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. And, something new this week: the pepper meter!
The pepper meter was suggested to us by a RANGE-head as a way of communicating how spicy a meeting or agenda item is going to be. We’ve been testing it out on Twitter, and people seem to find it fun, so we decided to bring it to CIVICS. Here’s the gist: we’ll give each meeting a ranking out of five 🌶️s. Five is the spiciest a meeting can be, think protests and extremely controversial agenda items. One is the least spicy, like a night where the only things on the agenda are consent items. We’ll signify half a pepper with the bell pepper emoji 🫑. Of course, these are just estimates, and sometimes even we get surprised at meetings, but we hope the ranking system will help you decide how to allocate your limited amounts of time, energy and advocacy.
Some things that stick out to us this week include:
- Rental notification ordinance could require a 180-day notice before any rent increases
- Continuing a contract with Salvation Army for Trent Shelter
- An ordinance to define what a city council emergency really is
- Liberty Lake will discuss changing how the city’s library is funded
Important meetings this week:
- Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
- Finance and Administration Committee (Spokane city)
- Board of County Commissioners – Briefing Session and Legislative Session
- Liberty Lake City Council
- Spokane Valley City Council
- Central Valley School District Board of Directors
- Spokane School District Board of Directors
- Parking Advisory Committee
- Plan Commission
- Spokane Regional Health District Board
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Grant for East Central community building
The city received a $130,000 grant from Smart Growth America to partner with the East Central community along the 5th Avenue area. The funding is intended to “address the historical and ongoing harms from I-90 and current development of US 395,” both of which caused the displacement of people from historically Black neighborhoods. The grant acceptance is in the consent agenda, and lists some of the scope of work under the grant as:
- Subarea planning in the 5th Avenue area
- Starting an effort to return surplus lands alongside I-90 in East Central to the community
- Creating space for the community to give their vision for their neighborhood, which will guide the subarea planning and surplus land use
As part of the grant, the city will have to provide a report on how the money was used to further these aims by May 31, 2025.
More funding for SFD opioid response
The city has a little over $2 million available in funding that it received from settlements in litigation against opioid manufacturers. That funding will be received in chunks over 17 years, and is intended to be spent on opioid use prevention and care. The Brown administration has proposed using $500,000 of the available $2 million to expand Spokane Fire Department’s CARES program, which sends social workers on certain calls to help connect individuals in need with deeper care, and another $500,000 to the creation of a “high utilizer/complex care initiative.”
Details on the complex care initiative are slim, but if the Special Budget Ordinance passes tonight, SFD’s CARES program will add two classified Mental Health Coordinator positions — up from zero — and a Social Response Manager position, bringing them to two total social response managers.
SFD told RANGE earlier this year that they saw greater success in connecting patients experiencing overdoses with resources and further care past just naloxone administration and revival when CARES team members were able to go on calls with them.
Housing Action Subcommittee appointments
Somewhere between 40 and 41 people could be appointed to the Housing Action Subcommittee, which the mayor’s administration is trying to get back off the ground. The discrepancy in numbers comes from two separate lists of appointments. The set of 41 names is in the original resolution, submitted by Council Members Kitty Klitzke, Jonathan Bingle and Zack Zappone. Council Member Lili Navarrete has filed an amendment with 40 names, striking Paul Kropp from the appointments. Not much information is publicly available about Kropp, although he did endorse Klitzke in a letter to the editor published in the Spokesman Review back in 2023. At least as recently as 2023, he was also Chair of the Community Assembly Liaison Committee.
Tax committee back on the agenda
In early April, we wrote about the revival of the Lodging Tax and Advisory Committee, which decides what to do with the funds collected by the lodging tax from the rental of hotels, motels and Airbnbs. The agenda item was deferred indefinitely at the April 8 meeting, but is back on the agenda for tonight with an amendment from Zappone.
