Welcome to CIVICS, where we break down the week’s municipal meetings throughout the Inland Northwest, so you can keep track of and fight for the issues you care about.
Here are the highlights:
- Equity’s on the brain for the Spokane City Council as they consider a resolution asking the mayor’s office to move the city towards more inclusive procurement and contracting practices and vote on an ordinance that could give the Human Rights Commission a say on all ordinances addressing human rights issues.
- The Spokane Transit Authority Board will consider a contract for the newly anointed CEO, Karl Otterstrom, and a plan to implement discounted fare for low-income riders.
- Avista will present the BOCC with its decade-long plan — initiated in 2020 — to mitigate wildfire risk in an age of climate change and expanding development in fire-prone areas.
- Liberty Lake City Council will host an “advisory vote” on a “Library/Community Center Project” at a special council meeting.
Important meetings this week:
- Spokane City Council
- Public Infrastructure, Environment & Sustainability Committee
- Spokane Transit Authority Board
- Spokane Plan Commission
- Spokane County Board of Commissioners Briefing and Legislative Sessions
- Spokane Valley City Council
- Liberty Lake City Council (special meeting)
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Consent agenda contracts
There are two interesting contracts on the consent agenda this week. The first is a grant from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission for $158,861.06, which would cover 75% of the salary and benefits for one full-time police officer “dedicated to enforcement of DUI laws.” The second is an agreement between the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts and Spokane Municipal Court, with the state giving Spokane $430,330 to continue funding our Therapeutic Courts through June 30, 2026. Therapeutic courts are an opportunity for people to get connected with resources and accountability measures, as opposed to incarceration and other punishments.
Intentional and inclusive procurement
(This one got deferred from last week, so we’re reusing our own work.)
The city of Spokane is constantly running procurement processes, asking local businesses, companies and nonprofits to submit bids for labor contracts with the city. A new resolution from Wilkerson and Council Member Paul Dillon that’s up for a vote tonight would ask Brown’s administration to “direct the department of purchasing and contracts to collect and track data, coordinate with community partners, develop assistance to women, minority, veteran-owned businesses and other underutilized firms, and provide council a yearly report on progress.” It also asks the administration to identify and work to address any barriers in the procurement process that might specifically be impacting these businesses.
Essentially, they want to make sure that small, women-owned, minority-owned and veteran-owned businesses are getting their fair share of the pie — the city-funded projects pie, that is.
Our warning with all resolutions: no matter how cool they are, they are nonbinding, so this one would rely on the mayor’s — current and future — voluntary compliance to make it happen.
Changes to the Human Rights Commission ordinance
Deferred from June, the ordinance penned by Council Member Jonathan Bingle and now former-Council Member Lili Navarrete to expand the duties of the Spokane Human Rights Commission “to include automatic review of proposed changes to Title 18 of the Spokane Municipal Code and related provisions,” is back up for a vote, this time with a potential amendment from Council Member Paul Dillon.
The aim of the ordinance was to give the commission to weigh in on any legislation that would regulate discriminatory practices and claims before it was voted through, but the original draft had provisions that could greatly slow the passage of new legislation intended to address human rights issues. In the original draft, council members would have had to provide the commission a copy of each ordinance a minimum of 15 days before it would appear at a committee, and the commission would have up to 45 days after to provide written comments.
Normally, a piece of legislation appears at a committee and can be voted on and passed as early as two weeks later. If the council chooses to wait to move on an ordinance until they receive feedback from the commission, it could delay the passage of the ordinance by a month.
However, Dillon’s proposed amendment, which could be adopted at the 3:30 Agenda Review session today, would remove the 15 and 45 day requirements. Instead, it would keep the timeline for ordinances the same and simply require council members to provide ordinances to the Commission any time before the ordinance would appear in committee, and stipulate that the Commission can provide comments and feedback any time before final action on the ordinance.
Next week’s sneak peek:
- Next week, council could pass an Interlocal Agreement between the county and all cities within the county to add representatives from the Spokane Tribe and Kalispel Tribe as voting members on the Steering Committee of Elected Officials, which looks at growth management in the region.
- Council will decide on a replacement for Navarrete, who is now working for the city in the Community Health and Human Services (CHHS) team. The two council conservatives are recommending Ryan Oelrich, who previously served as an appointed council member for District 2 last year, while Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Dillon are recommending Shelby Lambdin, the Health Equity director at CHAS. Which candidate advances for the final confirmation vote will be decided at the 3:30 pm Agenda Review session next week, then the final vote will happen at the 6 pm Legislative Session.
- The new Complete Streets program ordinance is up for a vote. That ordinance integrates routine street construction with planning to make streets safer and more accessible for pedestrians and cyclists too. There’s an amendment from Council Member Kitty Klitzke on this one too, which does a few things, but chiefly, it directs the city to “prioritize continued access to all sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes and bus stops,” during street construction.
Agenda here
Monday, July 21, at 6 pm
808 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Public Infrastructure, Environment & Sustainability Committee
🌶️/5 peppers
Sounds like this week’s meeting might be like Cocomelon for infrastructure wonks: there’s nothing terribly interesting or controversial on this agenda that we noticed, but there will be a monthly report on infrastructure from the Public Works Director, a presentation on wildfire (no additional details given) from Avista Utilities and two low-bid contract awards for adaptive design traffic calming projects.
Agenda here
Monday, July 21, at noon
808 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
The new CEO
Last week, at a special meeting where no public comment was allowed, the Spokane Transit Authority (STA) Board of Directors approved internal hire and former interim Co-CEO Karl Otterstrom as the official pick to be the new CEO for STA.
