Park and neighborhood improvements near you?

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 approve funding for a variety of crucial neighborhood projects, including affordable housing in West Spokane, rehabilitation of the Ridpath Apartments downtown and a variety of infrastructure improvements to community centers.
• The Public Infrastructure, Environment and Sustainability Committee will discuss a new ordinance to change the process for out-of-cycle amendments to the six-year Street Plan. 
• The Central Library is hosting a free event to help those in need get replacement ID cards, renew their driver’s license and connect with other resources on Tuesday from 10 am to 2 pm.
• There is a scam text going around claiming to be from the county clerk’s office. Don’t open any associated links!
• The Central Valley School District will talk about the new position the state organization for school activities just took on transgender girls in sports: they want to ban their participation, but can’t because of state law

Important meetings this week:

• Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
• Public Infrastructure, Environment, and Sustainability Committee
• Spokane Plan Commission
• Board of County Commissioners - Briefing Session and Legislative Session
• Spokane Regional Transportation Council
• Mead School District Board of Directors
• Central Valley School District Board of Directors
• West Valley School District Board of Directors
• Spokane Valley City Council 
• Liberty Lake City Council

Local craft brews support local craft news

Come join Perry Street Brewing and your friends at RANGE for a week of festivities that have always gone extremely well together: reading the news, then drinking about it. The rules are simple: Come to any of the festivities above, have a beer, and presto, you've also supported worker-owned news serving working people in Spokane. More info here.

Resource Fair at the Library

Tomorrow from 10 am to 2 pm, the Central Library will host a free event designed to help community members with income barriers or who are experiencing homelessness connect with resources. Folks can get a free replacement Washington State ID card or renew their driver’s license. Local service organizations will also be on site to offer “support related to housing, employment, medical screenings, addiction and recovery, food access, clothing, counseling, and more.” 

Tuesday, May 12 from 10 am to 2 pm
Central Library
906 W Main Ave, Spokane

Scam Warning

If you got a text claiming to be from the county clerk or the District Administration that read something like “Spokane County has a letter attached in Adobe for your reference,” do not open any attached links. This is a scam text. Spokane County Clerk Tim Fitzgerald has issued a warning about this scam, and stated the clerk’s offices will not send correspondence over text. For more scam information or if you want to report a scamSCAM like this, please report it to the Federal Trade Commission at https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

Spokane City Council

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Approving neighborhood project funding

Tonight, the city council could approve allocations of nearly $1.8 million in Community Development Block Grant funding that would fund capital projects and neighborhood development. This would divvy up $400,000 between three projects:

• the Shiloh Hills Friendship Park Sports Court would get $266,667
• the Nevada Heights Just One Neighborhood Project would get $88,889 
• Chief Garry Park’s Northeast Youth and Family Services would get $44,444 for its parking lot

And $1,102,484 in capital project funding would be divided between eight projects: 

• the Northeast Youth Center Rehabilitation would get $210,000 
• Transitions TLC would get $55,000 for a boiler replacement 
• the Northeast Public Development Authority would get $199,500 
• the Northeast Community Center Association would get $142,320 for air filtration upgrades
• the Catholic Housing Services of Eastern Washington would get $117,205 to make improvements to the Ridpath Apartments
• the Salvation Army’s Stepping Stones Rehabilitation would get $150,000
• the Salish School Of Spokane would get $52,789 for its Salish Cultural Recreation Community Center 
• the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center would get $175,670 for restroom rehabilitation

Improvements in West Quadrant

The council could approve the spending of funds collected by the West Quadrant Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District to repay property owners who installed “important pedestrian, street and utility infrastructure adjacent to their properties.” The Neighborhood Projects Advisory Committee approved two repayment agreements:

• $237,057 to Broadway Foods and Broadway Laundromat in West Central for “sidewalks, frontage improvements, and other features necessary to ensure pedestrian safety and circulation.”
• $1,200,500 to Habitat for Humanity to fund the purchase and renovation of up to seven “permanently affordable” homes in the TIF district. 

Both projects received letters of support detailing their importance to the neighborhoods. The ordinance to approve the TIF spending is sponsored by Council Members Kitty Klitzke and Zack Zappone. 

Agenda here
Monday, May 11 at 6 pm
Council Chambers 
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here. 

