Welcome to CIVICS, where we break down the week’s municipal meetings throughout the Inland Northwest, so you can keep track of and fight for the issues you care about.
Here are highlights of what’s coming up:
- The Human Rights Commission may get more say in changes to the city’s Title 18 code, which is designed to prevent discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.
- The Mead School District has written a letter to the private high school sports rule-making body saying it may not renew its membership in the future because the board is not assertive enough in protecting districts that implement anti-trans policies.
- Treatment services provided by the regional health district — which only a year ago was at risk of being privatized — may instead be expanded, pending a vote by the Board of Directors this week.
- The city of Spokane Valley is pushing into the next phase of a police-hiring spree city council members say are required to bring the city’s public safety infrastructure up to par with its growing population.
- Mayor Lisa Brown has asked the Spokane City Council to table discussions of providing more robust language access to city services.
Important meetings this week:
- Spokane City Council
- Finance and Administration Committee
- Spokane Housing Authority Board
- Spokane Public Facilities District
- Spokane Plan Commission
- Mead School District Board of Directors
- Central Valley School District Board of Directors
- Spokane Regional Health District
- Spokane Valley City Council
- Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing & Legislative Session
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Human Rights Commission could get more say
Up for a first read today is an ordinance from Council Members Jonathan Bingle and Lili Navarrete, which would expand the duties of the Spokane Human Rights Commission “to include automatic review of proposed changes to Title 18 of the Spokane Municipal Code and related provisions.”
If passed, it would require the commission to review and comment on any legislation that would regulate discriminatory practices and claims before council could discuss legislation in committee, and before they take final action on the proposed ordinances.
Navarrete and Bingle added new provisions to the ordinance after its initial committee hearing that could slow the passage of new legislation intended to address issues related to human rights and discrimination: council members would have to provide a copy of each ordinance a minimum of 15 days before it would appear at a committee, and the commission would have up to 45 days after to provide written comments.
Normally, a piece of legislation appears at a committee and can be voted on and passed as early as two weeks later. If the council chose to wait to move on an ordinance until they received feedback from the commission, it could delay the passage of the ordinance by a month, which is a big con. However, the council could choose to bypass the requirement with a majority vote.
Public hearing: alcohol impact area
In April, the council voted to pass an interim ordinance to prohibit new alcohol outlets — stores that sell alcohol for off-premises use — within 500 feet of parks, schools, libraries, transit centers and community centers. That ordinance was passed as an interim, emergency ordinance, which meant it went into effect immediately in April without much opportunity for public feedback.
Tonight, people will have a chance to testify on it at a hearing during the council meeting and offer any insights or perspectives they didn’t get to share before. If that sounds like you, come on down to council tonight and sign up for the hearings section, which also includes hearings on the Six-Year Comprehensive Street Program and a new ordinance to expand opportunities for commercial development — like bakeries, cafes and other small businesses — in new residential neighborhoods.
Next week’s sneak peek:
- A final vote on the ordinance to require the Human Rights Commission’s review on relevant ordinances
- An ordinance to prohibit new housing developments receiving the city’s Multi-Family Tax Exemption credit from operating units in the building as short-term rentals (think Airbnb). This is intended to ensure projects receiving the tax credit are actually contributing in the long term to the region’s housing supply.
- Possibly an emergency vote on an ordinance to limit Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ability to arrest people without a judicial warrant in city-owned spaces.
Agenda here
Monday, June 23, at 6 pm
808 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Finance and Administration Committee
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
About those homelessness ordinances…
Last week, we had a lot of whiplash from the way the council handled Mayor Lisa Brown’s slate of homelessness ordinances: passing a few and voting down the one that would criminalize camping citywide but give a seven day grace period for someone to move, then choosing late in the evening to reconsider the ordinance but with an amendment dropping the grace period to three days, then finally, voting to defer the ordinance in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
It was a lot for any lay-person to follow, and sparked heated testimony from the public and arguments on the dais from council members. Today though, the council is going to take a deep breath and have a discussion on the ordinances, and what exactly they should do next.
