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:
- It’s week two of the Spokane City Council’s new meeting schedule. We will continue to remind you — no Monday council meeting tonight!
- On Wednesday, the Spokane City Council could pass an ordinance allowing money in a rental mitigation fund to be used for eviction prevention.
- The Urban Experience Committee is discussing an extension of the interim zoning ordinance that allowed childcare centers to be operated in all residential and commercial zones across the city.
- The Bicycle Advisory Board is getting a presentation from urbanist advocacy group Spokane Reimagined on partnering for the Week Without Driving event.
- The BOCC is considering a data center moratorium that would nix much real estate from the potential for a new data center in the next nine months.
Spokane City Council Agenda Review
Full disclosure: We’re also still getting used to the new Spokane City Council format and thinking through how we can restructure CIVICS to best capture what’s going to be on the docket for the new Wednesday council meeting. Now, the council posts a draft agenda of items that are going to be discussed, debated and potentially amended on Tuesday, with the final draft of the agenda for Wednesday coming out after that.
Part of the reasoning behind this new format was to give people more time to testify on items that won’t be voted on for another two weeks, so here’s a little trial of a new format — a list of items that won’t be up for a vote on Wednesday, but are on the city council’s to-pass list for July 29:
- Accepting a grant of more than $550,000 to support the city’s Therapeutic Court, a diversionary program that diverts people into programs other than jail.
- Accepting a grant of almost $300,000 from the Dept. of Commerce Connecting Housing to Infrastructure Program.
- Passing the right-to-cooling ordinance, which was moved back a step in the new process after an amendment approved at the last agenda review session.
Agenda here when available.
Tuesday, July 21 at 11 am
Council Chambers
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Technically, none of this is set in stone, as the final agenda will come out after the Tuesday Agenda Review, but here’s what’s likely to get a vote this week:
- A contract amendment to spend an additional $200,000 on legal services to fight suits by firefighters who say the Spokane Fire Department violated their rights by requiring them to be vaccinated against COVID-19. This brings the total amount fighting the suit to $885,000.
- A $105,000 settlement with Larry Pond for unspecified reasons (the agenda just says “an incident on or about July 8, 2025.”)
- A $250,000 settlement with Cheryl Bulldis for “a trip and fall incident on or about October 7th, 2024.”
- A resolution officially supporting the Spokane Transit Authority tax renewal
- An ordinance allowing money from the Residential Rental Mitigation Fund to support the eviction prevention program created earlier this year
- An ordinance sponsored by Council Members Zack Zappone and Kitty Klitzke that would allow the city to designate sections of streets as “shared streets.” This would allow the city to set a speed limit of 10 miles an hour on said shared street, as well as giving the right of way to pedestrians, bicyclists and scooter riders.
Agenda here
Wednesday, July 22 at 6 pm
Council Chambers
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Urban Experience Committee (Spokane city)
🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Guaranteed beds
When members of the Spokane Police or Fire Departments respond to calls for unhoused people, they’re supposed to offer services to those individuals. For example: shelter beds. But knowing which programs individuals qualify for, or which shelters have open beds, can be complicated for first responders, and if immediate aid isn’t available or convenient, it often leads to people declining help they might otherwise take. Spokane has tried to address this through their Behavioral Health Unit, which specializes in helping people navigate the system and goes out to mental health and overdose calls. Another tool in the city’s kit is contracting specific beds at shelters around town that are reserved for referrals from the police and fire departments and available 24/7.
At the Urban Experience Committee, the city will discuss extending one of those contracts, which reserves three shelter beds per night at the House of Charity, at a rate of $75 per bed, per night. The current contract was from February 1 to July 31, with a cost cap of $40,725. If approved, this extension would contract the beds out from August 1 to December 31, with total costs not to exceed $34,425. These beds are specifically for single men, who make up the largest percentage of people currently unsheltered in Spokane, according to city data, the agenda states.
Childcare in your neighborhood
Last September, the Spokane City Council passed an interim zoning ordinance that allowed daycare and childcare centers to be permitted and placed in all residential and commercial zones across the city. This was a temporary, one-year suspension of regulations that made it harder for neighborhoods to get convenient, close-by childcare services. The council is discussing a six-month extension to the ordinance, and is working with a consultant to prepare new code that could make this change permanent. If passed in a few weeks, the extension would mean the interim ordinance would not expire until March 22, 2027.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 21 at 1 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Bicycle Advisory Board
🚲🚲🚲/5 bikes
Week without Driving
This year, Spokane Reimagined is coordinating a series of events for the Week Without Driving — a grassroots event started by Disability Rights Washington to draw attention to the needs of non-drivers — and they’ll be presenting to the Bicycle Advisory Board with opportunities for partnership. The goals of the weeklong commitment, scheduled for the first week of October, are to celebrate modes of transit like biking, walking or bussing, and to encourage the development of accessible transit infrastructure. Last year, Spokane Reimagined painted and delivered handmade benches to bus stops around town. Some potential projects the group will discuss with the BAB for this year’s celebration include:
- “Identifying spots around town that would be good candidates for art (like painted bike lanes)
- Facilitating bike audits (securing cameras, developing easy forms for folks to fill out and submit)
- Soliciting volunteers for events during WWD (like bike corrals)
- Organizing bike-busses-for-grownups in the weeks leading up to WWD so folks who don’t cycle regularly can feel more empowered during WWD.”
