Legislative Meeting - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everybody.

Welcome. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 9 a.m. board briefing meeting. Let the Breck reflect that board commissioners and present Commissioner French will be coming here shortly. It is June 2nd, 2026. I know we've got a busy morning. It seems like it's not busy, but it's going to be busy because I know we have a lot of people.

Why are you looking at me, Madam Chair?

that's going on look at the person that's easiest to blame so with that we're going to go ahead get started and rose well thank you for joining us today thank you for having me it should be pretty quick today um really excited to just kind of very briefly go over our economic impact report which is of course our 2025 numbers uh we just had our event last week thank you to commissioner kearns for speaking Ron and Josh came and that was great. And we had a couple of eights there as well. So the numbers are looking good in terms of beating out 2024. We had about a just under 2% increase on visitation and spend, which is great. 10.2 million people. It's most that Spokane County has ever seen in terms of visitation. So we're excited to see that number continue to grow. And then $1.55 billion in visitor spend. And I know y'all just had a pretty long budget meeting, I think, last week, the week before. And you were looking at sales tax was a strong, strong line. And we're very proud to see that the visitor spend contributes significantly to the sales tax. So $242 million went to local and state taxes out of visitor spend, which actually equates to a savings of $1,100 for every household in Spokane County. So if visitors were not here spending those dollars, that is money that we would have to make up on our end. And everybody knows cost of business and the cost of living and everything is going up. So it's nice to have the offset from visitors. Another really interesting thing in this report, and of course I can always send you the follow-up more detailed report. We like to put it into this kind of pretty presentation, a little bit easier to digest, but we do have the methodology and everything that comes with it. I just wanted to call out the segments here, the food and beverage, lodging, retail, transportation, and recreation. So we've been hearing from restaurants for the last year, a little more than a year, that the margins are so thin and they're just, you know, some of them are really struggling to stay alive. And the visitor economy is absolutely crucial to the food and beverage industry here. And that is always our number one, the most money is spent at the food and beverage establishment. um we're doing our best to help promote and elevate the restaurants uh we do have a pretty robust uh promotions program where we work with and talk about and send our social media and do videos uh we also have consulting that we do we also invite restaurants to spoken hotel motel association meetings in addition to the washington hospitality association meetings that we are involved in so there's plenty of opportunity for them to be connected to us and learn about what we do and the promotions that we do for free and then there's also other ways to elevate if they're just engaged one thing we see is that some are not as engaged and that is because they are running their own business and they have all of this this stuff on their hands so um but it's good to see that food and beverage was also on top again out of the out of all those segments that i mentioned previously and then of course transportation um that does include air transportation so With the airport's expansion and continued growth, we expect to see that increase. It was very nice to be at the sea concourse last week. I saw all of you there. It looks beautiful. We can't wait for the entire project to be finished, but not every airport is going through that type of growth and expansion. So we should be grateful that you're investing and have the opportunity to do that. They are our number one strategic partner. The airport also sponsor, they are our destination sponsor for the year. So they will be presenting at every event that we have. And the new CEO, Dave Herring, has been excellent to communicate with. Of course, we love Todd and Alana, Joe, everybody on that team is exceptional. Yeah. I think the last thing just to call out, this is something that as elected officials, I feel like is a number that you all are interested in is jobs and how we're supporting the industry. So I've got 17,754 jobs or hospitality jobs in Spokane County. It actually is down a little bit from last year. We were in the 18, uh, closer to 18,000. Uh, so not too much of a decrease, but, um, it is, it does equate to about 5% of jobs of the workforce in Spokane County are hospitality related. Um, it's been extremely important. We're talking, you know, back of house, we're talking all customer service, people that are greeting and welcoming visitors as they come. Um, We need to do a little bit more investment in how we're training up this workforce. And I know that workforce has been a topic of discussion in Washington Hospitality. It's kind of a struggle to continue to get people to want to go into this industry. The good news is you're having really good conversations with the universities, Gonzaga, Whitworth, and Spokane Community Colleges. We have an individual now on their hospitality board at Spokane Community Colleges to loop in to help with education on how one can actually have a really good career if they go into the hospitality world. And then we're working with Gonzaga on some recruiting efforts, both on the relocation side in terms of getting information out to parents and potential students, but then also employment side. What can they do when they aren't here potentially working, you know, in between classes or in the down seasons, or if they're gonna stay throughout the year and not go back home, can we give them a role in hospitality? And we actually, Visit Spokane does rely on some college students for visitor center. We do have students from Gonzaga that work at the center, you know, if it's slow, we let them do their homework. But as soon as the customer comes in, they perk up and they handle that, you know, provide good customer service. So yeah, we're doing as much as we can on our end. There's always room for improvement, but really excited to have you guys have this report, look at it in more detail. Happy to answer any questions you might have right now or in the future.