The Zappone amendment would completely replace the old ordinance with a shorter, simplified version that mostly clarifies membership requirements. The major change we noticed: the original did not list city residence as a condition of voting membership, but under Zappone’s amendment, all members of the committee would have to reside in or within fifty miles of the city limits of Spokane and must have an in-person work role within the city of Spokane.
Ready, set, rental notification!
At tonight’s city council meeting, we’ll hear the first read of an ordinance submitted by Council Member Paul Dillon, which would require landlords to give tenants a minimum of 180 days notice before any rent increases, with a vote on the ordinance likely to occur at next week’s meeting.
While the submitted ordinance lists that 180 day notice for any rent increase, there is a submitted amendment from both Dillon and Council President Betsy Wilkerson that is likely to pass in the briefing session prior to the meeting that would add a bit more nuance. This amendment would require:
- 120 days written notice for any rent increase of 3% or below
- 180 days written notice for any rent increase greater than 3%
30 days written notice of any rent increase for subsidized housing where the rent amount is based on the tenant’s income or other “circumstances specific to the subsidized household.”
Because subsidized housing rent prices are already controlled by income level or other need factors as determined by each specific program, the ordinance will not seek to increase the notification period.
The ordinance, whether the amendment is passed or not, would also require all written notices of rent increase to be specific, listing the percentage of the rent increase, the amount of the new rent and the date it would go into effect.
This is just a first read, so we could continue to see amendments and edits, but we anticipate discussion of this to get a ‘lil spicy, following in the footsteps of the landlord/tenant ordinance from last spring.
What is an “emergency”?
Spokane City Council is going to tell us! There’s a first read of an ordinance submitted by Council Member Michael Cathcart that would define what an emergency is, at least in the context of governing legislation. It would outline a process for the council to appropriately use non-budget emergency ordinances — this means it wouldn’t impact the passage of the emergency Special Budget Ordinances.
Emergency ordinances don’t require the same period of public notification and go into effect immediately after passage and signing from the mayor. If Cathcart’s new ordinance passes, it would clarify that an emergency ordinance can only be adopted if:
- There is evidence of an imminent threat that could result in significant harm to the public health, safety or welfare of the citizens of Spokane
- The situation is sudden, unexpected and requires immediate action to prevent or mitigate the threat
- The normal course of legislative procedures of the city council cannot timely address the threat without causing or exacerbating harm to the community
- A citizens’ referendum delaying the effective date of the ordinance will be detrimental to the public health, safety or welfare.
A previous draft of this ordinance required all emergency ordinances to pass with unanimous approval, but that language has since been revised to require approval from a supermajority (five votes).
Earlier this year, RANGE heard concerns from both veteran council members Cathcart and Bingle and freshman council members Kitty Klitzke and Paul Dillon that, at times, the council had rushed to pass emergency ordinances when it wasn’t necessary, or in a way that silenced community voices. Though it won’t be up for a vote until next week at the earliest, ordinance could be the first step in codifying the process to ensure those rush votes only happen when absolutely necessary, protecting the rights of citizens to give input.
Agenda here
Monday, April 22 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, April 25 at 11 am
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
Postponing the Parks Levy?
After pushing the planned $225 million, 20-year parks levy from the February special election ballot back to the August ballot, the Spokane City Council is set to discuss a proposal to postpone it once again — this time, until the November 5 general election. The levy was intended to secure funding for new parks, new playgrounds and new rangers and maintenance workers to attend to them, as well as improvements in some of the existing parks. With the recent unveiling of Mayor Lisa Brown’s pitch for a $192.5 million public safety levy to be placed on the August ballot, it seems funding for parks may be getting deprioritized. Some council members have expressed concern that with the passage of the $7.6 million library levy in February and the potential public safety levy on the ballot in August, people will simply have no more room in their property tax pocketbooks for parks.
The resolution, submitted by Zappone and Dillon, will have to pass committee and then be approved at a regular legislative session meeting, or the parks levy will stay on the August ballot. The mayor’s public safety levy will also need to be approved by the city council,in order to appear on the August ballot, and has yet to come before the council for a vote.
