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:
- Spokane City Council wants to hear your tall tales tonight! (This is our cute way of saying they’re holding a public hearing this evening on the interim ordinance to remove height restrictions on buildings downtown.)
- At the Finance and Administration Committee, council is discussing a few big items: rapid spending of opioid settlement dollars to help the overdose crisis, enshrining protections for LGBTQIA2S+ Spokanites, prohibiting employers from discriminating against unhoused people in hiring processes and opposing state and federal Medicaid cuts.
- The Spokane Housing Authority Board is getting a presentation on one of the most comprehensive, dense and impressive homelessness reports we’ve ever seen: the Longitudinal Systems Analysis.
- Mead School District is considering changes to its policy on transgender and non-binary students that would assess which bathrooms and locker rooms students can use on a “case-by-case basis,” require students on overnight trips to have room assignments based on their assigned gender at birth, and more.
- Both Mead and Central Valley School Districts will consider vocally supporting two proposed amendments to the WA Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) handbook that would limit girls’ sports participation to “biological females” and create a third “open” division for trans and non-binary students.
Important meetings this week:
- West Plains Water Coalition
- Spokane City Council
- Finance and Administration Committee
- Spokane Housing Authority Board
- Spokane Public Facilities District
- Spokane Plan Commission
- Spokane Regional Health District
- Mead School District Board of Directors
- Central Valley School District Board of Directors
- Spokane School District Board of Directors
- Board of County Commissioners - Legislative Session
- Spokane Valley City Council - CANCELLED
West Plains Water Coalition
More details are surfacingcoming about the extent of “forever chemicals” contamination in West Plains drinking water wells. The West Plains Water Coalition will present the results of a “live experience” survey of West Plains residents who have wells drilled into their aquifer, which is contaminated with per- or polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, a family of synthetic chemicals that is increasingly thought to be connected to serious diseases, including cancer (and which is physically separate from the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, where much of Spokane and Kootenai Counties get their water). Here is a brief summary of the survey:
- 113 are aware of PFAS water contamination
- 97 have had their well tested
- 90 use their well water for gardening or watering livestock.
- 76 use their well water for their pets
- 53 have PFAS home filters or use bottled water.
Gail Oneal, a local nurse specializing in the health effects of environmental risks, will talk about the health implications of being exposed. Read RANGE’s extensive coverage of PFAS contamination here.
Monday, March 24 at 5:30 pm
The HUB
12703 W 14th Ave, Airway Heights, WA 99001
The meeting will also be live-streamed
here.
March for Gender Freedom
It’s not our usual CIVICS fare, but we love to celebrate civic engagement, so here’s a spot of good news for your Monday: over the weekend, Trans Spokane and Spokane Pride hosted a march against President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive orders.
"We gathered together to show visibility of the transgender and gender expansive community and our allies' dissent of the anti-trans executive orders and the Trump administration's rhetoric,” wrote Trans Spokane executive director Louis Stay. “We stand together to show the city we would like protections against discrimination and safety from the federal government's actions."
Spokane Pride estimated over 1,000 attendees at the march.
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
More money to fight wrongful death lawsuit
If the city council approves the consent agenda tonight, they’ll be approving a $100,000 contract amendment with the law firm helping the city fight a wrongful death lawsuit by the children of Robert Bradley, who was killed by the Spokane police in 2022. If the contract amendment is approved, it will bring the total spent on fighting the lawsuit to $500,000, which is the same amount the city paid in December to settle the first wrongful death lawsuit about Bradley’s death, filed by his fiancee. The agenda notes for this item say that mediation with Bradley’s children was unsuccessful and that the case is poised to go to trial.
Thoughts on tall buildings downtown?
Come tell the council tonight! They’re holding a hearing and a final reading of the interim zoning ordinance that would get rid of height restrictions for buildings in the downtown core.
Next week’s sneak peek:
- There will be votes on a slate of code clean-ups that all looked pretty technical in nature, like consolidating relevant licensing language to a single section and fixing errors that resulted from an earlier code streamlining.
