We’re eight months into 2024 and into the terms of three new council members plus a new mayor. So far we’ve seen some popular ideas surfaced and passed into policy, like the Safe Streets Now! Resolution to commit to low-cost adaptive street design to make Spokane safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. We’ve also seen not-so-popular ideas surfaced, like Mayor Lisa Brown’s Community Safety Levy ballot measure, which got pushed from the August election to November and transformed to a cheaper sales tax.
What do these have in common? In both cases, we saw what happens when many people speak up to influence public officials’ actions.
Council President Betsy Wilkerson cited the “voices of the community” and lack of input and information as the reason the council voted to postpone the levy ballot measure.
So how can we, the people, hold the politicians we elect to office accountable to our collective will?
We spoke to 13 community leaders and every city elected to ask how regular folks can hold their elected officials accountable to the needs of the people beyond voting on election day (though we still all absolutely need to vote). What we found serves as a reminder that more voices can equal more power and can lead to real change.
Talk to your council people
The Spokane City council is made up of seven elected officials. Each person in Spokane has two council members to represent their district (and a council president who represents us all). That’s three people whose job it is to listen to you and your concerns, and try to find solutions.
This might seem obvious, but most council members told us that the most important part of holding leaders accountable is telling them what you want in the first place.
“I don’t know a council member who is not willing to have a conversation with individuals,” District 3 Council Member Zack Zappone said. “If you just email us and call us and say that, ‘Hey, I’d like to have a conversation with you.’ We’re all more than willing to do that and oftentimes that’s where we can really engage … and come up with ideas.”
Find out who your council members are and how to contact them here.
Some council members told us this means making themselves accessible to people where the people are at. District 2 Council Member Paul Dillon, who was first elected in November, said he wants to strike a balance between being in City Hall and being out in the community and he wants to provide more opportunities for people to share their thoughts outside of regular council meetings, like by holding neighborhood town halls.
“That’s really important to me because everybody is the expert of their own experience and I want to listen and hear that and advocate for people,” Dillon said. “And I think oftentimes there is either a culture of ‘We can’t do that,’ or not thinking big enough when it comes to solving a lot of these issues around public safety, around climate, and around gun violence.”
Freshman Council Member Kitty Klitzke, representing District 3, shared similar sentiments, noting that she tries to make sure that she’s up to date on the issues in her district by continuing to interface with the community through town halls.
“I think it’s so helpful to hear from … the kind of people who are willing to show up on a topic, what their priorities are to make sure that what you’re thinking is really what your community is thinking too, not just the people in your circle,” Klitzke said.
Kiana McKenna, policy director at the Pacific Islander Community Association of Washington, said she wants to see more outreach to the communities who face the most barriers in getting access to their representatives.
“I would like to see local electeds engaging communities better — and not the communities that have been traditionally easy to reach, but communities that have been overburdened with having to go out of their way and reach local electeds.”
For those who have faced barriers, other organizers we spoke with said that making electeds listen requires people showing up consistently and demanding to be heard — physically when you can and digitally when you can’t.
Making change happen is a two-way street, Ryann Louie, director of Asians for Collective Liberation (ACL), told us: “It’s not just the city council, it’s the people that live here that also have to influence who is in city council. So I don’t think it’s all up to [the council]. It’s a matter of people stepping up to email, to call, to protest, to testify.”
Testifying at city council meetings became a hot-button topic early this year with hotly debated changes to Open Forum rules, it became contentious because of how impactful addressing your elected officials in public can be. Several electeds at the time made the comment that council rules change every year, so why was this year so much more contentious? Simply put: more people showed up this time.
Over the weeks that the rules were debated, people from different parts of the city and different ideological backgrounds started working together.
“That’s why I value [public forum], because at its heart, there’s so much that can happen when a member of your community that you haven’t heard from talks about what’s impacting them and how city council can help,” community advocate Justice Forral told RANGE. “It gives other people’s ideas, it’s not just talking to city council. It’s talking to everybody at once and saying, ‘It’s important because I care.’”
