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:
- Spokane City Council will vote on a resolution to reaffirm their commitment to following state law that protects immigrants in the city. Latinos en Spokane will be hosting a rally in support of the resolution prior to the meeting.
- The Urban Experience Committee will discuss an ordinance that could, for a limited time, remove height limits on buildings in downtown Spokane.
- The Spokane City Climate Resilience and Sustainability Board will discuss the Tree Equity program, which could find its funding cut after President Donald Trump continues to wage war against diversity, equity and inclusion.
- Take a break from the Board of County Commissioners — their meetings are canceled!
Important meetings this week:
- Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
- Urban Experience Committee
- Mead School District Board of Directors
- Central Valley School District Board of Directors
- Spokane Valley City Council
- Spokane School District Board of Directors
- Spokane Plan Commission
- Spokane City Climate Resilience and Sustainability Board
- Spokane Park Board
- Spokane Regional Transportation Council
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Supporting the state law supporting immigrants
Soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Spokane began to see the effect of his mass deportation policies, as immigrants were arrested in Spokane and driven to the Kootenai County Jail.
Community organization Latinos en Spokane asked the city to reaffirm their commitment to state law — the Keep Washington Working Act, which prevents the Spokane Police Department from collaborating with ICE and Border Patrol — and provide city employees with training on how to stay in compliance with the KWWA.
Though it isn’t technically on the agenda for tonight, we’ve been told that council will likely vote to suspend the rules to add a resolution supporting immigrants and the state law that protects them to the list for tonight. Their resolution includes:
- Affirmations that the city will continue to follow state law, and a specific promise that SPD will not collaborate with immigration officers.
- A commitment to proactively building trust with and reducing fear in immigrant and refugee communities
- The council’s support to “explore future opportunities to allocate funding to community-based organizations and to expand legal representation and immigration defense services for immigrant and refugee residents.”
- A commitment to ongoing training of city employees to ensure compliance with the KWWA
- A request for a biannual report from SPD and “any relevant city agencies to assess compliance with the KWWA and to track progress in supporting immigrant and refugee communities.”
We predict this will be the spiciest item of the evening, as LeS plans on hosting a rally before the meeting and council will likely hear testimony from both supporters of the KWWA and fans of Trump’s inhumane policies, like shipping undocumented immigrants to Guantanamo Bay.
Questing for carbon reduction
There are a few items on today’s agenda tied to a grant from the Department of Ecology, which would “fund a feasibility and engineering study on carbon emissions reduction at the Waste to Energy Facility.” On the consent agenda, the council will first vote to accept the $650,000 grant, then later in the evening, they’ll vote on whether or not to a resolution waiving the usual competitive bid process in favor of contracting with CarbonQuest, which builds systems that “capture CO2 before it is emitted from natural gas sources like CHP systems, fuel cells, and boilers, enabling immediate and effective decarbonization.”
While all of this might sound boring, it could end up saving taxpayers a lot of money in the long run; the Waste-to-Energy plant will have to start bidding on carbon credits to offset its emissions in 2027, per the Climate Commitment Act, which could result in utility bills going up. Spokane is currently lobbying for an exemption for the plant at the legislative level, but if that fails, having a plan to reduce carbon emissions from the plant could keep utility bills from spiking in a few years.
Recruitment/recrutamento
After a deferral and an amendment that aligned it with state priorities and ensured it wouldn’t impact collective bargaining, the city council is scheduled to vote on Council Member Lili Navarrete’s ordinance requiring the city to start actively recruiting multilingual applicants.
Spokane is actively working to put a Language Access program in place across all city departments no later than January 1, 2026, which would make multilingual job candidates even more valuable than they were before. The ordinance states that employees’ language skills will be “strategically leveraged by the City to meet the needs of the community.”
And, the ordinance lays out the beginnings of a plan for how the city can recruit multilingual applicants: flyers, posters, direct outreach to relevant organizations and specifically promoting vacant positions to multilingual communities.
Next week’s sneak peek:
Nothing’s happening! Council is canceled for President’s Day.