- The council is set to approve some items that the Plan Commission should be working on for 2025 through 2026. There’s also a joint amendment filed by Council Members Michael Cathcart and Kitty Klitzke that could add three new work priorities 👀
- They could POTENTIALLY vote on the midbiennial budget review ordinance. Emphasizing potentially because we’ve already mentioned this a bunch of times, but it keeps getting deferred! Next week, though: it might finally happen, and possibly unanimously. A a bipartisan amendment by Council Members Betsy Wilkerson, Paul Dillon and Cathcart has been filed that maybe everyone can agree on?
Agenda here
Monday, March 17, at 6 pm
808 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Finance and Administration Committee
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Taking on the opioid crisis
The city of Spokane received settlement dollars from a state lawsuit against opioid manufacturers, and will continue to receive regular disbursements of settlement dollars over the next decade and a half. The city’s biennial budget for 2025-26 didn’t include spending for their most recent disbursement of settlement dollars, because leaders planned to address it at the midbiennium budget review.
However, because of the severity of the opioid crisis in Spokane, with 346 people dying of overdoses in 2024, the administration wants to spend those dollars now, “in order to save lives and reduce the human and fiscal cost of addiction and overdose.” Here’s the plan for spending $1,489,388, according to deputy city administrator Maggie Yates:
- $350,000 to expand operations at the Spokane Regional Health District medication assisted treatment program so they can meet walk-in demand and be available as a drop off location for first responders who have contacts with people in need that might be ready for treatment. These dollars will also be matched by $350,000 from Spokane County for a total of $700,000.
- $500,000 for an additional 12 beds at Spokane Treatment and Recovery Services, a sobering facility that already serves as a drop-off point for first responders like the Behavioral Response Unit. This will also be matched with $500,000 from the county, but it’s unclear if that would help pay for those 12 beds or add an additional 12.
- $500,000 to “support the planning and launch of culturally specific, behavioral health treatment.” This chunk of funding would go to remedying local healthcare inequities for BIPOC patients seeking treatment for opioid use. According to the agenda notes, while Black patients suffer similar rates of opioid use disorder, they are less likely to receive a prescription for buprenorphine — one of the options for medication assisted treatment — than their white counterparts.
- $139,388 to hire a dedicated analyst to measure the efficacy of the city’s opioid spending by tracking overdose rates, overdose deaths and other metrics.
Ban the address
Council Member Lili Navarrete’s “Bill of Rights,” for unhoused people was indefinitely deferred last year, but a new version of it, co-sponsored by Navarrete, Dillon and Cathcart, is back up for discussion. This new ordinance focuses solely on the most popular part of Navarrete’s old ordinance: making it illegal for employers’ hiring practices to discriminate against unhoused people applying for jobs. Here’s what made it into the new ordinance:
- Forbids employers from requiring an applicant to provide an address or residence history until after granting a provisional offer of employment
- Forbids employers from asking any question about housing status in an application, interview or other communication prior to granting a provisional offer of employment.
- Forbids employers from rejecting an applicant solely because they don’t have a physical residence, list a PO Box or list a shelter, unless housing status has “legitimate relation to the primary duties of the job.”
- Definitely states that “No person may be disqualified from employment with the City due solely, or in part, to their housing status unless it directly relates to the job position sought."
Protecting LGBTQIA2S+ in Spokane
The committee will discuss legislation proposed by council members Dillon, Navarrete and Zack Zappone that would enshrine protections for queer people in city code.
Here’s what it would do:
- Creates a Shield Law for Spokane, which means that no city resources will be used to assist in investigating or detaining an individual for exercising their rights, which includes seeking gender-affirming care. This clarifies city-specific protection, in addition to the state’s standing Shield Law.
- Cleans up outdated language in the city’s Human Rights code and adds the LGBTQIA2S+ community and gender affirming care.
- Prohibits the city from collecting or disseminating information about any individual’s sex assigned at birth, unless it’s related to a criminal investigation.
- Directs the police department to maintain an LGTBQIA2S+ liaison officer to act as a point of contact and build trust with the community.
