*The crawl fixes all. Or at least, temporarily distracts us. Meme by Erin Sellers.*

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:

Join RANGE this Friday for our second annual Politicrawl, a politics-themed barcrawl for the politically passionate or the civically curious!

Spokane City Council is having a first read on an ordinance to change the day of their regular Monday council meetings, but they don’t know what day they want to change it to yet.

The Public Safety & Community Health Committee will be discussing opioid treatment and reviewing the unlawful camping ordinance they passed earlier this summer.

The Mead School District Board is planning to discuss a Supreme Court decision that allowed parents to challenge individual bits of curriculum, like books that discuss the right to gay marriage in a positive light.

The Spokane Valley City Council will set its legislative agenda for the next year, focusing on increasing police capacity in the city.

The Liberty Lake City Council will vote on whether to establish October 14 as “Charlie Kirk Day” to honor the far-right activist who was assassinated last month.

Important meetings this week:

Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
Public Safety & Community Health Committee
Board of County Commissioners - Briefing Session and Legislative Session
Mead School District Board of Directors
Central Valley School District Board of Directors
Spokane School District Board of Directors
Spokane Valley City Council
Liberty Lake City Council

The Politicrawl

Join RANGE this Friday from 6 to 10 pm for our second annual PolitiCrawl, a bar crawl celebrating political engagement and community empowerment beyond election season! We’ll stop at four bars, one in each city council district and one we’re calling our “citywide bar,” where you can chat with local electeds, candidates, journalists and other civically-minded or civically-curious Spokanites. More information here, or if you already know you want to come, you can register here to get the full map and help us give bars a heads-up of how many people to expect!

Spokane City

Spokane City Council

🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

There are a couple of interesting contracts in the consent agenda for this week, including a $200,000 contract with engineering firm DOWL, Inc for the design of the Pacific Avenue Greenway and a $3.4 million subcontract with Spokane County to support eviction prevention services within Spokane city limits for 2026 through 2028. The eviction prevention services will be administered by subcontractors chosen through a competitive request for proposals process.

West Quadrant Tax Increment Financing

Over $300,000 of funds collected through the West Quadrant Tax Increment Financing District could be spent on a couple of projects, with council’s approval tonight. The first is a more than $100,000 spend on reimbursing local developer and conservative mega donor Larry Stone for fixing the sidewalk, landscaping and street lights outside of a building on Monroe Street that he is renovating. The second project is $229,692 for public improvements to be installed as part of implementing the “West Central Infrastructure Project” and the “27 by 2027 Urban Mobility Network.”

HEART to heart

After a series of deferrals, the city could actually start the process of renaming the 1590 Fund to the HEART Fund. The 1590 Fund is made up of dollars collected through a sales tax authorized by the state government through bill 1590, with the revenue intended to be spent on affordable housing projects. The ordinance would also allow the city to use 10% of the revenue collected from the tax that fuels this fund on administrative fees from projects — up from 2.5% before.

Monday or some other day?

Council could hold a first read on an ordinance to change the meeting days from Monday to something else. What that something else could be is still up in the air; the agenda item still has a blank in place for the replacement day. Essentially, if passed, this ordinance would empower the city council to agree to move the day, and then select the new day later, after discussion and community engagement. It’s unclear why they wouldn’t do that first and then vote on an ordinance that actually says what day they’re moving meetings to.

Next week’s sneak peek:

Next week’s council meeting and committee meeting are both cancelled for Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Agenda here
Monday, October 6 at 6 pm

City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane City Council Study Sessions

Agenda here when available.
Thursday, May 16 at 11 am
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Council Committees

Public Safety & Community Health Committee

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Report central

The council is set to get a slate of reports at the committee meeting. Here are a few of the highlights:

The red light camera system saw 2,017 violations for the month of August, which is up 12 violations from last year. The intersection where drivers were most likely to run a red light was by far Freya and 3rd, with Brown and Sprague and Sprague and Division intersections second and third.

There were no speed camera violations in August. That doesn’t mean drivers got safer, it just means the cameras were off because school wasn’t in session.

The quarterly asset forfeiture and seizure report showed that the assets the Spokane Police Department seized exceeded the program’s expenditures, which in layperson’s terms means we made money off of asset forfeiture.

Opioid Treatment presentation

Dr. Bob Lutz, the former health officer for Spokane Regional Health District, will give a presentation on opioid treatment to the council. There’s no info attached in the agenda, but it’s scheduled for 20 minutes.