Agenda here
Monday, February 10, at 6 pm
808 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane City Council Study Sessions
Agenda here when available.
Thursday, February 13 at 11 am
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Urban Experience Committee (Spokane city)
🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Hope House beyond hope?
Note: We wrote this up last month, but at the last minute, the presentation to council got pushed back to this month, so we’re self-plagiarizing.
According to the committee agenda, Volunteers of America (VOA) are planning to close the Hope House by the end of this June, leaving up to 100 women on the streets. They’ll be presenting information on the wind-down process to the council today. This closure is coming after the city gave $1.2 million to Hope House in August of 2024 — paid for with money accumulated through Brown’s cost savings measures at the Trent Shelter — to keep their doors open.
At that time, VOA CEO Fawn Schott told KHQ that “With no additional investment from Commerce, Spokane County or the private sector, the City of Spokane rose to the occasion and invested in the lives of these women,” Today, she’ll be presenting on the closure of the shelter, hopefully including the fate of the relatively new building and the fate of those living inside.
The presentation might include something else entirely: this isn’t the first time Hope House has announced their closure — they actually do this almost every year (2021, 2022, 2024) — so we’re curious if it’s actually closing, or if this is a scare tactic to leverage more funds.
Reach for the skies!
From whenever the “Interim Zoning Ordinance for Height Limits” gets passed until September 10, developers downtown can dream big. Or, more accurately, dream tall; if passed, the ordinance would eliminate height limits in downtown Spokane, allowing for taller buildings and more dense development. How tall, you ask? According to the text of the draft ordinance, “there shall be no maximum height limit,” for any properties that fall into the boundaries (map on page 165)
Though political polarization may be at an all time high, Spokane’s City Council has been extremely successful at crossing party lines when it comes to passing urbanist laws. This ordinance will likely be no different, co-sponsored by conservative Council Member Jonathan Bingle and progressives Zack Zappone and Kitty Klitzke. Bingle has been a big proponent of killing height restrictions downtown, and more progressive urbanists tend to be on the same page: building up instead of out could mean less sprawl, more affordable housing and density, which is better for businesses and transit.
Committee meetings are just for discussion, but this ordinance could find itself up for a vote as early as March 8. And while it’s an interim ordinance with an end date written in, a stipulation is written in to hold public hearings and consider extending the timeline.
Emergency sheltering funds
The city is required by law to provide additional emergency shelter beds when weather conditions reach critically low or high temps, or the air quality index hits a dangerous level. Since November, the city has hit those lows 60 times, spending a total of $171,661.75 on surge beds.
The office of Community, Housing and Human Services (CHHS) is asking the council to allocate more money towards ongoing contracts with service providers to open beds during emergency weather conditions. The contract amendments would include an additional:
- $70,000 to The Way Out Center
- $120,000 to House of Charity and St. Margarets
- $30,000 to Revive
An important note: the money to pay for these contract amendments has already been approved by council, coming out of the $800,000 allocation from 1590 funds. This would just be increasing contract amounts with the providers.
27 club
If you read our urbanism columnist Lauren Pangborn’s monthly pieces, you may have heard of 27 by 2027 (or as CM Paul Dillon likes to call it, “The Lilac Loop,”): Spokane’s plan to build 27 miles of low-stress walking and cycling routes by 2027. Today, the committee will discuss a recommendation from the Neighborhood Project Advisory Committee to use nearly $140,000 of money from the West Quadrant Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district to fund sections of the 27 by 2027 plan located inside the TIF.
Preserving Prop 1
In 2023, Spokane citizens voted in favor of Proposition 1, which made it illegal to camp in over half of Spokane. There’s not much (or any information) that we could find in the agenda, but it looks like Bingle is going to be pitching a “Resolution Preserving Prop 1 & Spokane Public Safety Efforts.” We think it’s likely this is in response to community criticism — mostly from folks with the Larry-Stone-funded East Spokane Business Association and Spokane Business Association — of House Bill 1380, which could establish guidelines for the kinds of laws cities can enact that limit camping on public property.
