[Grieg’s “Peer Gynt No. 1, Op.46: Morning” plays] Happy Wednesday, friends!
It’s late February in Spokane, and as a milder than usual winter gives way to what is feeling like an early spring, the mind turns naturally to renewal: What was likely the season’s last real flurry is melting as I type this. The sun is greeting us earlier each morning, and sticking around past 5 in the evenings. The crocuses will soon pop through the blanket of pine needles in our flower beds, and the other spring buds won’t be far behind.
In Spokane, there has been a notable, if cautious, optimism in the air.
Our new mayor, Lisa Brown, is in office and about six weeks into her honeymoon period. People, even downtown business folks, seem generally content with Brown’s first attempts at increasing shelter capacity for the homeless. There’s considerable irritation, as always, over how much and how frequently neighborhoods are getting plowed, but most people (source: Reddit, NextDoor) aren’t blaming her directly, yet.
We also have a city council with members — both newly elected and incumbent — who were carried into office on some pretty respectable vote margins.
And these peoples’ champions got right to work, [hard cut to Grieg’s “Hall of the Mountain King” Metal Version] spending about a quarter of their time in January squabbling with each other and members of the public over new council rules and general decorum during public meetings. Heck of a way to spend your first month in power: hosting a contentious fight about meeting rules that overshadows the actual legislation you’re working on, passing said rules, then quickly suspending your own new rules while you work on revisions.
So much for the fairytale version of this story.
But that’s politics. The things that a candidate promises on the campaign trail aren’t necessarily the things they actually prioritize once in office. Other pressures bubble to the surface. Politicians break promises.
If all it took was voting, we wouldn’t need these council decorum rules at all, right? No, voting for people who promise to make the changes you want is just the first step, not the final step. Now the real work begins: holding our electeds accountable to the people they serve and accountable for the promises they’ve made.
That’s why we write CIVICS every week, and it’s why we’re putting together this package: The Peoples’ Priorities.
Over the course of December and January, we spoke with community leaders, asking them what they and their communities feel are the biggest needs to address in Spokane in 2024. We also spoke with every city elected to see how well their priorities line up.
We’ll drop a total of five of these features in the coming weeks, broken down into broad categories like
- Good governance
- Housing & homelessness
- Crime and public safety
We’ll also have a sort of potpourri edition for other important priorities that don’t fit nicely into one of the categories above, and we’ll round it off with an accountability explainer to ensure our readers have the most effective communication tools all in one place. The whole point is to make it as easy as possible to make sure your voice and the voices of your community are heard.
Always rough when this category has the Daily Double
We didn’t conceive of this package as a gotcha for our leaders (if that were the intent, we’d publish this at the end of the year as a report card, not the beginning as a guide), and as the rules discourse dragged on in January, and some of our sources — including lawmakers — got increasingly frustrated, this project seemed increasingly important.
We sincerely hope these features will help our electeds stay aligned with the needs and desires of the communities they serve, and lead to better and more proactive communication for everyone involved.
So keep an eye out for the next couple weeks as we drop more of these pieces.
Until then, we bid you good luck and good governance.
