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: 

• The city of Spokane is revisiting an ordinance that would ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from arresting people without a warrant, this time as a regular measure instead of an emergency one, meaning it has a better chance of becoming law.
• The city’s Finance and Administration Committee will discuss some financial bad-news-bears, like increased insurance costs and the empty fund intended to pay the city’s jail bills with the county. They also discuss new equity subcommittee members and the potential of moving the regular Monday council meetings to a different day.
• Spokane County has established a long-awaited task force to address ‘forever chemicals’ contamination on the West Plains, and it will host its first meeting Wednesday night.

Important meetings this week:

• Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
• Finance and Administration Committee
• Spokane Housing Authority Board
• Spokane Public Facilities District Board
• Mead School District Board of Directors
• Central Valley School District Board of Directors
• Spokane School District Board of Directors
• Board of County Commissioners – Briefing Session and Legislative Session
• Spokane Valley City Council 

Inaugural PFAS task force meeting

Eight years after officials at Fairchild Air Force Base disclosed to local, state and federal governments that it had discovered potentially toxic chemicals in West Plains drinking water, Spokane County will convene a task force to advise those governments on clean-up and water provision efforts. The county has worked for more than a year to establish the task force, which represents the first concerted action at the county level to solve the crisis. Its members include representatives of local city and county governments and West Plains well owners who’ve been subject to the contaminated water for years. The first meeting will take place Wednesday and is scheduled to feature discussions with the taskforce’s co-chairs, Spokane Regional Health District Health Officer Frank Velazquez and County Commissioner Al French. No public comment will be taken at the first meeting.

Wednesday, August 27 at 6 pm
Sheriff Training Center 
13033 W Medical Lake Road 
Spokane, WA 99224
The meeting will be live streamed here. 

Property tax Q&A with county treasurer

If there’s a truism about property taxes, it’s that they tend to increase. No one likes it, but the revenue they generate contributes meaningfully to our lives as the most important source of money for better public schools, fire prevention and public spaces like parks and libraries. Spokane County Treasurer Mike Volz will answer questions about these functions this week at the North Spokane Library. Find more information here.

Tuesday, August 26 at 6 pm
North Spokane Public Library
44 East Hawthorne Road

Spokane City 

Spokane City Council

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Last week was a week of first reads; this one is the week for votes on two big ordinances!

ICE out the streets

The ordinance to ban ICE from conducting warrantless arrests at ticketed street festivals in the public right-of-way is back, and finally up for another vote. This time, it’s not an emergency ordinance, which means it only needs a simple majority to pass. Council President Betsy Wilkerson and council members Michael Cathcart and Jonathan Bingle voted against it in June, so new Council Member Shelby Lambdin could be the deciding vote — although Wilkerson signalled she was open to potentially passing it as a regular ordinance with more time for public input. Still, it’s too late to protect Tacos y Tequila, which was indefinitely postponed due to community concerns that ICE might show up. 

Community Workforce Agreements

The first policy is a Community Workforce Agreement ordinance, which would ensure that taxpayer dollars for city projects benefit local laborers. We covered it in depth here.

Next week’s sneak peek:

• Next week’s meeting is cancelled for Labor Day!

Agenda here
Monday, August 25 at 6 pm
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall 
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here. 

Council Committees

Finance and Administration Committee

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Out of money for jail

As reporting from Spokane Public Radio revealed earlier this month, the city’s Criminal Justice Assistance Fund (CJA) — which pays Spokane’s bill for beds in the county jail — is out of money, which has led to two month’s worth of unpaid jail bills. 

For background, the fund was established in the early 2000s with the city’s share of the county’s imposed criminal justice sales tax  for “criminal justice purposes.” That language is vague, but at first, it was really only spent on the city’s share of jail operational costs. Over time, though, expenses for the Spokane Police Department (SPD) started to dip into the fund, including for their regular contract with police tech company Axon (which makes things like TASERs and body cameras). In 2021, the state passed a “fiscal flexibility” bill which allowed then-mayor Nadine Woodward to dip into the fund for homelessness costs in 2022 and 2023, which used up most of the fund’s balance.

Now, jail costs have jumped significantly and the fund is too drained to pay for them. According to the agenda sheet from CFO Matt Boston, “the fund’s cash balance has reached insolvency,” and the monthly deposit of the city’s county sales tax share is no longer enough to pay the monthly jail bill from the county. 

According to reporting from SPR, in 2021, the city paid about $4 million to use about 10% of the county’s jail beds, and in 2024, the yearly bill jumped to almost $7.5 million for about 14% of beds.

To pay our jail bills in 2025, the city needs to dip into the General Fund, and likely for the foreseeable future, as our sales tax no longer covers the rising costs of the monthly bill for the county jail. 

Making matters worse, SPD needs to take another $2 million out of the CJA fund because their extra duty costs went over budget (maybe from the sheer amount of officers sent to respond to nonviolent protests?) In the same special budget ordinance (SBO), they also want to use the city’s new Community Safety Tax to buy four motorcycles and one passenger vehicle to upgrade the existing fleet. 

The SBO up for discussion in committee is a one-time solution, but doesn’t answer the question of long-term solvency to pay our jail bills, so we’re curious what the council plans to do. 

