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: 

• Last week, Mayor Lisa Brown declared an emergency in response to the federal SNAP benefit cut and the city’s tightening restrictions on public homelessness. Tonight, the Spokane City Council will vote on whether or not to ratify that declaration, and what restrictions they might put on emergency spending.
• The Finance and Administration Committee is discussing a creative local tax proposal that could put a higher tax burden on commercial surface parking lots, which occupy 30% of land downtown.
• The vast majority of Spokane County’s proposed budget is slated for “public safety,” meaning programs that support the sheriff’s office and other law enforcement.
• The city of Liberty Lake’s proposed budget dedicated $2 million to renovating the library as a new police department. 
• Election Day is TOMORROW!!! Due to postal service delays, it’s too late to mail in, so be sure to get your ballot into a drop box by 8 pm Tuesday. Get all our election coverage here. 

Important meetings this week:

• Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
• Finance and Administration Committee
• Community, Housing, and Human Services Board
• Spokane Human Rights Commission
• Board of County Commissioners – Briefing Session and Legislative Session
• Mead School District Board of Directors
• Spokane School District Board of Directors
• Liberty Lake City Council

Spokane City 

Spokane City Council

🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Firing power to the president

After a deferral, council is finally planning to vote on the ordinance that removes employment protections for city council staff, instead putting the sole hiring and firing authority for most staff in the hands of one person: the council president. (Individual council members will still have power to hire and fire their direct legislative assistants)

Currently, firing a staff member requires a vote of a five-council-member super majority, a protection established by former Council President Breean Beggs to ensure council staff had job security and weren’t subject to the whims of politicians. If the ordinance passes tonight, those protections would be removed, giving the council president more flexibility to make position cuts and reduce spending. But, it would also leave the entire council staff at the whim of just one person, who is up for election every four years, creating uncertainty for the eight non-legislative-assistant employees in the council office and making those jobs less attractive.  

The agenda sheet calls the current staff structure “overly specific and cumbersome,” indicating that staff position cuts (and possibly staff position cuts that wouldn’t have received the five votes necessary under the old language) could be coming soon.

An interesting election note: while this ordinance is co-sponsored by two progressives — Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Council Member Paul Dillon — this sentiment has been championed by conservative city council candidate Christopher Savage, who has been consistently advocating for council to fire some of their own staff to help with the budget crisis. 

SNAP to it

Despite orders from federal judges for the Trump administration to use designated emergency funds to pay out SNAP benefits, the future of the program under the government shutdown is uncertain, leaving 83,000 people in Spokane County alone at risk. 

In response to both the SNAP crisis and Spokane City Council’s recent passage of an ordinance further criminalizing homelessness, Mayor Lisa Brown declared an emergency to free up funds and resources to address the crisis by: funding 50 additional shelter beds, fasttracking eviction prevention contracts and funding mobile, medication-assisted treatment. 

Tonight, the council will have to ratify Brown’s declaration, but it’s not looking like a simple yes/no vote. There are three separate ratification options on the table.

• The first is proposed by Wilkerson and Council Member Michael Cathcart. It would set the end date of the state emergency for December 31, 2025 or when SNAP receives a 6-month federal funding commitment, whichever comes first. Any contract signed by Brown under the state of emergency would need to either expire by March 1, 2026 or come back before council for approval on March 1. It sets a cap on Brown’s spending at $500,000 in general fund sources and $2.5 million in HEART funds, $30,000 of which must be spent on food relief programs.

• Council Member Jonathan Bingle has filed an amendment that calls the declaration “a bald effort by the Mayor to commit nearly $13 million of City funds for non-food related programs without council approval, all under the guise of a purported housing emergency arising from the federal shutdown.” His amendment would limit emergency spending to just $250,000 solely on food relief.

(Note: when talking about emergencies, it is worth pointing out that just last week, Bingle and the rest of the council unanimously declared an emergency to pass the ordinance criminalizing homelessness a week early with no notice to the public.)

• A third amendment has been filed by Dillon that is more closely in line with the original ratification, but gives the mayor the ability to sign longer-running contracts, as long as they expire by December 31, 2026. It would also set a slightly lower cap for her spending though, with $500,000 allowable from the general fund and only $1 million from the HEART fund. It also states that at least $30,000 would have to be spent on food relief. 

We won’t know until agenda review this afternoon which version of the emergency ratification will be up for a vote tonight. Separately, there is also a non-binding resolution on the table from Dillon and Council Member Shelby Lambdin “requesting the restoration of federal funding for low-income food programs,” and making more local calls for relief, including:

• requesting that the Spokane Transit Authority provide free bus access to federal employees and SNAP beneficiaries until the federal shutdown ends and benefits are restored

• Supporting Attorney General Nick Brown’s sign-on to a multi-state lawsuit against the federal government for the shutdown of SNAP

• And commending Governor Bob Ferguson for freeing up $2.2 million in weekly funds to support food security. 

Next week’s sneak peek:

• Council will have a full discussion and vote on the contract to buy two long range acoustical devices (LRADs) for the Spokane Police Department, which was deferred from the consent agenda last week after community pushback.
• There will be a first read of an ordinance to ban landlords and property management companies from using algorithmic price fixing software to price-gouge tenants and disrupt the free market.
• They are also scheduled for first reads on the ordinances setting annual water, sewer and general use charges.

Agenda here
Monday, November 3 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, November 6 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

Pavement to the people, stick it to the man

According to city estimates, around 30% of land downtown Spokane is parking lots. 