Great event last week, and it was great to see all the folks that work in the hospitality industry and tourism industry to be all in one place celebrating. You throw one hell of an event.

Yeah, we had a good time. It was about 200 people came, so we were excited, and it was super creepy hot. That's what I heard. It was. We had a big storm. Yeah, it cooled off like about the last 45 minutes.

That's a real VIP.

So yeah, on the back. We know that Mr. Kearns provided us. Yeah, as well as State of Washington tourism, David Blanford. And I guess I'll just leave with this. You can get on to the next presentation. David Blanford, the executive director for State of Washington tourism. He will be in town June 16th presenting to the Spokane Hotel Motel Association. He's going to be updating our industry on statewide assessment bill that was passed last year. And what does that mean? this year and what we need to do moving forward for that, as well as address any concerns with a local TPA bill, which we will be putting to the, which we need to pass. We absolutely need to pass next session. So we have hired a, the state DMOs have hired a lobbyist working in conjunction with State of Washington Tourism the same lobbyists that did help get the safe assessment across the line. So we're having some good conversation, taking education with the turnover you know, the elected officials, but I'll be reaching out to you all more directly on ways that you can assist with messaging and help us connect over in Olympia. I know you're all very well connected. We just want to make sure that this does pass in the next session.

So if you'd like to- Do you have a legislator lined up to try and sponsor the bill? Like, do you know who's going to be your vehicle to- We're working on it.

Yes. I don't remember the individual's did state assessment, but I think that's the same one. And then Richelli on the Senate side came in and boosted it prior. So we're working on getting that done. Yeah, because the reason why it didn't get passed last session is it didn't get pulled out of old rules. Yes. Still kind of figured that out. And I'd imagine there's going to be a lot of bills introduced again in 2027. So we want to make sure it's top of mind for everyone. But if you would like to see David speak, let me know. I'll send you an invite. Lunch is provided. It'll be at the hotel that you know. And then it's a nice way to network with other hoteliers. Both our convention hotel and select service hotels do come to that meeting. So it's kind of a nice get together.

I just had one wondering. The Broadway shows and a lot of the musical events that happen either at the park or the Interstate Center for the Arts. Have we seen, do you know how numbers are doing with drawing people from... I had heard that those numbers were down a bit last year.

I was wondering. Well, I think we talked about the Canadian audience for best of Broadway was down around 10%. Um, we won't know an update from that. So I need to connect with other seasons over this year. So with, um, with the concerts in the park, we absolutely know that 2025 sucked for us because we only had four concerts. It was not the amount of traffic that we're used to. In 2024, we had quite a few more. There's six concerts programmed for 2026, which is great. And I think they're working on more. And the park is going out to, they went out to RFP to figure out if AEJ is the continued desired park to program that or not. So we'll have an update. We won't have that until after a few concerts come through. The last, the concert they just had, she's like an alt country woman. They only sold half. It's 2,500 tickets when we can sell 5,000. Yeah.

like a little week yeah so we'll um yeah we gotta help it's just such an opportunity you know with that space um there's a real sure that all of your food and beverage everyone benefits from those oh yeah so we need those to be successful we rely on those and now it's paid out at the park yeah that was my other question what what is the economic impact of that um i mean

Pickout has gone through a lot of iteration. It's kind of... It's had its ups and downs. Yes. I know. Obviously, it's a food and beverage event. Yes, it's definitely going to impact. And they are working on replacing it. We do have the Crave Northwest food event that is happening now downtown. We were able to get some impact dollars. for that $50,000 to help supplement that event. They are looking to refill the pig out scenario. The pig out was free to attend. So the economic impact relies on a post event from surrounding restaurants and the actual food trucks that are there. So we'll see what happens, I guess.

