Skip to content
RANGE Media
Sign in Subscribe

Spokane women’s shelter Hope House says it will close its doors in June

CIVICS: Plus, improvements in education outcomes for Spokane’s Indigenous students, more Al Merkel controversy in the Valley and the city is funding more bed space for homeless people in weather emergencies.

By Erin Sellers and Aaron Hedge
Part of High Bridge Park set to be leased to American Indian Community Center for $1 a year
Published:
Share to X Share to Bluesky Share to Facebook Share to LinkedIn Share by email
Hope House will *maybe* be closing in June if they can't get more money from the city. (Art by Valerie Osier)

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:

Important meetings this week:

Spokane City Council

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Consent agenda:

HR for HR?

We covered this in the committee section of last week’s CIVICS, but now it’s on the consent agenda for tonight, which means it will get voted on: a $46,000 contract with Archbright, a Seattle-based company for supplementary HR services related to Spokane Fire Department (likely union negotiations) — with an interesting backstory that we just copy-pasted from last week:

After the city’s former Human Resources Director David Moss was fired, he was not satisfied with the $27,000 payout he was offered and instead threatened to sue for $50 million (as far as we can tell, no legal documents have actually been filed.) One of Moss’s complaints was that he was terminated for criticizing the administration’s spending on contracts with Archbright to provide supplementary HR services, which it’s been doing since 2017. Moss told the Spokesman this was a waste of money and that he was punished for questioning the spending. Others in administration claimed Moss was checked out of his job and didn’t actually live in Spokane, which meant he frequently ghosted his staff and didn’t show up to work.

It’s an interesting story that The Spokesman covered in detail, though despite all Moss’s claims to the media, at the time of his termination, Brown had only contracted with Archbright once, for $27,000 worth of services.

More funds for extreme weather sheltering

Also in the consent agenda is a contract to spend another $200,000 on inclement weather shelter, entering into four $50,000 contracts with four different providers to operate The Way Out shelter, The House of Charity and St. Margaret’s shelters, Hope House and Revive Inclement Weather beds.

The city is required by law to open additional shelter beds during extreme weather (like bad smoke, cold temps under 32 and hot temps above 95 degrees). In 2024, Mayor Lisa Brown was working with former Mayor Nadine Woodward’s budget, which allocated just $250,000 to pay for these beds all year round, which amounts to just 38 nights of emergency shelter with 100 beds a night.

On October 30, 2024, Brown pulled $800,000 from the 1590 HEART fund — which is money that is supposed to go toward affordable housing and supportive housing services — to ensure the city could pay for beds to get through the winter of 2024, since Woodward’s original $250,000 had already run out. In November, the city contracted with five sites to run emergency shelter beds through December 31.

Now, Brown is working off her own two-year budget, approved by the council at the end of 2024. For this year, she budgeted the usual $250,000 plus 1590 funds for inclement weather beds. In 2026, it goes up to a flat $1 million that doesn’t touch the 1590 fund.

The contracts in the consent agenda tonight will be paid for with money remaining from the original $800,000 dip into 1590 funds, city spokesperson Erin Hut told RANGE. Hut added that no additional draws from 1590 funds for inclement weather beds would be necessary.

Eviction Defense funds

The Community, Housing and Human Services (CHHS) department in the city manages a $3.4 million Eviction Prevention fund, with funds from the Washington State Department of Commerce. They awarded money to three organizations for 2023 through 2025, but there’s still $1.26 million left in the fund, “due to slow draw-down and unused admin/operations held by the City.” Now, the city wants to rapidly spend down that money before the June 30, 2025 deadline, so they're entering into contracts with organizations who can quickly mobilize to do eviction defense:

These subcontracts are in the consent agenda for a vote tonight.

First read of bilingual recruiting ordinance

Last week, we jumped the gun a little and said an ordinance sponsored by Council Member Lili Navarrete that would call for the City to establish policies and procedures to improve the recruitment of bilingual candidates would be up for a vote tonight. It’s actually just up for its first reading, where you can give public comment on it, and is scheduled for a vote on January 27. Read more about the ordinance in our previous coverage here.

