Town Hall, tasers, tons of lawn mowers

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: 

• We’re holding another Documenters orientation this week, so if you want to join the putting-things-on-the-public-record-party, now is your chance!
• Spokane City Council is holding its first Town Hall meeting of 2024, which will take place at the Northeast Community Center and make the council meeting look a little different.
• Liberty Lake City Council is circling back around to a discussion on library funding, after a late 2023 vote to establish more control over the library. They’re also buying a LOT of lawn mowers.

Important meetings this week:

• Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
• Public Infrastructure and Environment and Sustainability Committee
• Board of County Commissioners – Briefing Session and Legislative Session
• Liberty Lake City Council
• Spokane Public Library Board of Trustees
• Bicycle Advisory Board
• Spokane School District Board of Directors
• Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors
• Spokane Airport Board Engineering Committee

Documenters training this week

From quiet policy changes on local school boards like in Central Valley to a continued power struggle over decorum rules at the Spokane City Council, our region’s public meetings have been starting the new year off with a bang. Our Documenters program seeks to put meetings like these on the public record for all to access. At RANGE, we love the Inland Northwest and want to make it better — that means sharing vital information from these meetings with more of our community and holding decision-makers accountable. 

If you’re as much of a fan of local meetings, community accessibility to information and civic engagement as we are, we have a virtual training this week where you’ll be able to get trained to become a Spokane Documenter. By becoming a Documenter, you’ll be the eyes and ears in the public rooms where decisions are made. And you’ll get paid to attend the meetings that interest you and take notes that get published online. Some of those notes will even be used to inform or spark stories by local journalists, like the notes taken by a Documenter at a Spokane Regional Health District meeting that sparked our recent story about a position for Tribal Communities that’s been left vacant for years!

Our virtual March training will introduce you to the Spokane Documenters program, starting with a walkthrough of Documenters.org and our assignment workflow. You’ll practice skills relevant to assignments, learn about public meetings law and meet fellow Documenters. Upon completion of this workshop, you’ll be eligible to apply for paid assignments with the Spokane Documenters program. Just make a Documenters account and register here!

Wednesday, March 20 from 6 – 7:30 pm
Set up an account and register for the training here.
Read notes from our current Documenters here.

NAACP Special Town Hall

After racist content was sent out in the Wilson Elementary newsletter, NAACP Spokane will host a town hall this Wednesday to discuss race issues in area schools. The event, which will be hosted at the Central Public Library, can also be streamed digitally here. The town hall will be moderated by Lisa Gardner, NAACP President, and include panelists of school district educators, invited students and a professor from Eastern Washington University’s Africana Studies department. People can submit questions they’d like to hear addressed by panelists to this link. 

Wednesday, March 20 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Central Public Library
906 W. Main Ave
Stream virtually here.

Spokane City Council

Town Hall today!

This week, the Spokane City Council will hold their first Town Hall meeting, a process which was created under the newest slate of rule changes proposed by Council President Betsy Wilkerson and passed on March 4. This meeting will not take place at the normal City Hall location, but at the Northeast Community Center, but the time is staying the same – it will start promptly at 6 pm. 

We aren’t sure exactly what to expect from the very first Town Hall meeting, but there are some outlined format changes. There is time reserved between board and commission appointments and the consent agenda for “Neighborhood Reports.” Though it’s unclear precisely what these reports are, the rules packet says it’s intended to offer a time for council to hear from that district’s residents and neighborhood councils. The amount of speakers who will be allowed to speak during this section is at Wilkerson’s discretion, with preference given to the neighborhood councils of the district where the meeting is held. Because the first of these Town Hall meetings is being held in Northeast Spokane, we expect the conversation about District 1 representation will probably continue. 

The other big change is a commitment to ending the meeting by 8:30 pm. They’re keeping the legislative agenda light, and allowing comments on items like normal, but the agenda does make a special note to say that Open Forum will end early if it hits that 8:30 cut-off, regardless of how many people are left on the speaker list for Open Forum. 

Finally, the meeting will not stream live on City Cable 5 like usual, but it will be recorded for viewing and uploaded to the City Council’s Vimeo page following the meeting. And, we’ll be there live-tweeting for anyone who wants to follow along in live time. 

Consent agenda context

There has been a new section added to the top of the consent agenda to give context about funding. We think it’s pretty useful to remember when thinking about consent agenda items, so we’ve pasted it below: 

The consent agenda consists of purchases and contracts for supplies and services provided to the city, as well as other agreements that arise (such as settlement or union agreements), and weekly claims and payments of previously approved obligations and biweekly payroll claims against the city. Any agreement over $50,000 must be approved by the city council. Typically, the funding to pay for these agreements has already been approved by the city council through the annual budget ordinance, or through a separate special budget ordinance. If the contract requires a new allocation of funds, that fact usually will be indicated in the summary of the contract in the consent agenda.  

Unless a council member requests that an item be considered separately, the council approves the consent agenda as a whole in a single vote. The public is welcome to testify on matters listed in the consent agenda, but individual testimony is limited to three minutes for the entire consent agenda.  