Thank you.

All right.

Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it. That's going to take us to Evelyn.

Good morning. Four pages.

Yes. Hi, I'm Evelyn Whitmer and I'm with Washington State University Cooperative Extension, which is awesome. Thank you. And I have a program called FNEP. But today I'm going to talk about some things that we've been doing in that program. Next slide. So I'll give you a little bit of data, a little bit of the background of us, some of the partnerships we have, and we had some students do some surveys. That's basically what I'm here to talk about, and then how we'd like to move forward after we've gathered some of that information. Next slide. So if you're not familiar, I don't know how familiar you are with Cooperative Extension. but we're the outreach arm of the university is what we're called. So we take research-based information and we kind of massage it a little bit so that the general public can get some of that knowledge that's from the university or from different studies, et cetera. And we give that back to the community. And we also develop partnerships within the community. And I'm rather new. I've been here for about a year. I came from Arizona and I worked in a similar position for about 20, 20 years. So, so I'm coming here with fresh eyes and meeting new people. And it's, it's been, I love it here. This is, this is home. So thank you. And I love all the things that are happening in the parks. I was like, really listening to all that. Yeah, do that. Next slide. So what is FNAP? So we're federally, this is a lot of words. Basically, I want you guys to have some of this information, but we're a federally funded program and we teach nutrition education primarily. But my other job is to look at policy systems and environmental changes in the community so that we're not just teaching the information, but we're also making sure that people have access to different things in the community. And so one of the things that we're working on right now is making sure people, we have a lot of places that are working on food access, but one of the things that I've noticed nationally is that trying to get the food home has been difficult. And so that's what we'll talk about today. We use hands-on research. We have trained educators that are from the communities that go out and teach in the community. So we go to rehab centers, we go to homeless shelters, we go anywhere that there's like a low income population and we teach them certain things. We teach them how to look for produce that's in season so it's affordable. We actually work on budgeting with them so that they can stretch their food dollar so they have food to the end of the month and physical activity, et cetera. And then my job is to develop some community partnerships so that we can make sure that the environment is good for families to be able to get those foods or get them home. Next slide. So in Washington itself, one in eight people face hunger and one in six children face hunger. And about 30% of the households that we have in Washington state receive SNAP benefits or no. Let me back that up. 30% of the families who receive SNAP benefits have children. And then if we spend on SNAP, we spend about a billion dollars on SNAP dollars itself. And that generates about $2 billion with having people work, do transportation, et cetera. So it actually generates, those SNAP dollars generate funds for Washington state. Next slide. So this is one of my favorite slides and it's about what makes people healthy. So if you look at the top, it's basically social economic factors. So, you know, the educational level, how much you're getting in for your jobs, et cetera. 10% is the physical environment. So, you know, what does it look like around you? Actually, I've seen some studies where it showed how many potholes do you have in your, in your community, but that actually affects the longevity of your, of your life. And then other factors are like smoking. So 30% of your, of your alcohol, of your overall health is determined by like you're smoking, you're drinking, you know, if you have access to, you know, or when they always say, oh yeah, eat fruits and vegetables and do exercise. And, you know, well, if you live in a community that it's hard to get out or you don't feel safe, you're not going to go out for a