• Spokane Housing Authority Board
• Spokane Valley City Council 
• Central Valley School District Board of Directors
• East Valley School District Board of Directors

Spokane City 

Spokane City Council

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Spokane Arts persists

After back and forth about the future of Spokane Arts (is it getting absorbed into the city? Is it staying independent?), the Spokane City Council is set to pass a stop-gap agreement with the organization for $919,632 in the consent agenda. That agreement would run through December 31, 2027, which would keep Spokane Arts independent and running arts programming paid for by city dollars set aside from the Admissions tax, as mandated by the city charter.

No more rental price fixing

After a deferral last week, council will have a first read on an ordinance to ban landlords and property management companies from using algorithmic price-fixing software to raise rental rates and manipulate the market.

A 2024 report from the federal government found that this kind of software can cost renters an average of $70 per month in additional rent expenses. Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown recently filed a lawsuit against one of the software companies, called RealPage, alleging the company and the landlords who used it violated the Consumer Protection Act. If passed in Spokane, this could be the latest move in the council’s quest to protect renters in the city. 

There is an amendment submitted by Council Member Zack Zappone, who has spear-headed the legislation, to make some minor tweaks, like adding a new definition for the phrase “nonpublic competitor information,” and making the penalty for violations ironclad: if you do algorithmic price-fixing, the city of Spokane “shall” revoke your business license (which is required to rent most properties) and be ineligible for a new one for five years.

The pavement tax

Spokane City Council is set to vote on an ordinance that would start taxing commercial parking lots across the city. The TLDR is that, if passed, consumers would pay a 6% to 12% tax to park in surface parking lots or parking garages while city-managed street parking, student parking and residential parking would all be exempt from the tax. The tax would then pay for street repair. For the longer explanation on the tax, how it works and what it could accomplish, check out this piece by RANGE Urbanism Columnist Lauren Pangborn. 

Last week, the council passed an amendment which scooched back the effective by date for this tax from January to April 1, 2026, giving parking lot operators a little more runway to get used to the new prices. 

Utility Tax increase

Headed into the final stretch of the race to pass the mid-biennium budget modifications before December 31, the city council is getting a little bit creative when it comes to creating revenue. The first revenue stream proposed is above (the parking lot tax). The second revenue stream on the table is a half percent raise on utility taxes and rates for the next year proposed by the council as an alternative to even more cuts. It’s a more regressive tax, hitting the pocketbooks of the poorest utility payers harder, but the council is arguing that it’s necessary and there are credits available to seniors, disabled people and the lowest users of water. For more information on how much your bill might go up if this is passed tomorrow, check out this reporting from The Spokesman. 

A Big ‘Ole B

Yup, that’s right — it’s the council’s self-imposed early deadline to pass their mid-biennium budget modifications, which is shaking out to be a pretty high intensity activity as the overall economic downturn caused revenue projections to be a bit too rosy and resulted in a $13 million budget deficit. 

A quick refresher on how budgeting works in Spokane: The Mayor proposes a budget to the council. There are negotiations and workshops where the council can propose modifications. Any modifications at this point would have to be approved by a simple majority vote of the council before they actually alter the mayor’s budget. Then, the council can vote to approve or deny the budget.

The council is trying to pass the budget today, because newly elected Council Member Kate Telis, who is replacing the appointed Shelby Lambdin, will be sworn in on Tuesday (November 25), which means negotiations could start anew and set the process back if a budget isn’t passed tonight. 

Most of Mayor Lisa Brown’s budget seems to be amenable to the council, although they’re seeking to create additional revenue through the above two items instead of solely cutting. However, there’s a lot of disagreement on what to do about the last $2 million-ish of funding to cut.

There are two different amendments to the budget up for a vote today. The first, submitted by Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Council Member Paul Dillon, would do a few things:

• Primarily, it reduces cuts to the council office proposed by Brown from $370,000 to $270,000 and directs $71,000 of those cuts to come from non-personnel costs. Dillon said the personnel cuts would primarily be absorbed by a hiring freeze for a position that’s about to be vacated. 

• It also directs $500,000 to Spokane Public Libraries, who started a late-in-the-game campaign to get the city to increase their budget allocation by 15%, a hefty raise during a midbiennium budget modification that is intended to be more for minor tweaks than overhauls. Still, after a public outreach campaign, Dillon and Wilkerson are proposing the cool half mil be added to Brown’s plan to serve as “bridge funding,” to get the library through until 2026, when a new two-year budgeting cycle begins.

• One consequence of the new laws heightening enforcement against visibly homeless people (and state laws setting caseload standards) — the city needs a whole new public defender to defend unhoused people who picked up charges for sleeping outside. $100,000 for that is included in the Wilkerson/Dillon amendment. 