Sheltering through the summer

How to offer cost-effective homelessness sheltering during the midst of a $50 million budget deficit is shaping up to be one of the first big hurdles for Lisa Brown’s new administration. Nestled in the consent agenda is a contract with Jewels Helping Hands (JHH) that seems to be at least a partial proposal. The agreement would guarantee shelter services at the church locations through August 31 — tackling some of the additional emergency need for heat and smoke sheltering — and costing the city a total of either $514,200 total, or, if the amendment from Council Member Zack Zappone passes (which seems likely), $342,000, which is $57,000 a month. 

This is a sharp discount from the Salvation Army’s operations at the Trent Shelter, which is costing the city $3.7 million to operate just for the first four months of 2024. Of course, it’s not a direct comparison, as the Trent Shelter does maintain between 250 and 350 beds, depending on whether it’s flexing up to accommodate emergency capacity, and the contract with JHH doesn’t specify exactly how many beds or even churches will be up for operation, but when JHH initially proposed the scatter-site church model and we did the math, their costs per person were about a third of the cost per person the city was paying the Salvation Army. 

Agenda here
Monday, March 18 at 6 pm
Northeast Community Center 
Lower Level Main Room, 4001 N. Cook St.
The meeting is also live streamed here. 

Spokane City Council Study Sessions

Agenda here when available.
Thursday, March 21 at 11 am
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall 
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Public Infrastructure, Environment and Sustainability Committee

Utility rate discussion

At the end of 2024, the utility rates the city charges residents will expire. The city council needs to decide what the new utility rates will be prior to 2025. They started this discussion at the January meeting of the PIES Committee with Public Works staff with the intent of establishing a rate that would last for two years, from 2025 to the end of 2026, and then focus on setting a rate for four years after that. The council is trying to do these things well in advance as “a way to develop a stable financial planning tool that will be vital for prudent fiscal management and financial sustainability,” according to the agenda. 

At today’s PIES Committee meeting, there are 30 minutes set aside to continue having the discussion on utility rates. There is no clear timeline laid out in the agenda, so it’s unclear when they anticipate having a complete proposal ready for a vote, but if you’re someone who is curious about how these rates get set, this might be a discussion to tune into. 

Potential funding for transportation projects

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has put out a call for projects for two of their programs: the Safe Routes to School program — which has $25 million in funding statewide and seeks to increase the number of kids choosing to walk or bike to school and eliminate all traffic crashes involving kids walking or biking to school — and the Bicycle and Pedestrian Program, which has $23 million in funding statewide and serves all ages and is seeking to eliminate all serious injury and fatal traffic crashes involving bicyclists or pedestrians.  

Spokane is planning to submit projects to both of these calls, which have application due dates at the end of May and the beginning of June, respectively, and will be discussing which Spokane projects meet the application criteria and have the best chances of getting funded. If you’re interested in what kinds of pedestrian and bicyclist safety projects Spokane is kicking around, and finding out which they ultimately decide on submitting to the WSDOT call in hopes of getting state funding, there is a 10 minute discussion scheduled to take place at the PIES Committee.

Agenda here
Monday, March 18 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 19 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

Public Hearing on stormwater code

The county commissioners will hold a public hearing on an ordinance that would amend county code on stormwater management. According to the agenda, the county needs to make these changes to comply with the Phase II Stormwater NPDES Permit from the state department of ecology, which requires “local governments to manage and control stormwater runoff so that it does not pollute downstream waters”. 

More board appointments

The BOCC will vote whether to approve Scott Gordon to the county’s Developmental Disabilities Advisory Board.

The BOCC will vote whether to approve Jason Nazzaro, who serves on Cheney’s City Council, to the county’s Housing and Community Development Advisory Committee.

Agenda here 
Tuesday, March 19 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

Funding for Liberty Lake Library

Late last year, conversations around obscenity and a post-election scheduling quirk that gave conservatives a temporary supermajority that empowered them to pass an ordinance that gave the city council power over the library’s future policy changes, a move local advocates fear will lead to book banning. After a little breather, the Liberty Lake Library is back on the agenda. This time, the council intends to circle back to a conversation that surfaced during debates about the library control ordinance — how much funding should the library get?

Phil Folyer, who was on the council at the time, but was replaced by Linda Ball in the new year, proposed a change in how the council interpreted their property tax policy, which would effectively cut the library’s budget by $50,000 per year. The council decided not to make any budget decisions then — they were discussing and adopting the 2024 annual city budget at the same meetings they were debating the library ordinance — and instead come back to it in the new year, directing staff to evaluate the library’s funding mechanism and bring analysis and recommendations back to the council in the first quarter of the year. This week, they’ll be discussing those staff recommendations at a workshop. No vote is scheduled yet, but we anticipate this will be a conversation worth keeping an eye on as activists feared the previously passed library ordinance and budgeting conversations could be used as a bludgeon to control content in the public library.

Personnel Policy amendments

The city council will be voting on a resolution to amend the personnel policy for all employees of the city. We did a power skim of the entire document and one of the biggest changes we noticed were cutting down the protected categories from discrimination, namely citizenship or immigration status, marital status and HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C status. Language that had previously listed those as categories protected from unlawful discrimination and harassment were also removed. We’re unsure how this works as at least marital status and HIV/AIDs and Hepatitis C status are still listed as protected categories under Washington State law, but maybe we missed something. 

