New ordinance gives Spokane City Council final say over mayor on police precincts, fire stations and city-owned homeless shelters

Opening new city-run homeless shelters, police precincts and other operations will require officials to navigate additional requirements, thanks to new rules approved by the Spokane City Council earlier this week.

The change approved Monday gives the council final authority on locating city facilities, effectively taking that power away from the mayor.

Council members who supported the rules argued they will force a more open process and extra opportunities for public feedback. Mayor Nadine Woodward, however, noted the council added a new layer of bureaucracy to the process of opening shelters even though multiple council members have criticized her administration for not doing enough to open them.

The legislation, described as “dangerous” and “retaliatory” by Woodward, passed with a 5-2 vote and takes effect immediately.

It was crafted in response to Woodward’s decision in June to relocate a police precinct in the East Central Neighborhood into the former East Side Library on Stone Street, which was left empty when Spokane Public Library opened its new Liberty Park branch.

The measure sets specific criteria for locating the following: fire and police stations, city-owned homeless shelters, community centers, and city-owned water reservoirs and certain other utility facilities.

According to the ordinance, sites selected for police precincts must be in a frequently traveled location with high public visibility of patrol cars, foot and bicycle patrols. The location must also be able to provide public access to onsite services as well as adequate space and facilities for services through Spokane C.O.P.S.

The law also establishes a public process the city administration must follow before even siting these types of facilities. That process includes at least one public hearing as well as a review and recommendation from the City Council’s Equity Subcommittee.

The ordinance also bars the city from providing services out of a selected location without City Council approval. The ordinance applies to city facilities that are located or relocated after June 25 of this year.

“This just tells everybody, ‘Take a breath, don’t rush into anything, go through a process and figure out how to do things,’ ” Council President Breean Beggs said Monday. “That’s what this is meant to do going forward not just for this facility, but for other similar facilities.”

Woodward decried the ordinance as another attack to limit the powers of the mayor.

Last month, the City Council passed legislation to set up a November ballot proposition that, if approved, would make the selection of a city attorney subject to the council’s approval of a seven-year contract. The removal of a city attorney also would be subject to council approval.

Woodward said neighbors have overwhelmingly embraced the new police precinct that sparked the council’s ire.

“The Council acted out of displeasure for the location of a police facility. The emergency designation was done to bypass any possibility of mayoral review,” Woodward said in a statement Monday night.

Precinct staying put

Woodward said Tuesday she is not planning to take the police department out of the library building for the time being, as the city’s legal department is looking into whether the ordinance is actually retroactive to her decision to relocate the police precinct.

“Once we get the clarity, we will make some decisions moving forward, but I have said in the past that I wasn’t going to move police out of here,” she said. “We’re still moving forward with making this space the best space for our police and for behavioral health functions as well.”

Seven officers work out of the precinct. Woodward and police leaders alike have acknowledged the library building needs more work toward becoming a fully formed community policing precinct.

Artifacts of the former library, such as hanging section signs and glass art, were still present as of Tuesday afternoon.

The front doorbell did not seem to work. The building’s main space was largely empty, with officer workstations at opposite ends of the room.

The plan is to wall the building into sections for police activities and health services. Spokane police Maj. Eric Olsen said Monday police were looking into how to best structure the building to meet those needs.

Excelsior Wellness is the city administration’s preference for a health services provider, as recommended by the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Center, city spokesman Brian Coddington said.

The city needs council approval on expenses of $50,000 or more, Woodward said.

“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to keep it under that number,” she said.

“The goal is to outfit it most appropriately and figure out how to pay for that and get that over to the council,” Coddington said.

Beggs said he envisions leasing out the library space perhaps to a clinic or another organization and then using that rent to purchase or lease another, better location for a police precinct.

The City Council will focus on a process to find a new tenant for the former library, Beggs said Tuesday. He said the council would then work with a prospective tenant to enter into a contract with them so they can legally occupy the building.

“I guess if they don’t, somebody will take legal action,” Beggs said. “I don’t know if it’s the council or a community member.”

Prior to moving into the library at the end of June, officers for years had been located on the second floor of a nunnery at St. Ann Catholic Church, which was initially thought of as a temporary location.

Woodward proposed using the library as a police precinct based on what she has described as overwhelming community support collected over at least three years through community feedback as well as a ThoughtExchange survey commissioned last year by the City Council.

When Woodward first pitched the idea during a news conference in May, she said the council would have the final say as to how the building is used.

But that same week, Beggs introduced legislation to dictate the library’s use and find a different East Central location for a precinct. Woodward, citing her operational purview to do so without council approval, gave the order to move the officers at St. Ann Church into the library.

The ordinance specifically applies to basic city facilities located or relocated after June 25. Police started moving into the library June 30.

Asked where officers would go if forced out of the library, Woodward said it’s her understanding that officers cannot go back to St. Ann Church since the contract has been dissolved. Initially enacted in June 2012, the contract with St. Ann Church was a monthly lease that charged $475, Coddington said.

“There isn’t a place for them,” Woodward said. “That’s a good question.”

Church representatives could not be reached for comment .

