Finding $3.1 million for new Spokane police cars

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 and Spokane Valley City Council will both vote on moving funds to their police departments, for more cars and more officers, respectively.
A vague library policy review at Mead School Board.
A discussion on 2025 traffic calming projects at the PIES Committee
Green trash bin pick up is back!

Important meetings this week:

Changes in income limit for property tax exemptions

House Bill 1344 passed in 2023, leading to an announcement last week from the Spokane County Assessor that the annual income limit for senior citizens, people with disabilities and veterans with disabilities seeking property tax exemptions is increasing. Previously, folks seeking this exemption had to make less than $40,000 per year. Now, that number is going up to less than $50,000 per year. Under the legislation, the income threshold will be adjusted every three years instead of every five years. To learn more about the program and whether or not you qualify, contact the Spokane County Assessor’s Office Exemption Department at 509-477-3698, by email at assessorseniorexemptions@spokanecounty.org or visit the Assessor’s Office website.

Curbside green cart pick up returns

The City of Spokane is resuming curbside yard and food waste pick up today, and Cletus the Compost Cart wants you to participate. The optional yard waste service typically runs March through November. For those participating, green carts need to be on the curb no later than 6 am on your usual garbage pick up day. More details on the service here.

Spokane City Council

Dawn Kinder, the new director of the Neighborhoods, Housing and Human Services (NHHS) Department, submitted a request to suspend the rules and add contracts with Compassionate Addiction Treatment (CAT) Spokane for $184,539 and Jewels Helping Hands (JHH) for $116, 688 to continue providing warming shelter services through March 1. Because Mayor Brown declared a state of emergency, which lasted January 11 through January 21, these funds did not originally need council approval, but contract extensions do require approval now that the emergency is over.

ARPA Funds for cop cars

Special Budget Ordinances (SBO) on tonight’s agenda could see $3,128,000 moved into the Property Acquisition Police Fund so that the Spokane Police Department can purchase new vehicles. This originally came up for discussion at the February 5 Public Safety and Community Health Committee meeting, which was covered by one of our Documenters (you can read her detailed meeting notes here!) Major Eric Olsen with SPD told council that vehicles are an ongoing expense as they need to be replaced, and requested funding for 55 new vehicles this year.

It was unclear to both council members who asked the question at the committee meeting and our Documenter in attendance why this had not been included in former Mayor Nadine Woodward’s budget for 2024, if it’s a regular, ongoing yearly expense. But because it was not included in the budget, SPD asked the council to identify a source of funds for the vehicle purchases. If the special budget ordinance passes tonight, that source will be American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds that had previously been allocated to the Municipal Court Justice Building.

There is also a proposed amendment to the SBO on the agenda from Council Member Zack Zappone that wouldn’t change the SPD funding, but would move an additional $375,000 of ARPA funding: $250,000 would be allocated for contractual services to support the upcoming 50-year anniversary of Expo 74, and $125,000 would be used for the recruitment of a new police chief and fire chief. Both positions are being filled in an interim capacity at the moment as both the former chiefs resigned when Mayor Lisa Brown took office. The Zappone amendment also proposes taking $259,553 that had previously been allocated for the purpose of hiring Equity Navigators and instead use it to increase language access. If this amendment passes, all of this would happen immediately.

Municipal court gets a grant

The Municipal Court could be taking an L if the special budget ordinance above passes, but they will also be getting a small W. The Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund is giving the court a one-time $25,000 grant. $5,000 will be used to purchase bus passes at a 50% discount from the Spokane Transit Authority for the Municipal Court to give out, and the remaining $20,000 is to be used to provide clothing and personal services such as haircuts, ID replacements and housing assistance.

Parking lot emergency?

At the Urban Experience Committee meeting earlier this month, the council discussed an interim zoning ordinance that would make immediate adjustments to zoning code around “public parking lots,” clearly defining what exactly a public parking lot is. The interim zoning ordinance appears on tonight’s agenda as an emergency item, which would put it into effect right away.

At the committee meeting, Council Members Michael Cathcart and Jonathan Bingle asked for clarity around why exactly the ordinance constituted an emergency, after council has received consistent negative citizen feedback about items getting unnecessarily listed as emergencies to push them through quicker and with less chance for community feedback. Freshman council member Paul Dillon responded that the interim zoning ordinance would increase pedestrian safety, a sentiment he also shared on Twitter, citing the rise of severe and fatal car crashes in Spokane County as a reason that all ordinances increasing pedestrian safety should be treated as emergencies.

There was some pushback to this sentiment at the committee meeting, and requests to outline a clear process for declaring emergencies. We anticipate this coming up at tonight’s meeting as well during discussion of this ordinance.

