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:
- The city council will vote on a slate of new rule changes — notably excluding a controversial rule that would have restricted public testimony at city meetings.
- Spokane may ban federal officials from enforcing immigration law on city property.
- The kratom ban is up for a vote, sans an amendment to regulate and not fully get rid of the mind-altering substance.
- The Spokane County Board of Commissioners will award more than $16 million in behavioral health contracts to 15 providers for the coming year.
- Spokane police want to award Mujeres in Action a grant to improve communication between police and immigrant communities in Spokane.
- Liberty Lake wants to award Dardan Enterprises with a $3.6 million contract to build a new City Hall building.
Important meetings this week:
- Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
- Public Safety & Community Health Committee
- 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 Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
The rules are changing!
After months of debate, the city council will vote to revise its Rules of Procedure, which govern how the regular meetings are run and the decorum of people attending. One of the biggest changes is the day the city council would meet — currently, the council meets on Monday evenings, but if the new rules are adopted, the council will meet on Wednesdays at 6 pm starting June 9. Agenda review meetings and council committees would be moved to the Tuesday prior at 11 am.
Another big change is a rewrite of Rule 3, which outlines the difference between “legislative” and “adjudicative” hearings. A legislative hearing, defined in the rewrite, is a hearing where the council considers new legislation. Two meetings are required in order to pass a new law, and the public is allowed to testify on it. An adjudicative hearing is one in which the council is settling a dispute between parties. The parties to the dispute are the only people allowed to testify.
It looks like one of the most controversial proposed changes — one that would have reduced the amount of time the public is allowed to testify the dais — did not make it to this final version of the rule changes. Monday morning, Council Member Michael Cathcart introduced amendments to the proposed changes clarifying how long people can speak on items. The amendments emphasize that “speaking times allowed on the Pending Agenda: two minutes for Boards and Commissions as a whole, two minutes for Reports, Contracts, and Claims as a whole, and to preserve the option for up to three minutes for each remaining individual item and three minutes for any Second Reading/Final Consideration item.”
Other changes include an expedited process for adding legislative items to council agendas to accommodate responses to emergencies, adding a formal way for council members to be notified of special meetings within 24 hours of their start, swapping meeting days of the Public Infrastructure and Environment, and Sustainability and Urban Experience committees.
Vote to further restrict immigration enforcement in Spokane
The council will vote on an ordinance to ban federal officials from enforcing immigration law on city-owned property unless they have a judicial warrant, establishing the entire city as an “immigration enforcement free zone.” The measure is one of two new laws proposed by Mayor Lisa Brown that would heavily restrict the federal government from enforcing immigration law. The other bars private land owners from leasing their property to immigration enforcement agencies.
New priorities for affordable housing spending
The council wants to clarify the scope of legally allowed uses for affordable housing funding, administered through the HEART Fund (previously called the 1590 Fund). Agenda literature says the changes create mechanisms for funding distributions to “reflect ALL legally eligible uses of HEART funding and encourage any project or service applying for funding to apply for any eligible use as defined” in state law. The idea is to free up more funding to house people in marginalized communities. As we’ve noted, 70% of this money must be used in creating actual housing and supporting behavioral health services, while the remaining 30% can be used for administrative costs.
Kratom ban is up for vote
The final version of this is a full-on ban of sales that rejects an amendment proposed by Cathcart that would have simply limited sales of the mind-altering substance to people older than 21. The ban only targets the selling of kratom, not the possession of it.
Violations would be considered civil infractions. Additionally, anyone found to be in violation would face "escalating penalties and repeat offender provisions," according to a document in the city agenda. Kratom retailers could have their business licenses revoked or denied if found to be in violation.
The Spokane Valley City Council is also considering a kratom ban of their own, as detailed later in this civics report.
The vote will follow a failed effort at the state level that would have banned kratom sales to people under 21.
Agenda here
Monday, March 2 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, March 5 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
SPD wants better communication with immigrant communities
The Spokane Police Department wants to award a contract to Mujeres in Action (MiA), a Latine advocacy nonprofit, that would create channels of communication between police and immigrant communities. The $120,000 contract would pay for monthly reports to generate the following metrics:
- number of contacts with domestic violence or sexual assault survivors who have limited-English-proficiency
- observations about SPD’s response in the field
- officer feedback about MiA’s services during domestic violence calls
- community feedback on Spokane Police interactions
- number of officers trained on cultural competency and trauma-informed service.
Recovery court in the works
The agenda item does not include much detail, but the Spokane municipal court system is looking to add a recovery court to its community court to serve people “involved in the criminal legal system who suffer from substance use or co-occurring disorders.”
Agenda here
Monday, March 2 at 12 pm
Council Chambers
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Tuesday, March 3 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
$16M-plus in behavioral health contracts
The BOCC is set to approve more than $16 million in contracts with 15 behavioral health providers for non-emergency services. Frontier Behavioral Health is the main contractor and represents by far the largest contract with an award of $6,447,537.80. See a breakdown of all proposals here.
Board appointment
The BOCC is set to appoint
- Shelley Moore to the Spokane County Community Services Developmental Disabilities Advisory Board.
- Derek Baziotis and Stephanie Courtney to the Spokane Regional Health District Board
Agenda here
Tuesday, March 3 at 2 pm
Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane School District Board of Directors
🌶️/5 peppers
Agenda here
Wednesday, March 4 at 6 pm
200 N. Bernard, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Valley City Council
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Second read on kratom ban
The city council will consider banning local businesses from selling kratom, a stimulant that some medical organizations say can be addictive and harmful if used irresponsibly. This is the second read on the resolution. Businesses that violate the proposed ban would have to pay a $250 fine on the first violation and $1,000 fines for subsequent violations.
Nearly $4M on table for Sullivan Road preservation
Spokane Valley wants to hire Selland Construction, Inc. to repave, build sidewalks, crosswalks and make other improvements to the stretch of Sullivan Road between 8th and 24th avenues. The project would be funded by a National Highway System grant with no matching requirement for the city.
Agenda here
Tuesday, March 3 at 6 pm
10210 E Sprague Ave, Spokane Valley
Virtual attendance here.
Liberty Lake City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
$3.6M for new City Hall
The city council is set to give Liberty Lake Mayor Cris Kaminskas permission to hire Dardan Enterprises to construct a new City Hall building for Liberty Lake for a price up to $3.6 million. Dardan said it would be able to complete the project for somewhat less than that, proposing a $3,238,683 price tag.
Public safety sales tax
The city is workshopping a potential ballot proposal that would allow it to collect a .1% sales tax to pay for public safety measures, likely in the form of hiring new police officers. If approved, it would yield $720,000 in revenue. Spokane County is also proposing a .2% tax increase for public safety, which if approved, would funnel $300,000 into Liberty Lake coffers, also for police.
The Liberty Lake tax would follow the lead of Spokane Valley, which has raised taxes in recent years to hire more police officers as part of an historic expansion of its police force.
Agenda here
Tuesday, March 3 at 6 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake
The meeting is also live streamed here.