More money to Salvation Army
After a lengthy saga involving canceled Requests for Proposals (RFP), cost conversations and the resignation of a key housing official in the Neighborhood, Housing and Human Services (NHHS) division, the Spokane City Council voted in December to approve a four-month contract extension with The Salvation Army to operate the Trent Shelter — the city’s largest homeless shelter. That contract, which is slated to finish at the end of April, came with an amendment that allowed the city to cancel the contract any time and go with another operator.
As that contract comes to its end though, Dawn Kinder, the new director of NHHS who replaced Kim McCollim, is proposing a one-month contract extension with The Salvation Army to continue operating the shelter for up to 250 guests, at a rate of $700,000 a month. The contract would run for the entirety of May. With the current contract expiring soon, council will have to move quickly to ensure operations continue at the Trent Shelter; there are only two meetings left before May — tonight, and next Monday.
It’s unclear if the city is planning to issue a new RFP for a different operator going forward, or wind down the shelter entirely, an option city officials have told RANGE is probably in the cards for 2024.
ARPA clawbacks coming?
In late March, we previewed the potential for a fight over the remaining roughly $9.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds left to be allocated. City council had a published plan and process to spend down the rest of the funds, while Mayor Brown released a plan of her own that caught some council members by surprise. The council has continued to chug along in their process, which included a dot exercise to further delineate priorities.
However, it looks like Brown’s administration is continuing to push for some of those remaining funds to be spent on her plan. Matt Boston, Brown’s chief financial officer who was formerly the council’s budget advisor, submitted a Special Budget Ordinance (SBO) — sponsored by Zappone, Wilkerson and Cathcart — recommending some clawbacks.
It’s unclear exactly how much will be reallocated from council priorities to the mayor’s priorities. The description of the agenda item states that “it is the recommendation of Administration staff on each of the ARPA working groups to pull back $9.45 million in ARPA allocation,” which is the entirety of the funding. It also lists reallocation recommendations that are exactly what Brown listed in her press release. However, the SBO itself leaves the numbers to be clawed back blank and subject to council substitutions. The council gets the final say on how these ARPA funds will be spent (although whatever they decide does ultimately have to be signed by the mayor), so we will continue to follow the jockeying over what to do with money, which has to be contracted before the end of the year, or given back to the federal government.
Agenda here
Monday, April 22 at 1:15 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.
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Millions to address opioid crisis
Like other local boards we’ve written about recently, including the Liberty Lake and Spokane city councils, the BOCC will also vote to accept a settlement from a lawsuit against opioid distributor Janssen Pharmaceutical, more commonly known as Johnson & Johnson. The one-time payment is estimated to be almost $3.5 million dollars, which is intended to be spent on “opioid remediation,” which is defined as care, treatment and other programs that address the misuse of opioid products and mitigate the effects of the ongoing opioid crisis.
Traffic safety campaign
The county received a $15,000 grant from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. In the briefing session agenda is a proposal from the Spokane County Target Zero Task Force on how to spend it: installing wraps featuring traffic safety messages for 17 signal boxes across the county. The wraps will feature “simple messages” and images of people modeling traffic safety behaviors. With an increased eye on traffic safety due to an uptick in accidents and community activism to draw attention to them, this could be the county’s next step to address harm. While public art is nice and could be impactful, we anticipate hearing calls for “physical infrastructure installation,” like bollards and bike lanes, which has become a rallying cry for pedestrian and traffic safety advocates at other local meetings.
Agenda here
Tuesday, April 23 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
PCBs settlement
Spokane County previously received almost $4 million from a class action lawsuit settlement against the Monsanto Company for its contribution of PCBs — harmful chemicals — that got into county water via the company’s product widely known as Round-Up. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, the county is eligible to file an additional claim, which it must do before April 28. Tomorrow, the county will vote on whether or not to file the additional claim for $5.1 million, which would fund street sweepers, vactor (sewer cleaning) trucks — which clean the sewage water — and other stormwater outfall removals.
