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:
- Firefighters’ lawsuit against Spokane for requiring COVID-19 vaccines has advanced to the Ninth Circuit, which means the city needs more money to fight it. One of the plaintiffs in the case is Tim Archer, who ran for mayor in 2023 and lost.
- Pizza Pipeline could be providing hot pizza to Spokane School District students, if a contract is passed this week.
- The Finance and Administration Committee will be getting a progress report on Spokane’s internal audit of the Public Records Request office, which is the slowest in our region.
- Spokane Valley City Council will be getting an update on the city’s wildfire incident preparedness.
Important meetings this week:
- Spokane City Council (and Study Session)
- Finance and Administration Committee
- Board of County Commissioners - Briefing Session and Legislative Session
- Spokane Valley City Council
- Mead School District Board of Directors
- Central Valley School District Board of Directors
- Plan Commission
- Spokane School District Board of Directors
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Cash to fight COVID-19 lawsuit
The city is planning to spend another $80,000 — on top of the originally approved $205,000 — to continue to fight a lawsuit from Michael Bacon and a group of firefighters who say that their terminations because they wouldn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine violate their rights.
While the city’s motion to dismiss the case was initially granted, the group suing the city appealed and the case is now going up to the Ninth Circuit. An interesting wrinkle: Tim Archer is one of the plaintiffs in the case, which means both major candidates who lost the 2023 mayoral race to Mayor Lisa Brown are suing the city, though former Mayor Nadine Woodward (who is suing over alleged free speech violations) is one of the defendants in this case.
Don’t drink and drive
DUI enforcement in Spokane is about to get a little bit better as the Spokane Police Department (SPD) received a state grant to pay for a full-time DUI enforcement officer, plus benefits and overtime. Tonight, the council will likely vote to accept the $192,671 grant, which will get SPD dedicated DUI patrols 7 days a week.
Final steps for street medicine
Tonight, council will likely take the final steps to make CHAS the official street medicine provider for the city, as funded by the $1 million grant the city voted to accept last week. The first action item is a special budget ordinance to add the grant funds to the budget, and the second action is a resolution declaring CHAS the sole provider. If this program gets fully approved, it could be a gamechanger for data collection and create another entry point for unhoused people to get connected to services beyond just immediate medical care.
New affordable housing projects near you?
City council will vote to allocate about $9 million in funding for projects that create affordable housing. The funding is coming from a combination from 1590 Sales and Uses Tax, and Home Investment Partnership program funds. Some of the approved projects, which were chosen through a request for proposals process through the Community, Housing, and Human Services Department include:
- A little over $2 million for redevelopment of a burned-out building and new construction of two three-story, 22-unit multi-family residential buildings in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood serving seniors and those exiting or at risk of homelessness
- $1.3 million to build four three-bedroom single family homes in the Grandview/Thorpe neighborhood that will serve families exiting or at risk of homelessness and low-income refugees and immigrants.
- $1.5 million to build a 35-unit development in the Cliff/Cannon neighborhood to serve low-income seniors.
Agenda here
Monday, August 26 at 6 pm
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane City Council Study Sessions
Agenda here when available.
Thursday, August 29 at 11 am
City Council Chambers – Lower Level of City Hall
808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Finance and Administration Committee
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
COPS contract renewal?
In today’s committee meeting, council is scheduled to discuss re-upping a contract with nonprofit Spokane Community Oriented Policing Services (COPs) — not to be mistaken with the actual cops. The nonprofit has COPs stations in neighborhoods and runs various programs, like neighborhood watches, Paws on Patrols and finger-printing services. The city has been in business with COPs since 1993, but the most recent contract expires at the end of December. The council will discuss signing a new five-year contract with COPS for equal to or greater than $467,964.46 — the amount they got paid last year.
