Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Spokane has received more than $80 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). The city has been gradually spending that money down, but as the looming deadline to contract all funds out by the end of 2024 has grown closer, the process to get dollars out the door has become more fraught.
During the June 10 Spokane City Council meeting, the council voted on a plan for how to spend the last remaining $5 million, setting the conflict to rest — for now: if any ongoing ARPA-funded projects fall through before the end of the year, that money will have to be quickly reallocated to something else by December 31, 2024, or the funds will need to be given back to the federal government.
The process has been a little messy, with dot exercise disagreements between council members, a ninth-inning curveball proposal from Mayor Lisa Brown creating a tug-of-war over the last remaining money and a slew of different proposals submitted by different arrangements of council members clogging up agendas for the last few weeks, but it has been guided by a framework approved by the council back in 2021.
That framework states that federal funds would be used to replenish lost government revenue, reach out to community partner organizations to remedy damage caused by the pandemic and create resiliency for Spokane with long-term, sustainable growth investments and bring relief for residents and businesses.
While the list of projects was publicly discussed and approved last week, some of the details were thin (who knows exactly what an “alleyway activation” even means?) so RANGE did a deep dive into the 14 projects officials decided to move forward with.
Property acquisition to reduce homelessness downtown
The largest chunk of the remaining funds — roughly $1.875 million — is allocated to “property acquisition for reductions of impact of homelessness in the downtown core and/or for contractual services for implementation of a new shelter model outside of the downtown plan area expanded south to 11 Ave between Maple and Arthur.”
This idea came from Brown’s eleventh hour press release at the end of March, where she asked the council to consider using $6 million of ARPA funds to help both Catholic Charities’ House of Charity and Compassionate Addiction Treatment (CAT) move their facilities out of the downtown corridor.
Moving House of Charity, which was one of Brown’s pledges in her first state of the city address, has long been a hot button issue in Spokane.
Back in 2022, then-Mayor Nadine Woodward made the same pledge — to move the shelter out of downtown — but made little progress. Catholic Charities released a statement in 2023, blaming Woodward and stating, “All three sites identified by Catholic Charities were shovel ready, zoned correctly, and viable for the project. Two of those sites were rejected outright by the mayor. The third site was determined to be too close to the end of the Spokane Airport runway to be an appropriate location to provide adequate care and human dignity.”
Brown has faced similar challenges in her first months in office, with controversy quickly percolating as her administration continues to search for a new building for Catholic Charities to move into.
The ARPA funding most recently approved by the council could ease some of those struggles by streamlining the process to purchase a building, but it is not yet set in stone that the money will go to either Catholic Charities or CAT. The funding has to be awarded through a public Request for Proposals (RFP) or Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA), which will be posted and reviewed by Brown’s administration.
According to city staff members, the received proposals will then be reviewed by the Community, Housing and Human Services (CHHS) Board RFP and Evaluation Committee, who will then make recommendations to send to the full CHHS board, who will then vote to pass those recommendations on to city council.
Freshman Council Member Kitty Klitzke said the intention of this item on the ARPA project list is simply to “move some of these services that we have downtown outside the downtown core so that there's not such a high concentration downtown.” She said which services move will be determined by the RFP process, which will be posted soon.
Council Member Michael Cathcart, who has sat on the council for the entirety of the ARPA allocation process and was the lone council no vote against this last ARPA allocation, is wary that these dollars going to Catholic Charities or CAT is a foregone conclusion.
“The dollars are clearly allocated to Catholic Charities and CAT. I suspect that RFP is likely already close to completion and will come back pretty darn quick,” Cathcart said.
Whichever organization ends up winning the RFP, Cathcart says the funds will be handed over to them and it will be their responsibility to buy and maintain a building or site outside of downtown.
Some, including Cathcart, have expressed distaste with buying a property for another organization, especially Catholic Charities, which is a national nonprofit with a large budget. Cathcart thinks the city could explore alternatives that would be a return on investment to taxpayers.
Klitzke said the issue with some of those alternatives, like buying a property and then renting it out to a nonprofit, is the responsibility it saddles the city with.
“The city's pretty averse to acquiring new responsibilities and burdens and sometimes property can be seen as a responsibility and a burden, even new park land,” she said.
Municipal criminal justice services
The next largest chunk of money approved will pay staffing costs to keep the municipal court running.
While there had been bigger proposals on the table that would have moved the court into a new building — including a $5 million previously-approved chunk that the city clawed back — council only approved enough dollars to keep staff on for a bit longer so the court can continue operations for six months to a year.