- Requires the city to conduct regular review of policies and practices to ensure they’re equitable and affirming for LGBTQIA2S+ people.
- Directs the city to collaborate with LGBTQIA2S+ leaders and event organizers to ensure public safety and well-being for community members and event attendees.
- Guarantees city employees gender-affirming care coverage and reproductive healthcare.
This is just a committee discussion, but we anticipate that when this moves to the legislative council meeting, there will be heated and likely queerphobic debate. After all, we’re *still* hearing homophobic comments about the rainbow intersection downtown on the regular.
“No to Medicaid Cuts.”
The council will discuss a resolution expressing their opposition to the proposed federal and state proposed Medicaid cuts (see the House Budget plan, and Governor Bob Ferguson’s “oops all cuts,” plan.) The resolution points to the high rates of Medicaid usage in Washington’s 5th Legislative District, and the necessity of Medicaid funding for the city’s homelessness response.
No to pausing North/South Corridor
We couldn’t find a draft attached in the agenda, but Cathcart is presenting on “A letter of support for completion of [the North/South] Corridor,” the region’s decades-long transportation project to connect I-90 to the US 2 and US 395. It’s an effort to relieve north/south congestion on arterials, and is currently coupled with the Spokane Transit Authority’s Division Bus Rapid Transit project — another effort to reduce congestion on north/south streets.
We’ve heard rumblings that there could be another delay to the N/S corridor construction, possibly because of federal and state funding cuts. Seems like whatever is in Cathcart’s letter is probably against any more delays.
Agenda here
Monday, March 24 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.
Spokane Housing Authority Board
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Longitudinal Systems Analysis … gesundheit?
The Housing Authority Board will be getting a report on the 2024 Longitudinal Systems Analysis Report, which is one of the most detailed and comprehensive reports on homelessness in Spokane that we’ve ever had the pleasure of trying to decipher. There’s some really interesting data in there that will be used to inform the city’s policies and funding decisions, like the fact that 7,221 unique individuals accessed homelessness services in 2024, over 3 times the amount of unhoused people the city counted on the streets during their 2024 Point in Time count.
The LSA was a truly dense data document (which is great for wonks, just bad for reporters on deadline) so we’re hoping that the presentation to the Housing Authority Board will reveal some of the nuances we missed in our power skim.
Agenda here
Monday, March 24 at 3:30 pm
Meeting Room 25 W. Nora Ave, Spokane, WA 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Plan Commission
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Climate Planning Community Survey results
Spokanites are feeling the heat, according to a climate planning survey conducted by the Plan Commission. Even more, they’re shrouded in smoke, which is also worsened by climate change. And if they’re poor, they’re feeling the effects of extreme cold caused by warming in the arctic, which pushes the frigid gulf stream south. That’s all according to numbers that will be discussed at Wednesday’s meeting.
Per the survey, when asked what climate hazards impact your lives, 72% of the general population said wildfire smoke affects them. Apparently most of us remember the Gray Fire and other wildfires that choked Spokane in August 2023 and some of the fires that consumed parts of the Latah Valley last summer. Nearly 60% say they struggle with the heat, and about 33% are impacted by extreme cold.
What’s interesting about this: the commission drilled down a little further in the data, isolating answers from people who make less than $28,000 a year. The percentage of people in that bracket who suffered from extreme cold jumped to about 42%, and extreme heat jumped to about 65%, while wildfire smoke fell to 65%.
Public hearing: Bike Priority Network
The Plan Commission will host a public hearing on the Bicycle Priority Network (BPN), a map of good bicycle routes to get around Spokane on non-motorized wheels. As cycling becomes more popular for Spokanites, the network is being established to create better infrastructure for it. The Plan Commission will make a recommendation to Spokane City Council on adopting the new network after the public hearing. The BPN prioritizes:
- directness of routes
- access to destinations
- low-stress routes
- network spacing
- route quality and legibility
- equitable coverage
- local context and
- route feasibility
Agenda here
Wednesday, March 26 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Regional Health District Board
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Treatment Services Report
The SRHD Board is getting a presentation on how things are going with the Treatment Services Division. Here’s a few highlights from the materials attached in the agenda:
- In 2024, Treatment Services served 1,369 unique patients for medication dispensing. In January and February of 2025 alone, they’re already up 1,009 unique dispensing patients.