Sneak Peek

Now that we’re getting regular, fairly accurate draft agendas in advance, we’re making a little teaser to next week a regular feature. But because next Monday is Martin Luther King Jr Day, your sneak peek is very short: the meeting is cancelled. Council will be back at it Monday, January 27.

Agenda here
Monday, January 13 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, January 16 at 11 am
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.



Urban Experience Committee (Spokane city)

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

It’s Council Member Jonathan Bingle’s first meeting chairing the Urban Experience Committee, which we were informed of via a meme sent in by a city council staffer this morning. Bingle will be welcomed by a couple big pieces of information that are scheduled to be covered in the meeting.

And remember, you can now testify for two minutes on agenda items at committee meetings! Sign up here.

Meme sent in by city staffer.

Hope House no more

According to the committee agenda, Volunteers of America (VOA) are planning to close the Hope House by the end of this June, leaving up to 100 women on the streets. They’ll be presenting information on the wind-down process to the council today. This closure is coming after  the city gave $1.2 million to Hope House in August of 2024 — paid for with money accumulated through Brown’s cost savings measures at the Trent Shelter — to keep their doors open.

At that time, VOA CEO Fawn Schott told KHQ that "With no additional investment from Commerce, Spokane County or the private sector, the City of Spokane rose to the occasion and invested in the lives of these women," Today, she'll be presenting on the closure of the shelter, hopefully including the fate of the relatively new building and the fate of those living inside.

The presentation might include something else entirely: this isn’t the first time Hope House has announced their closure — they actually do this almost every year (2021, 2022, 2024) — so we’re curious if it’s actually closing, or if this is a scare tactic to leverage more funds.

Mysterious but interesting?

Also on the list for discussion is an “arborist ordinance update.” We genuinely have no idea what this is about and couldn’t find details in the agenda, so hopefully our curiosity will be sated come noon.

Agenda here
Monday, January 13 at 12 pm
Council Briefing Center in the Lower Level of City Hall.
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.



Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

PFAS task force

The BOCC will discuss the scope of a task force to address “forever chemicals” contamination on the West Plains, which residents of that area have been agitating for in recent months. The task force was proposed by County Commissioner Chris Jordan late last year. West Plains groundwater has been contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances for decades but local residents have only known about it for the last seven years. The task force is the first formal action the county has taken on the crisis. Read our story about the task force — and internal squabbles over legal representation — here and the rest of our extensive coverage of the contamination crisis here.

Replacing ARP funds for YWCA

The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Spokane is requesting half a million dollars 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.

Agenda here
Tuesday, January 14 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

Board appointments

The BOCC is set to appoint Doug Luther and Steph Kennedy to the Newman Lake Flood Control Zone District Advisory Board. Luther would be a non-voting member.

Steering Committee proposes housing be condensed in urban areas

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.”

$3.2M on table for affordable housing renovations

The BOCC is set to vote to accept more than $3 million of federal funding for SNAP to rehabilitate “a 50-unit affordable housing project called Pine Villa.” If approved, the project would be dedicated to rent-restricted housing for the following two decades.

Agenda here
Tuesday, January 14 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 Valley City Council

🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Permanent Housing and Homelessness Task Force in the works

The council is set to adopt a permanent nine-person task force to address housing and homelessness in Spokane Valley to comply with state law. It will include two people with lived experience of being unhoused, a Spokane Valley council member and a Spokane Regional Health District representative, among others.

Spending on Merkel controversies

2024 was an eventful year for freshman City Council Member Al Merkel, and his colleagues want to talk about it! They’ll specifically discuss the $230,000 of taxpayer money the Valley spent on investigations and other actions into controversies involving the council member as he enters his second year. Those controversies include alleged harassment of city staff, allegations Merkel has denied.

