After 112 years, Spokane City Council may stop meeting on Mondays

Spokane city government has a reputation for change. Only one mayor in the last 45 years has served more than a term. But there has been at least one constant: Monday meetings.

Spokane leaders have reserved Mondays to conduct the public’s business for more than 100 years.

That could change soon.

The Spokane City Council is considering major changes to its rules, including moving its legislative meetings from Mondays to Tuesdays and making it harder to move proposed laws out of committee. The proposal is scheduled to be considered at Monday’s meeting and would take effect Feb. 1.

Members of the liberal supermajority argue the changes will lead to fewer canceled meetings, better attendance and more collaboration, though they are not in lockstep on every proposed change. The two conservative members in the minority believe the changes are primarily targeted at weakening what little legislative power they have.

Council members Michael Cathcart and Jonathan Bingle, the dual representatives of northeast Spokane and members of the council’s conservative minority, suggested the most substantive proposed changes are intended to silence them. They noted that Bingle is unable to attend Tuesday meetings, as his wife works those days and he cares for their children.

“I don’t know if there’s some expectation that (Bingle) might resign as a result of this, but I will just tell you, we are going to be louder than ever if these are the rules that are imposed, because these are not fair,” Cathcart told his colleagues Monday afternoon.

Cathcart also stated that the Spokane City Council had been holding its legislative meetings on Mondays for decades, arguing there was little reason to change that longstanding practice.

According to archived copies of the Official Gazette of the city of Spokane, where the city publishes minutes from council meetings, the council has typically held its regularly scheduled legislative sessions on Mondays since Oct. 7, 1912.

The council’s schedule has changed profoundly over the years, though mostly as the administrative powers of its members, who once simultaneously served as commissioners for various city agencies, were gradually handed over to a city manager and to the mayor’s office. At one point, the council met every day of the work week, and occasionally on Saturdays, to perform administrative duties.

Council President Betsy Wilkerson stated the change to Tuesday meetings was motivated by the high number of Monday holidays, and that these canceled meetings created challenges for the council, residents and city staff.

Only four of the meetings that the council canceled this year landed on federal holidays: Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day and Presidents’ Day – notably, City Hall itself was still open on Presidents’ Day. The council worked on Indigenous People’s Day and intended to work on Veterans Day, though that latter meeting was moved to a Thursday over threats made to City Hall.

The council often cancels Monday meetings even when holidays don’t fall on Monday. This year, for instance, Juneteenth fell on a Wednesday, but the council cancelled its meeting two days before. The Fourth of July fell on Thursday, but the council cancelled its meeting that would have fallen on July 1. The council plans to cancel meetings on Dec. 23 and Dec. 30 even though they don’t fall on Christmas or New Year’s.

The council also took off July 29 and Aug. 5 for “council summer break,” April 1 for “spring break week,” and canceled its May 13 legislative meeting without an accompanying holiday.

Once upon a time, if council meetings landed on a holiday, the council met the next day instead, rather than wait until the next week. Christmas landed on a Monday in 1916, for instance, so the council met for its legislative session the next day.

Councilwoman Kitty Klitzke, defending some of the proposed changes, argued that policies and practices shouldn’t be upheld simply because they’re longstanding. She argued that increasingly frequent school closures on Mondays create challenges for herself and city staff, though she said in an interview that she isn’t convinced the meetings couldn’t be shifted to Wednesday or Thursday rather than Tuesday.

Councilman Zack Zappone said in an interview last week that the council had heard from nonprofit advocacy groups, staff and residents that Monday meetings created challenges due to their families or vacations, and the meetings of various regional boards and authorities council members have to attend make it difficult to change to Wednesday or Thursday meetings. He further argued that Fridays would have low attendance.

“We are always striving to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and we hear, for the greatest number of people, that Tuesday is a better day,” Zappone said.

But if Bingle’s family schedule prevented him specifically from attending meetings, that was something that he would have to deal with, Zappone added.

“We all have struggles with juggling family life with our obligations as City Council members and as professionals and workers,” Zappone said. “That is a very common experience for all workers in the city.”

Not all members of the liberal majority back moving to Tuesdays. Councilman Paul Dillon said he would support a call to stay on Mondays. Zappone noted in his interview that nothing was set in stone ahead of a Dec. 9 vote.

Cathcart and Bingle also took issue with new rules that would require the support of three council members, up from two, to move legislation out of committee and onto the council’s schedule, effectively blocking the two conservatives from putting ordinances and resolutions up for a vote without support from at least one liberal member.

“That is not just silencing District 1’s voice, this is silencing District 2’s, it is silencing District 3’s, because if they have an issue that is germane solely to their district and no one wants to bring it forward, it’s dead,” Bingle argued to his colleagues Monday.

Dillon argued that the change would encourage better collaboration between council members. But given the current 5-2 split of the council, Bingle rebutted that “collaboration is code for” Bingle and Cathcart needing to modify their positions while the supermajority works in relative lockstep.

Councilwoman Lili Navarrete sharply disagreed with this characterization. An ordinance to include homelessness as a protected class, one of Navarette’s only marquee pieces of legislation this year, was also put on ice for months while a compromise law is negotiated.

Klitzke noted in an interview that she has had to go back to the drawing board before with her legislation as well, and argued requiring more collaboration ahead of time would prevent “awkward fights on the dais,” which she believes have made the council seem unprofessional.

It’s unclear how much practical difference the change will make. Klitzke noted that legislation that can’t get three sponsors won’t be able to get a majority vote.

Ordinances that don’t have enough votes to pass do not typically get far enough along in the process to have particularly public debate before they’re shot down. Instead, those failing bills get pulled off the table during poorly attended afternoon meetings through an “indefinite deferral,” killing it without council members technically taking a position on its merits.

Notably, though a majority of council members appeared to look at most of the proposed changes favorably, they were sponsored by only two members: Wilkerson and Zappone.

During Monday’s meetings, Zappone did note that, while it would be harder to get laws out of committee, at least one of the changes could make it easier to get laws in front of a committee, which is the first opportunity for the full council to look at proposed legislation, by reducing the needed sponsors from two to one.

“And then you have to start building support like any legislative body,” Zappone said. “I think it’s about creating a culture of reaching out to each other to build a collaboration, instead of not doing that.”

The rule changes also propose allowing public testimony during the afternoon committee meetings, giving people an opportunity to support getting an item out of committee and onto the council’s docket. Individual council members also would still be able to introduce amendments to laws under consideration without additional sponsors, Zappone noted.