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West Plains aquifer protection, coming soon to a ballot near you?

CIVICS: Plus, a new 911 dispatch center for the city of Spokane, state violence accountability at the Police Ombuds meeting and SpoVal could get better opioid data.

By Erin Sellers and Aaron Hedge
Part of High Bridge Park set to be leased to American Indian Community Center for $1 a year
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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

Spokane City Council

🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Tonight’s meeting is packed with first reads on a few big policies, which means they won’t have their final vote until next week at the earliest, but you can share your opinions on them tonight. It’s also the first meeting for Council Member Shelby Lambdin, who was appointed to fill the seat left vacant by former Council Member Lili Navarrete.

Community Workforce Agreements

The first policy is a Community Workforce Agreement ordinance, which would ensure that taxpayer dollars for city projects benefit local laborers. We covered it in depth here. There is a proposed amendment from Council Member Michael Cathcart that would state the city needs to consider the potential for labor disruptions from unionized employees like strikes or lockouts before deciding to implement a Community Workforce Agreement. The Cathcart amendment, which would require a suspension of the rules to even consider, would also state that any revenue collected from penalties imposed against contractors not following the rules would go to expanding workforce development programs, while the original version written by Council Member Paul Dillon says revenue must be dedicated to grants for state-recognized pre-apprenticeship programs to support priority hire workers.

A new name for Spokane’s emergency communications

Spokane city has been in a messy break-up with Spokane Regional Emergency Communications — which dispatches 911 calls — for a while, and is now in the process of standing up their own communications network. But first, it needs a name. Amendments to the ordinance to begin standing up our own network show three potential names on the table:

We obviously don’t get a vote, but if anyone cares, we’re partial to SPARC — it’s got the catchiest acronym.

ICE out of the streets

The ordinance to ban ICE from conducting warrantless arrests at ticketed street festivals in the public right-of-way is back! This time, it’s not an emergency ordinance, which means it only needs a simple majority to pass. Wilkerson, Cathcart and Council Member Jonathan Bingle voted against it in June, so Lambdin could be the deciding vote — although Wilkerson signalled she was open to potentially passing it as a regular ordinance with more time for public input. Still, it’s too late to protect Tacos y Tequila, which was indefinitely postponed due to community concerns.

Agenda here
Monday, August 18 at 6 pm
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.



Council Committees

Public Infrastructure, Environment, and Sustainability Committee

🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

What traffic calming project is coming to your neighborhood next?

This fall, the city will select its next wave of traffic calming projects to be implemented in 2026 and 2027, and for the first time, the Transportation Commission will have a leading role in deciding which projects are sent to the city council for approval. At today’s PIES committee meeting, the council will get a presentation on what this new process will look like. Here’s a few highlights from the docs:

The tall and long of it

Earlier this year, the council approved an interim zoning ordinance that got rid of height limits downtown, allowing for the construction of really tall buildings! It was created as an interim ordinance — which means it runs for six months and then must be reupped or made permanent or it’ll go away — so that the city had time to study the impacts of permanent changes to height limits as part of the City's periodic update to the Comprehensive Plan.

The update of the Comp Plan is still ongoing, and the city says it needs more time to decide if the change should be permanent so the council will discuss a six-month extension to the interim period, which would expire in March of 2026. And, because the Comp Plan update is due in December of 2026, the city thinks they’ll likely need to expand the interim period one more time after this. We’re antsy to see if that means any developers will actually start getting tall building construction underway…

New street signs for neighborhoods

The committee will discuss a resolution to approve spending $6,000 of the Safe Streets fund on buying new signage that can be placed in neighborhoods to discourage speeding. The signs show silhouettes of kids and a dog running and read, “SLOW DOWN kids and pets at play.” Signs would be distributed through the Office of Neighborhood Services but it’s unclear what the process is for deciding which neighborhoods and streets get the new signage.

Agenda here
Monday, August 18 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.



MISC City

Bicycle Advisory Board

🌶️/5 peppers

Thorpe/Fish lake connection

The city is working with a consulting firm to design a connection from the Fish Lake Trail down to Thorpe Road. The route would continue through the 200 foot long tunnel under the BNSF tracks, which has 9 foot lanes, a 5 foot sidewalk and no internal lighting. One design option under consideration is a push button flasher that cyclists could activate before biking through the tunnel.

Agenda here
Tuesday, August 19 at 6 pm
City Council Briefing Center
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.



Spokane Ombuds Commission

🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Police violence testimony

There was no agenda up by press time, but local people concerned about the June 11 arrests of 31 people plan to testify before the commission about police violence that day. They’re working with the Spokane chapter of the NAACP to prepare their remarks. Learn more about the meeting and filling out OPO complaints in our most recent podcast here.