Review of camping ordinance

Earlier this summer, the Spokane City Council passed the HOME ordinance as a replacement for the voter-approved Proposition 1, which was overturned by the state Supreme Court. While Proposition 1 banned camping near parks and schools, HOME went further, making camping illegal citywide, while giving more flexibility in enforcement to connect people with services before jumping straight to arrest. There’s no information in the agenda as to what it’s supposed to entail, but Council Member Zack Zappone, who is running for reelection, has put a “review of obstruction and unlawful camping ordinance,” on the agenda.

Agenda here
Monday, October 6 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.

MISC City

Spokane Plan Commission

/5 peppers

Agenda here
Wednesday, October 8 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Public Facilities District

Agenda here when available
Wednesday, October 8 at 12:30 pm
Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena Board Room
720 W Mallon Ave, Spokane, WA 99201
Virtual attendance here.

Spokane County

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Tuesday, October 7 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

$620K for mental health field response program

The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs has awarded the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office $620,000 to fund the county’s Behavioral Health Unit, an alternative to police response designed to keep people in mental health crisis out of the carceral system.

Aquifer protection funds available for school districts

In the November election, Spokane County voters renewed the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer Protection District, a tax that pays for groundwater conservation, including educational programs to teach grade-school children about the aquifer, which is a drinking water source for about 500,000 people. The BOCC will vote on agreements with three local school districts to manage these educational programs and distribute the funds in the following amounts:

$20,000 to the West Valley School District over two years
$5,000 to the Mead School District over one year, and
$4,000 to the East Valley School District over two years

$3M in state money for Harvard Road improvement

Spokane County has secured more than $3 million from the state Department of Transportation to install a roundabout at the intersection of Harvard and Euclid roads, build a guardrail along sections of Day Mt. Spokane Road and remove trees and install guardrails along portions of Government Way and Hayford and Forker roads. The BOCC is set to accept the money Tuesday.

Board appointment

The BOCC is set to reappoint Kimberley Taylor to the Spokane County Behavioral Health Advisory Board.

Agenda here
Tuesday, October 7 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 Regional Transportation Council

/5 peppers

Agenda here
Thursday, October 9 at 1 pm
Spokane Regional Transportation Office
21 W Riverside Ave, Suite 504, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

School Boards

Mead School District Board of Directors

🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Opting out of LGBTQ+ books?

It’s just a work session, which means no public comment opportunity, but Mead School District board is scheduled to discuss the “Mahmoud Court Case.” This likely refers to Mahmoud v. Taylor, a Supreme Court decision which gave parents seeking to opt their kids out of LGBTQ+ affirming storybooks in curriculum the right to preliminary injunction. The National Education Association believed the Supreme Court decision will “hamstring efforts to give students a full, engaging, and inclusive public education,” because it gives parents the right to object to individual pieces of curriculum.

It’s unclear exactly how Mead wants to use this Supreme Court decision, but given their past record on queer issues, it’s likely to suppress any kind of queer media in classrooms in the name of religious freedom.

Agenda here
Monday, October 6 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 when available
Monday, May 13 at 6 p.m.
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

🫑/5 peppers

Agenda here
Wednesday, October 8 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Other Cities

Spokane Valley City Council

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Police-heavy legislative agenda

The council will vote whether to adopt Spokane Valley’s proposed legislative agenda, the list of priorities for setting policy in the city over the next year. At the top of the list is public safety, which focuses on expanding punitive functions of government and involuntary treatment of people struggling with mental health crises, including police and the discretion of judges to impose harsher penalties for various crimes. Here is a partial list of public safety measures proposed (edited for length and clarity):

Allowing judges the option to increase penalties for crimes perpetrated by habitual property offenders and for those who recklessly endanger the health, safety and life of others by their use of controlled substances, especially fentanyl
Prioritizing prevention, treatment and recovery services over government-provided harm reduction programs like safe needles
Increasing resources to hire and protect law enforcement officers
Increasing investments in alternative response teams, such as the city’s behavioral health unit and homeless outreach teams that pair an officer with either a social worker or a mental health professional in a co-responder model
Monitoring and supporting changes in Medicaid reimbursement that allow individuals to more effectively receive substance use disorder treatment
Revising the Involuntary Treatment Act and funding an adequate number of designated crisis responders to ensure those with substance abuse addictions receive treatment
Amending the Keeping Families Together Act to protect children from living arrangements where they may be exposed to controlled substances

Agenda here
Tuesday, October 7at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.

Liberty Lake City Council