Formalized private property camping exceptions

The city attorney has proposed a number of formalized exceptions to rules against camping on private property, allowing camping under the following circumstances, which are quoted from the agenda item:

Agenda here
Tuesday, January 14 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, WA 99206
Virtual attendance here.




Spokane Transit Authority Board of Directors

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

New board leadership at STA

Spokane Valley Mayor Pam Haley is the new chair of the STA board and, at this meeting, she’ll be appointing members of the board to internal committees. Last year, committee appointments became a battleground for a lengthy conflict when then-board chair Al French tried to cut representatives of Spokane City out of a voting position on STA’s most powerful committee.

This year, though, the conservative-led board seems to be turning a new leaf, or at least trying to keep things somewhat civil, as there wasn’t anything terribly controversial or surprising in Haley’s proposed committee appointments, which will be voted on today. Haley’s appointments also include seating non-voting board members on committees to offer their opinions and perspective, a positive change from a board structure that usually doesn’t offer them many opportunities to offer input.

One last note: In what might come as another blow to Spokane City Council Member Zack Zappone, who recently lost his position as second-in-command on the Spokane City Council, Haley is proposing to replace Zappone on the executive committee with his fellow council member Kitty Klitzke.

Last year, French wouldn’t appoint Zappone to the same committee as Haley because, he said it wouldn’t “solve the problem as far as Mayor Haley is concerned,” implying that Haley had asked to swap so she wouldn’t have to be on the same committee as Zappone, which Haley later denied. Still, in her committee draft lists, she isn’t on a single committee with Zappone.

He then continued, saying having Zappone and Haley on P&D wouldn’t “solve the problem as far as Mayor Haley is concerned,” implying that Haley had asked to swap so she wouldn’t have to be on the same committee as Zappone.

Haley’s proposed lists are as follows:

Board Operations Committee (the most powerful committee)

Planning & Development (P&D) Committee

Performance Monitoring & External Relations (PMER) Committee

Agenda here
Thursday, January 16 at 1:30 pm
STA Boardroom
1230 W Boone Avenue, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.



Mead School District Board of Directors

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Bond refunding?

This week’s Mead School District board meeting has a paper-thin agenda, but we know they’ll be spending tonight in a work session to discuss a few key items, though no details on the items were provided. We were most interested in the first one on the list: “Bond Refunding Continued Discussion.” We don’t want to hypothesize too much (or at all) but we are curious about this!

Agenda here
Monday, January 13 at 6 pm
Union Event Center
12509 N. Market St. Bldg. D, Mead, WA 99021
Watch via Zoom here.



Central Valley School District Board of Directors

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

G.O. infrastructure bond up for public hearing

The board will host a hearing for the public to comment on a proposed general obligation bond that could pay for aging infrastructure not covered by a recent tax increase measure that voters have struck down. A bond is essentially a promise to debtors that the district will be able to raise the funds to cover anticipated spending.

Informational session on legislation to address intimidation

The district will hold an informational session on a state law proposed by Fourth District Representative Suzanne Schmidt, HB 1085, which would improve “school safety by extending penalties for interference by, or intimidation by threat of, force or violence at schools and extracurricular activities and requiring schools to notify the public of such penalties.”

Agenda here
Monday, January 13 at 6 pm
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 Special Session

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Budget priorities

The board will host a special discussion on its 2024-25 list of budget priorities, which include:

Agenda here
Wednesday, January 15 at 4:30 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.



Spokane School District Board of Directors

🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Native student strategic education plan update

The board will hear a presentation about the district’s Native education program, which lists goals and outcomes of its program to improve the education of Indigenous students. The program emphasized outdoor education, project-based learning and culture. The presentation slides say the program has improved graduation rates by 20%, from 67% in 2016 to 87% in 2024.

Agenda here
Wednesday, January 15 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201


Erin Sellers

All articles
Tags: CIVICS

More in CIVICS

See all

More from Erin Sellers

See all