Spending too much on insurance claims

The city has overspent its 2025 budget for insurance claims by over $1.5 million. This budget fund covers worker’s comp claims, unemployment claims — which are up because of lay-offs — and risk claims, which are lawsuits like anti-queer worship pastor Sean Feucht’s suit against the city or police violence claims. While insurance pays for a large portion of the costs to fight or settle these suits, the city is still on the hook for a portion of it, and increased risk claims have contributed to the budget over-run.

In order to fill the gap and pay out worker’s comp and unemployment claims in time to meet the legal requirements, the mayor’s administration is requesting a one-time pull from the reserve fund of $1,550,000. 

New meeting day?

Dedicated RANGE readers may remember a bit of a kerfuffle over the council rules for 2025. One of the issues on the table was a proposal to change council meeting days to Tuesday. Proponents argued that it would lead to less cancellations (because of Monday holidays like Labor Day) and better synchronization with the school system for council members with kids. 

Opponents argued that it wasn’t fair to change the date mid-council cycle when people ran for office thinking the meetings were Monday — Bingle has a regular Tuesday conflict he can’t move. The compromise they all came to was that it wouldn’t change for this year, but they passed a resolution stating their intent to consider changing the regular meeting date beginning in 2026, which would give time for public input and for council members to decide if a potential date change would impact running for reelection.

Now, the discussion on dates is back on the table. There’s no official pitch yet for whether meetings should stay on Monday, move to Tuesday or do something else entirely, but we imagine there will be lively debate about this starting at today’s committee. This is also your reminder that committees now take public comment, so if you have strong opinions on council meeting day, it’s not too late to go and speak.

Equity Subcommittee appointments

Whatever’s happening at the national level, Spokane city is working to hold to its equity commitments. That includes the meeting of the equity subcommittee, which advises the city on equity measures, and provides feedback on proposed new legislation. Folks’ terms on the subcommittee are expiring, so today the council will discuss appointments. Here’s the proposal for who will be on the subcommittee this year:

• John Alder, reappointed for a second 3-year term
• Sarah Dixit — Spokane City Council District 1 candidate, reappointed for a second 3-year term
• Kianna McKenna, reappointed for a second 3-year term
• KJ January, reappointed for a second 3-year term
• Patricia Castaneda, appointed for a first term
• Sebastian Ruiz, appointed for a first term
• Naghmana Sherazi, appointed for a first term
• Luke Kobin, appointed for a first term
• Tyler Tamoush — who is working on the campaign for the other City Council District 1 candidate, incumbent Jonathan Bingle — has one more year on the committee and will be up for reappointment next year.
• Wendy Schatz has one more year on the committee and will be up for reappointment next year.

Traffic Calming funding

Last week, the council committee got a presentation on the new community process to decide which traffic calming projects get city funding in the next round. This week, the committee is discussing just how much money from the Safe Streets for All fund they plan to spend on the next slate of projects. Here’s the pitch:

• $5 million in total 
• No less than $300,000 on adaptive traffic calming strategies, which are creative, cheaper solutions that will be installed in 2026
• No less than $3.8 million on projects for the 27 by 2027 bike network

Agenda here 
Monday, August 25 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.

MISC City

Spokane Housing Authority Board

​​🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Monday, August 25 at 3:30 pm
Meeting Room 25 W. Nora Ave, Spokane, WA 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Public Facilities District

?/5 peppers

Agenda here when available
Wednesday, August 27 at 12:30 pm
Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena Board Room
720 W Mallon Ave, Spokane, WA 99201
Virtual attendance here.

Spokane County

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here 
Tuesday, August 26 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

School resource deputies for SpoCo districts

The county is set to reup its agreements with local school districts to supply them with school resource deputies. These officers are sheriff deputies assigned to enforce district rules, investigate crimes, work as counselors, train students and school employees on school safety and create safe campuses, along with other duties. Each district pays the county more than $70,000 per deputy per year for this service. Though intended to create safer school environments, similar programs have been criticized by some think tanks and advocacy organizations for unnecessarily heightening disciplinary cultures at schools and, in some cases, discriminating against students of color and other underrepresented groups.

Here are the Spokane County school districts with contracts up for renewal:

• Deer Park
• Central Valley (two deputies) 
• East Valley
• West Valley
• Freeman
• Liberty
• Mead (two deputies)
• Medical Lake

$5M for road preservation

The BOCC will vote to accept more than $5 million from the Spokane Regional Transportation Council for three road-impovement projects:

• Preservation of Aero Road
• Preservation of Staley Road
• Realignment of the intersection of Craig and Thorpe roads

Agenda here 
Tuesday, August 26 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.

School Boards

Mead School District Board of Directors

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Monday, August 25 at 6 p.m.
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

For CVSD meeting followers used to the regular flow of agenda items about transgender students, you can take a breather this week: the board is taking a break from that to do important school business, like hearing a budget report, getting a report on a bilingual instruction program and approving extracurricular travel expenses for students. 

Agenda here
Monday, August 25 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

Agenda here 
Wednesday, August 27 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Other Cities

Spokane Valley City Council

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Potential state funding for affordable housing connections

Spokane Valley city staff are asking the council to approve applications for new state-level funding to build utility connections for affordable housing projects. The agenda sheet says such funding encourages developers to create more affordable housing to alleviate homelessness. Funding would be allocated to projects being carried out by Habitat for Humanity and Spokane Neighborhood Action Partners. 

Agenda here
Tuesday, August 26 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206Virtual attendance here.