Sheriff, you can’t spend all your behavioral health money on more cops

Welcome to CIVICS, where we break down the week’s municipal meetings throughout the Inland Northwest, so you can keep track of and fight for the issues you care about. 

Here are highlights of what’s coming up:

• This afternoon, you can make your voice heard on the Spokane Transit Authority’s 5-year transit development plan with a public engagement opportunity at the Plaza.
• The Spokane City Council is having a District 2 Town Hall tonight, so there’s going to be a different venue and format than usual.
• The city’s Urban Experience Committee has a few big items up for discussion: an ordinance to require the Human Rights Commission to weigh in on legislation related to human rights, an ordinance to streamline the process for holding street festivals and a presentation on the future of Spokane Arts.
• The Spokane County Planning Commission will discuss several urgent issues as it complies with new state requirements re: racial disparities in housing, climate change and environmental impact.
• Spokane County will need to revise its budget for its planned behavioral health unit to make it actually focus on responding to behavioral health crises by deploying health professionals rather than cops.

Important meetings this week:

• Spokane City Council
• Urban Experience Committee
• Spokane City Climate Resilience and Sustainability Board 
• Spokane Plan Commission
• Spokane Regional Transportation Council
• Mead School District Board of Directors
• Central Valley School District Board of Directors
• Spokane School District Board of Directors
• Spokane Valley City Council
• Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing & Legislative Session
• Spokane County Planning Commission

Shape the future of transit

If you have a free afternoon and a desire to help shape the Spokane Transit Authority’s (STA) 2026 to 2031 Transit Development Plan, you can join staff at the STA Plaza (701 W Riverside Ave)  from 2:30 to 5:30 pm to learn more about the plan and offer feedback and thoughts on the future of transit. More information here.

Spokane City Council

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Today’s meeting is a District 2 Town Hall, held at the MLK Jr. Community Center (500 S. Stone St., Multi-Purpose Room). There will be discussion on how the city’s 311 number works and an overview of the process for appointing a new council member to temporarily fill Council Member Lili Navarrete’s soon-to-be vacant seat until after the November election. Then, there will be time for discussion and questions from the community, with priority given to residents of the district. Unlike traditional meetings, council and key city staff will be able to answer questions, provide context and address criticism, so these meetings can actually be pretty interesting and informative. 

Next week’s sneak peek:

• Council will vote on spending an additional $100,000 to fight a lawsuit against the city from Sean Feucht, a Christian worship pastor who brought former legislator and alleged domestic terrorist Matt Shea on stage with former Mayor Nadine Woodward in 2023. This would bring the total amount spent fighting the lawsuit to $200,000.
• They could also vote to approve an additional $100,000 to fight a lawsuit from former Spokane firefighters who claimed their rights were violated when they were fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine. This would bring the total spent on fighting that lawsuit to $385,000.
• In another lawsuit-related item, council could also approve a $53,000 settlement with Roxann McNaughton for “an incident,” in February, 2025. There aren’t any details on what the “incident,” was (and we couldn’t find anything with a quick Google), but it’s a pretty quick turnaround for a settlement. 
• Mayor Lisa Brown’s homeless ordinances are up for a vote next week. One of those ordinances — which would make camping or obstructing public right-of-way illegal citywide, but give people up to seven days to stop camping in that spot — was pretty universally panned: by homeless rights’ advocates for being too harsh and by business owners for being not harsh enough.
• The ordinance to ban cryptocurrency kiosks throughout the city is also up for a vote next week. 
• Council will do a first read of the ordinance which would give the Spokane Parks Board or Director the authority to designate sections of the parks as “nonpublic,” for events or other circumstances, making it harder for ICE agents to issue nonjudicial warrants and detain community members. 

Agenda here
Monday, June 9, at 6 pm
808 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here. 

Urban Experience Committee (Spokane city)

🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Human Rights Commission

Up for discussion today is an ordinance from Council Member Jonathan Bingle, which would expand the duties of the Spokane Human Rights Commission “to include automatic review of proposed changes to Title 18 of the Spokane Municipal Code and related provisions.” If passed, it would require the commission to review and comment on any legislation that would regulate discriminatory practices and claims before council could discuss legislation in committee, and before they take final action on the proposed ordinances. 

There are potential pros and cons to this: the biggest pro would be establishing a firm process that requires more input from the public. The biggest downside would be that it could slow down ordinances intended to quickly create protections for people facing discrimination. We also have to wonder if this ordinance is a direct response to the recently-passed ordinance affirming the rights of LGBTQIA2S+ people ordinance, which Bingle was opposed to. He also proposed some pretty transphobic amendments, and it’s unclear if amendments to ordinances would be subject to the same scrutiny from the Spokane Human Rights Commission (since they’re proposed after an ordinance is discussed in committee), or only if they get adopted. 

Festival Streets

Continuing their trend of trying to make the streets more people-friendly, the city is seeking to identify and label the sections of streets that are typically closed for large pedestrian-oriented activities like festivals. Once these streets are identified, they could be labeled as “festival streets,” and be privy to a new, stream-lined closure process with standardized traffic control requirements and potential cost reductions for both event organizers and the City. Basically, the ordinance seeks to make it easier to hold events like Tacos y Tequila, Spokane Pride and Terrain’s Bazaar. 