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 21 at 6 pm
Shadle Park Library
2111 W. Wellesley Ave, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Plan Commission
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Wednesday, July 22 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Public Facilities District
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Hockey hook-up
If you’re a fan of hockey — specifically the Spokane Chiefs — this might be the public facilities district meeting for you. The Public Facilities District board will receive a very fancy presentation on how the season went, including attendance statistics, honors and sales at the arena.
Agenda here
Wednesday, July 24 at 12:30 pm
Board Room, 720 W Mallon Ave, Spokane
Virtual attendance here.
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Countywide data center moratorium?
Last month, the Spokane City Council said it wouldn’t approve new data center proposals for at least a year. The move came after news broke that the power utility Avista was considering a deal with an unnamed “large load customer” to build a large data center … somewhere in its service territory. But the city’s moratorium didn’t mean much. The mysterious entity that wanted the data center — which would process and store massive amounts of electronic data, possibly at tremendous cost to the local environment — probably wouldn’t have been located in the city limits.
Now, the BOCC is considering its own nine-month moratorium. That would significantly limit the opportunities to build a data center anywhere around here. As we reported last month, the commercial real estate firm Daines Capital had a property up for sale that would have accommodated such a facility. It was not in the city but the county. That’s why the county’s proposal, which is sponsored by Chris Jordan and Amber Waldref, the two liberal commissioners on the five-member board, is a bigger deal. But to pass it, one of the three conservatives on the commission will need to vote in favor.
Governments across the county, including hyper-conservative Kootenai County, Idaho; very liberal Snohomish County, Wash.; and the state of New York have implemented data center moratoria, citing concerns about the massive amount of energy they consume — sometimes at the expense of individual ratepayers — and potential water contamination, among other problems.
The moratorium would not mean no new data centers; it would only mean no new data centers for now. The idea is to give governments more time to figure out how to regulate them.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 21 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
New funding for public defense?
The BOCC is set to vote on 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
Almost $13M to developmental disability service providers
Nearly two dozen providers of developmental disability service providers may see a large new influx in cash from the county in the amount of $12,883,940. The largest single disbursements would go to:
- True North Employment, $1,572,000
- Ability Employment Services, $1,811,412
- Northwest Center, $1,087,000
Committee appointments
The BOCC is set to appoint:
- Brian Muegge to the Spokane County Parks and Recreation Committee.
- Ben Wick, Tim Hattenburg and Gregg Tenner to the Spokane County Housing and Community Development Advisory Committee
- Nathan Breazile and Betsy Cowles to the Essential Public Facilities Committee
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 21 at 2 pm
Commissioners’ Hearing Room
1026 W. Broadway Ave, Spokane
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Central Valley School District Board of Directors
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
New levy?
The board will gather for a work session to begin planning discussions to renew its Educational Programs & Operations levy set to expire in 2027. This levy supports 16% of the district’s yearly operating expenses, including educational programs, staffing, student activities and support, according to an agenda item.
District officials are looking into keeping the same rate of $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value, according to the agenda. That means an average homeowner with a property of an assessed value of $410,000 would pay $85.42 a month or $1,025 a year.
Under the proposal, the district would collect $48.9 million in 2028, roughly $50.5 million in 2029 and $52.4 in 2030.
Agenda here
Monday, July 20 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
Improving culinary arts facility
The board will take a vote on a resolution to transfer $250,000 in unused funds from the Career and Technical Education program into the Capital Projects Fund to pay for future improvements to the culinary arts facility and capital projects.
Sending levies to voters
The board will also take a vote on a resolution to send over its Educational Programs and Operations Replacement Levy to voters in a special election held alongside the Nov. 3 general election.
The current three-year levy is set to expire in 2027.
The proposed levy would also be collected over three years at an estimated tax rate of $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value, according to the resolution. The district would collect approximately $10.5 million in 2028, about $10.8 million in 2029 and about $10.95 million in 2030. This three-year levy would pay for educational programs and operations.
The board will also take a vote on sending a second levy to voters. With its current three-year
Capital Projects Fund tax levy set to expire in 2027, the district will ask voters to approve a two-year levy that would fund safety, security and infrastructure improvements across the district, according to an agenda item.
The district would collect roughly $4.1 million in 2028 and about $4.3 million in 2029, according to the resolution. The tax levy rate is estimated at $1.00 per $1,000 of assessed property value
Upcoming school year’s budget
Keeping in line with its meeting packed with resolutions, the board will also take a vote on a resolution adopting its 2026-2027 budget after a hearing on the upcoming school year’s budget.
Agenda here
Wednesday, July 22 at 3:30 pm
District Conference Center
8818 E. Grace, Spokane
Watch via Zoom here.
Spokane Valley City Council
🌶️/5 peppers
More than $11M in road construction
The stretch of Pines Road between 32nd and 40th avenues and Barker Road between Sprague and 8th avenues could get a makeover if the Spokane Valley City Council approves $11,026,000 million in funding. Most of the funding, $7,593,258, would come from grants, and $1,697,000 would come from the Washington Transportation Improvement Board funding.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 21 at 6 pm
10210 E Sprague Ave, Spokane Valley
Virtual attendance here.
Liberty Lake City Council
🌶️/5 peppers
$900K for improvements to Mission Ave
The council is set to award Seland Construction a $900,000 contract to rebuild a section of the Mission Avenue frontage road between Selkirk Middle School and Aladdin Road. It will install sidewalks accessible to people who use wheelchairs and drainage swales. The bid is hundreds of thousands of dollars less than the $1,493,975 the city had budgeted for the projects.
Agenda here
Tuesday, July 21 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake
The meeting is also live streamed here.
