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. RANGE and several city governments had Monday off to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. so it’s a light week for municipal meetings.
Some things that stick out to us this week include:
- The Office of the Police Ombuds (OPO) is asking the OPO Commission for a number of reforms to investigative processes at the Spokane Police Department. Of them: an important remaking of the Use of Force Review Board
- The BOCC will host a public hearing on proposed rule changes for open forum, the time allocated to the public to comment on county business at legislations sessions
- Spokane Regional Emergency Communications has kicked the City of Spokane representative off its board, and the BOCC will review a proposal to allow the city to create its own emergency communications system.
- Spokane Valley is making their homeless and housing task force permanent
- Brush up on your Public Records and Open Public Meeting Act skills at Spokane Valley City Council tonight, where the council is getting their training.
Important meetings this week:
- Spokane Valley City Council
- Liberty Lake City Council
- Office of Police Ombuds Commission
- Board of County Commissioners - Briefing Session and Legislative Session
- Spokane Public Facilities District Board
- Spokane Plan Commission
- Spokane Airport Board
- Spokane City Council Study Session
Spokane Valley City Council
🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
A home for the Homeless and Housing Task Force
Since the summer of 2023, Spokane Valley has had an interim Homeless and Housing Task Force, which was intended to provide recommendations to the council on the implementation of their five-year plan for housing, use of money coming in from the Homeless Housing and Assistance Act and the final form for the task force, once it became permanent. Almost two years later, the council is ready to ditch the “interim” from the task force’s title and establish it as a permanent body.
Currently, the task force is made up of a Spokane Valley City Council member, a Spokane County representative, a business representative, a school representative, a Housing Authority representative and two people with lived experience of homelessness (although the Housing Authority representative and one lived experience seat are vacant right now). Tonight, the make-up could change, if council approves recommendations from the interim task force to expand the body to nine members, add terms/term limits, create flexibility around what “lived experience” entails and add a representative from the city of Spokane, where *all* of the homeless shelters and nearly all homeless services are located.
If approved, the new, permanent nine-member board would be comprised of a Spokane Valley City Council member, a Spokane County representative, a business representative, a school representative, a Housing authority representative and two members with either lived experience of homelessness, or experience in:
- Philanthropy
- Behavioral health/Spokane Regional Health
- Providing healthcare
- Law & justice
- Private housing developers/providers
This new structure could allow for a housing and homelessness task force without a single person who has experienced homelessness sitting on it, if the two positions went to developers or folks with other experience. There would also be two non-voting members, one of which would be a representative from the City of Spokane and the other would be a staff member from the City of Spokane Valley who would serve as a liaison between the City Council and the Homeless and Housing Task Force.
The Spokane Valley City Council is scheduled to vote on implementing this tonight.
Public Records and Open Public Meeting Act training
Spokane Valley City Council is set to receive training from city staff on public records and the Open Public Meeting Act (OPMA). If you’re looking for a free brush-up on your skills, or you want to learn your rights when it comes to what you can (and can’t) request from government agencies, or what exactly constitutes an OPMA violation, this could be a good meeting to attend.
Agenda here
Tuesday, January 21 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.
Liberty Lake City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
A library board appointment attempt
Despite the repeated refusal of the Liberty Lake City Council to seat qualified appointments to the Liberty Lake Library board, Mayor Cris Kaminskas isn’t giving up. Tonight, she’s set to appoint Jennifer Chase, the director of Career and Technical Education at Central Valley School District, to fill an empty position on the library board. This is worth watching, to see if the council continues to deny Kaminskas’ appointments.
Potential changes to emergency shelter requirements
Liberty Lake City Council is holding a public hearing on a slate of proposed changes to their “Limited Use Standards for Emergency Housing & Shelters,” policy. After a quick skim, it seems like the potential changes — which come recommended from Liberty Lake’s Planning Commission — would actually make it easier to open an emergency shelter, and put the city in compliance with recent legislative changes. The potential amendments strike three old requirements:
- Forbidding shelters from having more than 75 residents.
- Requiring all shelters to be spaced at least ¾ of a mile away from each other
- Requiring shelters to be within ¼ mile of a fixed transit route
Because it’s just scheduled for a public hearing, there won’t be a vote tonight, but there will be a chance for you to share your thoughts with the council!
Agenda here
Tuesday, January 21 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Ombuds Commission
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
After bodyslam incident, proposed review board reform
Last March, a Spokane Police Department (SPD) officer detained someone for walking in the roadway of 6th Avenue after initiating a struggle with the person and slamming their body into the pavement. Their face was dirtied and bloodied from the body slam, according to a transcript of an interview with the person detained. A paramedic examined the person. “The subject had full range of motion but the subject had obvious bruising, deformity, or swelling on their arm and a mark,” a new report by the Office of Police Ombuds (OPO) says.
Based on this incident, the Ombuds is recommending to the Ombuds Commission several policy reforms. One notable proposal is to revise the make-up of the review board that investigates use of force incidents, which RANGE wrote about last month. In reviewing this case, “no member of the review board took issue with the use of force,” according to page 11 of the report, despite it having been found to have violated department policy during a previous chain of command investigation. The Ombuds recommendation specifically asks for civilian representation on the board. If the OPO Commission approves the recommendation Tuesday night, the Ombuds will present it to Chief of Police Kevin Hall, who can attempt to implement it.
SPD consistently ranks among the deadliest city police forces in the nation.
Agenda here
Tuesday, January 21 at 5:30 pm
City Council Chambers
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Spokane, you can’t be in the SREC club anymore
Spokane Regional Emergency Communications (SREC) has had it. After vitriolic finger-pointing between the city’s representative on the SREC board and the rest of the body on whether to reform the agency, the BOCC will hear a proposal by the board to allow the city to establish its own independent emergency communications service by the beginning of next year. SREC triages emergency calls and routes them to the correct responding agency.
