Legislative Meeting - Regular Meeting

This is the May 19th, 2026, 2 p.m. legislative agenda for the Board of County Commissioners. Please let the record reflect that online we have Commissioners Brooks, French, and Jordan, and in the

In the hearing room, we have Commissioners Waldriff and Kern.

So all five commissioners are present. I do not believe we received any written comment for anything that's on the consent agenda today. So all of those in attendance would please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance. and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. That will bring us to Open Public Forum. This is your opportunity to testify on anything that is not on our consent agenda today. So we have three individuals who have signed up ahead of time.

Wendy Fishburne.

So Wendy, if you could just state your name and address for the record, and then we'll put three minutes up on the screen for you.

I'm Wendy Fishburne, 8712 East Red Oak Drive. My home is in the Fancher area, and that's why I wanted to come down and say hello and thank you guys for protecting that. That's the newly acquired county park. And so I wrote to you guys in support of that, and you passed it. So thanks for protecting that area. That made me happy. I was like, I want to come down and say thank you. But then I was like, there's so many other things I want to thank you guys for. Seriously, the representative of good governance needs some praise. So you guys, I love how you've passed, you know, you worked with SREC, you've done the Crisis Stabilization Center, STARS, now breaking ground on PATH. I'm like, we're over here in all these different roundups, having all these conversations, and you guys are breaking ground. which is just dang admirable. So I just wanted to say thank you, thanks to those who aren't here, for the hard work of actually, you listened to the community, you responded, you didn't do a bunch of messaging or promotions, you actually just did good governance. And I appreciate that. So, huge kudos. And then, of course, the transition to treatment was one of the things I was like, oh, this is on your radar, too. So that MOU, I know it seems... it's consequential because i think what it is is it's messaging to our region that we're transitioning to treatment because we've done housing and housing has failed for a lot of money and a lot of years and a lot of lives so right now we're in that window we've got like two weeks we've got a crisis of funding coming at us you know i've heard that funding for the housing we're going to move from 88 to 35 percent So for our service providers, I just want to blast to them that this is a good message to send because I want their jobs protected. I want all of our service providers' jobs protected. I want this funding stream protected. And it's a good message that we want to tell the people who are trapped in addiction on our streets. We actually want to save lives and not just house people to death in shelters. So this is cool. We can address two crises at one time, a funding crisis, an addiction crisis, and just blast across Spokane that we're moving towards a safe and healthy Spokane. So thanks for all your good work. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. Next up is Randy O'Brien. Randy, if you could state your name and address, and we'll get the timer reset.

Randy O'Brien, 2410 South Park Drive in Spokane. I didn't plan on speaking. I thought I was going to come and be with a big group to support the transition to treatment MOU. I've never done this before, and I'm always surprised when I show up and there's very few people because it seems really important. I've written letters, I don't know if anybody ever gets them, but in support of this because I think it is a smart move. I feel nervous because I don't always know all the details. There's so many pieces of information, but I do know that I've worked in mental health for 40 years. I used to do crisis intervention and I've taught psychiatric nursing and I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I just retired a couple years ago. And what I want to say, and I am 39 years in recovery, coming from homelessness. giving me a house would not have gotten me here, you know? I became a contributing member of society, paying taxes and having a life. I mean, we're saying saving lives, let's give people a life, you know? through the way most people do, that I know, and I know a lot of people in recovery, through kind of the courts, forced. You know, and I've walked around a lot, talked about, what are you going to do? You know, we'll do this and this for you, but what are you going to do? People need to be required to do something, to have investment, is what I think. I remember when housing first came out as a model in the studies that were done, and I was really impressed with it. But it is for the highest utilizers because it saves money on emergency services. It's not for everyone, right? What people need is treatment. Treatment works. And sometimes they need to be forced to do treatment. You need time for your brain to settle out and realize what's going on. I know I'm a little bit scattered because I didn't plan on it, but I would hate to see us lose all this money, these opportunities. When I look at the list of things that are offered, like child care, I had two children, child care, housing resources, these are things that I actually put together luckily. through the generosity of the county and, you know, Liberty Park Daycare gave me childcare for 35 cents an hour so I could go to recovery resources and later to college. You know, that was through a church. But we could put all things together in one space. We need the money, and so why we would pass this up? The minute it came out, I said, I don't want this to be political, the money's available for this transition to treatment model. I said, we need to do this. This is what would help people. And I'll speak from experience. It was hard to put it together. It would be nice if it was all a package like this. Thank you for listening.

Thank you. This is Susie Hokanson.

Susie Hokanson, I don't think I ever give you my address. 1315 West Woodside Place, that little piece of land that comes down that should be part of the city, but I love being part of the county. As most of you know, I'm in the League of Women Voters, totally nonpartisan with them. And we're doing a two-year study of all recognized tribes in the state, and I have now visited all 29 of the tribes. And it's just an exciting thing to be part of. I think we have so much to learn. And I've been encouraging all of you, county commissioners, to be thinking about doing a land acknowledgement. And I realized last night no county in the state does have a land acknowledgement. So you have an opportunity to be the first. And of course, since we're named after a tribe, that would be just really, really nice. But I also have my shirt on today because this is the famous rule.

And the groundbreaking for the new campus is Tuesday at 2 o'clock, and it's just going to be fantastic.

