(The Center Square) – Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown issued a “State of Community Safety” address on Wednesday, updating residents on how her voter-approved sales tax will help mitigate crime downtown.
Voters approved her one-tenth of 1% sales tax last week, which will cost approximately $1 for every $1,000 spent. The city intends to use the revenue to bolster its public safety apparatus by providing additional funding to police, fire, municipal court and other departments.
Last month, the Spokane Police Department, Fire Department, Brown and others teamed up on a pilot program to tackle crime and other issues downtown. The officials are seeing the fruits of their labor but noted that it might take a while for additional impacts from the new tax revenue.
While Brown led the address, Police Chief Kevin Hall, Fire Chief Julie O’Berg and Dawn Kinder, director of the Neighborhood, Housing, and Human Services Division, conveyed the message.
“This initiative wasn’t just a police initiative. This involved fire. It involved housing. It involved behavioral health. It involved substance use treatment providers, a whole host of community partnerships and city departments,” Hall said. “The best way possible as we move forward is to look at this holistically as an all-government, all-community problem-solving initiative.
He noted that while downtown only represents about 2% of the city, it accounts for an inordinate amount of low-level crime. The four-week pilot resulted in roughly 200 contacts with 143 people, who account for over 2,000 arrests “over time,” though Hall didn’t clarify how long of a period.
Hall said the data gives SPD valuable insight into how it could carry out a high-utilizer program, targeting individuals who account for the most crime. He said that the top 15%, roughly 21 of the 143 people that SPD made contact with, accounted for over 1,100 arrests “over time.”
Simple and aggravated assaults did trend down slightly over the period, and while Hall isn’t sure why at this point, he said SPD is confident that there’s a correlation with the pilot program.
Brown’s new tax revenue will help Hall and SPD phase in seven new neighborhood resource officers and set up a hybrid traffic unit. Hall said it would rely on cameras and other technology to bridge the personnel and fleet gaps as the department adjusts its recruiting model.
O’Berg also touched on how the revenue will impact SFD, but like other departments, it will take time, even up to years, to realize the full benefits.
“It’s really important that we manage expectations,” she said.
The city could order a new fire engine and other fleet improvements tomorrow, but it would still have to wait up to two or three years before delivery. Capital isn’t always a quick turnaround; neither are new programs; both take time to stand up.
While it might be a while until Spokane sees its renewed and improved fire fleet, Spokane will see some investments in the not-so-distant future, such as the 2025 fire academy. The city previously postponed it due to the budget deficit, but the new revenue will pick it back up.
Kinder provided updates on Spokane’s housing and homelessness system, such as the new navigation center, the city’s inclement weather sheltering plan and different funding sources.
Spokane is in the middle of transitioning away from congregate shelters and toward a new scattered-site model. Kinder said there are currently three up and running and that the city is in talks with several providers and organizations to open more in the coming weeks.
Just before closing the address, Brown took a question about the possibility of tax proposals further driving up the cost of living. However, she didn’t answer directly; instead, focusing on the Community Safety sales tax’s slimmed-down approach compared to her prior property tax proposal.
“When I came into office, [I] put together a proposal that would have been a significant property tax levy, and wanted to do it all at once, basically eliminate our huge structural deficit of $25 million per year, as well as make all these public safety investments,” Brown said, “… but we heard right away that people just didn’t feel that fit within their budget. … The result of that is that many of these investments will take longer to realize. We are climbing out of that deficit, and we presented a balanced two-year budget, but it’s frustrating to not be able to make all the investments that we’d like to make right away.”
