Development, infrastructure and homelessness among priorities for Spokane City Council in 2024

Jan. 10—The Spokane City Council returned to work Monday after an end-of-year recess, and its returning and newly elected members say they have big plans for the year ahead.

Those priorities include promoting residential development downtown, advocating for funds to improve infrastructure — particularly in the underinvested Latah Valley — fixing structural issues with the city budget, finalizing a long-discussed regional homeless authority and more.

Council President Betsy Wilkerson and Councilman Paul Dillon are focused on securing state money for a new fire station in the Latah Valley, which has had a temporary fire station since 2015. Dillon believes that the state will be willing to help fund the $8 million project if the city agrees to create a regional emergency response hub that could serve as a fire station and also as a command center for county and state resources during large incidents like last summer's fires that devastated Medical Lake and Elk.

Councilmen Jonathan Bingle and Zack Zappone are looking to expand on their work last year to promote the conversion of surface parking lots and commercial buildings into housing, hoping to revitalize downtown, including through sales tax abatement. The two council members are supporting a bill being pushed by state Sen. Andy Billig to allow these changes.

"Speaking with developers downtown, the opportunity is there for more development," Bingle said. "There's just a couple more things to get it across the finish line."

Some council members are more focused on procedural issues, hoping to reform how the City Council conducts its business and interacts with the public, while others are focused on lobbying state and federal governments for the money needed to complete expensive projects.

There will be dozens more key projects for 2023, and though many have broad support, some were most highly anticipated by particular members.

Council President Betsy Wilkerson

Advocacy:

* Pushing for a levy lid lift, which would require voter approval to raise the city's property tax levy by more than the 1% normally allowed each year under state law, in order to avoid deep cuts to city services.

Lobbying:

* Trying to secure federal funding to rehabilitate the Latah Bridge, also known as the Sunset Bridge, which was built 100 years ago and has deteriorated significantly.

* Asking the state for funding to invest in a "destination park" in the Hillyard area and to continue building out the Fish Lake Trail.

* Lobbying the state to bolster hate crime laws to specifically incorporate damage to public property. This push is in response to the

vandalism of LGBTQ+ symbols

* downtown and in the South Perry District.

Jonathan Bingle

Development downtown:

* Easing regulatory burdens that prevent new downtown residential towers from being built as part of what Bingle is loosely calling the "Downtown Skyline" project. Bingle noted that new development of downtown towers has slowed significantly in recent decades, and believes that increased housing stock could help the city address homelessness and downtown crime.

Michael Cathcart

Budget:

* Wants to see the city move to a biennial budget process, similar to how the state legislature operates. The current year-by-year budget contributes to short-term thinking, Cathcart argues, which might be mitigated by requiring the city to instead draft a budget for the coming two years.

Civil Service:

* "Mildly" modifying the rules for the city's Civil Service Commission, which attempts to ensure that city employment is merit-based, in order to allow for targeted recruitment of employees with certain desirable characteristics, such as being bilingual.

Neighborhood Policing:

* Creating a robust neighborhood patrol program so that some number of officers are walking or biking through residential areas, creating relationships with citizens and getting out into the community. Potentially interested in working with Mayor Lisa Brown, who wants to revive the city's neighborhood resource officer program, which Cathcart differentiated as more of a community liaison role that could theoretically be combined with his proposal.

Cleanup:

* Working to pilot a community cleanup program in the Hillyard area through the Northeast Public Development Authority, modeled after similar programs downtown and in the area of East Sprague Avenue. If the pilot is successful, would push to create a permanent business improvement district, in which area businesses would pay into a fund to make the program permanent.

Paul Dillon

Crisis intervention:

* Dillon's top priority for the year is creating a nonemergency crisis intervention team modeled after the city of Eugene's CAHOOTS program, decreasing the reliance on uniformed police officers and the criminal justice system for some calls, such as mental health or addiction cases, and freeing up police resources for patrol.

Homelessness:

* Like Brown and his colleagues on the City Council, Dillon is eager to finalize creation of a regional homeless authority. He specifically wants to have a seat on that organization's governing body.

Controversial art:

* Reviving discussions of how the city should respond to controversial art and other items on public property, such as the Monaghan statue. The City Council had adopted a process last year, but it was vetoed by then-Mayor Nadine Woodward during a short period when the council lost its liberal supermajority.

Trees:

* Modifying local regulations on tree removal and investing in increasing the city's tree canopy, particularly in places with fewer trees.

Transportation and pedestrians:

* Implement a pedestrian designation for 29th Avenue to prevent businesses from creating new drive-thrus, which Dillon believes have negatively impacted local traffic and pedestrian safety.

Kitty Klitzke

Processes and procedures:

* Reforming how the City Council conducts its business, though Klitzke's unsure how much appetite there is from her colleagues. She wants to slow down the process for passing big-ticket legislation and to encourage more robust public participation, including with notices and delays if the council decides to make major changes to significant ordinances before they're passed.

* Creating a system for publishing plain language explainers of draft legislation, because "it seems clear that people don't understand what the legislation does or why we're doing it."

Contracts:

* Tightening how the City Council writes its contracts to prevent last-minute cost overruns like have been occurring with the Salvation Army's management of the city's largest homeless shelter.

Zack Zappone

Homelessness:

* Concerned with governance issues with other regional bodies such as the Spokane Transit Authority, Zappone wants to ensure that the city isn't sidelined by other partners as the regional homeless authority's governance structure is being finalized.

Public safety:

* More robust data from the Spokane Police Department on response times and to improve efficiency.

Transportation and pedestrians:

* Building out the city's protected bike lanes and improving neighborhood walkability, including by clearly defining that Traffic Calming Funds, which come from the city's red light and speeding cameras, can be used on such improvements.

* As part of the city's efforts for the 50th anniversary celebration of Expo '74, working to improve pedestrian and biking connectivity on Howard Street near Riverfront Park and the Spokane Arena, including by potentially closing a portion of the street to vehicle traffic.

* Continuing to push for reduced fares for bus services through the Spokane Transit Authority.

American Rescue Plan Act:

* With 2024 as the last year to use COVID-19 pandemic relief funding, Zappone is focused on funding improved youth behavioral health programming, expanding the capacity of multicultural centers to fundraise and working with stakeholders to identify investment needs for the city's neighborhood business districts.