- They’re set to clear their 2024 numbers for counseling patients as well: In 2024, they had 7,881 sessions and are already up to 1,449 sessions for 2025.
- Their client satisfaction survey, which had 160 responses, revealed that the majority of patients are either “satisfied” or “very satisfied,” with the level of care they’re receiving from Treatment Services.
One other thing we thought was interesting is that one of the areas of improvement clients identified in the satisfaction survey was long wait times for dispensing. If the city and the county’s joint funding plan to expand capacity for medication assisted treatment at SRHD moves forward, this may be addressed.!
Agenda here
Thursday, March 27 at 12:30 p.m.
Auditorium, First Floor
Spokane Regional Health District
1101 West College Avenue
Mead School District Board of Directors
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Changes to policy on transgender students
After asking the Trump administration for help, the Mead school board is debuting a first reading of changes to Policy 3211 on transgender students. Immediately, the new policy removes previous language that promised equal opportunity to all students and replaces it with language stating that the district will avoid “blanket solutions inherently favoring one protected class over another.” The changes adopt some language from Washington law, but states that considering “sex” and “gender identity” both as protected classes are contradictory, despite receiving clarity from the state telling them to “follow state law.”
For bathroom access, this means that students will have to coordinate with school administration to use the bathroom when “inconsistent with sex at birth.” Locker room access will be similarly on a case-by-case basis. For overnight trips, student room assignments will be made based on sex at birth.
All of this is blatantly against state law.
But don’t worry; Mead’s addressed that. The new policy includes a section that says where state and federal law conflict, it will side with federal law. The policy also notes that since federal law establishes the right of families to information about their student, they will follow that law when it comes to sharing information to students’ parents about their gender identity, rather than state law which protects students’ privacy at school. However, the policy then states that when a student wants to change their gender expression, the school is to consult the student about family involvement in subsequent meetings. Later on, it says that school employees cannot withhold student information unless legally required.
The policy also cuts the terms “cisgender,” “gender expansive,” and “assigned” from “sex at birth,” from the policy, adding that “with rare exceptions, sex is binary and immutable.”
Since this is the first reading of the policy, the board will not be voting on it yet, but people can still give public comments on it.
New sports rules
For sports participation, the new policy on transgender students refers to the rules set by the WA Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA). It just so happens that at its March 10 board work session, the board and two principals reviewed 16 amendments the WIAA is proposing. Most notably, the board voted to support the two amendments that deal with trans students: amendment 7, which would limit participation in girls’ sports to “biological females,” and amendment 8, which would essentially establish a third division for trans and non-binary students. Since Mead has already publicly made their stance on trans athletes clear, we think that it’s pretty obvious they’re in support of WIAA policy to ban trans kids from real sports participation — with so few trans athletes, it’s basically impossible for them to form a full open division, let alone a single team.
Agenda here
Monday, March 24 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
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Roundtable discussion on sports rules
The Central Valley School Board will similarly discuss and then vote on their stance on the 16 amendments for WIAA. Each board member has stated their positions here, with a majority of board members supporting amendments 7 and 8, with Board Director Cindy McMullen being the only one opposed. These amendments would limit girls’ sports participation to “biological females” and create a third division for trans and non-binary students.
The board will later vote on their position, but barring some drastic change of heart, we have a good sense of how they’ll vote. CVSD has made their position clear on trans kids, and the agenda material states that all but one of the school board members are in support of the anti-trans WIAA amendments.
Agenda here
Monday, March 24 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
Not much and that’s interesting
There isn’t a lot going on this week at the Spokane school board meeting, most notably the board is not discussing its position on the WIAA amendments like CVSD and Mead are.
