Temperatures are steadily dropping, snow is flying and as the new year fast approaches, time is running out for the Spokane City Council to decide what to do about the city’s looming December 31 contract expiration for running the Trent Resource and Assistance Center (TRAC), Spokane’s largest homeless shelter, which flexes surge capacity to function as a warming shelter when the temperature drops below 32 degrees.
On Monday, council members will take a vote on an eleventh hour $3.7 million contract amendment that would secure the Salvation Army, the current operator, as the operator of the shelter until the end of April 2024, with the option for the city to terminate the agreement early. This contract amendment, published Friday afternoon in the agenda for next week’s meeting, differs from the almost unanimously disliked first version that’s been on the table since a November 16 study session revealed that a Request for Proposal (RFP) intended to place a less costly shelter operator in TRAC by December 16 had failed. That first draft of a contract amendment would have cost $3.9 million, locking the city into a 4-month deal with the Salvation Army and leaving no funds to continue to pay Revive, the service provider working alongside the Salvation Army to provide counseling and navigational services to residents of TRAC.
As late as Wednesday, November 29, council members found themselves backed into that corner by the first draft amendment — in what Council President Betsy Wilkerson has repeatedly called “the bottom of the ninth.” Only two options were on the table: vote “yes” on an original 4-month extension and nearly $4 million contract with the Salvation Army with no budget for Revive, leaving the shelter functioning solely as a warehouse in which to get warm, or vote “no” and see the shelter close on December 31, pushing occupants into the deadly winter elements.
After the abrupt cancellation of a RFP to find a cheaper shelter operator, council members were confused as to how an applicant, Jewels Helping Hands (JHH), had been selected by the recommending committee, but was never presented before the council as an option to vote on. Since then, heated conversations have swirled around the ever-increasing price tag of what some members described as a “blank check” contract with the Salvation Army, and questions as to how and why the RFP had stalled for so long that a safe transition process between operators, should they choose to contract with JHH, was no longer possible before the end of the current contract.
Both Julie Garcia, executive director of JHH, and Layne Pavey, executive director of Revive, are still holding out hope that the council will go with a third option: pressure the mayor’s administration into presenting city council with a contract with JHH, go with the original plan of using December as a transitional month and start January with JHH as the sole operator of TRAC.
JHH’s proposal for a year of operating TRAC came in under $9 million, about the same as what Salvation Army was paid for 2023, but JHH’s proposal built in the cost of Revive’s services, as well as costs to hire private security, which would minimize the city’s need to utilize police time and overtime in the neighborhood. In an email sent to city council on November 18, Pavey said that it wasn’t too late to award the contract to JHH.
“I'm deeply concerned that we haven't been included in discussions about what could happen at TRAC, but this is not a time to start finger pointing and blaming politics when there are actions that should be taken,” Pavey wrote. “If the point of releasing the RFP in August was to find a provider who could do this for less money, then why not just get the process started and save the money?”
Garcia said that should JHH be awarded the original RFP she applied for, moving in as the new operator would be possible. But if the city instead decides to post a completely new RFP for a service provider, she won’t apply again.
“My only objective is to help the people of Spokane,” Garcia said. “I am unwilling to hurt my organization by continuing to waste time and man hours on things that we've already done.”
When Wilkerson moved into the council president role, council dropped down to six members and will remain there until someone can be appointed to fill her open seat, meaning that any contract will require four “yes” votes to pass.
After interviewing council members Jonathan Bingle, Zack Zappone and Paul Dillon — who was sworn in Wednesday and will take his first vote on Monday — it seemed unclear whether the original draft of the contract extension with the Salvation Army would have passed. The uncertainty led to a week of negotiations, and this last minute new version that was published publicly just before the weekend.
Zappone and Dillon both said it would have been very hard for them to vote in favor of the first draft (the $3.9 million, 4-month contract). They were against committing the city to four more months with the Salvation Army operating the shelter. Zappone had been vocal in public meetings about having issues with the hefty cost and the overspending of the original Salvation Army contract, as well as the first amendment they passed to give the operator $3.5 million more back in August. Dillon was worried about conditions at TRAC under the Salvation Army, as well as continuing to funnel money into local billionaire Larry Stone’s pockets (the city pays more than $26,000 a month to lease the warehouse from Stone, which has no running water or bathrooms available to residents).
“Ultimately, I want to see us get out of TRAC. That’s got to be the goal,” Dillon said. “The contract has got to be very firm about that, so we don't just keep repeating the same cycle of, ‘Oh, we reluctantly have to approve this because we don't have any other options.’”
Dillon said, “This is like a lump of coal in a stocking that the mayor has left the city and the taxpayers with.”
He said he wanted a “not so binary decision” that would make a contract with Salvation Army shorter, cheaper and tied to an audit of TRAC to give council and the public a clear idea of what’s been going on at the shelter.
The new $3.7 million contract seems to be that less “binary” compromise, as it addresses some fears that council members had about the timeframe and cost of the original amendment and ensures that the 400 people consistently filling TRAC to its maximum surge capacity wouldn’t be forced back onto freezing cold streets on January 1, while leaving flexibility to switch operators prior to April 30.
Bingle was also frustrated by the life-or-death timeline and the limited options presented to council over the past few weeks leading up to the vote.
“That's still the corner that we're in, and, again, I'd like to say that this is, you know, a one time unique situation, but it just isn't,” Bingle said. “My entire time on council, which is only a couple years, homelessness funding has always been, ‘Hey, fund this or else it's not going to happen and people are going to be dying on the streets.’ It's always been this last-minute, desperate, dire situation.”
With the ability to end the contract with Salvation Army earlier than April, the city council could either reopen and finish the RFP that had been prematurely canceled, or put out a new RFP entirely. After multiple interviews with council members and city staff, it is unclear what exactly will happen with the RFP, as questions about what to do with the appeal filed by the Salvation Army — that ground the original process to a halt — still linger.
Mayor-elect Lisa Brown’s plans for TRAC have been a sticking point in conversations. The original contract amendment given to council by Kim McCollim, the director of Neighborhood, Housing and Human Services (NHHS) department who had been overseeing the Community, Housing and Human Services (CHHS) department following Jenn Ceredes’ resignation in September, stated they wanted to give Brown’s administration flexibility in its first months as a reason to commit to the more expensive Salvation Army contract. Yet, it was JHH’s proposal that was created as “a wind down of TRAC, to close at an eventual date or lower the capacity and provide assistance to those living there to move them into better situations,” according to Garcia, which was much closer to Brown’s stated campaign goals to replace it.
Brown told RANGE when this first came up that she saw the option on the table then as more of a burden than a freedom. But whatever happens, she and her transition team are preparing for her first days in office.
“This is far from an ideal situation, but I'm not going to second guess the city council at this point,” Brown said. “I'm going to see where we're at in January and go from there.”
Though the agenda currently reflects the $3.7 million amendment that seems to be more in line with the city council’s wants, potentially leaving money to pay for the continuance of Revive’s services and an option to back out at any point, Dillon doesn’t necessarily think it’s a done deal. Rules of the council allow changes to the agenda at the Briefing Session, which takes place at 4:30 pm on Monday (the public doesn’t have to be notified of those changes, a quirk of council that has seen its own fair share of criticism recently.)
Dillon said, “I feel like this is going to get negotiated up until 6 pm on Monday.”