Multicultural Grants
One of the council’s recent decisions around ARPA funding involved a commitment of $1 million to support multicultural centers. They solicited applications via a Notice of Funding, and identified nine qualified community organizations, who will each be receiving $100,000 from the city to support multicultural centers. Those organizations are:
- Asians for Collective Liberation
- Hispanic Business Professionals Association and Nuestro Raices Centro Community
- Latinos en Spokane
- Manzanita House
- Martin Luther King Jr Family Outreach Center
- Multi-ethnic Business Association / AHANA
- Salish School of Spokane
- Terrain
- Spectrum
For those of you who are good at math, that leaves $100,000 that was allocated for multicultural centers but not spent, so it will likely need to be clawed back and spent on something else, or given back to the federal government at the end of the year.
Public Record progress report
The city’s Internal Audit Office and Performance Management Office is currently in the process of conducting a performance audit of the city’s Public Records Request office. During today’s committee meeting, those offices will present an update, but per the slideshow attached in the agenda, there is not much data yet, nor any formal conclusions or recommendations, as they have just now begun initial interviews. As a new outlet who puts in a *lot* of Public Records Requests, we can tell you from experience the process is slow, and per Daniel Walters’ reporting for InvestigateWest, we can tell you from data it’s the slowest in the region. We’re looking forward to the part of this process where recommendations for improvements start to come into play.
Agenda here
Monday, August 26 at 1:15 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.
Board of Spokane County Commissioners Briefing Session
🌶️🌶️🌶️/5 peppers
More money for county prosecutors?
Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Haskell will present to the BOCC two scenarios for increasing what the county pays its prosecutors. The first scenario would increase their pay by $10,000 annually for a possible budget impact next year of nearly $100,000. The second would hike pay by $20,000 for a potential budget impact of more than $200,000. If each salary increase corresponds directly to an existing position, that would represent a staff of 10 attorneys now working for the county’s Prosecutor’s Office.
Agenda here
Tuesday, August 20 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
There's not much going on this week in the county commissioners legislative session — mostly small grant and contract renewals for small and existing relationships with various agencies and contracts.
Agenda here
Tuesday, August 20 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
Stop, drop and report
How prepared is Spokane Valley for wildfire incidents? We’re about to find out. This week, various officials will present the council with “an overview of wildfire incident preparedness planning, agency coordination, incident response, and post-incident actions taken in the event of a wildfire occurrence in or near the City of Spokane Valley.” No action will be taken by the council as this is purely informational. For those of you who just can’t wait until Tuesday, you can review the slides for the presentation here.
Agenda here
Tuesday, August 20 at 6 pm
City Hall
10210 E Sprague Ave
Spokane Valley, WA 99206
Virtual attendance here.
Mead School District Board of Directors
🌶️/5 peppers
Agenda here
Monday, August 26 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, August 26 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 pizzas
Hot pizza guys
We’ve used the phrase ‘hot pizza’ before, usually in reference to this story about a Spokane City Council frequent flier, but this week ‘hot pizza’ is more of a celebration! Spokane Public School District is set to vote on a contract with local business Pizza Pipeline to provide district high schools $600,000 worth of hot pizza for lunch through the end of 2025. The district has used Pizza Pipeline in the past and “their product was well received by students.” The pizza options include cheese, pepperoni, sausage, vegetarian and perhaps most controversially, Canadian bacon & pineapple. If approved, this contract would be paid out of the general fund.
Agenda here
Wednesday, August 28 at 6 pm
Spokane Public Schools Administration Building
200 N. Bernard, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
Spokane Plan Commission
🌶️🫑/5 peppers
Protecting history
Spokane Plan Commission will be discussing a proposal to add new areas to the city code where an official Historic Preservation review process would be required before demolition of a “historic or eligible structure,” could happen. According to the agenda, “the intent of these efforts is to keep historic buildings in use and the historic character of Centers and Corridor Zones intact by reviewing demolitions proposed on historic or eligible properties within those zones.” You can review the full details of the proposal, including which zones would be added to the list here.
Agenda here
Wednesday, August 28 at 2 pm
Council Briefing Center
808 W Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA 99201
The meeting is also live streamed here.
