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 highlights of what’s coming up:
- Spokane City Council wants to hear your opinion on who they should appoint to fill former Council Member Lili Navarrete’s vacant seat. If you’re a District 2 resident, consider going tonight to share your thoughts on what you’re looking for out of a short-term appointed representative.
- The 2025 Point-in-Time Count data is getting presented at today’s Urban Experience Committee, which will give us additional information about unhoused people living in Spokane.
- West Central is getting new infrastructure projects to make pedestrians and bicyclists safer, including bike lanes on Broadway! Learn more about the timeline and funding at the Bicycle Advisory Board.
Important meetings this week:
- Spokane City Council
- Urban Experience Committee
- Bicycle Advisory Board
- Spokane Public Library Board of Trustees
- Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session and Legislative Session
- Spokane County Planning Commission
- Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors
- Spokane Airport Board
- Spokane Valley City Council
- Liberty Lake City Council
Come to our prison reform event!
Don’t miss the Look 2 Justice symposium on the trauma-to-prison pipeline, which we’re co-hosting with L2J and the Black Rose Collective this Saturday. You’ll hear from incarcerated journalists and pastors, formerly incarcerated activists and lawyers. RSVP here.
Protesting 101
Looking for a primer on how to protest with a purpose? The Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane (PJALS) is holding Protest 101: a People’s Training on Tuesday from 5:30 to 7 pm. You’ll learn strategies for keeping your community safe at protests, how to prepare to attend one, how to assess your own risk level, and more. You can contact PJALS for more information here.
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Ballot committees
One nontraditional way to get involved in local democracy: writing the “For” and “Against” sections on local ballot measures for the nonpartisan Spokane County Voter’s Guide. The council is getting ready to appoint the committees for this year’s Parks Levy based on the applications they received. On the pro-Parks levy side is a bipartisan duo of former conservative Mayor David Condon and former liberal state Senator Andy Billig. On the con side is a committee of one: Dennis Flynn, a frequent commenter at city council meetings who says the word “dictate,” more frequently than perhaps anyone in the world, and is currently exploring a run for council at some point in the future.
Tonight, the council will likely vote to approve these committees, and come the end of summer, you’ll see their statements in your voter’s guide.
Thinking long-term
Spokane has something called the Multi-Family Tax Exemption (MFTE), which is a tax credit used by the city to incentivize new affordable housing construction. The tax credit is currently given to developers of new housing who meet certain criteria, like keeping a certain percentage of newly constructed units affordable.
The council will vote tonight on an ordinance that would add one more piece of criteria to the qualifying standards for the MFTE: no units in a building that received the MFTE can operate as “short-term rentals,” — think AirBnBs — because they “reduce the project's contribution to the number of units available for long-term occupancy.”
The goal of this policy is to ensure that projects receiving the tax exemption are actually contributing long-term to Spokane’s housing stock.
Public hearing on council appointment
After appointed Council Member Lili Navarrete resigned her position representing District 2 for a job in the mayor’s administration, the council is looking for a new temporary member who will serve until the results of the upcoming November election are certified. Four candidates out of nine applicants were interviewed — Kris Neely, Kristina Sabestinas, Ryan Oelrich and Shelby Lambdin — and tonight, there will be a public hearing where folks can offer their opinion on who should fill the seat.
One of those names caught our attention: Oelrich could be coming back as a recurring council appointee. He previously represented District 2 when Council President Betsy Wilkerson was appointed to temporarily fill the council president seat after Breean Beggs’ departure, leaving her member position vacant. If he’s chosen, he could be Spokane’s own comeback kid/season regular.
If you want to learn more about the four candidates up for consideration and offer testimony tonight, you can watch their interviews here, or read their applications starting on page 761 of the agenda.
Intentional and inclusive procurement
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 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.
Agenda here
Monday, July 14, at 6 pm
808 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Urban Experience Committee
🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
More homelessness survey results
If the Spokane Business Association’s “study” didn’t scratch your itch for comprehensive data on homelessness in Spokane, maybe today’s Urban Experience Committee will do it for you; Mayor Lisa Brown’s administration just got finalized results of the 2025 Point-In-Time Count back and they’re presenting those to the council today.
