Spokane city shifts to new council schedule with legislative meetings on Wednesdays

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:

You might have noticed the “On Wednesdays we go to council meetings,” marketing campaign from the Spokane City Council, but if you didn’t, here’s your reminder: legislative meetings have officially switched to Wednesdays.
At the new WEDNESDAY meeting, the city council could approve a grant to help safely store sexual assault kits, appoint ten members to the newly formed Spokane Urban Native Advisory Council and appoint former city council director Giacobbe Byrd to a new position: City Clerk.
It’s not just legislative meetings that have found new days: Spokane City Council’s Agenda Review meetings (where they finalize the agenda for the following legislative meeting) and committee meetings have moved to Tuesdays.
The Spokane Transit Authority is meeting this week and will discuss financial health indicators, including numbers showing they’re both under budget on expenses and bringing in more revenue than expected — truly a sign of a healthy transit agency.
The BOCC will weigh a proposed contract with the Washington state Office of Public Defense to distribute $941,297 for “improving the quality of public defense” in Spokane County.
The Spokane Valley City Council may spend nearly $200,000 in marketing for the auto dealerships along Sprague Avenue, which staffers identified as an important sales tax revenue source for the city.
The Spokane Airport board is warning us all that parking will be much more complicated this summer as it consolidates two lots.

Spokane City Council

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Mondays are out. Wednesdays are in.

This is the week that the Spokane City Council moves to their new schedule, which means we all have a lot of new things to get used to. First — there’s no meeting tonight! Instead, the council will hold their legislative meeting on Wednesday at 6 pm. Another new thing to get used to is that there’s no official agenda online for review. Instead, we can see the agenda for the council’s agenda review session — which takes place on Tuesday — where they will finalize the Wednesday agenda. The final agenda will presumably be posted after that meeting.

Testimony changes

The other major change to the city council meetings is the format of testimony, which is designed to frontload testimony on items when they’re in their first and second readings and can be more easily changed, rather than when they’re up for a final vote. You can now sign up for:

Express Testimony: allows you to speak at the beginning of the meeting for three total minutes on any items on the council agenda, including ordinances and resolutions. If you sign up for this time, you won’t be able to speak again unless it’s for Hearings and Open Forum at the end of the meeting. Express testimony was created to allow people who can’t stay for the whole meeting to speak to the council.
Final Hearing Testimony: allows you to testify for three minutes on each final hearing.
Proposed Legislative Testimony: allows you to testify for two minutes on the proposed legislative section as a whole (as opposed to two minutes per item) which is made up of items that are getting their first reading.
Pending Legislative Testimony: allows you to testify for two minutes on each individual item in the pending legislative section, which is made up of items getting their second reading, typically scheduled for a third and final reading plus vote the following week.
Final Legislative Testimony: allows you to testify for two minutes on the final legislative section as a whole, which is all items that will be voted on that night.
Open Forum: allows you to testify for two minutes total on affairs of the city, other than what’s on the legislative agenda. This is held at the end of the meeting.

Agenda here when available
WEDNESDAY, July 15 at 6 pm
Council Chambers
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane City Council Agenda Review Session

Starting tomorrow: Tuesdays at 11 am is when the final city council agendas will be finalized. This will allow council members to make additions, subtractions or amendments to the agenda while giving the public more notice that something has changed. Gone are the days when you show up to testify, only to learn that the item you felt passionately about was deferred at the agenda review meeting just a few hours earlier. Now, there will be at least 24 hours and an agenda posted after this meeting that actually accurately reflects what’s happening at legislative sessions.

Here are some important things likely to show up on the final agenda for Wednesday. The council could:

Hold a second read of a resolution officially stating their support for Proposition 1, the Spokane Transit Authority ballot measure to renew an existing 0.2% sales tax that funds public transportation services.
Vote to appoint 10 people to the newly formed Spokane Urban Native Advisory Council, including Spokane School Board President Jenny Slagle, The NATIVE Project CEO Toni Lodge and Yoyot Sp'q'n'i executive director Angel Tomeo Sam.
Vote to accept a $72,500 from the Department of Justice to purchase two evidence refrigerators for the Spokane Police Department, as part of an initiative to process and test sexual assault kits.
Vote to confirm previous city council director Giacobbe Byrd as the new city clerk, a move that would place him in the mayor’s office and which council members have equally congratulated him for and bemoaned. Some reporters feel compelled to do the same: As council members say, we’re going to take a “point of privilege,” and thank Byrd for his work, which included telling this reporter how to correctly spell the names of people who signed up testify, answering urgent agenda-related questions and getting a power strip installed at the media desk so reporter laptops could charge and survive marathon meetings.
Vote on an ordinance to create the “right to cooling” for renters — although this has a proposed amendment on the table, which could delay its approval. The amendment, submitted by Council Members Paul Dillon, Sarah Dixit and Kate Telis, would define cooling equipment as “central air conditioning, an evaporative cooler, or a portable cooling device.” It removes any kind of temperature requirement and instead requires adequate cooling in at least one room in the unit effective immediately, regardless of temperature, allowing tenants to purchase their own cooling unit and deduct up to $500 from rent if the landlord doesn’t rectify it in a timely fashion. By 2032, all bedrooms in a unit will be required to have adequate cooling. There is also a path for other remedies, like allowing tenants to get out of their leases if landlords do not comply. If the amendment is adopted on Tuesday, the ordinance will need two more readings, with the earliest date for a vote being July 29th, unless the council declares an emergency.
Hold first and second reads on a whole bunch of other stuff! Read the full proposed agenda at the link below.

