New City contract latest in Spokane’s scrap with SCRAPS

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:

After years of fighting about allegedly unnecessary euthanasias, Spokane City could approve a new animal control contract with SCRAPS.

The city council electeds are gearing up for the annual seat shuffle and will discuss a first draft of their 2026 board and committee appointments at the Public Infrastructure, Environment and Sustainability Committee. These appointments will tell you which representatives you should bug for specific issues.

The Spokane Public Library Board of Trustees will discuss how much to pay the Library Director.

A new budget, legislative priorities and chair person for 2026 could all be approved at the Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors.

The county commission will accept nearly $1 million in state funding to pay for the management of solid waste.

Important meetings this week:

Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
Public Infrastructure, Environment, and Sustainability Committee
Spokane Public Library Board of Trustees
Board of County Commissioners – Briefing Session and Legislative Session
Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors
Spokane Airport Board
Spokane Valley City Council
Spokane School District Board of Directors

Spokane City

Spokane City Council

🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

PFAS lawyers

The city has been paying an outside legal firm to consult and give advice on their legal responsibilities regarding the Spokane International Airport and its role in the West Plains PFAS contamination. The contamination issue — and who is on the hook to deal with it — is obviously still ongoing, so council is set to approve an additional $100,000 to the legal contract, bringing the total spent so far to $150,000.

The Year of the Co-op

Council will be voting on a non-binding resolution, sponsored by Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Council Member Paul 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 our 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 with 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 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!

Agreements with the county

Council is set to approve new interlocal agreements with Spokane County that will dictate animal services and emergency services.

The first is a new contract with Spokane Regional Animal Protection Services (SCRAPS), which the city has been at odds with since news broke about 14 euthanasias in one day, which some employees said were needless. The controversy continued with a whistleblower former employee accusing SCRAPS of euthanizing a dog she wanted to adopt as retaliation. There were also regional discussions about governance and accountability, with electeds from Spokane and Spokane Valley — who contract with the county for services — taking issue with the lack of board oversight and transparency from SCRAPS. Most recently, there was a back-and-forth over whether or not Spokane city could have a say in the hiring of a new SCRAPS director after former director Jesse Ferrari resigned.

The city explored their options, and it looks like they’re choosing to stick it out with SCRAPS, likely because of budget limitations. However, the new contract does address some of their concerns. The new SCRAPS director will provide a monthly performance and service report to increase transparency, and on the euthanasia front, no euthanasia will be performed without the express approval of that director. SCRAPS will agree to “take all reasonable steps to avoid euthanasia of animals due to lack of physical capacity in its facility.” If an animal that originated within Spokane city limits is set to be euthanized due to lack of capacity, SCRAPS will give the city three days’ notice and the opportunity for the city to transfer the animal to “an alternative location.”

If the city disagrees with the county’s euthanasia practices, the contract states, there will be a mediation process to look for mutually agreeable solutions. If none can be found, the city can terminate the contract.

The other county contract up for a vote is a contract regarding Spokane Regional Emergency Communications, but there’s no additional info. Apparently, “The documents relating to OPR 2025-0877 were not available at the time of packet creation/distribution.”

Agenda here
Monday, December 15 at 6 pm
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane City Council Study Sessions

Agenda here when available.
Thursday, December 18 at 11 am
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Public Infrastructure, Environment, and Sustainability Committee

🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

The committee shuffle

Every December and January, Spokane City Council has to make a few big decisions that determine the power balance for the next year, like: who gets to chair the committees? Who is the Council President’s second-in-command? Who do we send to the external committees? Who gets to be in which council workgroups? At today’s committee meeting, they’re planning to discuss their first draft of the list, which can be found in full on page 169 of the agenda. Here are a few of the key points we noticed:

Dillon is set to stay as Wilkerson’s council pro-tempore — her second-in-command. Last year, there was a lot of last-minute kerfuffle on the dais over who got the job, so when this goes up for a vote we’ll be keeping an eye on that.

Council Member Michael Cathcart — the lone conservative on the board who has already launched a 2026 bid for County Auditor — has been shut out of all committee chairships and vice chairships. It’s a bit of a snub, since he’s the most senior member of the council. Meanwhile, freshman Kate Telis has been given chairship of the Public Safety & Community Health Committee in this first draft.

For our transit riders out there, here’s the lowdown on who will be representing you at the various transportation boards and commissions. Over at the Spokane Transit Authority (STA), seats are slated to go to council members Zack Zappone, Kitty Klitzke, Cathcart and Sarah Dixit. For the Spokane Regional Transportation Commission (SRTC), Klitzke will be joined by Telis, who is replacing outgoing Council Member Jonathan Bingle. Dixit, Telis and Zappone will all serve as liaisons to the Spokane City Transportation Commission.