Sheriff John Knowles wrote in a statement: “This was a difficult decision, but over the past year, it has become clear that District 3 State Representatives have chosen to prioritize the needs of the City of Spokane over the broader regional interests, politicizing public safety funding in the process. This difference in priorities has created a fundamental distrust on how we approach regional collaboration.”
Mayor Lisa Brown wrote in a statement last week: “As my team has been assessing SREC’s governance and financials over the past year, SREC has consistently provided us with unreasonable deadlines, an artificial sense of urgency, and answers to our questions that underscore their own lack of certainty behind parts of their user-fee model. This has complicated our review and created unnecessary tension between regional partners. On multiple occasions, the City of Spokane has offered solutions – like jointly identifying a neutral facilitator – intended to move us collectively toward a resolution, but SREC has been disagreeable and unwilling to consider our recommendations.”
For more details on the saga, read Samantha Wohlfeil’s report in The Inlander here.
$2.5M in fed funding for child support enforcement
The County Prosecutor will receive about $2.5 million in federal funding, distributed through the state Department of Social and Health Services, to enforce child support rulings. The money reimburses the county $2 for every $3 spent on finding parents who owe child support and the administration of enforcing those decisions. $2.1 million will go directly to the Prosecutor’s Office, just more than $300,000 will go to the County Clerk and about $150,000 to the Superior Court.
New money for road projects
The BOCC will hear presentations on the following projects:
- The Transportation Improvement Board wants to allocate more than $800,000 to build new sidewalks, crosswalks and improvements to accessibility along Crestline Street near 57th Avenue in the South Hill.
- The state Department of Ecology has allocated $400,000 from the Department of Ecology to a project that would seal parts of Dearborn, Fairview, Carahan and Chronicle roads and Grace Avenue, near Felt’s Field. The project is designed to reduce air pollution in an area of town that’s designated as an “overburdened community.” The county would have to contribute $130,000 to complete the project.
- $419,000 from the Washington Department of Transportation for new sidewalks to improve safety on school routes around Snowden Elementary.
Agenda here
Tuesday, January 21 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
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Potential revisions to public forum rules
The BOCC is hosting a hearing to discuss several proposed revisions to the rules governing public forums, which is the central opportunity for average citizens to address their county government representatives at the podium during regular sessions in the commission chambers. The changes include:
- Striking the title of the “Statement of Acknowledgement of the Open Public Meetings Act” and the “Rules of Conduct Applicable to Meetings, and replacing them with the title, “Rules of Decorum Applicable to Meetings”
- In the rule barring public commenters from initiating complaints against a county employees, clarify that “county employee” does not include an elected official
- Allow the chair of the BOCC the discretion to allow more than the allotted three minutes of speaking time. This tightens the existing rule, which allows the chair discretion on whether to impose a three-minute limit
- Bar speakers from allocating their time to another speaker, meaning, if a speaker only speaks for a minute and a half, they can’t give the remaining minute and a half to someone else
- Formally adopt the state code governing interruptions of public meetings, which allows the commission to remove people who are interrupting meetings to restore order, clear the room and reconvene in another location. This code explicitly allows representatives of the press who are not participating in the disturbance to stay in these meetings.
New GMA-mandated housing allocations
As part of new requirements in the state Growth Management Act, the county is set to select one of several methodologies for planning where to locate affordable housing in the county. Planning Director Scott Chesney is recommending to the BOCC to choose the “A Prime” methodology, which “reserves housing for urban areas” and “avoids placing emergency housing in rural areas.”
Contract rescinded from Indigenous group re-awarded to SpoVal
The BOCC is set to reallocate a $227,486 homeless outreach contract originally awarded to Yoyot Sp’q’n”I but retracted last year after the organization failed to communicate with the county, to Spokane Valley, who is then going to hire Frontier Behavior Health as subcontractor to do homeless outreach.
$600K for public defender contracts
County public defenders are asking for $600,000 to fund a one year contract to fund nine lawyers to conduct conflict services for the county.
Replacing ARP funds for YWCA
The BOCC is set to vote on a request from the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Spokane for about $500,000 from the county’s Housing & Community Development Department to partly replace a loss in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding “in order to ensure there is no significant reduction in services.” It had lost the funds to a “spend down requirement,” which dictated that all funding from ARP be spent by a certain date. YWCA would have to use all remaining ARP funds before spending county money.
Board appointments
The BOCC will vote on the following individuals to be part of county boards:
- Eric Brewer and Jeannette Wilson to the Spokane County Developmental Disabilities Advisory Board
- Telicia Palmer and Mary Crago to the Spokane County Developmental Disabilities Advisory Board
- Annissa Goodwin is hereby appointed in an interim role to the Board of Directors of Hutchinson Irrigation District No. 16 to fill a vacancy
Agenda here
Tuesday, January 21 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 Public Facilities District Board of Directors
?/5 peppers
Agenda here when available
Wednesday, January 22 at 12:30 pm
Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena Board Room
720 W Mallon Ave, Spokane, WA 99201
Virtual attendance here.
Spokane Plan Commission
🌶️/5 peppers
Agenda here
Wednesday, January 22 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Airport Board
🌶️/5 peppers
Transload Center construction award
The board is set to vote to give a contract to Halme Construction to build Phase 4 of its Rail-Truck Transload Center, a $14.3 million rail line that moves freight from a facility near Interstate 90 to the airport across the West Plains. The project started Phase 1 in 2019.
Agenda here.
Thursday, January 23 at 9 am
Airport Event Center
9211 W. McFarlane Road, Spokane, WA 99224
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane City Council Study Sessions
Agenda here when available.
Thursday, January 23 at 11 am
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.
