*The Spokane Regional Health District headquarters building. (Photo by Sandra Rivera.)*

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 the highlights:

Spokane City Council is set to accept millions of dollars of grant funding for homelessness services, choose a new council member and approve a settlement for the family of a man killed by police in 2022.
The Finance and Administration Committee has a bunch of important items for discussion today, but the one that caught our attention was the revival of the ordinance to ban warrantless ICE arrests at ticketed events in the public right-of-way, like street festivals.
The Spokane County Planning Commission will host a discussion about wind energy development as part of its decades-long planning process.
The Spokane Regional Health District Board could get a whole lot bigger: they’re planning to add a county commissioner for every tribal representative they were required to add by new state law.
Liberty Lake City Council will host an “advisory vote” on a “Library/Community Center Project” at a special council meeting.

Important meetings this week:

Turn your ballot in!

It’s primary season, and ballots are due August 5. If you live in Spokane City’s District 3, we’ve got a piece out that might help you make up your mind, with another one on the way, and a podcast of a recent candidate forum you can listen to here. And for everyone else in the city limits, you just have the aquifer protection tax on your ballot! Quick and easy to fill out and turn in at a ballot box near you.

Human Rights Commission to host conversation on police violence

On Wednesday from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, the Spokane Human Rights Commission will host a panel on ways to improve communication between police and the community. Panelists will include Police Chief Kevin Hall, Police Ombuds Bart Logue and police accountability activists Debbie Novak, Jim Leighty and Cynthia Mannycolors. It will take place on the third floor of the Central Library. Find more details here.

Spokane City

Spokane City Council

🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Housing and Homelessness funding

Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Council Member Jonathan Bingle are the dual sponsors on three housing and homelessness agenda items:

Accepting nearly $7 million in funding from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to pay for 2024 housing and homelessness programs that addressed youth homelessness.
An over $24 million grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce that runs from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2027 to be spent on housing and homelessness services.
A $160,000 funding recommendation for SNAP’s housing counseling program, which helps people facing foreclosure stay in their homes, and which suffered from federal funding cuts. The metrics on SNAP’s program are impressive: last year, 419 households received housing counseling assistance from them, and 362 of those were saved from foreclosure, which is a conversion rate of 86%.

New District 2 Council Member

Tonight, council will officially vote to approve the appointed replacement for former Council Member Lili Navarrete, who is now working for the city in the Community Health and Human Services (CHHS) team. Last week, there was a bit of a toss-up between two final candidates, with the council conservatives recommending Ryan Oelrich — who previously served as an appointed council member for District 2 last year — and progressives Wilkerson and Council Member Paul Dillon recommending Shelby Lambdin, the Health Equity director at CHAS. At last week’s Agenda Review session, they narrowed it down to Lambdin, and tonight they’ll have the (sort of perfunctory) final vote to confirm her. You can likely expect to see Lambdin at the dais starting after council’s summer break. She will serve until after the election results for the upcoming city council race are certified.

Settlement for Robert Bradley’s family

The police shooting of Robert Bradley — who was shot at his home in September of 2022 — has continued to be a very expensive ordeal for the city, and a very drawn out one for Bradley’s family. First, council approved a half a million dollar settlement with his fiancee, Sarah. Since then, though, the city has spent a total of $600,000 fighting a second lawsuit from Bradley’s family. Tonight, the city council plans to approve a settlement reached by the city’s insurance carrier with Bradley’s family, for a total of $3,655,000. This brings the total spent on fighting or settling lawsuits around the shooting of Bradley to over $4.5 million.

Important side note on transparency here: folks at council meetings have long complained about the lack of clarity behind when the council fights or settles a lawsuit. In this week’s agenda, they’re making it more clear: they do what their insurance company tells them to do. In the case of the $3,655,000 settlement this week, Safety National Insurance is paying the entire settlement cost, and the city is paying $222,123.21 in “self-insured retention,” — essentially, the out-of-pocket cost before insurance kicks in.

Deferred from last week:

Two items we covered in depth last week — the Human Right Commission policy review ordinance and the inclusive contracting resolution — were deferred last week and are up for a vote this week. They’re substantively the same as when we covered them here and here, but one quick note: the Human Rights Commission ordinance was in fact amended at last week’s Agenda Review session to the new draft by Dillon, which we covered last week.

Next week’s sneak peek:

Spokane City Council is on summer vacay next week, which means the meeting will be cancelled! Spoiler alert — we might be following suit with a small break of our own 👀

Agenda here
Monday, July 28 at 6 pm
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Finance and Administration Committee

🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

It’s a really big week at the Finance and Administration Committee, so we honestly recommend just tuning in today, but here’s the quick-and-dirty rundown on what’s on their docket for discussion:

An update on the Internal Audit Office’s performance review of the public records request (PRR) department. (On a related note, the department completely ghosted RANGE on a PRR about cops from early 2024.)
An ordinance draft from the mayor’s administration to establish the Emergency Communications Center, Spokane city’s alternative to Spokane Regional Emergency Communications — which we left or got kicked out of, depending on which side of the divorce you ask.
A presentation from Director of Transportation and Sustainability Jon Snyder on how the city is losing around $360,000 every year by not requiring truck drivers to pay Spokane’s Transportation Benefit District fee.
A letter to SCRAPS, asking for Spokane city to have a say in the selection process for the new executive director after controversial former leader Jesse Ferrari — who is accused of ordering the execution of a dog about to be adopted by a whistleblower on poor conditions at the facility — exited the agency.