“It’s for some of the more innovative programs like diversion programs that the court had started trying with ARPA dollars to see if they make a difference and it sounds like the programs are pretty successful and good for the community,” Klitzke said. “But we haven't identified any new General Fund funding to be able to keep it with our regular budget, so this will float them for another year, but then we're going to have to find funding if we want to keep those programs going.”
She hopes the city prioritizes keeping municipal court programs up and running, but the money will have to come from somewhere else.
Refuse removal
Coming in at just over $500,000, the commitment to do “refuse removal for clean and safe neighborhoods,” is one of Cathcart’s passion projects.
“I don’t think it’s enough but I’m glad it’s there,” he said. “We can get the ball rolling and hopefully we can see some successes that might inspire us to find the means of investing more, or perhaps we can find some community partners who would come in and invest alongside us which would be great.”
This project will be going out to RFP, where the city will receive proposals from organizations to do effective clean-ups of neighborhoods across the city.
Fire station improvements
The council approved $300,000 to do facility improvements at Spokane Fire Department Station 1, which serves downtown.
“Their HVAC is always broken and their air conditioners are mostly broken in their trucks too, so they're miserable on their 48-hour plus shifts at that station in the summertime,” Klitzke said.
This chunk of funding will be going out to bid for contractors.
Youth activities
While the agenda lists this item as $250,000 to go towards “scholarships and equipment for youth sports,” Klitzke said the council sees this project more expansively. She mentioned chess club and other activities as potentially falling under the qualifications of this project.
Further details, though, will be determined by an RFP process and the proposals that come in from nonprofits. The city had originally considered administering funding for this themselves, but there were debates about income requirements and who should qualify for the program, should the city run it.
“There are people in our community who are just on this edge where they don't qualify for any additional services or the things that you would traditionally check to verify that somebody's low-income without having to do it yourself, and they’re still struggling financially,” Klitzke said. “I've known people that have been in that situation. So council members pushed back and said, ‘We don't necessarily want them to have income qualifications. We want the nonprofits to run those and, and award grants how say they see fit.’”
Depending on which nonprofits apply for and receive the RFP, Klitzke says the concept is that “if somebody is struggling to participate in any kind of youth activity, then this would allow a nonprofit to be able to give them a scholarship for either the equipment or other fees to do it.”
Working Families Tax Credit
Washington recently implemented the Working Families Tax Credit, which allows qualifying individuals and families to receive up to $1,255 back on their tax returns.
One of the most controversial items passed in the ARPA package was $250,000 “for the purpose of a local marketing campaign to work with community centers, libraries and community-based organizations to sign up community members for the working families tax credit.”
According to Klitzke, this will go out to RFP for groups to submit marketing proposals. She said there are already some groups interested in applying.
This item came somewhat out of left field and was not in earlier public proposals for how to spend the ARPA funding. Because of the last minute nature of the addition and the details (or lack thereof) of the proposal itself, Cathcart is not a fan.
“I cannot wrap my head around even the concept that we would put money into this,” he said. “All seven of us can go out and ra-ra about the program, we can write letters, we can encourage people to sign up, but to spend $250,000, to me, it just didn’t make any sense whatsoever, particularly when we have such a small amount left and so many big budget issues.”
Klitzke said she understood his frustration with the addition of new items to the list and had been asking for a clearer process. She was not a sponsor on the amended proposal that included this item.
School-based health center
Council Member Zack Zappone, who was one of the sponsors on the proposal that ultimately passed along with Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Council Member Paul Dillon, was a big proponent of the item committing $200,000 to Spokane Public Schools (SPS) for the purpose of creating a third school-based health center. The city council had previously used ARPA dollars to fund two school-based health centers, both of which opened in May.
Zappone said that having healthcare centers in schools created “better health outcomes for kids” and saved parents time and money.
“The other exciting part about this is that it’s a one time cost that has a long term impact,” Zappone said. “We as the city are just investing those dollars right now in this one-time capital improvement, and then clinical providers take on the ongoing operating cost and it becomes sustainable through insurance reimbursements and state funding.”
He said he thought SPS was considering Ferris High School as the site for the next healthcare center, but that the official decision had yet to be made.
Childcare Center Capital Projects
Another project Cathcart was particularly excited about that made the list was $225,000 for childcare center capital projects.
This will go out to RFP for interested providers to apply for.
Cathcart has publicly supported a potential development by the Northeast Public Development Authority (PDA), which would provide childcare during nontraditional hours. He anticipates the PDA will apply for this RFP, as will Raze Development, an organization run by Kerra Bower.