Conservatives say the bill could effectively legalize homeless encampments and lets homeless people sue cities for arresting them for camping, while the bill itself says it intends to curb civil rights violations lawsuits (like the one against Spokane) by asking city governments to “enact objectively reasonable time, place, and manner regulations,” for camping.
Data for the urbanism nerds
Want to know what development in Spokane has looked like for the last month? You can tune into the monthly permit report, where city staff will go over stats about the number and kind of building permits that have been issued.
Agenda here
Monday, February 10 at 12 pm
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.
Mead School District Board of Directors
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Clinic for kids
Mead’s agendas are always very bare bones, which makes it difficult to predict exactly what’s going on, but we did notice one interesting item labelled “CHAS Health Clinic Discussion,” leaving us to wonder if Mead could be joining other Spokane-area schools in getting a CHAS Health clinic.
Agenda here
Monday, February 10 at 6 p.m.
Union Event Center
12509 N. Market St. Bldg. D, Mead, WA 99021
Watch via Zoom here.
Central Valley School District Board of Directors
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Monday, February 10 at 6 p.m.
Learning and Teaching Center (district office)
Board Room at 2218 N Molter Rd, Liberty Lake
Watch via Zoom here.
Spokane Valley City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
$1.175M water line for Sullivan Park
The city is trying to raise enough money for a water line for Sullivan Park, located on the west side of Sullivan Road and north of the Spokane River. The park currently gets water from a well that’s not sufficient for current and future needs, and the city wants to construct a new line to the park from the river. It has identified about half the funds needed for the line from its capital reserve fund 312, which will allocate $412,900, and a grant from the state Department of Commerce of $126,100. The remaining $636,000 could be allocated from the same reserve fund.
More that $1M comprehensive planning
The city wants to allocate more that $1 million to Community Attributes, Inc (CAI), a Seattle firm, to perform its periodic update to its comprehensive plan, the process by which local governments decide the character of their communities as mandated under state law. According to the city’s agenda sheet, CAI will:
- Plan for sufficient land capacity for housing needs, including all economic segments of the population (moderate, low, very low and extremely low income, as well as emergency housing and permanent supportive housing).
- Provide moderate density housing options within Urban Growth Areas (UGAs), including but not limited to duplexes, triplexes and townhomes.
- Make adequate provisions for housing for existing and projected needs for all economic segments of the community, including documenting programs and actions needed to achieve housing availability.
- Identify racially disparate impacts, displacement and exclusion in housing policies and regulations, and begin to undo those impacts; and identify areas at higher risk of displacement and establish anti-displacement policies.
Agenda here when available
Tuesday, February 12 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.
Spokane School District Board of Directors
🫑/5 peppers
The board will be holding a special session at 4:30 pm to discuss the annual bargaining with the teachers’ union and discuss goals for the year before their regular meeting at 6 pm.
Agenda here
Wednesday, February 12 at 4:30 pm (special meeting) and 6 pm (regular meeting)
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Plan Commission
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Wednesday, February 12 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane City Climate Resilience and Sustainability Board
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers for global warming, 🌶️ 🌶️/5 peppers for the actual meeting content
Are trees DEI?
As Trump continues his crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion, we’ve heard whispers that one Spokane project could be on the chopping block: Tree Equity Spokane, was funded with a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The project sought to plant trees to create urban tree cover in historically red-lined and underfunded neighborhoods, like East Central and Hillyard. The Spokane City Climate Resilience and Sustainability Board is scheduled for a discussion on the project this week.
Agenda here
Thursday, February 13 at 2 pm
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 Park Board
Agenda here when available
Thursday, February 13 at 3:30 pm
Council Chambers in the Lower Level of City Hall.
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed via WebEx,
Call in: 408-418-9388 Access code: 2491 764 3350
Spokane Regional Transportation Council
🌶️/5 peppers
Agenda here
Thursday, February 13 at 1 pm
Spokane Regional Transportation Office
21 W Riverside Ave, Suite 504, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
