One step closer to addressing Spokane’s opioid crisis

Welcome to CIVICS, where we break down the week’s municipal meetings throughout the Inland Northwest, so you can get informed, be involved and speak out about the issues you care about.  

Some things that stick out to us this week: 

• Spokane City Council could pass a resolution to address the fentanyl and opiate crisis in Spokane. Spoiler alert — a large part of that plan is better data collection. 
• At the Finance and Administration committee meeting, the Spokane City Council will discuss exactly what constitutes an emergency, clarifying their emergency ordinance process.
• The Spokane Plan Commission is getting their steps in by doing a walking tour of Hillyard to review the parts of the neighborhood up for improvement. 

Important meetings this week:

• Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
• Finance and Administration Committee (Spokane)
• Board of County Commissioners – Briefing Session and Legislative Session
• Spokane Valley City Council 
• Spokane Housing Authority Board
• Mead School District Board of Directors
• Central Valley School District Board of Directors
• Parking Advisory Committee (Spokane)
• Plan Commission (Spokane)
• Spokane Regional Health District Board
• Spokane Airport Board

Housing Affordability Panel

This Wednesday, Gonzaga University will be hosting a panel on housing affordability. The panel includes Matthew Anderson, a professor at Eastern Washington University, who recently wrote this piece on homelessness policy for RANGE, Dawn Kinder, the Neighborhood, Housing and Human Services director, a data asset manager from King County and a representative from Catholic Charities Eastern Washington. The panel is free and open to the public, but requires an RSVP, which you can do here.

Wednesday, March 27 from 6 – 7:30 pm
Gonzaga University, Jepson Center, Wolff Auditorium
RSVP now. 

Femme Fair

Planned Parenthood is hosting a resource fair in honor of Women’s History Month. All women are welcome, and will be able to enjoy light refreshments, get signed up for Apple Health insurance, connect with local organizations working to uplift women, as well as build their own free reproductive healthcare kits with condoms, dental dams, emergency contraception and more.

Saturday, March 30 from 11:30 am – 2 pm
Lunarium
1925 N Monroe St. Ste A
Spokane, WA 99205

Spokane City Council

Encampment clean-up

An $845,000 agreement with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to clean up homeless encampments on WSDOT properties is in the consent agenda this week. 

According to a press release from the Brown administration last Thursday, the city has traditionally borne the full costs of these cleanup efforts, but the city secured $400,000 in funding from WSDOT to reimburse the city through 2025, and WSDOT is pursuing an additional $440,000, which would almost entirely cover the costs of the item in tonight’s consent agenda.

This agreement could be part of the Brown administration’s recent efforts to beautify the city before Expo ‘74, a point illustrated by closure of the Place of Truths plaza for cleaning and the press release from the administration sent out this morning that announced the city will be receiving an estimated $4 million in funding — in addition to $2 million we had previously received, and the $400,000 from last week — for encampment cleaning. 

Cleaner streets sound nice, but what this actually means for unhoused people living on the streets — especially as the city has reduced shelter capacity and has no money for emergency beds — is still up in the air. 

More affordable housing

Also in the consent agenda is a list of projects applying for the Multiple Family Housing Property Tax Exemption, which, as the name suggests, encourages the construction of multiple family housing. More than 200 units split between seven developments are up for construction under this most recent batch of projects applying for the tax exemption, the most notable of which is 44 units at the Garland Apartments, the building scheduled to go up in the Garland District behind the historic Garland Theater. 

Sexual assault settlement

In 2022, former Spokane Police Department Officer Nathan Nash was convicted of assaulting rape victims whose original assault cases he was supposed to be investigating. Tatyanna Presnell was one of the women who testified against Nash, who was sentenced to more than 14 years in prison. 

According to reporting from The Spokesman Review, concerns had been raised about Nash’s responses to previous domestic violence situations under police investigation, and he frequently gave out his personal phone number to crime victims. In today’s agenda, the city council intends to approve a $300,000 settlement for Presnell, who filed a suit against Spokane in September of 2022, citing the city’s failure to follow up on multiple complaints and concerns about Nash’s prior behavior. 

