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 could pass a law making it easier for food trucks and other mobile vendors to sell in the city limits, by cutting a fee and killing a requirement to get permission from owners of properties adjacent to where they want to set up. 
• At the Public Safety & Community Health Committee, Spokane City Council members will discuss a new ordinance with bipartisan sponsors to increase penalties for street racing and excessive speeding. 
• Spokane Park Board is holding a five-hour special session to discuss a slate of topics including naming/sponsorship rights and the status of Together Spokane projects.
• Spokane County will accept nearly $7.5 million in Department of Commerce funding to install filters on private drinking water wells contaminated by forever chemicals.
• The Spokane Valley City Council will hold its second reading on an ordinance that would ban cryptocurrency ATMs in the city.

Important meetings this week:

• Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
• Public Safety & Community Health Committee
• Spokane Park Board
• Board of County Commissioners - Briefing Session and Legislative Session
• Spokane School District Board of Directors
• Spokane Valley City Council 
• Liberty Lake City Council

Spokane City 

Spokane City Council

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Food truck vending

After a few weeks of deferring slowed the process, the ordinance from Council Members Sarah Dixit and Paul Dillon to make it easier for food trucks to operate in the city is scheduled for a vote. The ordinance would do a few things:

• Stop requiring food truck operators to make site improvements when they’re operating out of a surface parking lot
• Update city code to match state code, allowing food trucks to sell alcohol at certain events with the appropriate permits
• Eliminate a $60 permit required for trucks operating more than two weeks in the city
• Allow food trucks to park in any surface lot (with the owner’s permission)
• Eliminate an onerous requirement that food trucks get written permission from any adjacent properties they want to park next to, requiring only the permission of owner of the property they park on

Last week, the council voted down an amendment from Council Member Michael Cathcart that would have made violating food vending code a criminal misdemeanor for both employees and business owners, and given the Spokane Police Department the authority to enforce it. The Dixit/Dillon version, sans Cathcart amendment, is what’s up for a vote tonight. 

Agenda here
Monday, May 4 at 6 pm
Council Chambers 
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here. 

Spokane City Council Study Sessions

Agenda here when available.
Thursday, May 7 at 11 am
Council Chambers
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Public Safety & Community Health Committee

🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Presentation on Sheriffs Bill

Debbie Novak, the eastern Washington lead for the state's Coalition for Police Accountability, is giving a presentation to the council on Senate Bill 5974, the new law that allows sitting sheriffs to be decertified by the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission and replaced by the appointment of county officials until the next election — among other accountability measures. The law is currently being challenged in court by sheriffs across the state (including Sheriff John Nowels here in Spokane County), with a judge recently ruling to temporarily block some sections of the law. We don’t have many details on Novak’s presentation, but this might be an interesting watch for police accountability advocates. 

🎵I wonder if you know, how they live in Tokyo🎵

A new ordinance sponsored by Dillon and Cathcart that could curb street racing and excessive speeding by adding additional financial penalties is up for discussion today. 

Under this ordinance, anyone caught racing another vehicle, racing against an agreed-upon time, or driving at “excessively high rates of speed or acceleration,” or doing things like drifting, sliding or rolling coal (defined by the ordinance as “emitting black smoke”) could be given a traffic infraction.The penalties for receiving a traffic infraction in violation of this new ordinance would be $500 the first time, $800 the second and $1,500 the third. Anyone who violates the law more than three times could then be charged with a gross misdemeanor.  

An interesting facet of this ordinance is that it allows drivers to be cited based on video evidence. Basically, if a video of you racing up Division Street is posted online, it can be reviewed by the Spokane Police Department, who can then send you a traffic citation. If the driver is identifiable in the video evidence, they can be cited with street racing. But if the driver can’t be identified from the footage or other evidence, then the registered owner of the car can be cited with “unlawful vehicle use,” which has the same financial penalties as the citations for street racing. 

The ordinance is designed to “increase safety for all users of public streets,” the agenda sheet states.

Agenda here 
Monday, May 4 at 12 pm
Council Chambers
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Park Board

🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Special meeting 

The Park Board will hold a special meeting 9:15 am to 2:15 pm this Friday. On the agenda for the lengthy session are a public records refresher, an update on the River Loop, a presentation on sponsorships and naming rights of parks assets and an update on Together Spokane projects funded by the joint school bond and parks levy passed last year.

Agenda here
Friday, May 8 at 9:15 am
Council Chambers
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed via WebEx, 
Call in: 408-418-9388 Access code: 2491 764 3350

Editor's note: This section has been edited to reflect that the Park Board meeting is Friday, not Thursday.

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🌶️/5 peppers

County may receive nearly half a million for wildfire prevention

Spokane County is eligible to receive about $480,000 in funding to prevent wildfires in vulnerable areas. The money would come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). An initial $40,000 grant would allow the Haynes Estate, Holmberg, Beacon Hill and Mackenzie conservation areas to develop wildfire mitigation plans. It would then be eligible for an additional $438,731 to carry out those plans. The Department of Natural Resources would administer the grants. The BOCC is set to vote on accepting the money.

