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 will hold a first reading of an ordinance to make some small changes to the biennial (2-year) budget review process.
- The Finance and Administration Committee will discuss two important pieces of legislation from Council Member Michael Cathcart: a resolution against state legislation to allow even-year voting for local elections and an ordinance to require public-facing financial transparency from the city by 2027.
- Central Valley School District Board of Directors is continuing to partake in one of their favorite pastimes: discussing queer and transgender students, and legislation that could negatively impact them.
- Council President Betsy Wilkerson extended an olive branch to the county in an effort for the city and county to *finally* start collaborating on a regional response to the opioid epidemic in Spokane. Her request to meet about collaboration is pending approval from the Board of County Commissioners, who are voting on whether or not to even talk with the city about it.
- Spokane Valley says it’s struggling to stop “illicit massage” activities, but its got some ideas on how to get better: cracking down on landlords of properties where people are violating human trafficking laws.
- What’s going on with the Treatment Services Division at Spokane Regional Health District? We’ll know more after a presentation to the SRHD board this week.
Important meetings this week:
- Spokane City Council
- Finance and Administration Committee
- Central Valley School District Board of Directors
- Spokane Housing Authority Board
- Mead School District Board of Directors
- Board of County Commissioners - Briefing Session and Legislative Session
- Spokane Valley City Council
- Spokane School District Board of Directors
- Spokane Plan Commission
- Spokane Regional Health District Board
- Spokane County Planning Commission
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
Flock to it
City council could approve the purchase of 30 Flock cameras, which capture license plate information and identifiable vehicle characteristics. The cameras will be placed at key intersections in the city, but the list of intersections hasn’t been finalized yet — maybe it will include some of the most dangerous ones. The purchase and installation will cost just over $119,000. Most of the money is coming from a grant through the Washington Auto Theft Prevention Authority, but $19,028 is coming from the Spokane Police Department’s budget.
Starplex security services
It may sound like something out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the Starplex Corporation is actually the Pacific Northwest security company currently providing security services to the city of Spokane. (If you’re reading this from the City Council meeting, you can wave “hi” to the Starplex guards hanging out in the Chase Gallery.) The city is set to approve a two-year, $750,000 per year contract — with the option to renew for a third year — with Starplex, to continue providing security at City Hall, the Intermodal Center and Public Works, Parks and Library sites as needed.
Biennial budget process
Last year, the council and Mayor Lisa Brown worked to switch the city to a biennial budget, which was intended to help the city finances stabilize and do longer-term planning, rather than just plugging this year’s holes with money from the next year’s budget. Tonight, council will have a first reading of an ordinance that would clarify the mid-biennial budget review process, which is scheduled to happen each fall to ensure the city is hitting targets and is prepared for the next year.
A few of the changes in the ordinance include scootching the deadline for the end of the review process from November to December 15, giving the city a bit more time. There’s also a new section clarifying how “ad valorem” taxes, a tax based on the value of a property or a good, can be used to make up any differences that arise.
There is also a proposed amendment from Council Member Michael Cathcart that would add a lot of details about how the budgeting process should protect the city’s budget reserves and handle unexpected windfalls or shortfalls. Council will vote on whether to adopt this amendment during the Agenda Review session this afternoon, so we should know by the time we start live-posting council whether this becomes part of the ordinance getting read.
Next week’s sneak peek
- Approving over $2 million worth of adaptive design projects to be paid for from the Safe Streets for All Fund (formerly known as the Traffic Calming Fund.)
- Accepting almost $140,000 in funds from the West Quadrant Tax Increment Financing district to use for 27 by 2027 urban mobility projects
- Voting on the mid-biennial budget review process ordinance
Agenda here
Monday, February 24, at 6 pm
808 W. Spokane Falls Boulevard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Finance and Administration Committee
🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Pedestrian protections
After the death of prominent Spokane community member Janet Mann in a hit-and-run last summer, Mayor Brown committed to immediate traffic safety measures, including a review of intersections to see if they’d be candidates for Leading Pedestrian Intervals — which trigger the “walk” sign for pedestrians at crosswalks sign several seconds before the light turns green for cars, giving walkers time and giving drivers more opportunity to notice them — or completely banning cars from turning during red lights. Today, the council will receive a presentation from one of Brown’s staff members on the review process. There’s not much additional info in the agenda, but it is a timely presentation: this week, the man who killed Mann was sentenced to just 240 hours of community service, partially at the request of Mann’s husband.
Taking a stand against even-year voting
The committee will discuss a resolution from Cathcart, which would have the city take an official stance against House Bill 1339, which would allow municipalities to choose to hold their elections in even-numbered years.
