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 Spokane City Council could have a first read on whether or not to ban kratom tonight, but council members have told us that’s likely getting deferred for a few months.
• Mondays no more? At the Finance and Administration Committee, the Spokane City Council will discuss a rules change package that would shift their legislative meetings to Tuesdays, among other other things.
• At the Finance and Administration Committee: a presentation on homelessness data, and preliminary results show positive momentum for getting people into permanent housing options!
• The Central Valley School District board is considering policy revisions to require sex education that emphasizes abstinence.
• The Spokane Regional Health District will vote on “navigators” to help West Plains residents whose drinking water wells are contaminated with forever chemicals through the process of installing filters in their homes.

Important meetings this week:

• Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
• Finance and Administration Committee
• Spokane Housing Authority Board
• Spokane Plan Commission
• Spokane Public Facilities District
• Board of County Commissioners - Briefing Session and Legislative Session
• Spokane Airport Board
• Spokane Regional Health District Board
• Mead School District Board of Directors
• Central Valley School District Board of Directors
• East Valley School District Board of Directors
• Spokane Valley City Council 

Spokane City

Spokane City Council

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Procedural items

Tonight’s agenda is mostly proposed procedural changes, like updating the list of arterial streets to correctly reflect the current arterial streets, adding a nonvoting member to Community, Housing, and Human Services (CHHS) Board and restoring updates to the fire code that were inadvertently removed when council passed a different ordinance. If the how-the-sausage-gets-made meetings are your favorite, this might be the one for you.

A first crack at kratom?

Technically, the council is scheduled to hold a first reading on an ordinance that would ban kratom — or ban it for those under 21, if an amendment penned by Council Member Michael Cathcart is accepted at the agenda review session. However, council members have told us that the ordinance in its entirety is likely to instead get deferred for a few months as legislation to regulate the drug moves through the state legislature. So if you’re planning to come down to council tonight just for the kratom ordinance, you might want to consider watching the agenda review session at 3:30 pm to see if this makes the final agenda.

Agenda here
Monday, January 26 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, January 29 at 11 am
Council Chambers
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Council Committees

Finance and Administration Committee

🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Ethics code changes

Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Council Member Paul Dillon are proposing a couple of changes to the city’s Code of Ethics, which lays out the process for how complaints against elected or appointed officials will be handled. Here’s the gist of what’s on the table for discussion today:

• Often, if a city elected official is currently running for office while holding office, the exact same ethics complaint gets filed to both the city and the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC). The first change would reduce duplicative work by stating that if a complaint with the same allegation is filed to both the city and the state PDC, the city complaint will be rendered moot and the city will defer to the PDC’s findings.

• The second change is around the publication of complaints. Currently, ethics complaints can be posted on the website before any investigation or preliminary review has occurred. If the Wilkerson/Dillon ordinance is adopted, complaints would not be published until the city Ethics Commission has concluded their investigation.

Homelessness update

Included in the packet was preliminary data from the city’s 2025 Longitudinal Systems Analysis, a more accurate form of measuring homelessness in the city than the Point-in-Time Count. Initial results to be presented by Dawn Kinder indicate some positive momentum for the city.

In 2024, over 7,200 people used the city’s homelessness services. In 2025, that was down 11%, with 6,430 people seeking services. Other data points show a higher percentage of people exiting homeless services into permanent housing, and a lower percentage of people returning to homeless services. See the preliminary data below:

Annual rules update

Every year, the Spokane City Council votes on changes to their rules of procedure for the year. Today, they’ll be discussing a slate of edits to their regular rules.

The biggest change on the table is that, if passed, evening legislative meetings would move from Mondays to Tuesdays, starting on June 1, 2026. Spokane City Council has been meeting on Mondays for 112 years, according to archived copies of the Official Gazette of the city of Spokane, and initial proposals to change the meeting day were met with significant pushback. The council posted a resident survey asking for input on the potential day change back in September (we’ve yet to see results from that survey, but maybe they’ll be discussed today?) but with former Council Member Jonathan Bingle — who had a conflict on Tuesdays — replaced by freshman Council Member Sarah Dixit, this could be the year the Monday tradition actually ends.

Another day change on the table in the rules packet: switching meeting days for the Public Infrastructure, Environment, and Sustainability Committee, which currently meets on the third Monday of the month, with the Urban Experience Committee, which currently meets the second Monday of the month.

For procedural wonks, there are a few key process changes that could result in better public notification of what the council is actually voting on. If council meetings move to Tuesdays, agenda review sessions will stay on Mondays. This means that there would be time to figure out if the item you care about was amended or deferred, instead of the current system which has folks coming to council just hours after agenda review, often not knowing an ordinance was changed or deferred. The new rules would also create an expedited process for adding year-end budget items and emergency declarations to the legislative agenda.

And for folks who were frustrated with the lack of information on the Spokane Police Department’s agenda sheet for the Department of Justice grant earlier this month, this rule change package would also add a mechanism to allow council members to reject agenda items if their agenda sheet hasn’t been fully completed.