walk, right? So a lot of those are environmental factors as well. And then if you look at healthcare, so do you have healthcare? Are you able to get to some good quality services? So that's about 20% of your overall health. So a lot of it, so 80% of your overall health has to do with your environment, basically, and the social determinants of health. So all the things that are in the community are the things that determine how long you're going to live. Okay, next slide. So my job is to look at, you know, do we have, who do we connect with here in the community so that we can look at some of these things that can help our citizens have healthier, happier lives? And so there's a bunch of different factors here. Access to fresh fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. How far do they have to travel to the grocery store to get fresh fruits and vegetables? Do they have farmers markets? I'm going to say we have. We have a lot of farmers markets. It's fantastic. And I'm actually working with the transportation department on that to make sure that people know how to get there on the bus. So, you know, schools, all the things that you guys are doing, basically looking at, that's what determines how healthy you're over a life span. OK, next slide. So we just decided to have, well, actually the School of Nursing reached out to me and said, hey, do you guys want to have a couple of nurse interns? And I was like, sure. We'll take them on. We'll see what we can do. I gave them a whole list of things that they wanted to do. I told them some of the needs that we had. And they said, well, we want to work on the, you know, we want to do a survey. And we know that, you know, we're hearing that people are having difficulty on the bus, right? So So we decided to ask some questions of our participants. And then I'll show you what the results of that were before. But we, so we, first of all, I was like, you know, I don't want to do this without talking to Spokane Transit authorities, right? I don't want to like have some kind of weird feeling between us and I want to make sure that they're on board and they know what's going on with that. So I connected, we connected with them. And then And then I let the students do their work on their survey. So next slide. So we did the survey because we wanted to understand if there were anything, if the rumors we were hearing were actually things that were concerning some of the people that we work with, which are low income people that a lot of them ride the bus. We also wanted to see how transportation impacts their food access, et cetera. And then we knew that there were going to be some changes in SNAP and WIC. So we wanted to know, do you understand those? Do you know anything about those? And then we wanted to also guide the community to see if we could look for some partnerships, et cetera. If we see something, a barrier, let's see if we can fix it. So next slide, please. So the results of the survey is we found that 90% of the respondents were worried about running out of food before they can buy more. And then 93% rely on public transit or walking to obtain groceries. And this is in our groups, in our classes that we did this. And then... 52% said that the number of bags that they can carry on the bus was a burden or a challenge, I should say. And then 48% had to travel about 3.5 miles. And then we did kind of a little bit of a follow-up survey on that. And they usually have to walk a mile with their groceries, with their kids, et cetera, to get that food home. So let's see. And then 41% reported that they are buying less healthy foods because of the weight of the item. So if you're carrying a bag of potatoes or apples, it's a lot heavier than carrying a bag of that has like noodles or not saying that those are bad, but they're less nutrient dense than the fruits and vegetables that you would get. And then 73% were unaware of any of the snap and quick changes. And I'm actually on that group to do that. And things came so fast and quick that they had already announced that there were changes. And we had just started working. We found out. started working on trying to get information out, but it's just so fast and furious that it's hard to get that information out. But obviously it's not the information about weight and stuff is not getting out. Okay, next slide.