Fully funded tree cover!

This week’s agenda has some good news for the folks asking for more tree cover in their neighborhoods; the city’s Urban Forestry Department was awarded a $6 million federal grant to plant and maintain trees in economically disadvantaged areas. The first $2 million of that is getting appropriated via a Special Budget Ordinance tonight. The program needs one full-time employee to manage, but otherwise, all funding will be used to keep an up-to-date inventory on street trees, remove dead trees, prune existing trees, plant new trees and educate neighborhoods on the care of those new trees. The lower South Hill, downtown and Northeast Spokane are the first neighborhoods on the list to start receiving trees, but it’s unclear exactly what the timeline is. 

Overdose crisis resolution

Tonight, the city could pass a resolution, authored by freshman Council Member Paul Dillon, adopting a plan to address the fentanyl and opiate overdose crisis in the city. The resolution does a few things, like asking Governor Jay Inslee to declare a statewide emergency, which would free up some resources and funding, and asking Washington State Legislature to partner with Inslee to “rapidly reassess a response to this crisis,” though those requests are non-binding. 

The resolution also has a strong focus on accurate data collection and sharing, which has been a consistent topic of conversation in the opening weeks of 2024. It asks the Washington Department of Health (DOH) to classify fentanyl overdoses as a notifiable condition, which, if the DOH did, would require the Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) to keep and share more up-to-date, actionable data on overdoses (SRHD’s publicly available overdose data is currently only up-to-date through the end of 2022). The resolution puts more pressure on SRHD by also specifically asking them to provide more real-time overdose data, citing the King County dashboard as an example for how it could be done. 

It also asks Mayor Lisa Brown to require the Spokane Fire Department and SPD to provide reports on overdose calls, asks shelters to provide voluntary reports of Naloxone usage, and states that all this data will be made publicly accessible at the council’s monthly Public Safety Committee meetings.

Finally, if passed, it would commit the city council to setting up an Opioid Overdose Town Hall meeting to “engage community members, providers, and local leaders to encourage and facilitate a meaningful conversation on ways to decrease the number of fentanyl and opioid overdoses in the City of Spokane.”

There is also a proposed amendment to this resolution submitted by Council Member Jonathan Bingle, which would request that the Washington State Legislature amend RCW 71.5 — also known as Ricky’s Law — to state that documented usage of Naloxone on a patient indicates that the individual is a danger to themself, and therefore eligible to be involuntarily committed and given addiction treatment. We expect this amendment to be pretty controversial, but it would not be the first time a city council has made this request of the state legislature.

Agenda here
Monday, March 25 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, March 28 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

City Council could go paperless

Nestled in the sheets of the digital agenda for the Finance and Administration Committee meeting is a resolution penned by Council Member Michael Cathcart that, if passed, would commit the City Council to completely transitioning to a paperless system by 2027. It would also ask for voluntary commitments from the mayor and each individual council member to reduce their personal usage by 90%. Cathcart cited enhanced efficiency, cost savings and improved constituent services as reasons for the potential transition. The resolution also said that this move would show the city’s “commitment to innovation, fiscal responsibility and environmental stewardship.” There will be discussion on this resolution during the committee, and if it passes the committee, could be up at the regular legislative meetings for a vote in the next two or three weeks. 

Ordinance on emergency ordinances

Last week, the city council held a special legislative session on Thursday, in place of their usual study session, where they approved a contract with Jewels Helping Hands that had been deferred from Monday’s consent agenda, and a resolution asking the Spokane Transit Authority to go fare-free for the month of Expo ‘74 and committing city ARPA funds to financially supporting that move. Cathcart, who joined virtually, said it was a move by the progressives “in the dark of night,” to fast-track the process without input from the public or the council members in the conservative minority. 