Agenda here 
Tuesday, May 5 at 9 am
Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Legislative Session

🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Nearly $7.5M in state funds for PFAS filters

The county is set to accept an award of $7,450,000 from the Washington Department of Commerce to pay for filters in the homes of people who drink from wells contaminated with forever chemicals. The filters would clean water for in-home consumption but would not clean water used for crops outside homes. Hundreds of wells drilled into West Plains aquifers were contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, stemming from firefighting chemicals deployed at Spokane International Airport and Fairchild Air Force Base.Read RANGE’s PFAS coverage in our environment section here.

Possible surveillance cameras for 2 county parks

The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office wants to partner with the Parks, Recreation & Golf Department to install surveillance cameras on public facilities in Plante’s Ferry Sports Complex and Camas Meadow Park. The cameras would be connected to the sheriff’s Real Time Crime Center. The agenda does not say who the cameras would be purchased from. The sheriff’s office currently partners with the Public Works Department to operate similar cameras.

$1M in improvements to Crestline Road

The Public Works Department is asking the county to approve $1,009,170 to build sidewalks along Crestline Road between 57th and 63rd avenues. The agenda doesn’t mention any bidders. Most of that money, $807,000, would come from state Transportation Improvement Board funding; the rest would come from the county’s Road Fund.

Agenda here 
Tuesday, May 5 at 2 pm
Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane School District Board of Directors (special meeting)

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Budget talks, public hearing

The board will get an update on the preliminary general fund budget in the works for 2026-2027. 

The board will also hold a public hearing and consider adopting a roughly $35.7 million budget extension for the new Transportation Vehicle Fund to purchase its own fleet of buses. “In December 2025, the School Board approved purchasing buses as one of the steps

necessary to implement district operated student transportation services,” according to a resolution attached to the agenda.

The board didn’t adopt a budget for the Transportation Vehicle Fund for 2025-2026 last August, so the extension would be for the months left in the fiscal year, according to the resolution. In December, the board moved to implement district-operated student transportation after new legislation and rising costs made it better to bring it in-house.

New name, same school

The board will also hear a presentation about the request to rename The Community School and it appears they will take action, according to the agenda.

Here are the recommended names the board is tasked with selecting from:

• Riverpoint High School
• The Community High School 
• Riverpoint Community High School
• Riverpoint Community School
• And lastly: The Community School. (No. That’s not a typo on our end.)

A packed consent agenda 

The board of directors is also expected to vote on approving a couple contracts and other items on the consent agenda, including :

• Capping the cost for the first phase of the Regional Fields Improvement Project at roughly $8.7 million. 
• A $148,285 contract with North Sound Auto Group for three new cargo vans. These will replace vehicles that “are no longer cost effective to maintain in a safe working condition.”
• A contract with Bouten Construction Company for the North Central High School Modernization Project. No specifics of the contract were shared through the agenda materials.
• A purchase order worth $611,270 over four years with Pathwise for bus routing software. 

Agenda here
Wednesday, May 6 at 4:30 pm
200 N. Bernard, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Valley City Council

🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Second read on crypto kiosk ban

Cryptocurrency is a relatively unregulated form of money that allows users to bypass the traditional hoops associated with bank accounts. One of the drawbacks is that it provides opportunities for scammers, and one of the most vulnerable choke points of this system is the “virtual currency kiosk,” essentially an ATM where users can add money to their digital wallets. Last year, the city of Spokane banned the kiosks from the city limits because scamming had become a real problem. 

It has in Spokane Valley, too. “The Spokane Valley Police Department has been tracking and investigating crimes involving cryptocurrency ATMs, and Spokane Valley residents have fallen victim to fraudulent schemes involving virtual currency kiosks,” according to a city memo on the problem. “This creates a significant public safety and welfare issue that is affecting citizens.” 

The Valley city council is on their second read of an ordinance banning the kiosks, meaning they could pass it Tuesday.

Agenda here
Tuesday, May 5 at 6 pm
10210 E Sprague Ave, Spokane Valley
Virtual attendance here.

Liberty Lake City Council

🌶️/5 peppers

Sidewalk plan would prioritize safety, equity

Liberty Lake’s walking paths are suffering from years of wear and tear, so the city is looking to adopt a long-term plan that would govern how the city repairs sidewalks. The plan would prioritize specific areas of the city, sorted by five categories: safety, equity, proximity and cost-benefit. The first two categories rate sidewalks according to a range of physical characteristics.

Safety

• Degree of Sidewalk Distress
• Concentration of Distress Points
• ADA Ramp Presence
• Pedestrian Injury in Vicinity
• Speed Limit of Adjacent Roadway

Equity

• High Concentration of Children or Seniors
• Proximity to Manufactured Housing
• Proximity to Senior Housing

Read more about the plan here, starting on page 21.

Agenda here
Tuesday, May 5 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake
The meeting is also live streamed here.