Which brings us to our next piece of advice:
Get in community
Collective change doesn’t happen overnight, and it almost never happens alone. At the most basic level: how will you know if your neighbors are dealing with the same things you are if you never talk to them? That’s why several community advocates told RANGE that in order to hold officials accountable, it’s important to find — or build — community.
Louie, the organizer from ACL, shared their desire for more Spokanites to simply have more human interaction with people in their communities and not be afraid of new or different experiences. They said ACL is literally a community of Asian folks that are working towards collective liberation, but, Louie added, “that’s for everyone because our liberation is connected … We’re all people of this planet that are sharing all the resources. We’re all impacting each other in one way or another. So we have to act like that.”
Getting in community may be as simple as going to local events. Spokane Community Against Racism (SCAR) has several regular events geared toward making these connections, including a game night and movie screenings.
Getting in community may mean volunteering with a local organization you like. It may mean joining a local book club, craft club or Dungeons and Dragons campaign. If getting out of your home is hard, it can even mean connecting to a locally focused social media, like a Facebook group or the r/Spokane community on Reddit. It can also mean joining a local Discord server — like RANGE’s!) or even a local server dedicated to your favorite online multiplayer game.
This all may just sound like having fun and making friends — and yes: that is essentially what getting in community means. The point is that you’re doing something that gets you talking to people outside of your immediate circle, learning new perspectives, making connections on issues that impact all of us and thinking of solutions together. And when you start doing that, you can start taking action together.
Once you’re ready to act, that’s where Organizing (™) comes in. Organizing is one of those words that sounds like it requires special expertise, but at its core, it’s the act of coming together with a group of people with a common problem to push for change.
Zappone pointed to the organizing efforts of community members who banded together to convince the council to change its original resolution supporting Israel to include Palestinians and anyone experiencing anti-Arab and Islamophobic hate.
“People in the community have power and they have a voice — especially when you use it together,” Zappone said. “So writing, calling in, showing up to testify.”
Some cooperation required
The more we pay attention to national news, the easier it is to assume politics falls perfectly along partisan lines. And for much of the last mayoral administration, it seemed true in Spokane as well: the dynamic between the former mayoral administration and the city council was so contentious that they were usually on opposing sides of any given issue. Council Member Dillon jokingly described the dynamic: “The mayor is like the Scooby-Doo villain: ‘I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you pesky council members!’” (There’s plenty of partisan bickering in other powerful bodies, like the conservative-leaning Spokane County Board of Commissioners as well.)
But the reality is: bipartisanship is relatively easy to come by locally. Our conservative council members and their more progressive counterparts work together all the time. We can think of two examples in the last two weeks: Council Members Jonathan Bingle and Zappone working together to pass an ordinance banning parking minimums (though Bingle was not present for the final vote) and Michael Cathcart and Paul Dillon vetting candidates for Spokane’s new police chief, who was appointed unanimously just yesterday.
As one of the two conservatives on the city council, Bingle told RANGE he believes any partisan divide on the council can be beaten with just “really good, reasonable policy.”
“What’s the common ground that we have and what are the things that we can partner on? Because I’ve actually partnered on policy with every one of my fellow council members and I’m really proud of that and I look forward to doing that again,” Bingle said.
And while on one issue, he could be sparring with another council member, in the next issue, they could be fist-bumping each other in getting something passed.
“I think it’s a really good sign for the city, because people are really looking for cooperation across the aisle,” Bingle said. “They’re really frustrated by a lot of things and as leaders, I think we have a unique opportunity and your responsibility to stand up and do that.”
That’s exactly what Spokane Homeless Coalition Administrator Barry Barfield told RANGE he wants electeds and community leaders of all stripes to do: they need to be willing to move away from just their own corner, he said.