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

Public Infrastructure, Environment, and Sustainability Committee

The days for committee meetings are changing too, and so are the times! The council committees will now be held Tuesdays at 1 pm. There’s not a ton of wildly interesting stuff on the list for PIES this week, but we did get a nearly $300,000 grant to pay for utility improvements for the Spokane Rise Apartments, an affordable housing project in Northeast Spokane.

Agenda here
TUESDAY, July 14 at 1 pm
Council Chambers
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

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New funding for public defense?

The BOCC will weigh a proposed contract with the Washington state Office of Public Defense to distribute $941,297 for “improving the quality of public defense” in Spokane County. The county was recently sued in Pend Oreille County Court for allegedly not providing enough resources to public defenders. The money could be allocated to the following goals, taken verbatim from the contract.

Creating or expanding a county or regional public defense agency
Funding an attorney coordinator to manage public defense attorney contracts
Adding attorneys to reduce public defense caseloads
Adding investigator services
Adding expert services
Increasing public defense attorney compensation
Providing public defense services at preliminary appearance calendars
Providing social work or sentencing mitigation as part of public defense representation
Providing interpreter services for attorney-client interviews and communications
Reimbursement of training costs
Investment in technological solutions (like case management systems)
Paying membership dues to organizations that support public defense training, practice, or advocacy
Increase support staff to reduce attorney workloads
Professional evaluation of public defense system performance by a public defense expert

Another round of appliance assistance on the docket

Spokane County’s Housing & Community Development Department is asking the board to accept $630,000 in state funding to reimburse homes for installing more efficient electric appliances. The money would be focused on low-income households. Last year, the same program served more than 100 homes.

Agenda here
Tuesday, July 14 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

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County may relax demolition fees for Upriver fire victims

The BOCC could reduce the fee required for permission to demolish a building for people whose homes were damaged in the Upriver fire that burned at least 15 homes and killed at least one person last month. The normal fee to destroy a building is $45 per 1,000 square feet. The county Building and Planning Department wants to reduce it to $27.12.

Agenda here
Tuesday, July 14 at 2 pm
Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane County Planning Commission

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Hearing on Critical Areas Ordinance change

A public hearing on changes to the Critical Areas Ordinance, which defines and designates physical environments that should be protected and focuses on flooding, will be held. Those changes include revisions to categories of wetland that will exclude “aspen-dominant forested wetlands larger than one-quarter acre” from the most protected category. There are large aspen-dominated forests in the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, which the US Fish & Wildlife Department manages; in The Hangman Creek watershed; and the Dishman Hills Conservation Area among other areas in the county. The state Department of Ecology objected to this change in April.

Agenda here
Thursday, July 16 at 9 am
Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors

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Financial Health

We love a financially healthy transit agency, and according to data to be presented at the Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors meeting this Thursday, it looks like we have one. In 2026 so far, STA has both spent less money than they predicted and made more money than they expected. Grants, ridership revenue and sales tax have all come in better than expected for the agency, putting them nearly $5 million above predictions on revenue, and expenses about $4 million under expected.

Agenda here
Thursday, July 16 at 1:30 pm
STA Boardroom
1230 W Boone Avenue, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Airport Board

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Contract for parking consolidation

The Spokane International Airport is embarking on a $48 million construction project to consolidate its economy and C Concourse parking lots. The project is expected to complicate summer travel, and the airport is advising travelers to arrive two hours before flights. The board is set to award the contract for the project at its Thursday meeting.

Agenda here.
Thursday, July 16 at 9 am
9211 W. McFarlane Road, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.

Spokane Valley City Council

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Proposal for marketing campaign for car sales

Spokane Valley’s economic development team wants to spend $184,533 on a marketing and relationship-building campaign to support its “Auto Row District,” a two-mile stretch of Sprague Avenue that contains at least 10 large car dealerships. The city considers the district the Inland Northwest’s largest car sales hub and one of the most important generators of sales tax revenue. By the average sticker price of a new Ameican car and the less-than-1% sales tax set by Spokane Valley, dealers would have to sell 442 cars to pay off the spend.