If the bill passes in its current form, it would not require any cities or other municipalities to hold their elections in even-numbered years, just give them the option to do so. The bill has moved through its committee of origin and the House Appropriations committee and now sits in the Rules committee for review.
While proponents of the bill think that it would increase voter turnout and engagement — because even-numbered years line up with big national elections that tend to draw voters to the ballot box — detractors, including Cathcart, think it could increase partisanship in nonpartisan elections and draw focus away from local issues.
“Local elections should minimize overt partisanship because municipal offices are non-partisan by design, encouraging issue-based campaigning and collaboration, and further, merging these races with state or federal elections inherently exposes them to broader partisan narratives,” his resolution reads.
There are other concerns too: current and past Washington Secretaries of State worry that even if there’s more turnout, it will result in more partial ballots, where voters decline to vote in local elections. Vicky Dalton, the Spokane County Auditor overseeing elections (and the only countywide elected Democrat) has also expressed concern about the state bill. Even if the bill passes the state, Cathcart pointed out it would require a change of the Spokane city charter to establish here, which currently states that city elections happen in odd-numbered years.
We’ll be tuning into the discussion of this resolution today.
Good for the press, good for the public
Cathcart also has a proposed ordinance up for discussion that, frankly, would be fantastic for the press, fantastic for government transparency advocates and fantastic for staving off some of the recent consent agenda testimony we’ve seen recently from members of the public concerned about the weekly expenditures listed from the mayor’s administration.
It’s called the “Timely Public Posting & Council Notification of Financial Data Act,” and starting in 2027, it would require the city to maintain an interactive online platform on the website displaying all financial data, like expenses with clear references to the budget line item they’re associated with and links to any related contracts. The dashboard would also include monthly revenue information and six-year budget projections. The ordinance will get its first public discussion today!
Agenda here
Monday, February 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.
Central Valley School District Board of Directors
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Rights for parents vs privacy for students
Central Valley School District, which has a track record of advocating for policies that restrict instruction of queer topics and restrict queer student participation in certain activities (see their opposition to queer history in the classroom and their letter asking for transgender girls to be barred from sports) is going to be discussing two pieces of state legislature at their board meeting this week. One of those is House Bill 1296, which would establish a set list of student rights and direct schools “to prioritize the protection of every student's safety, access to a free public education, and privacy.”
The other is Senate Bill 5181 (we covered it here), which makes changes to an initiative passed last year by the state legislature that enshrined parents’ rights when it comes to information about their students’ education. Activists have been fighting against a section in the initiative that could be interpreted as requiring school staff to “out” queer students who may have shared their identities with their teachers or school administrators, but not their families. SB 5181 would change the section to protect queer students’ privacy.
After discussing the two pieces of legislation, CVSD is scheduled to vote on an item just labeled “Consider Parent Initiative Advocacy.” Anniece Barker, the board member sponsoring the action item and providing the legislative updates, ran on the issue “restoring parental rights,” a term that describes a movement by conservatives to protect their children from things like vaccine mandates and “critical race theory.” Based on the board’s recent history, we can make an educated guess that they’re likely to come out in opposition to SB 5181.
More discussion of transgender student athletes
The CVSD board will also be getting a report on proposed changes to the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s (WIAA) handbook, which will be voted on in April. WIAA is the private nonprofit organization that oversees most sports in the state (meaning it is not part of the state government).
Currently, the handbook reads “All students have the opportunity to participate in WIAA athletics and/or activities in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity,” but proposed changes would require students to compete in one of two divisions — Girls or Boys/Open — depending on their biological sex assigned at birth.
If those proposed changes pass, the handbook would then state that eligibility will be determined by “using an original birth certificate or, if unavailable, an affidavit from a licensed physician.” It also notes that for students who might be intersex or have other differences in sex development, their “appeals should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.”
However, because WIAA is private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) service organization and rule-making body, it is unclear what happens if these amendments pass, because state law requires that schools “allow all students, including transgender and nonbinary students, the opportunity to participate on the interscholastic sports team that most closely aligns with their gender identity,” according the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
This is further complicated by President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports teams, which is currently being fought in court.
We’re going to continue to follow this complicated issue as it moves at the state level, but it’s always worth tuning in to see how our local school districts are talking about these issues!
Agenda here
Monday, February 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 Housing Authority Board
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Monday, February 24 at 3:30 pm
Meeting Room 25 W. Nora Ave, Spokane, WA 99205
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Mead School District Board of Directors
🫑/5 peppers
Agenda here
Monday, February 24 at 6 p.m.
Union Event Center
12509 N. Market St. Bldg. D, Mead, WA 99021
Watch via Zoom here.