Can I just ask about, I know that there's Medicaid changes that are going into effect January of 27. Are these, the SNAP and WIC, do those become effective already, or will they become effective?

They're already, yeah, they've already done all the changes on that. So people are finding out as they go, as they're using their benefits.

Eligibility, who's eligible to receive.

Right. So, and I don't have all the details of what the changes are, but there's some changes, and people were not really notified of them. So they're just, you know, going to use their card, and it's not working anymore in the school.

Yeah. Who were the individuals that were surveying?

They were participants in our classes.

And how many people was that total?

The first one that we did with the survey was 30. Okay. Yeah. So we do about 100 people a year in our classes.

And how were those people recruited to show up to your class?

Well, there's different things. We go to different places. So we'll go to, you know, like recovery houses. We'll go to, so we go and we meet with them. We go to different housing areas.

You said you went to the shelters. So when you go there, you tell them about the classes and then they.

And their leadership usually recruits them to come into our classes. Okay. Thanks for that question. Um, so basically the, there's a thing called the transit nutrition, nutrition connection. And, um, and these are the things that it says that, you know, that are issues. So transportation barriers, um, they limit overall, uh, choices. And then families have a hard time with, um, you know, getting groceries home because it's really heavy to carry, um, fresh, fresh produce is obviously heavier, um, and then going to the place and getting back what's going to be is a difficult thing for people. And then one of the biggest things is the transportation. And you guys have a great, I've ridden the bus several times. It's a great transportation. We have a great transportation system. Next slide. So these are some people that I actually got together to work on the survey and some of the items that we found on the survey. So we have the transit authority and you guys kind of know what they do. They help get food. They allow people to get groceries, et cetera. So they can get home medical, all that type of thing. I'm working with Second Harvest and then us. And then we have the nursing students that we're working with. And together, these partnerships strengthen Spokane community and support us in the food systems. OK, next slide. So here are some opportunities that we are looking at doing and working together on. So we want to support the literacy of education around SNAP-Ed and GIC. We want to increase outreach to transit and community and make sure that people are able to get to the areas that they need to to get food so that they don't have to walk so far to get home. And then we'll look at connecting the distribution with the transit authority so that they're getting food into the buses at times that they're getting things out of the shelters. OK. We want to work with Spokane Transit Authority to communicate some of the policies because they don't have a bank limit. We don't know what's going on there. So we're going to try and figure that out. In their rules, they don't have some of the things that people perceive to be happening. They don't have those rules. So we're going to look and see what happens. what, you know, if there's a communication issue, et cetera. So we'll look at those policies and try and get that information out to the public and get it out to the bus system or the drivers. And then we'll continue gathering a little bit of data. I have some more nursing students coming on. So we're going to be working with them to see if we can look at, you know, how do we work with some of the barriers that we have of people getting food home. Next slide. And then we have some different strategies that we're looking at. Okay, so we want to just develop some transportation education materials, which we've actually already started working on. And then, you know, get some more support from the community. So go ahead, next slide. And so why does EFNEP matter? That's the program that I run, which I didn't really get to talk about, but well, I guess I did because they do education. At some point, I want to tell you all the really cool things that they do, but not at this meeting. This meeting was just kind of about information about how we're trying to get, make sure that people get some food home. And so we already have different relationships in the community, like we go to all the shelters, et cetera. And so we have a lot of partnerships already in the community. And then we partner our nutrition education with real world problems. So it's not just about doing the education. It's also making sure that we create an environment that allows us to do our program and so that people can actually access the things that we're teaching them. And then the educators helped residents maximize the limit with their food budget. So we make sure that they're able to have food at the end of the month. You know, this is where you can get different resources. And so our educators go out and they give them a bunch of information about, um, you know, where you can get resources. Um, and then we know that community-based education improves long-term health outcomes. So we're trying to get people to live healthier lives so that they live longer so that they don't have as many medical costs, et cetera. And then, um, looking at partners, making sure that we have the right partners at the table in the health system. When I was in Arizona, we had firefighters. We had all kinds of different people on our team to look at different things that we needed to do in the communities. And I'm working on that right now to get different partners to the table. Next slide. And that's it. This is me here if you want to contact me if you have any ideas or go, oh, Evelyn needs to come to that or Evelyn needs to meet this person. That's kind of what I do.

Yes. So when I worked at the Northeast Community Center, we worked on a lot of efforts to create greater access to healthy foods in the Hilliard area and greater northeast area of Spokane. And of course, when I worked there, it was also the pandemic. And so did mobile food distribution really increase during that time period to get people access since people were able to gather in places or people were supposed to kind of distance, right? How is the mobile food distribution? I haven't heard because I'm not in the community working on that right now at the grassroots level. Do those mobile distributions from Second Harvest and others continue to occur? Because that could be a really great way to fill in the gaps for people that go to neighborhoods that might be food deserts.

Right. Well, right now, that would be Kathy at Second Harvest that would have that information about how they distribute stuff. Right now I'm working on once they get it distributed at that site, this is kind of what we're working on right now, is how do they now get it from that site home? And so if they're walking a mile home with bags and kids, et cetera, you know, what are they going to carry home? So that's kind of what we're working on right now. So I don't have the data on who's distributing and where they're distributing. So that would be like from Second Harvest or other.

But they're still doing those bubble food.

I don't know about this one. I don't know what exactly you're doing. I mean, you may know more than I do on that one.

I think there was a lot of funding, you know, during the, during and post pandemic to support that work. And yeah, it's, it is an issue. There are areas, there's huge areas where, you know, you have to walk a couple of miles to get to a grocery store and it can be a big barrier. Yeah.

And I don't know, I don't have that.