“We need to collaborate. We need to talk to each other. It’s got to start with somebody doing it,” Barfield said.
Reaching across divides also includes coalition-building between organizations that may not share specific purposes or fully align with each other on every topic so they can serve the wider community. Roo Ramos with Spectrum Center told RANGE that as much as organizations can understand and respect their lanes, they still need to show up for each other in different ways, “because we know our voices are more powerful collectively than they are singularly.”
Klitzke believes most partisanship can be avoided entirely, especially if communities are effectively engaged on an issue.
She pointed to the public input process used when advocating for complete streets policy: the Spokane Regional Transportation Council (SRTC) team went out to communities and got their input in shaping the plans at each step and with so much public engagement and discussions it “created a sense of inevitability.” As a result, the policies they were working on became bipartisan and popular.
“I think that’s the way to overcome partisanship,” Klitzke said. “It’s really intentional community engagement when the community understands what the choices are, understands the topic, how it impacts them and is able to give meaningful input and thought out alternatives.”
Join committees and boards
For those with more time to give, we suggest a more advanced accountability technique that is big, often underutilized, and a great opportunity for gaining real power for your community: joining one of our area’s MANY volunteer government committees or boards.
We cover dozens of public municipal meetings every week in CIVICS that are made up of regular people who just applied to the position because they were really interested and were appointed. These boards — from the Bicycle Advisory Board to various Citizen’s Advisory Committees to your local Neighborhood Council — make important recommendations that impact everyone and also serve as an even more direct line to council members. Whatever you care about, there’s probably a committee or board for it, and many of them have a vacancy (or several) to fill.
Klitzke said she sat on a citizen advisory committee for the SRTC for years long before she ran for office and told RANGE that regular people joining these kinds of boards are important.
“Not only does that hold elected officials accountable, but you’re participating in the process,” Klitzke said. “You’re concentrating the kind of feedback that you’re able to give to local governments through your participation.”
And while not everyone can participate that deeply, she said that watching recorded meetings online is another way to stay informed and be able to hold governments accountable.
Of course: this level of participation requires more than time, especially for parents, caregivers and the working poor.
Louie believes if our electeds truly want more citizen involvement, they need to step up to offer solutions to the barriers to participation normal people face: things like meetings being scheduled during work hours and inadequate childcare options.
It’s no wonder representation on these volunteer boards and committees is much more common in older and wealthier communities.
“Institutions ask for participation but don’t meet people where they’re at,” Louie said. “They’re like, ‘Do you want to help shape this or that?’ And it’s like, ‘I do — and I can’t do all of it.”
Power of the Press
It would be remiss of us to write about holding elected officials accountable and not talk about the Fourth Estate.
Even if an elected official refuses to talk to the press (ahem, Al French), it doesn’t get them out of being written about.
And not to toot our own horn, but RANGE’s coverage of issues, like the lack of data on opioid overdose deaths, conditions at the Trent Shelter and getting public input on the next CEO of the Spokane Transit Authority have been the result of people sending us tips and have led to tangible changes made by elected officials and accountability for their actions.
That’s how the Fourth Estate is supposed to work, but we also need your help. Hard-nosed journalism like the kind we like to do also relies on you: we need tips. We need leaks. We need documents.
But don’t take our word for it: “The public has the power of the press too,” Council Member Zappone said, “They can call press conferences and apply pressure to council members and other elected officials.”
What RANGE, The Spokesman and the Inlander write about and what local TV stations cover doesn’t go into a vacuum — it goes onto the internet, where people read about it, get pissed off and contact their elected officials. (And now we’ve come full circle to how we started this article.)
The power of the press is yours to leverage. Learn how to send RANGE news tips here.
In Conclusion
While so much of our civic lives revolve around voting, we only get to vote on who represents us once a year — don’t forget there’s 75 days until the November election! — holding those people accountable is a fun thing you can do with your friends 365 days a year.
And there’s never a better time to start than now.