While she once lauded ThoughtExchange as “the perfect tool to start this very important conversation,” Councilwoman Betsy Wilkerson said Monday many survey responses came from outside of East Central.

Of the more than 600 survey participants, 190 (35%) said they live in City Council District 2, the district that encompasses the former library building. Another 202 (37%) said they were unsure which council district they lived in, according to the results.

To that point, Wilkerson – one of the council’s District 2 representatives – maintains she does not believe enough outreach was done to get feedback from the more than 4,000 people that live in the neighborhood.

“I have said many times that if it came back to a precinct, great,” she said, “but right now, all of the information is so anecdotal that we really don’t have any true data to know what that neighborhood wants.”

‘Council owns crime’

The ordinance passed Monday was significantly different than the one first introduced by the council more than a month ago, amended just hours before the council’s 6 p.m. legislative session.

The amendments redefined which facilities are relevant to the law as “basic City facilities,” notably adding city-owned homeless shelters.

Councilwoman Lori Kinnear, who pushed for the addition of homeless shelters, said her reasoning was based on the community response she’s seen over the past three years of the city locating, or attempting to locate, homeless shelters in area neighborhoods.

She said the measure also forces the city to be very specific when considering types of shelters – such as low-barrier or 24/7 facilities – “so that there are no surprises for community members.”

“I think this is one way we can hold ourselves accountable and say, ‘OK, we’re going to have this idea to put this here. Now let’s hear what the community has to say about it,’ ” she said.

Woodward said the inclusion of homeless shelters in the ordinance “would only make it that much harder” to find a suitable location for one in the future.

“I’m still waiting for their recommendations in their districts for homeless shelter options,” she said.

The amended ordinance also somewhat loosened the specifications required of potential precinct locations, dropping the locational requirements for a facility within a documented cluster of criminal activity, within one block of a main street of a neighborhood business district and within a commercial zone.

City-owned homeless shelters, meanwhile, must be must be accessible by public transportation, must not be located within three blocks of schools, and must have a Good Neighbor Agreement in place between the shelter provider, the surrounding businesses and the relevant neighborhood council.

Council members Monday night voted to strike a paragraph that specifically highlighted how residents have the right to take legal action toward an injunction if they feel the city did not follow the process outlined in the law.

“Anybody can sue anybody for anything. It happens all the time,” Kinnear said Monday. “Let’s not open the door.”

Councilman Michael Cathcart predicted there will be a lawsuit in the near future that will result in the police’s removal from the former library.

Cathcart, who voted against the ordinance along with Councilman Jonathan Bingle, said the legislation puts public safety response directly on the City Council’s shoulders, not the administration.

Cathcart also called for the city to reopen appointments to the City Council’s Equity Subcommittee, saying the group now needs experts in financial sustainability, crime and neighborhood impacts.

“Council owns crime,” he said, “because now, this council is responsible for siting police precincts, determining where we’re going to deploy those resources. It’s on this City Council.”

Woodward was joined by representatives from the East Spokane Business Association, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, the Spokane Police Department and other residents in calling on the council to reject the ordinance.

She referenced how the City Council is pushing to purchase the Premera Blue Cross campus on East Sprague Avenue to use as a municipal criminal justice center for municipal court, court personnel, public defenders, prosecutors and criminal justice services. Woodward criticized the council for leaving municipal justice centers off the list of facilities affected by the legislation.

To date, the council has committed $5 million in federal COVID-19 relief funding toward the purchase of the Premera campus. Woodward said the council is pushing for the justice center “without a competitive process and without public input.”

“The municipal justice center, which would include municipal courts and holding cells for defendants, is purposefully omitted from the definition in this ordinance of public safety facilities despite its obvious connection to the criminal justice system,” Woodward said. “That’s the definition of hypocrisy.”

Asked why council members left out municipal justice centers, Beggs said they aren’t included as essential city facilities under the city’s comprehensive plan, while the city’s legal department did not specifically recommend adding them.

“Except for the addition of the homeless shelters at the end, the list of what should be and should not be came from city legal,” he said.

‘Toxic’ governing?

Other speakers Monday night included Freda Gandy, executive director of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, which is adjacent to the library building.

Gandy said the presence of the police precinct has not affected the community center’s services, including the food bank, while she has not heard any complaints.

She believes the controversy has distracted from “what really matters to families in that community,” saying she does not understand why the former library could not be used jointly for police and behavioral health services.

“I just do not understand how we got here. This, to me, is just absolutely ridiculous,” Gandy said.

“How we are choosing to govern is toxic, and it’s trickling down to our neighborhoods. It’s affecting how we interact as a community with other people.”

Other popular concepts for the former library have included a cultural center or a mental health facility.

“It’s not public safety legislation. It’s about community resource management, which is precisely why I voted for my council representative to legislate,” said Jac Archer, organizer for the Peace and Justice Action League in Spokane as well as Spokane Community Against Racism.

“Whatever the old library becomes – behavioral health, a cultural center or a police station – Spokane deserves an inclusive, collaborative and transparent process for deciding the fate of community resources, and that is what this ordinance gives us.”