The second amendment, proposed by Zappone and Council Member Kitty Klitzke, differs mostly on one key point — and it’s kind of giving DOGE:

• While Dillon and Wilkerson wanted to curb proposed staff cuts to the council office, Zappone and Klitzke are proposing additional cuts on top of Brown’s, stripping a total of $570,000 from council. About $100,000 of that would come from miscellaneous buckets, like council security or travel, but the rest would come from a mass lay-off of staff, who Klitzke said at a recent budget meeting they could explore replacing with contract project employees and interns for less money.

• The extra $300,000 that would be cut from the council office would be directed to the libraries, giving them a total of $800,000.

• Zappone and Klitzke also include the $100,000 for the new public defender to take on cases generated by the increased criminalization of visible homelessness.

Which version of the budget is up for a vote tonight will depend on which amendment (if either) gets passed at the 3:30 pm Agenda Review session, which does not take public comment. The Wilkerson/Dillon amendment will require four votes to pass. The Zappone/Klitzke amendment is more interesting — because emails show it was technically filed just minutes after the noon deadline (outside the letter of the rule though clearly within the spirit of it), it could require a rules suspension, which needs five votes.

Right now, it’s unclear if either faction has enough votes to pass their budget amendment. Lambdin seemed to be more in alignment with the Zappone/Klitzke amendment at last week’s budget meeting — though she voiced wanting to compromise on the staff cuts instead of adding more — which leaves the two conservatives on the council as the swing votes. 

Council Member Michael Cathcart has expressed wanting to see more staff cuts from the mayor’s side, whose staffing is staying budget-neutral, instead of expecting that solely of the council. He’s also proposed solutions like a travel embargo without special council approval. Council Member Jonathan Bingle remained silent in the last meeting, though seemed opposed to staff cuts in a budget meeting two weeks ago. It will require at least one, if not both, men’s votes to pass either amendment. 

Agenda here
Monday, November 24 at 6 pm
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall 
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here. 

Finance and Administration Committee

🌶️/5 peppers

The agenda for this meeting is pretty light, and not much stands out as far as heavy legislative lifts (which makes sense as we’re nearing the end of the year) but one thing stuck out to us:

The Year of the Co-op

Council will be discussing a non-binding resolution, proposed by Dillon, which will declare 2025 to be “The Year of the Cooperative,” and commit the city to exploring “all options to support the development and resilience of local cooperative businesses.”

Putting some bias front and center here, but we think this is pretty rad, for two reasons.

First, if you didn’t know it already, RANGE is cooperatively owned — we’re actually part of the larger Spokane Workers Cooperative, which includes Great Harvest Bakery and Treatment Creative. We love legislation that celebrates an economic model that puts the power back in the people, because when businesses are owned by people and not billionaires, we get to collectively decide to do cool things, like devote a week to creating a map of food resources in our region, or starting a free Food for Friends program. 

The other reason we think this is cool is that it’s the second (yes, second!!!) piece of legislation to come out of our annual Politicrawl, where we bring local politicians, journalists and civically-curious people together at bars across the city. One of the attendees, Emily from Inland Cooperative Services, pitched a few of the electeds on cooperative support, even bringing a draft of legislation to hand out. 

If there’s one thing we love more than worker-ownership, it’s seeing people engage with the political system out in the wild!

Agenda here 
Monday, November 24 at 12 pm
Council Chambers in the Lower Level of City Hall.
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Housing Authority Board

​​🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Monday, November 24 at 3:30 pm
Meeting Room 25 W. Nora Ave, Spokane, WA 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Valley City Council

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

$1.5 mil budget deficit

The city council is hosting its final public hearing on Spokane Valley’s 2026 budget, which includes $148,412,534 in appropriated funds. That amounts to $1.5 million more than the city will earn in revenue. The largest areas of spending are in building projects, much of which will be covered by grants from the federal and state governments. Another area of emphasis is on a new sales tax, which is projected to bring in $2.6 million to bulk up the Spokane Valley Police Department. The general fund of $68,467,487 is 7% larger than last year’s budget.

Holiday retail theft worries may amount to overtime for cops

The city may approve additional overtime for Spokane Valley police over the holidays to combat retail theft. Last year, Spokane County and the Spokane Police Department dedicated $300,000 to solving and fighting such crimes. Some data suggest retail theft does increase in the month of December and is driven in part by financial hardship, heavier foot traffic and easier access to goods that are out on display.

$50K more for housing-related expenses in behavioral health response 

The city council will vote on an additional $50,000 to an existing contract with Frontier Behavioral Health to pay for expenses for people who accept inpatient treatment. $20,000 of that would be allocated to paying for animal boarding fees for the 25% of people who, at the time they are contacted by behavioral health, are responsible for pets.

Agenda here
Tuesday, November 25 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.

School Boards

Central Valley School District Board of Directors

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Monday, November 24 at 6 pm
Learning and Teaching Center (district office) 
Board Room at 2218 N Molter Rd, Liberty Lake
Watch via Zoom here.

East Valley School District Board of Directors

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Tuesday, November 25 at 6 pm
EVSD Administration Office
3830 N Sullivan Rd, Bldg 1
Spokane Valley, WA 99216