Agenda here
Wednesday, March 26 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Legislative Session
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Long-term planning for climate, affordable housing
Two very real crises are happening globally, across the state and in our local community: housing and climate change. That’s why Washington’s long-term planning guidelines — dictated by a law called the Growth Management Act (GMA) — require counties to match their affordable housing and climate policies with cities within the county. Spokane County is setting up its discussions on changes to the affordable housing policy that were proposed by the Spokane Steering Committee of Elected Officials in 2022 and is considering an entirely new climate change policy. The Building & Planning Department wants to set April 1 (Tuesday next week) as the date to consider other departments that would be affected by the proposals and legal considerations surrounding the policies.
Climate
The climate policy would set the following goals, among others, that would make Spokane County carbon neutral by 2050 and adapt to warming that is already locked in by historic emissions:
- Plan for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction, which would include setting incremental target reductions in GHG emissions until 2050.
- Encourage infrastructure improvements to enhance non-single occupancy vehicle transportation modes and incentivize increased public transit users.
- Enhance and expand bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure to create safe, well-connected and attractive active transportation networks.
- Encourage green building practices that limit carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency, water efficiency and indoor environmental quality.
- Protect and restore natural resources that sequester carbon (forests, park and conservation land, farmland, wetlands, estuaries, urban tree canopies, etc.) while maintaining safety standards for hazardous wildland zones.
- Identify climate hazards to which Spokane County is most susceptible using available climate hazard mapping tools and/or other approaches in line with the best available science.
- Create goals and programs to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate hazards, and that prioritize environmental justice to avoid worsening environmental health disparities.
- Establish development regulations that incorporate best practices for reducing the risk of wildfire, extreme heat, flooding, and other climate-exacerbated hazards to which Spokane County is susceptible.
- Identify, map and protect lands (including, but not limited to, critical areas, resource lands, conservation lands and park lands) that provide climate resilience benefits from conversion to more developed land use types.
Affordable housing
The county wants to add the following goals to its policy establishing affordable housing:
- Identification of local policies and regulations that result in racially disparate impacts, displacement and exclusion in housing
- Implementation of policies and regulations that address and begin to undo racially disparate impacts, displacement and exclusion in housing
- Identification of areas that may be at higher risk of displacement from market forces that occur with changes to zoning development regulations and capital investments
- Establishment of anti-displacement policies
$28M contract with Waste Management
The BOCC will host a public hearing for Spokane County residents to discuss a contract it negotiated with Waste Management for waste disposal at the Adams County Regional Landfill (ACRL) near Washtucna. According to the agenda sheet, the ACRL is the closest regional landfill to Spokane. The contract would cost the county $28 million over a decade.
Board appointments
The BOCC is set to appoint:
- Karrina Denham-Love to the Spokane County Behavioral Health Advisory Board
- Jon Neill to the Spokane to the Public Facilities District Board
- Billy Costello as the City of Deer Park representative on the Spokane County Housing and Community Development Advisory Committee
- Andy Van Hees as the City of Millwood representative on the Spokane County Solid Waste Advisory Committee, and
- Reappoint Allison Rubino to the Spokane County Community Services Developmental Disabilities Advisory Board
More than $20M in behavioral health contracts
The BOCC will consider more than $20 million in contracts for 2025 with behavioral health providers for crises in the Spokane Regional Service Area, which includes Adams, Ferry, Lincoln, Pend Oreille, Spokane and Stevens counties. The contracts are proposed to be allocated to the following companies:
- Adams County Integrated Health Care Services: $540,600
- Frontier Behavioral Health: $17,429,300
- Northeast Washington Alliance Counseling Services $2,318,900, and
- Pend Oreille County Counseling Services: $713,000.00
Agenda here
Tuesday, March 25 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.
Liberty Lake City Council (Special Meeting)
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
City capital investment strategy workshop
Liberty Lake city staff will lead a workshop to discuss various financing tools it can use to fund its capital investments, which include buying long-term, physical assets like buildings, equipment and infrastructure.
Agenda here
Tuesday, March 25 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Public Facilities District
?/5 peppers
Agenda here when available
Wednesday, March 26 at 12:30 pm
Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena Board Room
720 W Mallon Ave, Spokane, WA 99201
Virtual attendance here.