A new council member is coming
We found out early last month that Council Member Lili Navarrete — appointed to fill the District 2 seat left vacant by then-Council Member Betsy Wilkerson’s election to Council President — was resigning her seat, effective June 30. We now know Navarrete is staying at City Hall, but moving into a job in the city’s Community Health and Human Services (CHHS) team. And today, we got a clear timeline for what appointing her replacement will look like:
- On July 10, council will interview candidates who applied to fill the seat by the June 20 cut-off date.
- On July 14, the council will hold a public hearing during the evening meeting on July 14 to hear testimony on the applicants.
- On July 28, the council will vote to appoint a new council member, who will serve until results of the upcoming election are certified this fall.
Language access, later.
In the last few years, the council has been moving to commit the city to improve language access to city services. In 2022, they passed a resolution encouraging the development of a citywide language-access program. In 2023, they passed an ordinance requiring the creation of language-access programs within city departments, beginning with budgeting for it in the 2025 budget.
That all sounds great, except, according to the agenda notes, “given the financial challenges facing the city during years 2025 through 2026, the Brown administration did not include language access planning programs in its proposed biennial budget.” Instead, the council’s agenda sheet says Brown’s administration is asking the council to push back the timeline for full implementation of language access initiatives by two years to 2029. Erin Hut, the city spokesperson, disputes that the request to move deadlines came from the mayor’s administration.
“We told the Council back in November that there would be funding challenges with the implementation deadlines, but budgeted ARPA dollars through 2026,” Hut wrote. “We didn’t ask for the deadlines to move, but that’s where the council went with it.
Editor’s Note: This section has been edited to reflect comments from the mayor’s office.
Agenda here
Monday, June 23 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
Agenda here
Monday, June 23 at 3:30 pm
Meeting Room 25 W. Nora Ave, Spokane, WA 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Public Facilities District
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Wednesday, June 25 at 12:30 pm
Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena Board Room
720 W Mallon Ave, Spokane, WA 99201
Virtual attendance here.
Spokane Plan Commission
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Wednesday, June 25 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Mead School District Board of Directors
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Trans students policy revision
The school board is revising its policy on transgender and gender nonconforming students to reflect state superintendent requirements. The agenda item is not clear about the specific nature of the changes, but the Mead School District has a controversial history in terms of how it treats queer students and employees. This revision is a result of a civil rights audit the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) recently conducted in the district, which said MSD must update its transgender student policy — known as Policy & Procedure 3211.
Mead sent an initial revision earlier this year that OSPI rejected on April 28, “stating the policy and procedure, as drafted, were not sufficient to bring the district into compliance.” That revision removed language from the policy that promised students equal protection. Additionally, MSD wrote the Trump administration a letter asking it to intervene and allow it to violate state policy by not respecting pronouns, bathroom preference or locker rooms for trans students, which would have violated state law.
MSD has until June 30 to come into compliance with state rules.
Mead may pull out of the WIAA next year
MSD has renewed its membership with the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) but is questioning its future relationship with the private high school sports regulatory body because WIAA is not being assertive enough in defending districts that don’t want trans students playing sports, according to a letter the directors penned to WIAA. The letter framed the board’s stance as trying to protect Title IX protections for female athletes, who they argue are endangered by trans girls playing in sports according to their gender identity.
State lawmakers have been trying to push trans athletes out of sports for years, but the civil rights lawyers Chase Strangio and Gabriel Arkles, writing for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued keeping trans girls and women out of sports hurts all female athletes. “It invites gender policing that could subject any woman to invasive tests or accusations of being ‘too masculine’ or ‘too good’ at their sport to be a ‘real’ woman,” they wrote.
Agenda here
Monday, June 23 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
Agenda here
Monday, June 23 at 6 p.m.
