(The Center Square) – The Spokane City Council is considering expanding oversight for street projects after the estimated costs of rebuilding a major arterial road downtown rose nearly 80% in three years.
Spokane first identified the half-mile stretch of Spokane Falls Boulevard from Post to Division Street in the city’s six-year street program back in 2018.
By 2019, the project was expected to cost $8.1 million to repave the boulevard, repair sidewalks and do various lighting, cable, traffic signal and utility work.
City officials went back and forth on the scope for a few years, reducing it to planning and design work until 2023. At that point, the city started planning for construction again and adjusted cost projections down to $7.8 million for 2023 to 2028, which rose to $11.4 million in 2025 and now to $14.15 million.
Councilmember Michael Cathcart, the fiscal conservative on the dais, says it’s time for some oversight.
“Oftentimes, you know, these projects are put in place prior to, perhaps, really, truly knowing what those designs or design changes are going to be,” Cartcart said during a Monday committee meeting.
He proposed an ordinance that would require the Transportation Commission and the city council to sign off on any modifications to arterial projects beyond the adopted scope in the last six-year plan.
The idea also allows taxpayers to weigh in by requiring a public hearing before the council’s approval.
Councilmember Zack Zappone asked how many projects this proposal would have applied to in recent years, but Cathcart didn’t have a hard number. The fiscal conservative said he would find out, noting the importance of leaving these costly decisions to elected officials rather than “an unelected body.”
His ordinance says an arterial project is considered “significantly modified or changed” if city staff are proposing things outside of the adopted plan that would reduce or increase the number of lanes, alter the direction of travel, or are expected to raise projected costs by over 50% in any year of the project.
“What this is trying to achieve is putting these … significant changes in the hands of an elected body, who folks know they can connect with, reach out to, and ultimately hold accountable,” Cathcart said.
Monday’s proposal follows a presentation in January that considered reverting the roughly 3,000-foot section of Spokane Falls Boulevard to two-way traffic and determining how many lanes it should have.
The city’s 2026-2031 street plan doesn’t include either of these considerations in the project scope for the boulevard, nor does the 2027-2032 draft street plan.
While the current draft pushes completion of the half-mile stretch to 2029, it includes the same $14.15 million estimate as in the last adopted plan.
Even without lane or travel changes, the project’s estimated cost has increased 79.56% since 2023.
Meanwhile, highway construction costs only increased 20% to 30% from when the council adopted the $7.88 million projection in the summer of 2022 to last summer, the most recent federal data available.
Expanding the project scope now by adding or removing lanes and changing the direction of traffic could result in additional costs for taxpayers that the council hasn’t planned for or budgeted.
According to the street plan adopted last year, the city plans to pay for much of the project with street capital reserves.
The plan described the scope last summer as “Construct full-depth roadway and repair sidewalk. Replacement of lighting, communication conduit and cable, and traffic signals. Accessible Pedestrian Signals (APS) updates as appropriate. Integrated project with Water and Wastewater improvements.”