The other big change in the personnel policy was the addition of a “Cameras in the Workplace” section, which states that the city reserves the right to install security cameras in the workplace, and that “employees should not have any expectation of privacy in work-related areas.” 

In more light-hearted news…

Liberty Lake is buying a bunch of lawn mowers and utility vehicles. We had to scroll through dozens of pages with detailed information and pictures of lawn mowers for the purchases, which are listed in the consent agenda. The most expensive lawn mower on the list is a John Deere 1600 Turbo Wide Area Mower, which costs $72,022.96 and looks like this:

New TASERs and body cams for police

The Liberty Lake Police Department is asking the mayor to sign a new contract with AXON to upgrade software and TASERs that can be deployed from further away. A TASER fires small metal darts that stick to a person and deliver an electric current to incapacitate them from a distance. According to the meeting agenda, the department’s current devices only have a maximum effective range of 15 feet away which “does not allow officers to keep a safe distance when faced with a threat,” and they can only deploy two probes per trigger. The new TASER 10 has a maximum range of 40 feet and allows for 10 deployments. To compare, 40 feet is about the length of an average school bus, while 15 is the length of an average car. 

AXON is also the company that makes the city’s police body cameras and records management system, so this contract rolls all that in. 

The new contract comes with new evidence redaction tools that are supposed to make the public records requesting process more efficient as well as allow officers to give people who have video or photo evidence a direct link to upload it into the system. It also comes with new AXON Body 4 body cameras for officers in 2.5 years (at the halfway point of the contract). It will cost $31,566 for the rest of 2024, $76,097 in 2025 and $69,755 for each of the following years.

Agenda here
Tuesday, March 19 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
The meeting is also live streamed here. 

Spokane Public Library Board of Trustees

Agenda here
Tuesday, March 19 at 4:30 pm
Shadle Park Library
2111 W. Wellesley Ave, Spokane, Washington, 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Bicycle Advisory Board

Rambling, roving, rivers and roads

These agendas never have much detail but May is “Bike Everywhere Month,” per the meeting minutes from the last BAB meeting, and the agenda item “May Roving Planning Meeting” will be a planning session for the board’s special roving board meeting, where they bike a specific route through Spokane to see what improvements it needs. To get all the details, you’ll have to attend the meeting, because even the minutes attached afterwards give very little detail. 

Agenda here
Tuesday, March 19 at 6 pm
City Council Briefing Center
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. Spokane, WA 99201 
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane School District Board of Directors

Agenda here 
Wednesday, March 20 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors

Expo ‘74 anniversary

Everyone wants to get in on celebrating the 50th anniversary of Expo ‘74, even the Spokane Transit Authority Board. A couple of uncontroversial celebratory plans from STA include a limited edition Connect Card, which is said to contain “whimsical elements of Expo ‘74, including the famous butterflies and hot air balloons,” and will be available starting May 3rd — the date of the opening ceremony and also Bloomsday weekend. They’ll also be decorating the STA Skybridge. 

The more controversial celebration is the conversation around promotional fare. The way a proposal works through committees at STA is a little complicated, but a pitch to make all fares on Route 11 — the shuttle between downtown and the arena — cost only $0.50 from May 3 through July 7, hit a split vote snag in its first committee. Representatives from the city of Spokane voted no — according to City Council Member Zack Zappone, they wanted fare to be free instead — leading to a tie. The item then moved to the Board Operations Committee, where Zappone cast the lone “no” vote, and will now proceed to the full board for a final vote. Details on the full proposal, which includes some additional details on discounts on Shuttle Park passes, can be found starting on page 40 of the packet. 

Agenda here
Thursday, March 21 at 1:30 pm
STA Boardroom 
1230 W Boone Avenue, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Airport Board Committees

Engineering Committee

The committee will vote on several infrastructure items, some of which we listed below, copied from the agenda. The agenda does not include links to associated documents, so the information available there is about as deep as we can go, but the Airport Board committees are some of the few in the county that facilitate remote attendance via zoom. Just click the link in the agenda, if you want to attend.

• Adopt Resolution No. 03-24 Accepting USDOT Federal Rail Administration: Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) Grant for Rail-Truck Transload Facility, Phase 3 
• Approve Professional Service Agreement Amendment No. 3 with Alliance for Concourse C Terminal Renovation and Expansion (TREX) – Construction Management and Administrative Services for East Phase 
• Approve Professional Service Agreement Amendment No. 1 with Turner & Townsend Heery for Concourse C Terminal Renovation and Expansion (TREX) – General Contractor/Construction Manager (GC/CM) Advisor Services for East Phase 
• Approve Procurement of Herbicides for Airside and Landside (SIA, Business Park, Felts Field) 
• Approve Professional Services Agreement Amendment No. 4 with SKIDATA for Renewal of Parking Access & Revenue Control System (SIA)

Agenda here.
Thursday, March 21 at 9 am
Airport Event Center
9211 W. McFarlane Road, Spokane, WA 99224 The meeting is also live streamed here.