That’s a lot of lots, and it’s a lot of lots that could instead be the sites of dense, mixed-use housing construction. While the city council has kicked around the idea of a Land Value Tax (which would tax based on the value of the land, not the development on it, creating tax breaks for density) that wouldn’t be allowed without support from the state legislature. 

So instead, the city is coming forward with an innovative tax plan, spearheaded by Director of Transportation and Sustainability Jon Snyder (who pushed to incentivize converting surface parking to other uses during his term as councilmember over a decade ago) which will set a 12% tax on parking fees charged by commercial businesses. For above and underground parking lots (think Riverfront Square) the tax will only be 6%, since those lots more effectively use space. There are exemptions for residential, student and employee lots. Money collected from this tax will be spent on funding transportation system maintenance and safety improvements across the city. 

More to come on this from our urbanism columnist Lauren as this moves along the pipeline! 

Investments and finances

For those among the RANGE-heads who love financial accountability and getting nose deep in a budget, this might be the meeting to attend: Council will be getting presentations on the city’s investments and the quarter three financial report. This information is crucial as the council and mayor continue biennial budget planning and negotiations. 

ARPA appropriations

If you thought you were done hearing about American Rescue Plan Act funds, so did we! But up for discussion at today’s committee meeting is a proposal to claw back more than $100,000 in extra and unspent ARPA dollars from closed programs to “fund under-budgeted administration [costs] through the 2026 program year.” Those unspent funds are coming from homeless services, affordable housing, the working family tax credit marketing campaign, childcare operations and the Expo 50 celebration.

Agenda here 
Monday, November 3 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.

Community, Housing, and Human Services Board

Agenda here when available
Wednesday, November 5 at 4 pm
City Council Briefing Chambers
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
Virtual attendance link included on their agenda when available.

Spokane Human Rights Commission

🌶️/5 peppers

Racially disparate impacts study

The HRC will hear a presentation on the disproportionate impacts of discriminate zoning and other housing-related policies in Spokane and the surrounding region.

Agenda here when available.
Thursday, November 6 at 5:30 pm
Council Briefing Center in the Lower Level of City Hall.
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201  

Spokane County

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here 
Tuesday, November 4 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

Aquifer protection area fees set at ~$3 million

Last year, Spokane County residents voted to renew the aquifer protection area that generates funds to educate the public about the health of the drinking water source — which serves about half a million people — and protect it from contamination. The BOCC says it will collect about $3 million for those activities each year.

Board appointment

The BOCC is set to reappoint Medical Lake City Council Member and Eastern Washington University geology professor Chad Pritchard to the Spokane County Housing and Community Development Advisory Committee.

Assessor received $5,000 grant to study property value impact of ‘forever chemicals’

The Spokane County Assessor’s office, which determines property values of homes in the county, has received a grant to study the impact of PFAS contamination in private wells on the West Plains. The BOCC is set to vote to accept the money Tuesday. Fairchild Air Force Base and the Spokane International Airport unknowingly contaminated the West Plains aquifers with the mad-made chemicals by conducting firefighting drills with a compound that used them. As a result, many rural drinking water wells between Spokane and Airway Heights have dangerous levels of PFAS, and owners of them worry they won’t be able to sell their properties.

Airport budget does not mention PFAS cleanup

The BOCC is scheduled to vote on the budget for Spokane Airports, the independent body that includes Felt’s Field, Spokane International Airport (SIA) and many infrastructure developments on the West Plains, where SIA is located. In 2023, SIA became liable to clean up years worth of “forever chemicals” it polluted West Plain aquifers with. It’s an expensive stat-mandated process to locate and isolate the man-made compounds, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (commonly shortened to PFAS). The budget presentation does not mention the cleanup.

Budget numbers prioritize sheriff

The BOCC will hear a presentation on the county’s $266.3 million budget, the vast majority of which is dedicated to the category of public safety, meaning the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement agencies.

Agenda here 
Tuesday, November 4 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

Agenda here
Tuesday, November 4 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
The meeting is also live streamed here. 

Mead School District Board of Directors

🌶️/5 peppers

More policy changes

Today’s meeting for the Mead school board is a work session, so there’s not much information in the agenda. They’ll be continuing a discussion on changes to Policy/Procedure 2020, which covers course design and adoption of instructional materials. They’ll also discuss Policy/Procedure 5254 on Staff Expression and Policy/Procedure 3240 on Student Conduct Expectations. 

Agenda here
Monday, November 3 at 6 pm
Union Event Center
12509 N. Market St. Bldg. D, Mead, WA 99021
Watch via Zoom here.

Spokane School District Board of Directors

🌶️/5 peppers

Special Meeting: Legislative sesh coming 

The SPS board will be meeting early to discuss the upcoming legislative session and possible budget cuts that may be coming down the pipe. In the big picture overview, the district’s government relations lobbyist highlights that it will be an election year and that there will likely be cuts of $2 to 3 billion. Regardless, among other things, SPS will be pushing for fully funding Materials, Supplies and Operating Costs with “actual operational costs” and adjustments for inflation. See their legislative agenda here. 

Cell phone and bond updates

At the regular meeting, the board will get an update on the district’s implementation of its new cell phone policy and efforts to promote healthy sleep habits. They’ll also get an update on the bond initiative, which voters will decide on on Tuesday. 

The intent of this agenda item is to provide an update on School Board Priority Strategy #5 (Technology 

Agenda here 
Wednesday, November 5 at 4:30 pm (special meeting) 6 pm (regular meeting)
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.