Public Infrastructure, Environment, and Sustainability Committee

🌶️/5 peppers

Public feedback on plan changes

Council Member Michael Cathcart has proposed an ordinance that would increase public feedback requirements for some changes to the six-Year Street Plan. Currently, the plan sets out the city’s goals for street improvements to be made in the upcoming six years and is updated annually. Cathcart’s amendment would prevent any arterial project from being “significantly modified or expanded beyond the scope of the project as set forth in the six-year plan” without first getting approval of the modifications from the Transportation Commission and then from the full City Council after a public hearing. This ordinance will be discussed today. 

Agenda here
Monday, May 11 at 12 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 14 at 11 am
Council Chambers
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Plan Commission

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here 
Wednesday, May 13 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center 
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🌶️/5 peppers

County looking for disaster recovery funds

The Spokane County Department of Housing & Community Development wants to establish a dedicated funding line for the administration of disaster recovery for homeowners who lost their homes to the Gray and Oregon fires three years ago. The money would total $2,634,000 over five years and come from Community Block Development Grants. The county has been building new homes at about a rate of 12 each year for people who lost their houses in the fires. The money would hire three full-time disaster case managers, an executive director, an administrative assistant and contracted services.

Agenda here 
Tuesday, May 12 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

More petty $ for sheriff’s deputies?

The sheriff’s office wants to boost the amount of discretionary funding in its budget to pay for small items. It’s asking the BOCC to increase the amount of “petty cash” in its coffers from $13,000 to $20,000. Petty cash is a funding line that allows employees to pay for small emergencies when traditional funding line approval processes are too onerous.

Agenda here
Tuesday, May 12 at 2 pm
Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Regional Transportation Council

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here 
Thursday, May 14 at 1 pm
21 W Riverside Ave, Suite 504, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Mead School District Board of Directors

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

WIAA Enrollment for next two years 

The Mead School District will host a work session to discuss its membership in the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), a statewide organization that prescribes policies for member districts to run parts of the schools. There is very little information in the agenda — but as always, you can get the deets to attend the meeting below.

Agenda here
Monday, May 11 at 6 pm
12509 N. Market St. Bldg. D, Mead
Watch via Zoom here.

Central Valley School District Board of Directors

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

WIAA recommends banning trans girls from sports

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, of which CVSD is a part, has said it doesn’t want transgender girls to play in school sports. It doesn’t matter in a legal sense — it’s just posturing, because WIAA rules can’t supersede state law, but 29 school representatives voted for the non-binding ban. The organization spent a lot of time on this, even though trans athletes, who number fewer than 10 in the state, make up about .004% of Washington’s K-12 athletes. This reflects a national fervor over the expanding acceptance of queer communities in American society. CVSD and the Mead School District have, over the past several years, consistently positioned themselves against queer, and particularly trans, rights in their schools.

Agenda here
Monday, May 11 at 6 pm
Board Room at 2218 N Molter Rd
Liberty Lake
Watch via Zoom here.

West Valley School District Board of Directors

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Wednesday, May 13 at 8 am
District Conference Center 8818 E. Grace, Spokane
Watch via Zoom here.

Spokane Valley City Council

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Parks master plan proposals

The city staff will recommend a number of additions to the Spokane Valley parks master plan to the city council, mostly focused on boosting opportunities for residents to engage in the various recreation programs the city maintains. Here are some of the big-ticket items they’ll talk about (verbatim from presentation):

• Provide more “learn to swim” classes and water safety courses
• Set aside and acquire additional land for future open space preservation as the city continues to develop
• Create green corridors for alternative transportation routes and habitat value, mitigating environmental impacts
• Enhance lighting for longer, usable hours at specific fields, courts and other amenity areas to boost programming opportunities

Agenda here
Tuesday, May 12 at 6 pm
10210 E Sprague Ave, Spokane Valley
Virtual attendance here.

Liberty Lake City Council (special meeting)

🌶️/5 peppers

Governance Manual proposal

The agenda contains no details, but the city council will meet to review a new draft governance manual, a document that sets down the rules city officials must follow in their jobs and in public meetings.

Agenda here
Tuesday, May 12 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake
The meeting is also live streamed here.