This was just the latest installment in an ongoing council debate about what constitutes an emergency. Classifying an ordinance as an emergency allows the City Council to circumvent the usual process and timeline that includes committee discussion and multiple opportunities to hear public comment. Conservative minority members Cathcart and Bingle, and, to a lesser extent, the process-oriented freshman council member Kitty Klitzke, have been speaking publicly at meetings about the need for the council to outline a clear delineation of what constitutes an emergency so things aren’t rushed through. 

This week, an “Ordinance on Emergency Ordinances” is slated for 10 minutes of discussion at the Finance Administration Committee, led by Cathcart, who chairs the committee. The paperwork in the agenda is missing the normal cover sheet and only includes the text of the ordinance, so it isn’t clear which council members are sponsoring it, but there are some particularly noteworthy line items in this first stab at the process. 

If an emergency ordinance is to be adopted by the council, it must include detailed findings that show:

• 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

Maybe most notable, this ordinance on emergency ordinances includes a clause that states that in order for an emergency ordinance to be passed, it must be approved unanimously, with at least five of the seven council members present. This move would give power back to Cathcart and Bingle, who are unable to overcome the current progressive supermajority. We anticipate this discussion today will be a lively one. 

Director of housing department

Since Jenn Cerecedes left at the end of the summer in 2023, the director of Community, Housing and Human Services (CHHS) department position has been vacant. The city’s homeless services departments — CHHS, and the Neighborhood, Housing and Human Services (NHHS) Department which sits over CHHS — saw high rates of staff turnover during the administration of former Mayor Nadine Woodward, an issue Brown has said she wants to remedy. 

Earlier this year, she appointed Dawn Kinder as the director of the NHHS department, and now she has a candidate in mind to appoint as director of the CHHS department — Arielle Anderson, who previously worked as the Director of Housing Assistance for the Spokane Housing Authority. The council will discuss Brown’s appointment of Anderson at today’s committee meeting, and if it goes well, her approval could end up on the legislative session agenda as early as tonight, if the council votes to suspend the rules and add the appointment during the Briefing Session. 

ARPA Updates

Scheduled for 40 minutes of discussion is an update on five projects the city is currently in contract with to spend American Rescue Act Plan (ARPA) funds on. Those ARPA funds need to be spent down by the end of the year, or the federal government will take them back, so 2024 is going to be a race to get all funding contracted out. The projects on the list for discussion and progress updates at today’s committee meeting are:

• a Pre-Apprenticeship Program with The Inland Northwest Associated General Contractors
• a Down Payment Assistance Program with Numerica Credit Union
• an Employment Support of the Arts program with Spokane Arts
• a Childcare program with Community-Minded Enterprises
• a Higher Education program with LaunchNW

It’s unclear if this discussion will be anything more than project updates on things currently contracted, but we anticipate as 2024 progresses, there could be increasingly heated conversations on how to spend down the city’s remaining ARPA funds, especially as Mayor Brown released a proposal this weekend on how to spend about $9 million of the funds. 

Agenda here
Monday, March 25 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

Agenda here 
Tuesday, March 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

The BOCC will vote whether to approve a $2.2 million bid by JR Construction to renovate Liberty Lake Regional Park, including building a new entrance to the park and regrading the existing gravel lot at the trailheads and access to the beach areas. 

Agenda here 
Tuesday, March 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.

Spokane Valley City Council

Public safety resolution

The city council will vote on a resolution, introduced by freshman Council Member Jessica Yaeger, to “continue to support and uphold the rule of law and take all necessary measures to prevent the infiltration of illegal drugs and related activities into our city.” The resolution dwells on Washington’s overdose crisis and says “the City supports border integrity and all measures that reduce and stop the influx of fentanyl, opioids and other illegal drugs into the United States, Washington state and the City of Spokane Valley.” 

New planning commish appointee?

After Spokane Valley Planning Commissioner Val Dimitrov resigned in January 2024, Mayor Pam Haley has nominated Michael Kelly, CFO of KT Contracting, to replace Dimitrov. The city council will vote on Kelly’s appointment Tuesday night. The nomination comes a couple of months after the council appointed three new members from a pool of eight applicants to the Planning Commission on its regular schedule. 