Learning and Teaching Center (district office)
Board Room at 2218 N Molter Rd, Liberty Lake
Watch via Zoom here.
Spokane Regional Health District Board
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Health equity could be set back
In June of 2020, right after the protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, the Spokane Regional Health District passed a resolution adopting a new approach to health equity in the region. That resolution was detailed in acknowledging the racial disparities of health impacts, the negative health repercussions of historical racism, including redlining, and made specific commitments to advance health equity, including “hiring a workforce that reflects the demographic, cultural, and linguistic characteristics of the populations it serves.”
This week, the board could vote to go from the extensive list of equity commitments to a new resolution that strips those commitments back to the bare minimum: a commitment to comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, and Washington’s Law Against Discrimination. This change was “warranted to avoid any misunderstanding or misconstruction of the language” in the first resolution, it says in one of the WHEREAS clauses.
It’s unclear whether this is complying in advance to avoid any potential notice or loss of funding from the Trump administration, or just an abrupt about-face in values. Either way, it’s worth opening up both the old resolution and the new one to see just how stark the difference is.
Treatment Services expansion
In better news, the Treatment Services Division of SRHD — which handles medication assisted treatment and counseling for those struggling with opioid usage — could be expanding! A year ago, we were writing about the potential privatization of the division, as SRHD explored options to turn it over to a private company. The community largely did not support this move. Now, with board approval, it could expand.
The division’s services are in high demand, with more than 950 individuals in Spokane County enrolled. In the last six months of 2024, the division had to turn away almost 200 patients because they didn’t have capacity to take on new patients. In the first quarter of 2025, they’ve already had to turn away 54 patients. The proposal up for a vote this week could “eliminate the need to turn away individuals seeking treatment, leading to increased access to life-saving care, improved patient outcomes, reduced wait times, enhanced community health, and potential for increased revenue to sustain operations.”
It outlines a plan to expand operational capacity, extend service hours to accommodate all individuals seeking timely access to care and increase staffing levels. It would change the hours of the facility from Monday through Friday 5:15 am to 6 pm, and Saturday 7 am to 3 pm, with an estimated increase in client capacity from 1,200 a week to 1,350.
Staffing up would cost an estimated $889,423.46, but it’s estimated that client expansion could bring in up to an additional $3 million per year. If approved by the board, the expansion funds would come from surplus revenue generated by the Treatment Services Division last year.
Agenda here
Thursday, June 26 at 12:30 p.m.
Auditorium, First Floor
Spokane Regional Health District
1101 West College Avenue
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Update on overdose deaths
The county medical examiner will present an inaugural data set showing a steady rise in Spokane and Eastern Washington in drug overdose deaths — which are largely driven by the opioid crisis — even as drug overdose deaths are declining in Washington state overall. The presentation is part of new requirements in the data sharing agreement between the medical examiner’s office and the Spokane Regional Health District.
Agenda here
Tuesday, June 24 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
Possible COPS show
The Spokane area is no stranger to the controversial police show COPS, and Spokane County may host the show pending a decision by the BOCC Tuesday that would give the sheriff permission to let its producers accompany deputies on ridealongs. The show has a storied history of sensationalizing police interactions with local people struggling with the worst circumstances of their lives in jurisdictions across the country. The Spokane Valley Police Department, which is an arm of the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, has hosted the show several times in recent years.
Agenda here
Tuesday, June 24 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
Hiring grant for more police
Spokane Valley is looking to move into the next phase of its police hiring program, requesting authority from city council to apply for a $1.25 million hiring grant from the US Department of Justice to hire 10 new officers in addition to the 10 the city has hired over the last year. The need for these new officers was identified by a consultant the city hired to analyze its policing environment in 2022. Hiring more police is one of the council’s central priorities because the members see more cops as the main solution to public safety problems.
Agenda here
Tuesday, June 24, at 8:30 am
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206Virtual attendance here.