But I think it's great that you're working with SDA to look at ways to, you know, SDA has really increased the routes in the last five years. So there's more opportunities to get into some of the locations.

And they have different funding streams, too, to help with specific things that they're working on. So, you know, like medical transportation, et cetera. So you talked a little bit about, okay, on those, can we look at, you know, maybe getting some groceries as well, so.

Thank you. Thank you. You guys got a flyer of our program and what the impacts are. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning.

we're going to talk about some eases related to resources this first one is the city of spokane it's looking to build a millwood trail and so they've asked us for an easement they already have a sewer easement across our nbi compensation property there east of sec but they don't have any easement for a trail grant them a 30-foot easement with an additional 10 feet of temporary construction access. That's the first one.

And if we say no, what's their alternative?

Then I guess right now there's a gravel trail. And so I guess they could not pave the park through our station.

So they do have an option if we say no.

There is a gravel trail there. Okay. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah. I have another slide on that one. The red is the urban easement, the yellow being the temporary construction.

Would they be paying for the easement?

No. They didn't offer to pay. It didn't get cut. More questions on that one? OK. We can move on to the next one. So the next one, this is Lloyd Torgerson and his wife. They own some property up near the Arby's. And so he has built some public sewer that extends north from Chris Court that will eventually serve those vacant parcels north of the little red line there. And it will serve the Arby's parcel and the county will assume ownership of the public sewer than he is. One marks five months. 20 foot wide public sewer. And we can move on to the next one. So this is in the valley. It's a valley move to vacate part of Hutchinson Road and Riverside Avenue. So go to the next slide. And so it's West Argonne, North Sprague there. You can go to one more slide, please. And a part of the vacation, they They probably made it a little more complicated than it needed to, but they just said that the applicant application needed to secure the easements from the utilities. And so it's kind of odd that we're getting an easement in a right of way, but kind of make the process work out. They're granting us an easement that would be is finalized when record survey is done for the final vacation process and when they pay for the easements. There's currently not even any sewer services on that piece of sewer, but it's there for future needs. Both are the three easements I had. All right, thank you.

Thank you. Just trying to figure out exactly where that was.

Yeah, it's McPherson Truck, Ultimate Truck, I think they're called.

Thank you.

And we have one quick traffic code revision for you over at Elkwood and Wellesley there along the state line. John Gerstle, Morning, good morning, appreciate your time, this is a. John Gerstle, This is actually the location for roundabout that we're working on currently on its state line set up a little sleep and the property acquisitions has been languishing probably be back to you. John Gerstle, Seeking condemnation authority that doesn't move pretty soon take we've been talking to him a long time and we think we're making headway and then things don't progress so. John Gerstle, Hopefully, sooner than later, we get the right away wrapped up we're ready to go lines are all done. John Gerstle, In a good spot, we just need to get the rights that we need property owners Jason to it be a good project so hopefully they'll come around later in the short run we've had a lot of accidents here that's why we're doing round about so. In 2025, we had six accidents, four injury, two property damage. So it's a bad intersection. Part of the problem is, a lot of the problem is, if you drive at southbound now on Appleway, there's two lanes. We have a dedicated right turn onto Wellesley, and it blocks the view of people coming straight through. The ones that are continuing southbound are obscured by the turning traffic. So our proposal is to put always stops all three legs.

We're going to stop them. We've modeled the traffic. It'll take it.

It's not going to be great, but it's a better option than continuing to have accidents. In the last five years, we've had 19 accidents there. So it's a bad intersection. We were hoping not to do this. We were hoping to get out to construction and be able it's cost us answering questions okay so i'm trying to write is this on this that side of the freeway or your side your side because you did the stop signs on the side and that actually worked quite well okay which is really counterintuitive sometimes these feet where the the one stop plague has a real high traffic volume like it does there when we stop them all they actually perform And I think this one will be similar. It'll have its challenges. It may even fail very certain times, but it's, again, just better than ongoing safety concerns. And it is short-lived. Any year, we're going to have a roundabout out here.

section people are going back and forth i know yes indeed yep alcohol and all those things that are just so much cheaper gas stations from the liquor store side one-thumb shopping so yeah okay thank you appreciate your time mr kurtz

