RANGE

Is your pocketbook tingling? Might be because new taxes and fees are scheduled for discussion this week at a few municipal meetings. Here's the highlight reel of what's happening:

🚔The Spokane County Commission is announcing a public hearing on October 13 for a new .1% sales tax to pay for policing and law enforcement costs, which takes up nearly three-quarters of the general fund budget.

🔥The city of Spokane could pass a special budget ordinance to allow unplanned spending to repair damage at the Northside Landfill caused by the Spokane Complex fires.

🚮Your waste disposal bill could be going up by about $3 a month as the city’s Waste-to-Energy plant prepares to bid on carbon offset credits under the Climate Commitment Act, up for discussion at the Finance and Administration Committee.

🏙The Spokane (city) Plan Commission will discuss development in the Wildland-Urban Interface — the areas where the city meets wildland, which often have increased wildfire risk.

⚕️The Spokane Regional Health District board could cut about $1.7 million in planned spending for opioid treatment, after they received $1,600,000 less than expected in Medicare and Medicaid fees this year.

🌐As the data center conversation heats up at the Spokane County Planning Commission, the Spokane County Commission will appoint a new person to the body.

👮Spokane Valley will hold a public hearing on its budget for next year, which emphasizes fiscal responsibility while pushing for $6 million in new cop funding.

Details on all that and more at the link below:

Possible new sales tax for county law enforcement Plus, Climate Commitment compliance could cost you about $3 a month with the new Waste-to-Energy plant fee proposal.

Remember the slate of voter initiatives run by conservative PAC Let's Go Washington back in 2024? Well, the only one that voters passed, the “Stop the Gas Ban” initiative, has just been overturned by the state Supreme Court. The initiative aimed to stop state and local governments from discouraging the use of natural gas and passed narrowly by 51.7% of voters.

WA high court tosses natural gas measure approved by voters Justices, in a 6-3 decision, found Initiative 2066 unconstitutional because it dealt with multiple unrelated subjects

Spokane School District's test scores continue to trail the county and state averages. But some local educators say that these proficiency scores don't tell the whole story about student progress. RANGE took a look at the data.

Read more here:

Spokane educators say there's more to lagging test scores State data shows Spokane students still trailing state and county averages. Some educators say proficiency scores miss the progress that kids in schools are making.

A plant of the Fort Worth, Texas, megachurch Mercy Culture, Zeal bought the New Community Church building downtown in May for $900,000. It made a splash by decorating the elegant 1906 gothic building in large black signs with large all-caps text and cancelling the lease for Shalom Ministries, a church that served tens of thousands of hot meals to unhoused and poor people each year. Valdez said people affiliated with Shalom were openly using drugs on church property.

The building towers above Third Avenue between Howard and Stevens streets. It’s a tech-savvy operation for the historic church with high cathedral ceilings and stained glass windows. Rather than using the classic organ that occupies the northeast corner of the sanctuary behind the pulpit, a projector screen covers it, displaying worship lyrics, a QR code to a site where congregants can tithe digitally or bass-heavy commercials advertising future events. It sells a line of Zeal-branded T-shirts for $35. There are always a couple of church photographers walking through the pews during services.

The church frames its work in Spokane with language that evokes spiritual warfare, telling its congregants to “war with your worship.” Next year, the church will host a concert by the Sons of Thunder, a Christian metal band whose slogan is “This is war music.” In the NAR, the idea is that praising the Lord in ostentatious, public ways will repel evil forces some Christians believe have taken over American society, with some of its biggest targets being legal abortion and q***r rights.

Read the full story on Zeal at the link below:

Prophecy, spiritual warfare and controversy Zeal Church claims it is saving souls on the streets of downtown Spokane, but it kicked out a ministry that fed the unhoused and split with another that affirmed q***r people. Who is this new church?

Diana Alejandra Sanders ofrece productos colombianos que no se pueden encontrar en ningún otro lugar de Spokane, como los roscones, unos panecillos esponjosos conocidos como mojicones y pan agridulce.

Las recetas provienen directamente de Colombia, específicamente de su hermano, quien es propietario de una panadería allí, y quien se las enseñó durante una visita que tuvo el mismo verano en que ella empezó a vender los productos.

¿Dónde puede encontrar pan colombiano? Cómo una colombiana creó un pequeño negocio elaborando pan que no encontrarás en ningún otro lugar de Spokane.