No ICE at street festivals

Perhaps the biggest item on the committee agenda: Dillon is resurrecting the “Safe and Welcome Spokane,” ordinance, which would forbid warrantless arrests at ticketed street festivals. Last time, it was on the table as an emergency ordinance, which meant that even though it got a majority of council votes approving it, it didn’t clear the 5-2 supermajority threshold needed for an emergency ordinance.

It’s back in committee as just a regular ordinance, which means it could be passed by Labor Day. Unfortunately, that’s not soon enough for Tacos and Tequila, which just postponed their annual event due to safety concerns.

Agenda here
Monday, July 28 at 12 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 County

Spokane Housing Authority Board

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Monday, July 28 at 3:30 pm
Meeting Room 25 W. Nora Ave, Spokane, WA 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane County Planning Commission

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Wind farm workshop

The commission will host a workshop on renewable wind energy, one of the crucial ways for energy systems to reduce the emission of climate warming gasses produced by fossil fuels. It’s a controversial topic in Eastern Washington, with some saying wind energy takes up a lot of land and others saying it’s necessary to decarbonize the economy. Spokane County does not have a zoning ordinance that specifically addresses wind development, so it will be interesting how these conversations play out.

Agenda here
Thursday, July 31 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 Regional Health District Board

🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Changing the board structure

Last year, RANGE broke the news that the Board of County Commissioners was refusing to seat a tribal representative on the SRHD board. Well, in this year’s legislative session, state lawmakers closed the loophole the BOCC was using to avoid seating someone, but instead of just seating tribal representatives, they’re now changing the whole make up of the 8-person board.

They’re proposing that for each federally recognized tribe that holds land in Spokane County and each “urban Indian organization recognized by the Indian Health services and registered as a 501(c)(3),” that choose to send a representative to the SRHD board, another county commissioner is also added to the board to balance them out, which could be up to all five county commissioners.

The rest of the board makeup would stay the same: one single member to represent Spokane city and all the other surrounding towns and cities in the region and three members chosen by the BOCC who do not hold office and who represent public health officials, public health consumers and other community stakeholders.

The stated goal is to make it so the membership of the board always has an equal number of elected and non-elected members. But instead of increasing representation for the surrounding cities and towns at the same time they increase indigenous representation, the BOCC is just going to consolidate power on the board.

Agenda here
Thursday, July 31 at 12:30 pm
Auditorium, First Floor
Spokane Regional Health District
1101 West College Avenue

School Boards

Mead School District Board of Directors

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Monday, July 28 at 6 pm
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

Facing federal funding cuts

CVSD staff identified a few federal funding grants that are likely to be cut for the upcoming school year, totalling over $800,000. Those grant dollars were expected to fund multiple Professional Development Teachers on Special Assignment. The district hasn’t yet identified a long-term solution, but the agenda states they’ve found one-time funding options to cover the potential losses this year, and they’re looking at proactive solutions for 2027 and beyond.

Agenda here
Monday, July 28 at 6 pm
Learning and Teaching Center (district office)
Board Room at 2218 N Molter Rd, Liberty Lake
Watch via Zoom here.

Spokane School District Board of Directors (special meeting)

🫑/5 peppers

Ballot prep

The board will appoint members to “for/against” committees who will write ballot pros and cons arguments for voters guides on the proposed building improvement bond that will appear on your ballots this November.

Agenda here
Wednesday, July 30 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Surrounding Cities

Spokane Valley City Council

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

SpoVal may apply for $1.84M in state funding for transportation projects

The city wants to apply for $1.8 million funding from the state’s Urban Arterial Program for a series of transportation projects that would total $6.2 million. It has already secured more than $6 million in federal funding for the projects. The projects include:

South Sullivan Road preservation from 8th Avenue to 24th Avenue
Full depth pavement repair, sidewalk infill, stormwater system upgrades, a new pedestrian crossing near 9th Avenue and new school zone flashing beacons
A single-lane roundabout at 4th Avenue and Barker Road

Agenda here
Tuesday, July 29 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.

Liberty Lake City Council

🌶️/5 peppers

Advisory vote on new ‘Library/Community Center Project’

The city council will host an advisory vote — a non-binding expression of public opinion — on support for a “Library/Community Center Project’ at a special session initially scheduled for the council to discuss new greenhouse gas requirements in public facilities.

Agenda here
Tuesday, July 29 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Is the Spokane health board about to get a whole lot bigger?