Last year, regional leaders from across the political spectrum, with different hopes, dreams and lived experiences, shacked up and decided to make a baby.
They called this situationship “The Safe and Healthy Task Force,” formed with the goal of creating a set of recommendations that would ultimately guide our region’s elected officials in how to spend finite behavioral health and criminal justice dollars.
During the gestation, there were plenty of arguments about vision and goals, but nine months later (as with most pregnancies) it concluded with a press conference where task force members and elected officials alike announced the birth of their child, a 65-page packet of recommendations, that boiled down to one key idea: “A community is only as safe as it is healthy, and only as healthy as it is safe.”
The birth announcement/presser on Thursday lacked certain details from the task force, like how many new beds the region’s homeless system needs, whether they want to build a new jail or rehabilitate the old jail and which recommendations will be prioritized first. Nor did it have a parenting plan with information on what the projects cost and who’s going to pay for what, and had no official question and answer period. Still, more than a dozen parents from the polycule spoke proudly about the group’s efforts and the project they christened the catchy earworm of a name: “Community-Built Roadmap for Improving Region’s Public Safety and Health.”
Unlike most pregnancies, where the key traits of a growing embryo are ultimately left up to chance, this was more of a designer baby created through a negotiated, constructed effort that required keeping some of the region’s self-admitted “complicated personalities” at the table. The task force was able to come up with 14 official recommendations that everyone from Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels to Angel Tomeo Sam of Yoyot Sp’q’n’i could agree on. Everyone plans for their baby to grow up to establish a shared data system, strengthen pre-trial diversion efforts and invest in modern, integrated justice facilities, among other things (see the full report here).
‘Not every crisis is a crime’
Matt Albright, the executive director of operations for Providence Inland Northwest, spoke to the scope of strain the medical system is currently under, due to untreated behavioral health issues and substance use. Over the last year, 8,000 of the total 60,000 adult visits to the Sacred Heart Medical Center were due to the behavioral health and substance abuse crisis, Albright said, and of those 8,000 people, 32% of them returned within 30 days of discharge, some “over and over and over again.”
We see firsthand when someone falls through the cracks or when support systems are missing,” Albright said. “This roadmap is about changing that. It is about building the kind of coordinated system where people get the right care at the right time, and where our community's resources are used in a way that actually produces better outcomes for everyone.”
Nowels, the cowboy-hat-wearing sheriff who has spoken about his daughter’s experience battling fentanyl addiction, said he “wholeheartedly” supported the recommendations.
Public safety, Nowels said, was inseparably tied to issues like addiction, mental health and the health care system.
“It has been my experience in the criminal justice system — and also my experience as a father and a son, a grandson, a son-in-law, with people who have dealt with substance use issues, been involved in the criminal justice system and who have dealt with mental health issues — that we have created an incredibly complicated system to navigate.”
Tomeo Sam, an enrolled Colville Tribe member, said that by highlighting paths beyond incarceration, the recommendations “recognize that not every crisis is a crime.”
“Native people have been disproportionately represented in these systems: systems of crisis, behavioral health and incarceration,” Tomeo Sam said. “These recommendations offer a different path, one rooted in prevention, intervention, healing and connection — and what's good for Native Americans is good for everybody.”
While Tomeo Sam has been a longtime advocate for looking beyond incarceration and prioritizing social services, the brainchild of the task force has the support of even its most disciplinarian parents.
Chud Wendle, executive director of the Hutton Settlement and prolific pro-business advocate, said that he used to think the complex problem had one simple answer: “ We need a new jail.”
The nine-month process opened his eyes, he said, after hearing about the criminal justice system from people like Tomeo Sam and Dr. Melissa Mace, the NAACP Spokane executive director. Wendle still spoke about the need for “modern integrated justice facilities,” — describing the current county jail as "obsolete" — but that has to come paired with affordable housing, he said.
“When people leave correctional facilities with nowhere to go, the cycle does not end. It restarts. Without adequate housing options, we are investing in a system that releases people back to the same circumstances that brought them in,” Wendle said.
Wendle’s change of heart was evidence for what many members touted as a big win: the relationship didn’t crumble, despite political differences. Service providers, people who had experienced homelessness or behavioral health crises, business leaders and politicians alike all kept coming to the table.
Spokane City Council President Betsy Wilkerson, and past target of Wendle’s activism, said that while the process wasn’t perfect, and service providers and business leaders likely won’t be besties any time soon, there were still signs for hope.