A reminder, though: even though the city’s PIT count likely has a much more robust sample size, data analysis and survey methodology, it’s still another cross-sectional study, which is not as accurate as longitudinal studies like the city’s yearly Longitudinal Systems Analysis.
Affordable housing awards
The city is set to allocate $7,499,098 for Affordable Housing Development and Tenant-Based Rental Assistance programs in Spokane. The funding comes from a combination of 1590 funds, 1406 dollars, HOME Affordable Housing Development Funds and HOME-ARP Tenant-based Rental Assistance Funds. After a regular Request for Proposals (RFP) process, nine of the 11 applicants are being recommended for potential or full funding.
Here’s what got recommended for funding:
- Mujeres in Action - Safe Harbor: $224,000
- Family Promise of Spokane: $276,000
- Ben Burr Townhomes home ownership program: $1,000,000
- Proclaim Liberty Bethany new construction: $885,000
- Volunteers of America Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, new construction: $2,000,000
- Threshold Project: $1,599,098
- Mujeres in Action Affordable Housing Program: $222,494
- The Collins Building (rehabilitating the building to create new units): $892,506
- Cornerstone Courtyard (rehabilitating the building to create seven new units): $400,000
No additional details on the projects who applied were provided, but we do know the two projects not recommended for funding were Proclaim Liberty Knox-Lumen and Latinos En Spokane.
Agenda here
Monday, July 14 at noon.
Council Briefing Center in the Lower Level of City Hall.
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Public Library Board of Trustees
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here|
Tuesday, July 15 at 4:30 pm
Shadle Park Library
2111 W. Wellesley Ave, Spokane, Washington, 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Bicycle Advisory Board
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Good news for West Central!
At today’s Bicycle Advisory Board, folks will get a presentation on the results of the West Central Neighborhood Infrastructure project, which engaged the public and the city in a public process to choose a few infrastructure projects to make the neighborhood safer. Many of the projects are only partially funded at the time, but here are a few of the improvements coming to the West Central neighborhood:
- Bike lanes on Broadway Avenue
- Traffic calming on Nettleton Street, Boone Avenue and Dean Avenue
- An accessible pathway from Ash Street to Maple Street
- Sidewalk repair throughout the neighborhood
You can view the project details in full starting on page 6 of the agenda linked below.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 15 at 6 pm
City Council Briefing Center
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Airport Board
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here.
Thursday, July 17 at 9 am
Airport Event Center
9211 W. McFarlane Road, Spokane, WA 99224
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors
???/5 peppers
There’s a special meeting of the Spokane Transit Authority board on Thursday. No agenda has been linked yet, but a little birdie told us they might be doing a board interview of the single candidate advanced in the hiring process, who has now been confirmed as interim co-CEO Karl Otterstrom.
Agenda here
Thursday, July 17 at 2:30 pm
STA Boardroom
1230 W Boone Avenue, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session
🌶️/5 peppers
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 15 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
$1M for Country Homes asphalt improvements
The BOCC is set to award a $921,921 contract to Shamrock Paving to fix the blacktop on Country Homes Boulevard from Cedar Road to Wall Street in North Spokane. We hope this means any Spokanite driving that particular stretch of pothole-ridden road will soon have a smooth ride.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 15 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 County Planning Commission
🫑/5 peppers
Comp plan workshop
The commission will host a workshop on the Comprehensive Plan that will govern growth in the county until 2046. There’s not much detail in the agenda item, but it does say the workshop will address:
- Comp Plan Goals and Policies — policy analysis and discussion, and
- Environmental Impact Statement — progress report and alternative development scenarios
Agenda here
Thursday, July 15 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.
Spokane Valley City Council
🌶️/5 peppers
‘Community Conversations’ meeting
The agenda includes no details, but references a project that will be up for public feedback.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 15, at 5 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.
Liberty Lake City Council
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 15 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
The meeting is also live streamed here.