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session
🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
County, city may meet to discuss opioids
Spokane City Council President Betsy Wilkerson emailed BOCC Chair Mary Kuney on February 13 to suggest a meeting between the two bodies to discuss a broader regional response to the opioid epidemic in Spokane. Kuney will bring this suggestion before the entire board Tuesday. Wilkerson also said the county and the city could rope the federal government into the discussions. “We could also try to get an update from the [Drug Enforcement Administration] and their activity in our community,” Wilkerson wrote. She suggested in her email that this might be the first meeting between the city and the county to talk about regional issues. The only issue she mentioned was opioids. “I’m open to any suggestions you may have on the topics we should discuss,” Wilkerson wrote.
Agenda here
Tuesday, February 4 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
City wants to buy property with half-a-million-dollar lien from county
The city of Spokane wants to buy a property with a building that was destroyed in a fire that has more than $500,000 in city back-taxes that didn’t sell at a county auction. The property, located near Regal Street and Trent Avenue, was sold in 2015 for $259,900 and was listed as vacant land. The city would pay all the outstanding taxes and recording fees.
Agenda here
Tuesday, February 4 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
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds for surveillance
The city council is set to vote on nearly $1 million in funds both provided by the American Rescue Plan and freed up by it to install cameras in parks and buy license-plate reading technology. The funds are made available through the city’s Law Enforcement Assistance program, which is meant to boost police presence in Spokane Valley, which is provided through the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office.
The agenda item says: “The primary goals of the project are to provide additional security and increase public safety within parks, to deter criminal acts within parks, to identify those responsible for criminal acts within parks, and to provide real-time viewing and analytics capability for law enforcement and staff as needed to manage ongoing activities within parks.”
This potential move follows new rules the city has established to crack down on unhoused people after the Supreme Court said local governments could punish people for sleeping in public. Many unhoused people don’t have anywhere else to sleep but in public places. The cameras could monitor such activity and enable law enforcement to identify people who’ve fallen asleep in a park or other publicly owned property.
Boosting massage enforcement
The city council will vote on vast revisions to the policy the city uses to enforce its stringent regulations on the massage industry in Spokane Valley. That’s because the city is concerned that courts have not been tough enough on massage businesses. The revision adds seven additional pages of massage regulation to the existing Spokane Valley code that seem intended to crack down on illicit massage.
In the past, the city says, it has tried to engage with landlords to enforce massage licenses, but that’s not enough, according to the agenda sheet. The new regulations would give Spokane Valley police the authority to charge landlords with a crime if they determine trafficking is happening on their property.
Agenda here when available
Tuesday, February 4 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, WA 99206
Virtual attendance here.
Spokane School District Board of Directors
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
The SPS Board will be holding a Special meeting before their regular meeting to discuss a few items: an overview of the Spokane Parks Department/Spokane Public Schools Partnership study, the upcoming legislative session and potential state level policy, and some routine policy review.
Agenda here
Wednesday, February 26 at 6 pm, Special Meeting at 4:30 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Plan Commission
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Room to grow?
The Spokane Plan Commission is going to present findings from the 2025 Land Capacity Analysis, to determine how much growth Spokane can expect, and how much room we have to house that growth. One highlight we noticed: they expect the city to grow by at least 20,000 residents before 2046, which means we’ll need an estimated 22,359 housing units to accommodate both new residents and the unhoused population. You can read the full analysis here.
Agenda here
Wednesday, February 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
Strategic plan
The board will vote on whether to adopt the strategic plan for the health district. Administrative officer Alicia Thompson will present the plan to the board. Typically, the associated materials for these meetings are linked on the SRHD website, but as of the time of publication, the strategic plan and other information for this voting item are just listed as “coming soon,” so y’all know about as much as we do at the moment.
Treatment Services update
The Treatment Service division of SRHD has had a rough year: for months, it’s been thrown into turmoil as some SRHD board members pushed to potentially privatize the agency in a drawn-out process that left staff and the people utilizing treatment services alike stressed and fearful. Though the board ultimately voted to pause their consideration of privatization, it may not be the end of stress for the division: its director Misty Challinor was, and possibly still is out on leave as the board has continued to press for more information on the division’s finances and metrics.
This week, the board will get an update on the division, not from Challinor but from Adam Martin, an application specialist within the division.
Editor's Note: Challinor is now back from leave.
Agenda here
Thursday, February 27 at 12:30 p.m.
Auditorium, First Floor
Spokane Regional Health District
1101 West College Avenue
Spokane County Planning Commission
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
A “charrette” for community planning
The commission will hold a “charrette” — a meeting to give people who live in Spokane County an opportunity to hash out differences — on “placemaking and resiliency” in community planning.
Agenda here
Thursday, August 15 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.