For fans of the parks, the libraries and the arts, your reps will likely be Wilkerson to the Parks Board, Telis to the Library Board and Dixit to the Spokane Arts Board.

Internally, workgroups have to be kept to less than three members to avoid breaking quorum rules, so these spots are a bit exclusive. If this first draft passes, Wilkerson, Dillon and Zappone will be on the budget workgroup for 2026; Wilkerson Dillon and Klitzke on the Council Office Operations workgroup; and Dillon, Dixit and Klitzke on the Legislative Committee, which helps advocate in state legislature for council priorities.

Overall, the appointment leaderboard is topped by Wilkerson with 15, Zappone with 11 and Dixit with 10. When you go district by district, District 3 has the most appointments with 19, District 1 with 18 and District 2 with 17.

When this list is finalized and voted on, which won’t be until January, we’ll keep you posted on the final list — after all, it tells you which council members you should call about which issues!

Agenda here
Monday, December 15 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 Public Library Board of Trustees

🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Low info, high stakes?

As per usual, the library agendas don’t come with a packet of additional info, so we just get the headline of the items up for a discussion. There are a few big ones: Planning for a 2026 marketing campaign, discussing Vision 2030 and discussing compensation for the Library Director — which could be particularly interesting as any change in executive compensation could tip the scales in one way or the other for the library’s precarious budget.

Agenda here
Tuesday, December 16 at 4:30 pm
Shadle Park Library
2111 W. Wellesley Ave, Spokane, WA, 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane County

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🌶️/5 peppers

$852K in state funding for solid waste management

The local and state governments spend a lot of money managing the things we throw away — paper, food, plastic, poop. So Spokane County gets a lot of state funding to dispose of those things in an environmentally sustainable way. The county will receive $852,000 from the Department of Ecology to take care of this waste and it will have to pay $284,000 from its enterprise fund to take care of the remaining cost.

Nearly $2.3M in housing funds on table for Gray, Elk fire victims

Spokane County is looking to allocate $2,298,240 from community development block grants to house victims of the 2023 Oregon and Gray Road wildfires that destroyed hundreds of buildings and killed a person.

Agenda here
Tuesday, December 16 at 9 am
Public Works Building Lower Level, Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane, WA 99260
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Legislative Session

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Board appointments

The county plans to appoint the following people to boards and commissions:

Clinton Branz to the Spokane County Fair & Expo Center Advisory Board as an At-Large representative
Jessica Hanson to the Spokane County Library District Board of Trustees
Wayne Brokaw to the Spokane County Fair & Expo Center Advisory Board as the District No. 5 representative

More than $1M in county spending for Axon

Spokane County is considering more than $3 million in contracts with Axon, the law enforcement technology provider for law enforcement agencies, to provide IT services to the sheriff’s office. This is the same company that provides body-worn cameras and TASERs to the sheriffs department.

Agenda here
Tuesday, December 16 at 2 pm
Public Works Building Lower Level, Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane, WA 99260
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors

🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Planning for 2026

STA is looking past the holidays and into the new year with a few big 2026 items on their agenda. This week, they’re set to pass the 2026 budget, decide on their lobbying priorities for the 2026 State Legislative session — which mostly includes funding asks for projects like the Division Street Bus Rapid Transit and high performance transit infrastructure for the Valley — and electing a new board chair person.

While duking it out for a board chair position sounds like it could be dramatic, it’s really not over at STA. Their board bylaws set a rotating chairship schedule, which means we know that this year the position is going to be a representative from the surrounding small cities and towns. And, because which small city and town representative gets to actually vote on the board also rotates, we know that the chair person is going to be whoever Medical Lake sends to STA.

The bigger fights will come later, in the new year, after each jurisdiction sends their representatives to the board and they have to battle for committee appointments.

Agenda here
Thursday, December 18 at 1:30 pm
STA Boardroom
1230 W Boone Avenue, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Airport Board

🫑/5 peppers

Legislative priorities

There are no details in the agenda sheet, but the board will discuss state and federal legislative priorities for the next year. Aside from normal operating expenses, one of the most important priorities for the airport is the “forever chemicals” contamination it found in campus groundwater in 2017, which the Department of Ecology found it liable for cleaning up in 2023. The agenda sheet doesn’t say anything about this.

Agenda here.
Thursday, December 18 at 9 am
Airport Event Center
9211 W. McFarlane Road, Spokane, WA 99224
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Valley City Council

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Tuesday, December 16 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, WA 99206
Virtual attendance here.

Spokane School District Board of Directors

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Wednesday, December 17 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201The meeting is also live streamed here.