“We just can’t write folks off. As my ‘best friend’ Chud said, he was gonna lock ‘em up,” Wilkerson said after the conference. “Now he’s seen the light.”
Afterbirth: Parenting doesn’t end after pregnancy
While the group was able to come to consensus on the philosophical guiding principles, practically, there are more uncertainties and tension to come. Essentially everything on the task force’s wishlist has one common thread besides “wholehearted,” support: it all costs money. And with almost every municipality in the region facing down deficits and projected financial shortfalls, there are limited options.
The task force recommendations didn’t include information on who would be paying for what, or which recommendations would be prioritized over others in tight budgeting seasons. One big question still on everyone’s minds (or at least every reporter’s mind) — are electeds planning on asking the voters to approve the same tax to build a new jail that failed in 2023? And if so, when will that measure appear on ballots?
“ For all the moms in the room, you know that the nine months that goes into producing the baby, in this case, the report, is not the end of the story,” Mayor Lisa Brown said. “That is the very actual beginning, and success for this region will be when we see each one of those little babies emerging in our region as someone who can be nourished, safe, healthy, housed with resources that are coordinated.”
Though much of the press conference was task force members thanking each other for showing up and praising the continued collaborative efforts, there were signs that the honeymoon phase may soon be coming to an end as funding prioritization conversations begin.
Wendle threw a little barb seemingly directed at Brown, who sent a letter with Spokane Police Chief Kevin Hall last week asking that shared data coordination and immediate improvements of the current jail facility be prioritized over other expensive options (like building a new jail entirely.)
“ I respectfully ask our elected leaders, including our mayor, to listen and act faithfully to work with us and not to demand that their personal agenda supersedes our work,” Wendle said during his remarks. “ The task force has been clear about the need for modern facilities as part of the integrated system, but it has not gotten into the specifics of facility planning … The task force hopes elected leaders will carry into those planning sessions, particularly the importance of looking at the system as a whole, not correctional facilities as a silo.”
During her remarks, Brown sniped back.
“Accountability for electeds is to keep this conversation moving forward with a coordinating entity of some sort and with data so we can measure outcomes,” she said. “That's not a personal agenda. That's responsible governance — how do we prioritize our limited resources and get this work off the ground?”
The back-and-forth between Wendle and Brown hinted at the harder future ahead. Past regional polycules have fallen apart once the relationship hit the same obstacles that have sunk many a couple: money problems and negotiating how to share responsibilities in real life, outside a love bubble.
One only has to look as far back as the Regional Homeless Authority, which died after Brown pulled the city’s support, citing concerns with the proposed governance and financial structure of the authority that would have left the city funding a large chunk of the authority’s activities, while controlling only two seats on the 14-person board. Of course, Safe and Healthy Task Force optimists will point to key differences between the two processes as a reason to hold out hope that this effort can weather the storm. The regional authority faced serious headwinds for relying too heavily on jail, and not meaningfully involving service providers or people who have been incarcerated or homeless in the process.
The participation of Tomeo Sam — who was a vocal critic of the regional authority and who worked on the campaign against the new jail tax — and other Black, Brown and Indigenous community leaders should be a sign that the future of this venture is on a more solid foundation, wrote Zeke Smith, the president of Waters Meet, one of the five organizations who officially convened the task force. The other conveners include Greater Spokane Inc., Greater Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Spokane Partnership and the Avista Foundation.
Wilkerson has heard chatter from her community that “they’re gonna build a jail to lock up Black and Brown people,” which is what has happened historically, she said. She too believes this effort is different, and will result in resources being directed to create “ the right beds: not just incarceration beds, but the right beds to meet the needs of the people that we are trying to help.”
She thinks that whatever difficulties in negotiation may lie ahead, community leaders are ready to lay down their weapons and work together.
“The region is ready for collaboration,” Wilkerson said. “We've done a lot of fighting, now it's time for collaboration.”
The first test of their collaboration could come next Tuesday, as the recommendations are presented to the full slate of county commissioners, Commissioner Chris Jordan told RANGE. The board of county commissioners, which is controlled by a conservative majority, will ultimately be the deciders on if a sales tax to fund these recommendations goes out to voters — and when.
Jordan was the only commissioner present at the press conference this week.
Will the region’s most eclectic polycule survive the most common relationship pitfalls in order to get us to a safer, healthier Spokane? Only time will tell. As Couples Therapy’s Dr. Orna Guralnik notes in her televised therapy sessions, “we must love our partners enough to transcend ourselves.”