Beer Garden ordinance in time out

Once again, the Family Friendly ordinance is on the agenda, but Zappone told us it’s likely getting deferred again. It was slated for a vote at the last city council meeting on February 12, but was deferred at the legislative session. Public testimony was given by both concerned citizens like Earl Moore, the council candidate who recently ran against Kitty Klitzke, and representatives from Downtown Spokane Partnership and Greater Spokane Incorporated, who thought some of the changes in the multiple proposed amendments brought the ordinance too far from its original purpose of making it easier for nonprofits to hold “shop and sip” events or have alcohol present at street festivals. What seemed like a fairly simple proposal to bring Spokane’s city codes in better alignment with state codes around beer gardens has turned into a very lengthy process and we’re looking forward to the day when we don’t have to write it up in CIVICS.

Agenda here
Monday, February 26 at 6 pm
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Public Infrastructure, Environment, and Sustainability Committee

PIES time change

The Public Infrastructure, Environment and Sustainability (PIES) Committee usually meets at 1:15 pm. Today, it met at 10 am. We’re unsure if this time change is permanent or one-time-only. Though that meeting has passed, one interesting item on the agenda was a review of neighborhood traffic calming projects slated for 2025. For our street-safety, traffic tracking friends, it might be worth watching the recording of this meeting, which will be posted on the City Cable 5 Youtube channel for more info on those upcoming projects.

Agenda here
Monday, February 26 at 10 am (usually at 1:15 pm)
Council Chambers in the Lower Level of City Hall
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane City Council Study Sessions

Agenda here when available.
Thursday, February 29 at 11 am
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

Grant for criminal justice diversion

BOCC will examine a resolution to accept a $1.3 million grant from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. The grant is being jointly awarded to the City of Spokane and the county. According to the city’s documentation, the grant’s goal “is to direct individuals to community resources and to divert individuals out of the criminal justice systems into programs better designed to meet individuals’ needs.” The city accepted the grant February 6; the county will have a chance to accept it in coming BOCC meetings.

Agenda here
Tuesday, February 27 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

Voting positions

In a resolution to codify positions on the various committees the county commissioners sit on, Commissioner Josh Kerns may be covering for Commissioner Al French in the event of French’s absence as a voting member of the Spokane Transit Authority (STA) Operations Committee (OC). Kerns currently chairs the OC’s Performance Monitoring & External Relations Committee, and had originally been slated to receive a voting position on the Operations Committee, which would have left the city of Spokane without a vote on that committee, until that proposal was voted down. The resolution that would codify this arrangement says it would apply “when OC Chair County Commissioner Al French is unable to attend any OC meeting for any reason whatsoever.”

The BOCC will also vote whether to appoint Hillary Pham, Spokane County’s inter-governmental affairs officer, to the county’s Veterans Advisory Board.

Agenda here
Tuesday, February 27 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 Valley City Council

“Right-sizing” police services

In late 2022, Spokane Valley City Council hired the Matrix Consulting Group to do a review of the valley’s police department and make recommendations on staffing needs. Those recommendations were made and presented in November 2023, and included proposing the valley hire:

25 additional dedicated commissioned officers
three shared dedicated commissioned officers
Two civilian positions

Earlier this year, Spokane Valley police chief David Ellis presented a staffing update to city council officially requesting $6.2 million in funding to hire those 28 officers, as well as the two civilian positions, one of which would be a contract analyst to help provide “consistent, timely data.” Ellis also noted that this would take multiple years to implement, because of struggles finding officers to hire, and estimated the department could hire about 10 officers a year.

After hearing the presentations from both Ellis and the consulting group, Spokane Valley City Council has laid out a proposal to staff up the police department in phases. Phase one, which would happen this year, would be hiring 10 officers, one shared lieutenant in the Office of Professional Standards and a contract analyst. This initial phase would cost an estimated $2.125 million annually, with an additional $624,000 for one-time vehicle and equipment costs, according to the agenda.

This proposal leaves the council with the question of how to pay for this. The lengthy agenda item lists four potential options. The first is to “prioritize public safety within existing resources.” Functionally, this would look like using the new Transportation Benefit District (TBD) fees to fund the new hires, as well as “repurposing” a $1.7 million streetwear fee, which would “eliminate the need for the General Fund to subsidize street maintenance activities which frees up revenues in the General Fund for public safety purposes.”

The second option is to use banked property taxes from the current levy, which could look like raising the levy rate from the current .79 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value to .86 cents per $1,000. The third option is to impose a utility tax, which can be done without voter approval if it stays below 6%. The final option is to impose an additional TBD sales tax (as opposed to option one, which would allocate the existing TBD license fees) of up to 0.1%, which could result in a total of $3.8 million that could be put towards the staff-up.