Agenda here
Tuesday, April 23 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.
Liberty Lake City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Liberty Lake library funding
After conversations in March, the Liberty Lake City Council finally has a budget proposal for how to fund the library. Instead of continuing to use a set percentage of property tax — a policy some of the more conservative members of the council took issue with back in the fall of 2023 — the council could instead decide to simply “appropriate funds annually for the operation and maintenance of the Liberty Lake Public Library.” This would put more power in the hands of the council, as opposed to the previous policy, which guaranteed a set percentage of taxpayer dollars going to the library each year.
On Tuesday, they will hold the first read of this new policy, which received approval from the Library Board of Trustees on April 10. The policy received a unanimous stamp of approval from the library board, but we still think this is something worth keeping an eye on, as the council has continued to establish more control over the library, and nationally, finances have been used as leverage to force censorship.
Agenda here
Tuesday, April 23 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Valley City Council
🌶️/5 peppers
For once, we didn’t notice much of interest up for a vote at the Spokane Valley City Council meeting!
Agenda here
Tuesday, April 23 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.
Central Valley School District Board of Directors
🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
More convo on “local control”
The concept of local control and how to advocate for more of that via policies at the Washington State School Directors’ Association (WSSDA) level are back on the agenda. WSSDA is the state organization of school board directors, which votes on position statements that are then used to advocate to the state legislature and make policy recommendations statewide. Part of their process to determine those position statements is to allow school boards across the state to propose statements which are then voted on at the annual WSSDA meeting.
Earlier this month, CVSD Director Cindy McMullen attended a WSSDA meeting to review policy positions submitted by local school boards that had been voted down by the body, with the intent of getting more information on why they weren’t approved so they could be edited and submitted again. According to McMullen’s report, CVSD’s last policy position on local control was voted down for two reasons: people feared it could be used to force WSSDA to support unconstitutional legislation, and there wasn’t enough clarity on what the phrase “local school board control,” actually meant.
With that feedback in mind, McMullen has drafted a new policy position that seeks to address those concerns, reading, “WSSDA will actively advocate for legislation that retains or protects the responsibility of the local school board for the final authority for the setting of policies ensuring the quality in the content and extent of its educational program, provided that the legislation does not violate the Constitutions of the United States or the State of Washington.”
The board will discuss this potential revision at tonight’s meeting, deciding whether or not to submit the new policy to WSSDA for a vote.
Student immunization policy up for review
The school board keeps their agendas pretty brief, but their existing policy on student immunizations and life-threatening health conditions is slated to receive its “first touch” of review and suggested updates from the board. Conversations around how the Central Valley School District should handle COVID-19 were some of the most hot button issues in the November school board elections, so while there’s not much detail eluding to any potential edits on the agenda, we expect there could be some debate around editing the current immunization policy.
Agenda here
Monday, April 22 at 6 p.m.
Learning and Teaching Center (district office)
Board Room at 2218 N Molter Rd, Liberty Lake
Watch via Zoom here.
Spokane School District Board of Directors
🌶️/5 peppers
Agenda here
Wednesday, April 24 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Regional Health District Board
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Sliding fee scale for treatment
This is already a very long CIVICS, so we’ll keep this last meeting brief short. Two of the items up for a vote look interesting. The SRHD Board will be discussing the adoption of an SRHD Risk Management Plan and the adoption of a sliding fee schedule policy for treatment services. We have no other details, but if either of those things sound interesting to you, you can attend the meeting yourself or check out Documenters notes from the meeting later this week.
Agenda here
Thursday, April 25 at 12:30 p.m.
Spokane Regional Health District
1101 West College Avenue
Auditorium, First Floor
Spokane Parking Advisory Committee
Agenda here (once posted)
Tuesday, April 23 at 2:30 p.m.
City Hall Lobby, Tribal Council Room
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd
Spokane Plan Commission
Agenda here
Wednesday, April 24 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
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