Kelly was not one the original eight applicants to the commission. There was one other applicant for the vacated position, Matthew Hurd, who was one the original applicants.

That position will be for a term of almost two years from March 26, 2024 through December 31, 2025. 

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

Spokane Housing Authority Board

Public hearing on revised plan

The Spokane Housing Authority (SHA) board is holding a public hearing on their revised “Moving To Work Administrative Plan,” this afternoon. SHA has been designated as a Moving to Work Demonstration Program agency, which will allow it to design and test innovative housing strategies for low-income families, while using assistance received from the United State Housing Act of 1937. The 114-page plan is a hefty read full of acronyms — don’t worry though, it comes with a guide to the acronyms at the top of the plan — and changes have been marked by purple underlined text and yellow highlighted text. The main changes we noticed were to the inspection process of units, which seemed to get streamlined and clarified in this plan. 

Public comments on the plan can be given in person at the public hearing today. A full copy of the plan with proposed revision can be viewed here.

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

Mead School District Board of Directors

Agenda here
Monday, March 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

Agenda here
Monday, March 25 at 6:30 p.m.
Learning and Teaching Center (district office) 
Board Room at 2218 N Molter Rd, Liberty Lake
Watch via Zoom here.

Spokane Parking Advisory Committee 

Agenda here (once posted) 
Tuesday, March 26 at 2:30 p.m.
City Hall Lobby, Tribal Council Room 
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd

Spokane Plan Commission

Special Meeting

The Plan Commission is holding a special meeting to review the Hillyard Subarea Plan, which seeks to “propose a series of revitalization and funding strategies to address the prolonged housing needs, infrastructure deficiencies, improve the quality of life, increase economic opportunity, and place brownfields and other underutilized properties back into productive use.” 

The project also seeks to prevent displacement of existing residents and businesses as this area improves over time. Like the Town Hall meeting of the Spokane City Council last week, this meeting will be held in the basement of the Northeast Community Center. It will begin as normal with a briefing session for the Plan Commission, but will be followed by a presentation of the Hillyard Subarea Plan and a walking and driving tour of the areas discussed in the plan. 

Members of the public are welcome and invited to attend, but check the specific list in the agenda for clarification on when public discussion is allowed. Route maps are also included in the agenda. 

Agenda here 
Wednesday, March 27 at 2 pm
Northeast Community Center
Lower Level Main Room, 4001 N. Cook St.
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Regional Health District Board

Rescinding a previous decision

On June 29, 2023, the Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) board unanimously made a decision on how to digitize the large amount of records from the Treatment Services Division, which were stored in lots of filing cabinets at the time. The discussion was quick — starting at one hour and 25 minutes into this recording — and they all agreed: option one was the best choice. 

Because of how the SRHD board digitizes their own records of meetings, we can’t easily find the agenda for that meeting, which might have included a more detailed description of what exactly option one entailed, only a three-page set of meeting minutes that show how the body voted. This decision didn’t appear to be particularly controversial back in June, but the lone action item for this week’s SRHD board meeting is to rescind the previous decision about what to do about those records. Of course, the SRHD board agendas are equally as thin as the meeting minutes for June 29, so we can’t tell you why that previous decision may be rescinded.

Still no Tribal Communities appointment

As we reported earlier this month, the only position vacant on the SRHD board is a position representing Tribal Communities. Despite another candidate for the position being submitted by the American Indian Health Commission earlier this month, it looks like that position is going to remain vacant for at least another month. 

Agenda here 
Thursday, March 28 at 12:30 p.m.
Auditorium, First Floor
Spokane Regional Health District
1101 West College Avenue

Spokane Airport Board

Agenda here.
Thursday, March 28 at 9 am
Airport Event Center
9211 W. McFarlane Road, Spokane, WA 99224 
The meeting is also live streamed here.