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:
- At their last meeting before July 15, the Spokane City Council could pass an emergency one-year moratorium on data centers, approve additional body cameras for cops, add a new urban Native advisory committee and either hold a first reading or an emergency vote on an ordinance to guarantee renters’ right to cooling in their homes.
- During the Finance and Administration Committee meeting, the council will discuss a new proposed staffing plan that would remove three initiative manager positions, replacing them with two analysts and an executive assistant, and potentially force council members to share one legislative assistant per district — regardless of whether those district representatives share political beliefs or not.
- The Board of County Commissioners will discuss appointing members to a new committee that will likely review locations for a potential new jail.
- The Spokane Valley City Council could vote to spend about $250,000 on a new Public Safety Director position to oversee all things public safety.
- A new addition to CVSD’s staff expression policy could ban Pride flags and other classroom decor that isn’t considered “neutral.”
Spokane City Council
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🫑/5 peppers
New body cams
The council could approve an amendment to the city’s contract with Axon — the police technology company that provides the department with body cameras and other tech — that would increase the number of body cameras worn, provide Axon Records licenses to the City Prosecutor’s Office for free (no mention of the Public Defender’s office…) and buy more TASERs, among other things. This would cost the city about $250,000 this year, and about $500,000 per year in 2027, 2028 and 2029, which was previously budgeted for. Interesting note: Axon has made news for testing facial recognition technology on police body cameras in Canada late last year.
Emergency: data center moratorium
Last week, the council failed to muster the five votes necessary to add the emergency one-year data center moratorium to the agenda as Council President Betsy Wilkerson and council members Zack Zappone and Michael Cathcart voted against the addition. However, it was added to the agenda for tonight. The ordinance as originally penned would ban all new data centers within Spokane city limits for one year.
An amendment filed by Zappone is also up for consideration. The amendment would change the definition of data center and add workplan elements for the Plan Commission and the Climate Resilience and Sustainability Board to consider the long-term aspects of data center siting and regulating…