December 2011 Newsletter
I hope everyone is taking some time to breathe deeply, experience the love of family and friends, and celebrate the season. I’ve enjoyed spending some down time with myfamily this past week. Santa stopped by, we ate lots of cookies, and baby Nora only got into the tree once when we weren’t looking! Here is a nice photo of us when we went to visit Santa. She’s growing so fast!
Important Council actions in Dec. 2011:
City Council passes 2012 Budget
On Monday, Dec. 5th, the City Council adopted a final 2012 budget. We closed a budget deficit of $8M by making cuts, realigning programs, and using a little over $1M in “one-time” reserve money. What difficult choices did we have to make?The Mayor presented a budget that made numerous reductions across city departments, but also cut three specific programs: Arts, Weights and Measures and Youth. The Council adopted a final budget that restored most, but not all, of the Arts Program, restored Weights and Measures, and reduced funding for Youth to $54,000 (with a $54,000 match by the County). This essentially eliminates the Youth “Department”, but continues funding the Chase Commission and its activities (BOBfest, Youth Issues Forum, Chase Youth Awards, etc). The city is working on next steps and will either grant the dollars directly to the Youth Commission for their use or release an RFP (request for proposals) for an outside agency to coordinate and support the activities of the Commission. The reason I supported this change is twofold: 1) the essential activities of the Chase Youth Commission to engage youth in civic leadership would be retained; 2) it gives the city an opportunity to partner with an organization that can provide new energy and resources to engage a larger and more diverse group of youth in Commission activities.The Council made a few other minor additions to the budget, including adding about $8K to the library budget to fund Worksource services to help citizens find jobs and increasing the Council office budget by about $35K to provide health benefits to City Council legislative assistants. Knowing cuts will be upcoming in the State budget, I made a successful motion to add $100K to another round of Human Services Grants in 2012 specifically aimed at organizations that provide access to health care. Also, the Council voted to put $615K in the City’s rainy day reserve fund in case of of future budget challenges.
Local 270 Contract Extension Approved
On December 12th, the Council had a full slate of issues to address, including a contract that would, for three years, put a pay freeze on about half of city workers in the Local 270 union. There has not been a contract in recent history that kept wages frozen for such a long period of time. I thought long and hard about my vote on this one. Could we wait and get a better deal under the new administration? Estimates provided to me by the city’s budget director showed this could save the city well over $2M in that three year period. By all accounts, this contract is a good deal for the city and I appreciate the union for understanding that our economy isn’t going to rebuild for several more years. I would have liked to see some more cost share of benefits by employees, but I’m confident that will come. I hope that the new mayor and unions will build a strong relationship and identify ways that our city can run more efficiently, keep the cost of benefits down, and improve the wellness of our workforce.
Complete Streets
If you tried to stay up Monday, Dec. 19th for our last Council meeting of the year, you were in for a long one. We deliberated until after 1:15am in the morning…but we got some important work done for the citizens of Spokane, including passing a complete streets ordinance. This ordinance, the culmination of over three years of work by grassroots citizens in our community, implements the objectives of our Comprehensive Plan. Now, if any major street work is done in our city (grind and overlay, complete rebuild), we must consider including the pedestrian, bike and other “complete” street elements that are specifically called for in our citizen-vetted plans. I appreciated the over 30 citizens who came down to testify — most in favor of including these street elements for safety, health and disabled access. I also appreciate that there is flexibility built into our ordinance that does not require the city to pay for changes to streetscape that would be cost-prohibitive. This is a positive step forward for a more inclusive, livable Spokane
. TBD street maintenance projects approved for 2012
The Council, acting as the Transportation Benefit District (TBD) Board, received a report and recommendations about how to best spend the revenue generated by the $20 car tabs from the Citizens Advisory Board on Dec. 19th. The citizens group recommended doing a mixture of additional arterial and residential street maintenance work. We approved the list of projects as presented (see full report). I want to extend my thanks to this group of citizens for working diligently to ensure these TBD dollars are spent wisely and I hope the new Mayor and councilmembers will support the value it can bring to our city.
View from the District
Public Development Authority Established for Northeast Spokane!:
After almost two years of working towards an economic development strategy for Northeast Spokane (industrial land east of the tracks in Hillyard), the City Council voted unanimously on Dec. 12th in support of establishing a Public Development Authority (essentially a private/public economic tool) in Northeast Spokane to help stimulate economic growth, complete infrastructure, and help grow new jobs. The targeted area is the industrial zone east of the railroad tracks in Hillyard, which is situated near key transportation corridors. Many, many thanks to the advisory board who is working on this project for their hard work in convincing the Council to make this move. I am very committed to this endeavor and I look forward to staying engaged in making things happen in 2012.
Amber’s Neighborhood Council Road Show - Look for me to give a brief update on Council activities and take input from citizens at the Hillyard/Bemiss/Whitman neighborhood CD Steering committee meeting on Thursday, Jan. 26th at the Northeast Community Center (time to be confirmed).
Sincerely,
Amber
P.S. Thank you for your continued input. I look forward to working with you for a better Spokane in 2012!