Something I had brought up a couple weeks ago. I actually didn't know it was going to have my name on it until the agenda came out. Just again, wanted to remind folks, both of our lobbyist contracts are expiring at the end of the year. So I think we need to progress that forward and make sure that we have a federal and a state lobbyist on contract before they expire. Because pretty soon here, I mean, it's crazy to believe we're in June, we're going to start working on our ledge agenda for Olympia. So I think we need to, I think we should start the process sooner rather than later. I guess I've only gone through a process of hiring a new federal lobbyist. In my time here, it's always just been a renewal for the state, but Whatever the process is we want to move forward, I think we need to start it sooner rather than later.

The process which we like.

What processes are available? Well, you have an opportunity to do a full RFP like you did last time with the federal lobbyists. Having done that with the state, you could also elect to redo that with the state. So you could do a full RFP, or you could renew the contracts as is for a determined time that the commissioners want to.

Renew on the contract.

We'll want to look at the terms of each of the contracts. I think the renewal periods are already, I think we're coming to the end of the renewal periods, but I suspect just like we've done with the state, you could elect to renew them and extend the terms of them. So just looking for your direction, which way you want to go.

Well, I thought the process we did for the federal worked fairly well and so I'd like to I mean, it's been a long time since we've done an RFP on the state. And so I think maybe it's time to see what's out there and what can benefit the county. And so I'd be, I'd be open to an RFP for the state. John's doing, I think John's doing a really good job for us at the federal level. He's working across the aisle for all of us. So Yeah, I agree. It'd be nice to do the same thing for the state.

I'm hearing, look for approach in federal with a renewal term extension and then on the state, do a RFP or RFQ. We can determine what the best way to do that. doing our people the rfq might be more appropriate on the state side so i'm here thank you for the reminder you got it yeah we need to get us on yeah okay we'll uh task our purchasing team with q and that up so i'm going from memory here i know that when we did the rfp or the federal

I think a number of us actually talked to the different candidates that we're looking for. We had a motion on the screen. They zoomed in. Yeah. We did interviews. Yeah. And so the interview process, I thought, was very helpful. So just wanted to throw that into the mix for consideration.

Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, we had that. I don't remember if it was like 30 minutes or 45 minutes or something like that. But I think we had each of them kind of one after another. They showed up on Zoom and they sort of made their pitch. They presented sort of their philosophy, the way they work, who some of their other clients were. big wins uh for those other clients i think they if i remember correctly i think they kind of shared sort of their understanding of spokane county and things that they why they thought they'd be a good fit something like that we have questions that we asked and i can't remember i don't remember all questions that i don't remember you have a set list of questions at each one But I agree with Commissioner French. I remember that being a really good process. Being able to weigh the pluses and minuses.

It depends on how many we get. I don't want to do like two or three interviews. Yeah, I think we did three for the federal.

Yeah, I think we did too. Okay. I just didn't want that to get lost in the shuffle of everything else we're dealing with this year.

Make sure we have someone on time. We already know tourism priorities and other things are coming up that we can support.

It's a good time.

Any other questions?

I was just wondering how the search was going for the communications director position.

We have two, well, one interview scheduled for this week, and we're trying to get a second. The county poll has been as good as we'd like it to be. But our plan would be, I think we're shooting to interview three of them, and then we'll shortlist and bring you all And if we think the qualifications and could be a good fit for the county. And then I would presume somewhere the last time you would want to have some time with the individual to talk with them and they had no chance to do a similar interview. So that's that works. That's the process we'll follow.

Yeah, I would just be concerned on timing. That's the longer we drag it out.

Yeah, we're moving as fast as we're getting good candidates that are coming in. And we just got one that I thought was a good one on Friday last week. So that's why we queued them up for interviews this week. So just not a strong candidate pool out there.

So Yesterday, I mentioned that there's an effort going on to create another sales tax for cultural arts. And coincidentally, just this morning, I ended up receiving an email from Skylar Oberst, who evidently is the director for Spokane Arts, and wants to have a meeting with me about the county's interest. And I'm going, what did I do to make you mad? No, I'm just kidding. I'm not sure why he's reaching out to me instead of the chair. And so I don't want to... I don't want to mislead this individual about possibility of the county doing this tax if there's no energy or incentive for us to even consider it or not and stuff. So, and again, I apologize to the chair. I'm not sure why they're reaching out to me, but I'm happy to acquiesce if you'd like to have these conversations.