And of course, I have little things for you. And I realize my little note, some of you maybe have it, but I have it for all of you, even here in the front row. A land acknowledgement does not have to be long. It could be as short as the Pledge of Allegiance. And the one I constantly use is, as a visitor on this land, I recognize how incredibly grateful I am to be in Spokane. I am committed to pushing for systematic changes and decolonization to support our indigenous learners and communities. Thank you. Look at that.

Thank you, Susie. Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to participate in open public forum? Second call. Looks like there's no one online. Third and final call. Seeing no one else wishing to participate in open public forum, we will close that portion and we will move on to a proclamation. And I will look to my fellow commissioner for a motion.

well it's a very special week it is national public works week and so we have a proclamation to honor our public works amazing public works staff here at the county and all public works employees so i'm going to read this proclamation in the form of a motion in the matter of proclaiming may 17th to the 23rd 2026 as national public works week in spokane county Whereas public works professionals focus on infrastructure, facilities, and services that are of vital importance to sustainable and resilient communities and the citizens of Spokane County, Washington. And whereas the Spokane County Public Works Department is responsible for the stewardship of state and federal grants, as well as our local funds that are utilized for the design and construction of roadway preservation and improvement projects, that in 2025 totaled more than seven million dollars whereas public works is also responsible for maintaining more than 5 100 miles of paved and gravel roads and in 2025 3 400 lane miles of roads were swept 4 400 lane miles of gravel roads were graded 66 culverts were replaced or repaired 50 lane miles of ditches were cleaned 154 lay miles of road shoulders maintained and whereas the Spokane County Public Works Department owns and maintains 158 bridges in 2025 staff conducted a total of 93 bridge inspections and an additional 10 railroad bridge safety inspections and whereas the spokane county public works department's water resources division and wastewater system division consists of an award-winning state-of-the-art water reclamation facility that serves 49 000 customer accounts and includes 600 665 miles of gravity wastewater collection pipes also in 2025 857 storm water facilities were cleaned And 5,200 stormwater facilities were inspected. In addition, the Water Resources Center and the Doris Morrison Learning Center provided educational outreach to thousands of students. And whereas the Spokane County Public Works Department also manages the regional solid waste system. and operates two transfer stations that provide solid waste disposal for 122,000 tons of garbage, processes 37,000 tons of organics, as well as related waste reduction and educational services to 11 participating jurisdictions in the unincorporated areas of Spokane County. Now, therefore, the Board of County Commissioners of Spokane County, Washington, on behalf of the citizens of Spokane County, Do hereby designate May 23rd to 2017 to 23rd, 2026 as National Public Works Week in Spokane County.

I will second the motion. We have a motion and a second. Are there any comments that anybody would like to share? Well, I am just going to say thank you for everything that our Public Works crew does. I think there is so much that you do, as was read by Commissioner Waldroff here. There is so much more that I think a lot of folks, quite frankly, don't realize, but I always say the stuff Public Works does, you may not notice it every day, but you would sure notice it if they stopped doing it. So thank you so much for everything you do for this community. I'm going to call for the vote. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

That's a unanimous vote there. 5-0. Kyle, please come forward and share some remarks.

Commissioners, this is the lovely poster of the year for National Public Works Week. You'll see these up around the campus at some of our facilities. And Commissioner Kearns, you hit it right on the head. Public works professionals do not like the spotlight. We like to be behind the scenes just doing the work. And frankly, we like it if you're not thinking about us because that means that road is smooth, that means your toilet flushed and you didn't have to think about it and your garbage got picked up and you didn't have to worry about where it went. We make sure all of those things, the bones of our community, the infrastructure, all the underlying components that allow our community to thrive are there functioning well maintained and really efficiently preserved and that's really the goal of all public works professionals we don't want you to have to think about the basic necessities of community living we want to take care of it for you and we love the work and we have just an amazing dedicated team here at the county commissioner waldorf read off some pretty uh incredible statistics that 5100 lane miles of roads that is the largest road network in the county and if you hopped on a plane that would get you to about the south end of peru uh before you ran out of miles uh for our road network here We also are probably owners of the largest gravel road network in the state, so that's fun as well. But whether it is our educational programs, our aquifer protection activities, our wastewater collection, wastewater treatment, solid waste, our financial team, our billing team, obviously our road crews, bridges, stormwater, it's everything that makes just... everybody able to live and thrive in our community and the things that we all hopefully get to take for granted because our team's got it covered for you so thank you so much public works week is every week for us but it's great to be honored up here by the board and you know nationally and so thank you very much thank you and anybody here from your team if you please come up we'd love to get a photograph here and we'll give you the official copy of the proclamation

That brings us to the rest of our agenda, which is items four and five.

Move approval of items four and five as presented.

I will second the motion. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I was trying to second for you. Perfect. Motion by Commissioner Waldruff, second by Commissioner Brooks to approve items four and five, including all sub-items. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. All right. That does it for the items on our printed agenda. So move to miscellaneous. I will look down the way.

Nothing further from me, Commissioner.

Okay. Do we have any closed items or executive sessions you want to queue us up for?

No closed items. One exec. That Matt will read. One executive session item under pending and potential litigation, RCW 42301101I. Approximately 30 minutes. No action is anticipated. Scott Simmons, Jeff McMorris, Matt Folsom, Devin Kurta, Scott Chesney, Nathan Gwynn, and Brian McGinn.

Okay. We will go into executive session as stated for approximately 30 minutes. It is 2.22. We will start the executive session. We'll give folks a few minutes to clear the room. We'll start the executive session at 2.25. At the conclusion of the executive session, we will be adjourned for the remainder of the day. Thank you all for joining us.