Diana Alejandra Sanders bakes Colombian goods you can’t find anywhere else in Spokane, like roscones, fluffy bread rolls known as mojicones, and a sweet and savory cheesy bread called pan agridulce.

The recipes come straight from Colombia, specifically from her brother, who owns a bakery there and taught them to her while he visited the same summer she started selling the baked goods.

Colombian baked goods just like ‘back home’ How a Colombian vendor built a small business making baked goods you won’t find anywhere else in Spokane.

Civics enjoyers and municipal meeting enthusiasts, strap in -- it's a big week. Here's the important stuff that sticks out to us:

👮The Spokane City Council could approve a lot of cash for cops, including a loan for $1.5 million for 18 new cars.

🔥 At an important Urban Experience Committee meeting, the council members will discuss regulatory relief for fire rebuilds, transit oriented development on Division Street and shelter contracts for 2027.

📚The Spokane Public Library Board of Trustees will vote on their budget for 2027 amid warnings of a budget shortfall.

🚲 Get out your bikes, because the Bicycle Advisory Board has a rolling meeting! You can also join Spokane Reimagined and the Bicycle Advisory Board for a Bike Buddy Ride, where they’ll show you safe routes from a variety of locations in the city to downtown.

🏒The Spokane Transit Authority board will discuss two big proposals: adding actual bus riders to the board, and giving free bus passes to people with Spokane Chiefs hockey tickets.

🎤The Spokane County Board of Commissioners will host the first of two public hearings on data center regulations after it was revealed in July that County Commissioner Al French had been secretly courting a data center developer. This will be one of the biggest opportunities for people to give input.

🌐The county Planning Commission will host a work session on new regulations for data centers, as the county has paused approvals for new facilities until mid-December.

Details on all that and more at the link below:

Public hearing alert: It’s time to give your input on data centers The first public hearing on data center regulations is on Tuesday and a work session will be on Thursday. Plus: transit riders on the STA board at long last?

Last week, Washington's DNR recommended the Thorpe Natural Area for legislative funding — a win for conservation advocates. But Latah Valley residents say the area's core problems are still there: tunnels too narrow for a fire truck, a fire station that's just a converted house.

Read more here:

A win for the Thorpe parcel, but Latah Valley's bigger problems remain The state DNR’s recommendation for conservation funding is a win for Latah Valley advocates, but they say the area’s deeper infrastructural problems remain unsolved.

In June, Asians for Collective Liberation in Spokane collaborated with the National Geographic Photo Camp program to hold the first Spokane Photo Camp, one of eight camps across Washington state.

Like the larger international program it’s part of, this Photo Camp empowered youth to tell their stories through photography and deepen their connections within their communities.

Students were mentored by local community members and National Geographic Explorers, all of whom expressed how meaningful the Camp was to them.

In this piece, Editorial Producer Pascal Bostic wrote about the moments and interactions they saw during the Photo Camp, including interviews with students and Camp staff.

Read more here:

Empowering youth through the lens of storytelling: A Spokane photo camp taught more than just photography skills. It taught local youth what it means to tell their stories.

Welcome to mini-abbreviated CIVICS, where we give you a little preview week’s municipal meetings throughout the Inland Northwest, so you can get involved and speak out about the issues you care about. We had yesterday off due to Labor Day weekend, so there's just a brief teaser:

- The Spokane City Council spent the morning discussing potential amendments to the ordinance that would give renters additional protections in the event of emergencies like the Spokane Complex fires. One of those amendments, from Council President Betsy Wilkerson, would narrow the scope of the ordinance to *just* renters affected by those fires specifically (as opposed to future emergencies.)

- At the Public Infrastructure, Environment and Sustainability Committee, city Transportation and Sustainability director Jon Snyder will give his monthly report on what his department has been up to, so if you’re an urbanist or climate conscious, this might be a meeting to watch.

- The Plan Commission will be discussing regulatory options to make rebuilding from the Spokane Complex fires easier, including allowing additional dwelling units to be built on properties without primary dwelling units.

- The Spokane Public Schools board might take a vote on adopting a new policy to allow video cameras on school buses across the district. We mentioned that policy in a previous version of civics in late August.

Details on that and other municipal meetings happening this week at the link below:

Renter emergency protections forever or only now? A light Labor Day week for municipal meetings.