Alleyway activation
One of the vaguer items on the list was $166,000 dedicated to “alleyway activation.” According to Zappone, this developed out of a proposal submitted by the Downtown Spokane Partnership (DSP) after Woodward called for community input.
“The idea is to do a downtown alleyway and activate it, make it more pedestrian, livelier,” Zappone said. He and Cathcart both pointed to a potential partnership with DSP that would help stretch the allocated dollars.
Cathcart said his understanding is that the alleway activation would “be a public-private partnership to really spruce up that space, perhaps make it an area where we can do weekly or frequent gatherings or, farmer's markets and things of that nature.”
Which alleyway will be “activated” though, is still up in the air and will likely be decided by an RFP. Whichever location is chosen, Cathcart said “the idea is to make that a place where everybody feels like they are welcome.”
Residential street lighting
“When I was running for office the first time, I knocked on this gentleman’s door and he started talking to me about just how dark his street is at night and how one of his neighbors had to go put in their own halogen light on the side of their house to eliminate the threat,” Cathcart said.
That story spurred his push for residential street lighting, which ended up receiving $150,000 of the last batch of ARPA funding. Cathcart and Klitzke weren’t sure if this would go out to RFP or be a direct partnership with Avista Utilities, who own most of the street lighting in town.
Cathcart hopes the lighting will be a cheaper way to prevent crime through “environmental design.”
“Can we, just by virtue of adding lights to our neighborhood streets, alleyways and even some of our parks that are overly dark, help reduce crime and disincentivize criminal activity from taking place?” Cathcart asked.
The city will soon find out.
Pond lining
The pond in Cannon Hill is leaking, and has been since at least 2014, when the Spokesman covered the issue.
“We’re losing millions and millions of gallons out of that pond every year,” former City Council Member Mike Allen told the Spokesman. “From a water-conservation standpoint, we have to address the amount of water we’re losing.”
Now, ten years later, the council is finally making a move to address the issue, which Klitzke called “super annoying” and “expensive for the city.” They allocated $150,000 for the Cannon Hill pond lining project to get the ball rolling on lining the pond, which will hopefully conserve water.
Office of the Police Ombudsman improvements
The Office of the Police Ombudsman, which provides oversight of the Spokane Police Department, is currently located on the first floor of City Hall. Cathcart described the office as noisy and lacking privacy.
The council dedicated $100,000 to improving the office’s workspace to make it more private.
“Civilian oversight is the check that the community deserves … and the issue is they don’t have privacy,” Cathcart said. “People deserve to be able to come and share their concerns and relay those things and not feel like they’re being monitored or observed.”
These improvements will likely be done in house, but Klitzke said they could potentially go out to bid for a contractor.
Downtown housing study
Both Klitzke and Cathcart said they were particularly excited about the $50,000 to spend on a downtown housing survey to analyze what kind of housing is needed downtown.
Initially another request from DSP, this study could help inform city code around downtown development. Cathcart said DSP wants there to be “a big infusion of housing downtown.”
“If we can actually do that and it’s not just subsidized housing but a mix … we could get there and really see a vibrant downtown,” Cathcart said.
Trash cans
The last $14,000 will go straight to the East Sprague Business Improvement District so they can purchase more trash cans.
Last looks
There are still a few hurdles for the city to clear in their ARPA allocation process — namely, ensuring that all the funds that have to go out to RFP are actually contracted by the end of the year — but council members are confident that the city’s administration will make it happen.
“Everyone's committed to getting it out the door,” Zappone said. But, he assured RANGE, there are contingency plans just in case any of the funding comes back and needs to be rapidly reallocated to something so it won’t have to be given back.
Erin Hut, Brown’s spokesperson, said the mayor is feeling positive about the final list, and is excited there are “lots of great projects that will be done in every council member’s district.”
Though he was excited about some of the projects that made the list, Cathcart said he was a little disappointed looking back at the cumulative ARPA funding decisions the council had made.
“I just think there’s some really big things that we could have done and accomplished that 10 years from now we’d be saying, ‘Wow, we transformed Spokane. What an opportunity that was.’” Cathcart said. “But I think we nickel-and-dimed ourselves and we spread our eggs so far and in 10 years, we’re going to look back and I don’t think we’re going to even notice what ARPA was or did or maybe even remember that it was a thing at that point.”
Zappone, though, strongly disagreed. “We’ve been investing in people and infrastructure in our community,” he said. “We also have new cultural events that are becoming annual traditions in our region, and that would not have been possible without ARPA funding.”