It was the frustrating end to a drawn-out hiring process where public transportation advocates fought tooth and nail for any kind of meaningful public participation, only to have the semblance of participation they’d won snatched away when the four person operations committee chose to forward only one candidate — Otterstrom, but it was a secret at the time — for public consideration.
This week, at the regularly scheduled meeting where they *do* take public comment, the board will vote to approve Otterstrom’s new contract, and we predict there will be public testimony.
It’s not all doom and gloom though. While the process was less than ideal for anyone who thought the public should get a say in who leads our public transportation benefit area’s transit agency, there’s a lot to like about Otterstrom: he’s a transit rider, an infrastructure nerd and a longtime Spokanite who clearly loves the region and public transit. Otterstrom started at STA as an intern about 20 years ago.
Anthony Gill on Bluesky said it best: “I think [Otterstrom] deserved better than what Al French gave him.”
Bus riding about to get even more affordable?
Initially approved in STA’s Connect 2035 strategic plan, discounted fare for low-income riders could go into effect. If passed, qualifying riders would pay just $1 a bus ride, with fare capped at $2 a day and $30 a month. The pilot program would last for three years, and then be subject to annual reports on effectiveness and potential adjustments from the board.
Here’s who could qualify for the reduced fare under the board’s current plan:
- Individuals residing in housing managed by or receiving a housing voucher from the Spokane Housing Authority
- Individuals whose income is at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) and receive Basic Food benefits managed by the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services
- Individuals whose income is at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level and are determined to be eligible based on other appropriate documentation.
Curious if you fall under that 200% FPL line? Here’s the current 2025 income caps by household size:
Staff estimated that the pilot program could cost STA between $800,000 to $3 million annually, which likely comes out of the $25 million line item in the 2025 capital budget for Connect 2035 projects.
An interesting footnote: Spokane City Council Member Michael Cathcart joined County Commissioner Josh Kerns in voting against the proposed structure and implementation of the low-income fare pilot program at the Performance Monitoring & External Relations. Cathcart represents the lowest income district in the city of Spokane, and fought hard for District 1 to have representation on the STA board. It wasn’t clear from meeting minutes why he voted against moving the low income fare structure and implementation forward, but it will be interesting to see how he votes at the full board level.
Agenda here
Thursday, July 24 at 1:30 pm
STA Boardroom
1230 W Boone Avenue, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Plan Commission
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Racist zoning examination
The state requires cities to “examine racially disparate impacts (RDI), displacement, exclusion and displacement risk in housing policies and regulations,” when updating their comprehensive plans, which Spokane is in the middle of doing right now. On Wednesday, the Plan Commission will present a briefing paper on racially disparate impacts in the city. There’s nothing else attached, so it’s not super clear if they’re presenting findings at this point, or just outlining how they plan to analyze for RDI.
Agenda here
Wednesday, July 23 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Public Facilities District
🫑/5 peppers
NORMAL MEETING CANCELLED
Agenda here
Wednesday, July 23 at 12:30 pm
Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena Board Room
720 W Mallon Ave, Spokane, WA 99201
Virtual attendance here.
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Avista to present 10-year fire plan
Avista, the energy utility that provides electricity to most Eastern Washingtonians, will present its plan to deal with wildfire danger in the decade starting in 2020. There are four aspects of the program:
- Grid hardening, which includes placing component of grid systems underground, swapping wooden pole with steel ones and placing electricity-absorbing mesh under grid components
- Enhanced vegetation management, which entails inspecting all “risk trees” annually
- Situational awareness, which includes AI fire detection cameras and gathering real-time data from weather station installations
- Operations and emergency response, which includes expanding fire protection settings in grid components and using public safety power shutoffs, which deenergizes components when the fire danger reaches a certain point
In an age of a warming climate, which is drying out the West, utilities have had a harder time making sure their equipment does not spark wildfires. The Washington Department of Natural Resources found an Avista warning light was the cause of the Gray fire of 2023, which destroyed hundreds of buildings in and near Medical Lake and killed one person.
Financing for clean buildings
County staff is asking for input from the BOCC to finance the purchase of new boilers and electric switch gears and to update other energy equipment in county buildings to comply with new state clean energy requirements. The purchases are estimated in the agenda sheet to cost $35 million. The cost could be covered by bonds or existing county funds that are not already dedicated to other projects.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 22 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
Board appointments
The BOCC is set to appoint:
- Sindhu Surapaneni, Rachel Ji, Michael McCauley, Ellie Henshaw and Miles McLane to the Chase Youth Commission
- Undersheriff Michael Kittilstved to fill the Law Enforcement Officer position on the Spokane County Behavioral Health Advisory Board
- Kenny Carlson to fill one of the Spokane County positions on the Spokane County Behavioral Health Advisory Board
- Acting Spokane County Prosecutor Preston McCollam to the Criminal Justice Treatment Account Panel
Nearly $1M for Creekside Elementary ADA, pedestrian upgrades
The BOCC will accept a $940,000 grant from the Washington Department of Transportation for the following projects on sidewalks and intersections at Creekside Elementary School:
- Two ADA curb ramps
- Rectangular rapid-flashing beacons
- High-visibility crosswalks
- School 20-mph flashing speed zone with flashing beacons
Nearly $4M in improvement funding for Argonne Road
The BOCC is set to accept $3.9 million in state funding for improvements to a long stretch of Argonne Road, from the Spokane River to Bigelow Gulch Road. They are scheduled to be completed by 2027.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 22 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
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 22, at 5 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.
Liberty Lake City Council (special meeting)
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Advisory vote on new ‘Library/Community Center Project’
The city council will host an advisory vote — a non-binding expression of public opinion — on support for a “Library/Community Center Project’ at a special session initially scheduled for the council to discuss new greenhouse gas requirements in public facilities.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 22 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
The meeting is also live streamed here.