I'm happy to let you acquiesce every day.

Consume hours of your life engaged in a conversation. I just... I don't want to be perceived as the point on this conversation because it's a board conversation. It's not me. And if the board would rather have the conversation, then God bless you. I'm not sure how I got into this position. They were probably watching us. I'm just trying to find a way to get out of this position. No, we've not had this conversation. And I don't want to presume that I know where the rest of you are at and either consume or waste his time or send us in the wrong direction. So just what's the will of the board? I mean, I have no idea.

My position right now, just hearing about it yesterday for the first time, is that we have more important things on our agenda to figure out our budget. So if we're looking at any kind of one tenth of one percent, it's public safety is going to be first and foremost, which there's a couple of options that are going to be facing us, you know, whether it's the Councilmatic for that or, you know, put that in the one tenth, putting it on the ballot. So those are where I feel And we saw that with the poll survey from GSI that still public safety is the most important thing. And if we can't fund that, we can't fund anything else. And our citizens, I don't think they're very happy with us not funding that, but then choosing to fund something else.

That's my position. But I don't know where the rest of you guys at. I mean, I don't want to lead this guy on and give him hope that we're going to do it when we've got other pressing needs that we've got to address. But I don't know. That's just me.

I think our unions would come after us. Oh, yeah. Well. Just to do a cancelmatic on it.

Yeah.

Parts versus doing things that are going to support. I mean.

I don't know anything about the conversation. I didn't even know that it was councilmatic. So that was used to me.

You can tell them there's not three votes to pass if that makes it easier. Makes it a lot easier.

I'd be interested in learning more about it, but I don't think the timeliness now that we are, we need to deal with some of these priorities of the community and our operations here at the county. And so I would love to learn more about it. I just don't know if the timeliness is the right time.

You could have him reach out to Kimber.

I just forwarded the email. I do know Skylar.

We're in charge. Thank you. Skylar, she's in charge.

I do know that Spokane Arts is doing lots of wonderful things, but I think that the timing is not right for us. this year, but I would be happy to meet with Skylar if you would like me to, Commissioner Craig.

Oh, I've already forwarded the email.

Check your email.

It's there. Okay. I think I'm also always happy to hear ideas.

I'm really most focused on public safety, behavioral health, those being safe and healthy task force. Those are top on my list.

So interesting to hear what you

Why don't you tackle that offline, Amber, and draft us an email.

I'm happy to learn more and hear what Spokane Arts is up to.

Any other miscellaneous slides? Seeing none, then I will go to...

For executive session items today under pending and potential litigation, RCW 4230-110, Section 1 of I, The first one, 20 minutes, Matt Folsom, Jeff McMorris, Scott Simmons, Deb Kurta, Jasper Coulter, Nathan Gwynn, Ben Bradebeau, Derek Villar, Kyle Tuig, Dan Gatt, Ashley Cloud, no action. The second, Matt Folsom, Scott Simmons, Jeff McMorris, Deb Kurta, Scott Chesney, Nathan Gwynn, no action. Third, Matt Folsom, Jeff McMorris, Scott Simmons, Devin Kurta, Kyle Tuig, no action. And the fourth, Matt Folsom, Jeff McMorris, Scott Simmons, Devin Kurta, five minutes, no action. So it's a total of an hour and five minutes, no action, all pending the potential litigation. I recommend that the board adjourn.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, Mac can I ask for that first one if it's what I think it is, can we please add rob ron Valencia yeah it is what you're thinking and absolutely okay.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, I have part stop at 1140 so we should have plenty of time and.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, One that actually cloud. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Okay. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Actually, did you hear that yeah.

Okay. So we are going into executive session for an hour and five minutes from the items just discussed. No action will be taken at the end of that. So at the end, we will adjourn for the morning and see everybody back for a two o'clock meeting. Thank you all very much.