When former Spokane City Council Member Jon Snyder left Spokane to serve as Governor Jay Inslee’s first Senior Policy Advisor for Outdoor Recreation and Economic Development in 2016, he said, “I can’t imagine not returning to my hometown at some point in the future.”
The future is now: Snyder is on his way back to Spokane, to fill a brand new Director of Transportation and Sustainability position in Mayor Lisa Brown’s cabinet, and will start in February 2025.
Late this morning, Brown announced a major reshuffle in her cabinet that created the new director position — a victory for urbanists in Spokane who have been pushing the city to focus more on safe, future-minded transportation networks.
Snyder has been in Inslee’s office for nearly 9 years, but during his time on council in Spokane, he was known for biking to council meetings and helped lead the creation of Spokane’s first greenway in 2015. He also pushed for transit expansion citywide and advocated for improvements to transportation facilities for pedestrians, bicyclists and people with disabilities.
Prior to his career in politics, he founded the regional outdoors magazine Out There and pled “guilty as charged” to his reputation as a “bike-riding liberal” though, at the time, also pointed to some “fiscally conservative” ideals.
“I believe setting strategic goals for transportation and sustainability are vital to the future of our city. To achieve these, we are creating a role that will work across departments and align efforts. From my experience, success depends on hiring the right leader and that person is Jon Snyder,” Brown wrote in a statement to RANGE. “He has proven his vision, expertise and ability to collaborate effectively to turn goals into reality. I’m so happy he has decided to bring his talents back to the City of Spokane.”
Q&A with Jon Snyder
How did you end up in this position?
They offered it to me, they’re kind of creating it as a new thing. I guess this will be two times in a row [that] I’m the first person to take a new job; my current position is the same way.
Spokane is one of my favorite places on Planet Earth. It’s my hometown, I grew up there. I still have friends and family there, it’s a wonderful spot. I never ever ruled out the possibility of coming back.
Now to me is a pretty interesting moment with who is in the mayor’s office, who is on the council and some of the things that are going around town — everything from the soccer teams to what’s happening on the West Plains.
What are going to be some of your first priorities in this new role?
Maybe at first glance it doesn’t seem directly connected to all things I’m working on right now, but there is a lot of overlap.
The first thing I think about is traffic safety. As a nation, as a state, we’re going through a time period where we’re in a little bit of a traffic safety crisis, where we’re seeing increased fatalities — especially among people who are biking and walking — and we know there are things that can be done about that. It’s something I worked on a lot out here in Olympia, and you know, the transportation system should be safe for everybody. You shouldn’t have to worry about taking your life in your hands when you use it.
So one of the first things I think about is traffic safety and what we can do there.
One of the first questions I got was ‘Transportation and Sustainability, how does that go together.’ What’s your response to that?
How can you possibly separate them? Greenhouse gas emissions from our transportation system is one of the top, or in some cases, the biggest source of greenhouse gas pollution. That affects the air we breathe, that affects the climate, that affects wildfires. How we get on a road to doing more decarbonization of our transportation is really important to keeping everything we love about our city, about our state. And what a beautiful place it is.
So I think that when you look at transportation, it’s not just streets. It’s an integrated system that includes everything from rail to shareable electric scooters. There’s opportunities to look at that whole system and how we can make it safer and less polluting.
There’s a lot of conflict in between what the city of Spokane wants and needs and is advocating for and what maybe the County Commissioners and representatives from smaller cities and towns around the county say that they want and need. How do you foresee yourself navigating that conflict?
I think it’s very similar to what we sometimes see in Olympia between the state and the federal government, or between the state and counties and other jurisdictions. There’s always overlapping responsibilities and connections. We’ve got to have good processes for communicating, planning and at times resolving disputes.
But, I think there’s a lot more that all parties have to gain from a well-operating, fully functioning, integrated transportation system, so if you keep that goal in mind, a lot of stuff is possible.
Have you been following the conflicts at the Spokane Transit Authority?
No, not real closely, but I mean, the first thing I think of at STA is not conflict. It’s maybe the best mid-sized transit system in America. I mean our ridership is up, we have created this new line — the City Line — the community depends on transportation for employment, education, etc. I do a lot in this job, and I go to places like Boise where they don’t have what Spokane has: they’re a similar size and they’ve just fallen behind.
There’s always going to be conflicts in a publicly governed agency, that just comes with the territory, but the most important thing is that it is a really well-run, highly functioning agency that’s serving its public well.
Can folks expect you to continue biking to City Hall?
Yeah. I don’t have a very bikeable commute right now from Tacoma to Olympia because they cut one of the transit lines that used to be here. But Spokane offers so many different neighborhoods that create good commuting options to downtown so I would be lying if I said that wasn’t appealing to me.
Do you think the 2016 description of you as a “bike-riding liberal” is still an accurate description?
Yeah. That really hasn’t changed. I believe in public action for the public good. We really need to support bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. In my job, in outdoor recreation, those are the two most popular forms of recreation and always will be at the state, but they’re also absolutely critical for transportation. So we need to make sure that we invest and keep people safe and keep it part of a really important integrated system.
Is there anything else you think is important?
I just want to say that I have such deep respect for the employees at the city of Spokane. People talk about doing like a police ride along, but I did a Streets ride along when I was a council member there and went and saw the crack seal work that the Streets Department was doing.
And there’s just a lot of great folks that believe in public service, and I appreciate the mayoral administration is really trying to elevate the ideals of public service and so I look forward to working with all the employees at the city of Spokane.
Importantly for Spokane, which is working to balance the current $14 million budget deficit: despite Snyder’s high profile, the new position won’t cost the city any additional money.
Through some creative reshuffling and the dissolution of the Chief of Staff position she created earlier this year, Brown is keeping all her current cabinet members on staff, filling the remaining vacant positions and keeping her cabinet budget neutral, even with the addition of Snyder.
Councilmember Paul Dillon served as Snyder’s legislative aide, called Snyder a “mentor,” and said Snyder is “a really huge addition to a cabinet in our city.”
“I could not be more excited to work with him,” Dillon said. “With the issues the city has around transportation and all the different moving pieces, he’s going to be someone that can come in with the experience to get good policies implemented.”
The shuffle, in brief, looks like this: Garrett Jones, who was serving as the Interim City Administrator is moving back into his previous role as Director of Parks and Recreation. Alexander Scott, who served in the now-eliminated Chief of Staff role and who previously worked for Brown at the Department of Commerce, is being appointed as the City Administrator to replace Jones.
Lastly, Brown is also making appointments to two positions that were vacant: Allison Adam will fill the Human Resources Director position, and Laz Martinez will be promoted internally to fill the IT Director position left vacant when Mike Sloon retired earlier this year.
By dissolving the Chief of Staff position, in effect replacing it with the new Director of Transportation and Sustainability position, Brown spokesperson Erin Hut said cabinet costs will stay budget neutral, a priority for the administration as it grapples with the budget deficit it inherited.
“With these appointments, my Cabinet is complete,” Mayor Brown said. “Each person brings unique expertise and a shared dedication to making the City of Spokane a better place for all. Together, we’ll tackle challenges and continue building a better future for our community.”
Of course, Adam’s appointment will have to be approved by the Spokane City Council (Jones and Martinez have already been confirmed, and Hut told RANGE Scott and Snyder’s appointments don’t have to go through council because they are “housed in the mayor’s office,”), which we anticipate will show up on agendas in the next few weeks.
Learn more about Snyder from this podcast episode by Spokast!
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include additional comments from Brown and elaborate on which appointments need to be confirmed by the city council. It has also been updated to add the Q&A.