Agenda here
Tuesday, August 19 at 5:30 pm
City Council Chambers
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.



Spokane County

Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session

🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Ballot measure could create West Plains water protection district

The Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie aquifer — an underground stream connected to the Spokane River — provides clean water to half a million Eastern Washingtonians and North Idahoans. Its quality is maintained by those same people who pay a fee to local governments to monitor and address contamination. That arrangement — organized under a mechanism called an aquifer protection area (APA) — was renewed by 74% of the voters in the August 5 election. It covers residents of Spokane, Spokane Valley, Millwood, Liberty Lake and some parts of unincorporated Spokane County.

But not everyone in Eastern Washington benefits from it. There is a separate aquifer under the West Plains that doesn’t enjoy similar protections. That water body is contaminated with PFAS, so-called “forever chemicals,” a family of man-made contaminants that are increasingly thought to contribute to cancers and other deadly diseases. So the county is in talks to put a ballot measure on ballots for August 6, 2026, that would create an APA for more than 18,000 West Plains plots where drinking water comes from the West Plains aquifer. It would amount to a new tax on the residents, which is not defined in the slideshow on the agenda. It and would require buy-in from any of the cities – most likely Airway Heights, Medical Lake and Cheney — covered. Potential activities the tax would pay for include:

Agenda here
Tuesday, August 19 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

Public Records Office shortfall

The county Public Records Office, which at any given time fields oodles of requests for public information, says it’s facing a $14,476 budget shortfall. It is asking the BOCC to reduce one full-time employee in next year’s budget to 80%, which would free up the lacking money. Presentation slides say the office has already eliminated funding for professional training, travel and printing expenses, meaning cutting wages is the only way to balance its budget.

Agenda here
Tuesday, August 19 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 Transit Authority Board of Directors

???/5 peppers

Special Board meeting

This week, the STA board is having a 30-minute special meeting. A chunk of that time will be spent in executive session discussing collective bargaining, which the public cannot attend, but there will also be “potential action regarding contract renewal.” No additional information on whose contract is up in the air was included in the agenda or packet.

Agenda here
Thursday, August 21 at 2 pm
STA Boardroom
1230 W Boone Avenue, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.



Spokane Airport Board

🌶️/5 peppers

Various construction projects

The agenda lists several construction projects up for approval. There’s not much detail on any of them, but one of the notable projects on the docket is a sewer project related to the high-profile Transload Facility Project, a rail line that will connect West Plains vendors with the airport proper. The West Plains is a place with extremely sensitive water resources beset by flooding problems local activists have blamed on airport construction projects. The projects include:

Agenda here.
Thursday, August 21 at 9 am
Airport Event Center
9211 W. McFarlane Road, Spokane, WA 99224
The meeting is also live streamed here.



Spokane Regional Health District Board

🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers

Opioid dashboard for SpoVal

After our reporting last year on the lack of up-to-date overdose data, we saw the Spokane Regional Health District’s opioid overdose dashboard change to include more preliminary data. This empowered elected officials to make decisions on more recent data from the county, instead of numbers from almost two years ago. At this week’s SRHD board meeting, the board could vote to approve a new contract with Spokane Valley that would give the valley a city-specific dashboard.

The contract also includes a Needs Assessment that will determine whether SRHD can track, disaggregate and model new data points, including insurance status, use of suboxone, hospitals utilized, arrests, housed/unhoused status and substance use history. This should also be helpful as SpoVal passes local laws targeting opioid use in the city.

The contract, which totals over $50,000, will be paid for using some of Spokane Valley’s opioid settlement dollars. It could be a big step in getting accurate, timely opioid data to decision-makers in the county, and could potentially be an option for Spokane city officials to look at: commissioning their own, city-specific dashboard.

Agenda here
Wednesday, August 20 at 12:30 pm
Auditorium, First Floor
Spokane Regional Health District
1101 West College Avenue



Other Cities

Spokane Valley City Council

🌶️/5 peppers

$11M realignment, roundabout

The city council is set to award an $11 million contract to Active Construction to move Pines Road to the east near the BNSF railroad tracks and construct a roundabout at Pines and Trent Avenue.

Agenda here
Tuesday, August 19 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, Washington 99206
Virtual attendance here.




Liberty Lake City Council

🌶️🌶️/5 peppers

Liberty Lake may join new library group

The Liberty Lake Library is asking the city council to allow it to join a new library network, after the Cooperative Information Network dissolves on September 30. The new network is called the InlandShare Library Group. It gives member libraries access to more material across a larger geographic area, which includes the following libraries:

Agenda here
Tuesday, August 19 at 7 pm
22710 E Country Vista Drive, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
The meeting is also live streamed here.


Erin Sellers

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