Agenda here
Monday, January 26  at 12 pm
Council Chambers
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

MISC City

Spokane Housing Authority Board

​​🫑/5 peppers

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

Spokane Plan Commission

🌶️/5 peppers

Sustainability in planning

This week, the Plan Commission will join forces with the Climate Resilience and Sustainability Board for their regular meeting. Because the climate board has “a responsibility to advise on climate resilience and greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies,” this will allow the two bodies to get together and chat about how sustainability and climate resiliency should be considered in the Comprehensive Plan’s land use and transportation elements.

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

Spokane Public Facilities District

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Wednesday, January 28 at 12:30 pm
Board Room, 720 W Mallon Ave, Spokane
Virtual attendance here.

Spokane County

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🌶️/5 peppers

Half a million needed for new public works comms

Part of Spokane County’s Department of Public Works’ job is to facilitate and conduct winter operations, road maintenance and construction management — work that requires fast and nimble communication. But the radios and tower systems that make that communication possible are old and failing, which can create dangerous working conditions. According to meeting documents, officials believe the system was already past its prime when it was purchased from the sheriff’s office two decades ago. The department is asking the BOCC for more than $577,000 to buy 156 truck radios, 45 handheld radios, new tower equipment and, possibly, one or two new radio towers.

$1M for affordable senior housing

Washington state has awarded Spokane County nearly $1 million to build 85 new units of affordable housing for seniors. The units would be located at 8415 N Wall Street.

Agenda here
Tuesday, January 27 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

$5.18M for rail bridges between Cheney & Spokane

The state Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is ready to dole out $5,186,000 in federal money for local rail bridge projects to Spokane County. There’s not a lot of detail in the agenda about precisely what the county will do with that money, but the WSDOT site dedicated to the funding says it can be used for projects like:

• Replacement and rehabilitation
• Steel bridge painting
• Retrofits to account for seismic activity
• Deck resurfacing and repair

Agenda here
Tuesday, January 27 at 2 pm
Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Airport Board

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Professional services, paint and weed killer

The board will approve agreements with an unnamed service provider for marketing and advertising for Spokane International Airport, the Airport Business Park and Felts Field; approve a paint purchase for runways and other airport roads; and a purchase of herbicides to be used on all campuses.

Agenda here.
Thursday, January 29 at 9 am
9211 W. McFarlane Road, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Regional Health District Board

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Postponing recruitment of administrative officer

Amid employment chaos at the health district, the board is set to postpone the search for an administrative officer to fill the seat left open by Alicia Thompson, who was fired last year. No additional information is available explaining why the board is postponing recruitment.

PFAS navigators

In SRHD’s consent agenda — a set of policies the body will likely accept under one vote — is a “PFA navigator.” There’s almost no information about this item, but it likely comes from the Spokane County PFAS Task Force, which is mobilizing resources to install filters in the homes of West Plains residents whose wells are contaminated with “forever chemicals.” During its inaugural meeting last summer, the task force discussed creating “navigators” to help people determine whether they need a filter and how it should be designed to fit their respective wells.

Hundreds of wells on the West Plains are contaminated after Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane International Airport, using federally-required fire retardant that contained the chemicals, unknowingly polluted the drinking water supply.

Agenda here
Thursday, January 29 at 12:30 pm
Auditorium, First Floor
1101 West College Avenue, Spokane

School Boards

Mead School District Board of Directors

🌶️/5 peppers

Agenda here
Monday, January 26 at 6 pm
12509 N. Market St. Bldg. D, Mead
Watch via Zoom here.

Central Valley School District Board of Directors

🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Abstinence ‘only sure way’ to avoid STIs, pregnancy

The board is set delete language from the district’s policy that would bar it from implementing abstinence-only sex education. It cited 2005 guidance from the Washington state Department of Health stressing “that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid pregnancy and to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV.” Stricken from the guidelines is the sentence “Abstinence will not be taught to the exclusion of other instruction on contraceptives and disease prevention” — presumably meaning that teachers can tell students abstaining from sex is the only way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.It requires teachers to teach abstinence as a way to avoid pregnancy and STI. The policy does go on to say the district’s sex education would remain consistent with the state’s comprehensive sex education guidelines, which also include contraception and LGBTQAI+-inclusive materials.

Studies on abstinence-only sex education have consistently shown that it’s ineffective at convincing young people to abstain from sex and correlates with higher rates of teen pregnancy and birth.

Agenda here
Monday, January 26 at 6 pm
Board Room at 2218 N Molter Rd
Liberty Lake
Watch via Zoom here.

East Valley School District Board of Directors (special meeting)

🌶️/5 peppers

Exec sessions

The board will review applications for employment, but these meetings are executive sessions, which means you can’t attend.

Agenda here
Wednesday, January 27 AND January 28 at 6:30 pm
3830 N Sullivan Rd, Bldg 1
Spokane Valley

West Valley School District Board of Directors

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Wednesday, January 28 at 5 pm
District Conference Center
8818 E. Grace, Spokane
Watch via Zoom here.

Other Cities

Spokane Valley City Council

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here when available
Tuesday, January 27 at 6 pm
10210 E Sprague Ave, Spokane Valley
Virtual attendance here.