Spokane Valley City Council’s newly formed Public Safety Committee, which includes Council Members Tim Hattenburg, Laura Padden and Ben Wick unanimously recommended that the council vote to use the first option, pulling the funding from existing resources, to fund at least the first phase. That proposal will be voted on tomorrow night under the agenda item, “Motion consideration to add additional Spokane Valley Police Department personnel.”

To move forward with additional phases and get up to their goal of 28 new officers, more ongoing funding will need to be identified. Also on the agenda for Tuesday is a discussion on a community involvement process that would seek community input on those other options for funding: increasing the levy amount, imposing additional utility tax or creating a new TBD sales tax. There is also an estimated cost associated with the community input process: $30,000 for printing, mailing and event supplies to market events. No vote will be held on what that community input process could look like this week, but we anticipate this will continue to be a major topic of discussion and action throughout the spring.

Dam policy priority

After hearing a presentation last week by representatives of Modern Electric, Kaiser Aluminum and the local steelworkers union, Spokane Valley City Council will vote on whether or not to amend their 2024 legislative agenda to include the preservation of Columbia River System and Lower Snake River dams as one of their policy priorities. The document calls the river system and dams “a critical cog in our economy.” Opponents, largely from the region’s Indigenous tribes, have argued for the removal of dams to help revive struggling salmon populations. For detailed background context about the dam politics, check out last week’s CIVICS section.

Agenda here
Tuesday, February 27 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.

Spokane Housing Authority Board

Public Hearing on voucher plan

The Spokane Housing Authority (SHA) is holding a 30 minute public hearing on their draft revisions to the Revised Housing Choice Voucher Administrative Plan. They’re hoping to hear from SHA clients, residents, landlords and the general public on the proposed changes. RANGE power skimmed the whole 54-page plan and the only major change we could find was a proposal to close all program waiting lists when the waiting period reaches 12 months instead of leaving them indefinitely open. Those wanting to attend the hearing can do so in person or virtually.

Agenda here
Monday, February 26 at 3:30 pm
Meeting Room 25 W. Nora Ave, Spokane, WA 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Mead School District Board of Directors

Library procedure review raising eyebrows

The Mead School District Board agendas are always incredibly thin (like one-page-no-details thin) so RANGE doesn’t have any context on these items, but a couple things stood out to us.

First, the board will be reviewing their Library Media Center procedure.

Earlier this year, we heard reports that librarians in Mead’s school board were asked to pull a list of titles from the shelves, including Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Hunger Games, Harry Potter and others. Following quick community ire, the district sent out an email to parents stating that though Mead had been “engaged in a committee-led process to both review concerns and review library materials district-wide,” the current situation was “the result of miscommunication and a misinterpretation of the intended process.”

In 2022, Michael Cannon, who was a school board member at the time but currently serves as president of the school board, had introduced policies to ban books with “critical race theory” or “gender identity.” Ultimately, the policies were voted down, but activists are keeping a close eye on Mead School Board whenever they talk books and libraries. (Fun RANGE fact: this is the meeting and issue that urged us to start CIVICS!)

Agenda here
Monday, February 26 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

Agenda here
Monday, February 26 at 6:30 p.m.
Learning and Teaching Center (district office)
Board Room at 2218 N Molter Rd, Liberty Lake
Watch via Zoom here.

Spokane Parking Advisory Committee

Agenda here (once posted)
Tuesday, February 27 at 2:30 p.m.
City Hall Lobby, Tribal Council Room
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd

Spokane Plan Commission

Paper cuts and procedure update

It’s a pretty quiet week at the Spokane Plan Commission, with only two items on their list of workshops. First, they’ll be continuing their paper cut process, which is doing routine line edits on codes to bring them up-to-date with any state or city legislation that has passed. They’ll also be reviewing and updating their rules of procedure. Those changes start on page 81 of the agenda. Most of them look pretty standard, for example, capitalizing the word “President.” One change we noticed is a new section that would add “liaisons” to Plan Commission meetings. These liaisons would be honorary participants with no vote, but the ability to provide regular reports and info to the commission. It’s unclear how those liaisons would be appointed to the commission.

Agenda here
Wednesday, February 28 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Regional Health District Board

Agenda here
Thursday, February 29 at 12:30 p.m.
Auditorium, First Floor
Spokane Regional Health District
1101 West College Avenue

Spokane Airport Board

Agenda here.
Thursday, February 29 at 9 am
Airport Event Center
9211 W. McFarlane Road, Spokane, WA 99224
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Finding $3.1 million for new Spokane police cars