The full list of street sections up for consideration to be labeled “festival streets,” can be found starting on page 74 of the agenda. 

Spokane Arts report

Spokane Arts, a non-profit arts organization that distributes SAGA grants to artists across the city, has an update presentation scheduled for today’s committee meeting. This will likely be an interesting item, because of Spokane Arts history and potential future. The organization was spun up over a decade ago when former mayor David Condon eliminated the Arts Department from the city budget. Spokane Arts arose from the ashes, funded mostly with the city admissions tax — a small tax charged on event tickets across the city. 

Last year, Mayor Lisa Brown announced she wanted to bring Spokane Arts back into the city as an official arts department — after all, much of their funding comes from city tax. However, that project quietly stalled, as Spokane Arts was given a short-term contract to continue their usual operations as the organization and the mayor’s office laid further plans for what reabsorption could look like. 

Then, a little over a week ago, The Spokesman broke the news that planning efforts were not, well, going according to plan. The Spokane Arts Commission, a board overseeing arts in the city, voted to recommend against moving forward with reabsorption, as did Spokane Arts board, which oversees the nonprofit. Today, Skyler Oberst, the executive director of Spokane Arts, is scheduled to present to the council, and we anticipate some interesting discussion about the future of the organization and the future of Brown’s plan to create an Arts Department within the city.

Agenda here
Monday, June 9 at noon
Council Briefing Center in the Lower Level of City Hall.
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane City Climate Resilience and Sustainability Board 

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers for global warming, 

🌶️/5 peppers for the actual meeting content

Walking tour

The Spokane City Climate Resilience and Sustainability Board is hitting the streets with a walking tour of the city’s CSO 26 Tank located at 930 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard. The group will meet at 3:30 pm at the Spokane City Hall Briefing Center and walk to the Place of Truth Plaza for the tour, which begins at 3:35 pm.

Agenda here
Wednesday, June 11 at 3:30 pm
Council Briefing Center in the Lower Level of City Hall.
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Plan Commission

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

New Complete Streets Ordinance

Spokane’s complete streets ordinance was originally passed in 2011 after years of work by a few familiar faces: then-council member, now Director of Transportation and Sustainability Jon Snyder; then-legislative assistant, now-council member Paul Dillon; and then-organizer, now-council member Kitty Klitzke. 

The original ordinance ensures that whenever the city is tearing up a road, it is rebuilt with all the master-planned bicycle and pedestrian facilities. But it’s kind of old now, so Snyder has been working on an updated version — A Complete-r Streets ordinance, if you will. The final draft of that ordinance will be presented at the Plan Commission this week. It will then start to make its way through the official city council process, so we’ve still got a few weeks before it could be eligible to be signed into law. 

Agenda here 
Wednesday, June 11 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center 
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Regional Transportation Council

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here 
Thursday, June 12 at 1 pm
Spokane Regional Transportation Office
21 W Riverside Ave, Suite 504, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Mead School District Board of Directors

??/5 peppers

Agenda here when available
Thursday, June 12 at 6 pm
Union Event Center
12509 N. Market St. Bldg. D, Mead, WA 99021
Watch via Zoom here.

Central Valley School District Board of Directors

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Monday, June 9 at 6 pm
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

Special meeting: participation opportunity

At a special meeting at 4:30 pm before their regular meeting, the Spokane School District Board of Directors is holding their annual Community Budget Forum. There will be a presentation on budget principles, the general fund and priorities for the upcoming year, with an opportunity to provide public comment on the direction of the budget. 

Agenda here 
Wednesday, June 11 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Valley City Council

🌶️/5 peppers

Budget meeting

Spokane Valley City Council is different this week: it starts at 8:30 am and is a marathon of presentations by city staff on the budgets and economic goals for the next year.

Agenda here
Tuesday, June 10 at 8:30 am
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🌶️/5 peppers

$620K for BHU funding

The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) expects to award Spokane County $620,000 to fund a Behavioral Health Unit (BHU) the county is trying to stand up. A letter sent to the county by WASPC asked for a budget from the county that reflects the amount offered and stressing that “your agency to focus funding efforts on clinicians, rather than deputy positions as you develop your revised budget.” This reflects a focus on having health professionals respond to behavioral health crises and not law enforcement officials.

Agenda here 
Tuesday, June 10 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

$2.5M in state funding for Hatch Road improvements

The Washington Transportation Improvement Board has awarded the county with $2,434,400 for reconstruction of Hatch Road between Ballard Road and Colbert Road. That’s not the entire cost of the project: Spokane County will have to fund sewer improvements, a cost of $200,000 and $515,212 in local funds in a local match for the remainder of the project costs.

Agenda here 
Tuesday, June 10 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 County Planning Commission

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Plan Spokane update

Every decade, counties in the state of Washington are required to update their plans to comply with evolving state law regarding development of county economies. Spokane County is in the thick of this process right now. Part of this is engaging with the public on how it wants the county to develop in the long-term future. The commission will host a workshop on several critical subjects that fit into how the county develops as populations increase and resources must be allocated among more people. The subject will include:

• How to construct environmental impact studies 
• How to address racial disparities in housing, and
• How to address climate change in planning

Agenda here 
Thursday, June 12 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center 
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201The meeting is also live streamed here.