A Guide to Voters’ Guides for the Rational Voter

Do your homework, fill out your ballot, and turn it in this weekend!

In my opinion the best positive voting guide is the progressivevotersguide.orgpublished by FUSE Washington. It provides reasoned recommendations for most of what might appear on your ballot anywhere in Spokane County (where I have studied it carefully) and beyond. Its limitation is that it doesn’t extend to recommendations for every small town and school board election, some of which, especially school boards, have highly contested and important races. Following my High Ground sign-off below I once again share the expanded recommendations of Petra Hoy.

NEGATIVE Voting Guides

There are three voting guides covering Spokane County that serve well to point out people for whom you probably do NOT want to cast a vote. All three might be useful for you to explore as you contemplate your choices. 

ONEThe Spokane GOP endorsements (aka those of the Spokane County Republican Party) found here: https://www.spokanegop.com/ are a good NEGATIVE guide. Last December the SpokaneGOP took a hard right turnand promptly went itself off the rails. The endorsement committee of the SpokaneGOP is now led by Rob Linebarger, notable for his extremism cloaked in his particular conception of Christianity. Consider this quote from the endorsement webpage stating the SpokaneGOP’s Mission:

to promote good government by Getting Republicans Elected at all levels, Support them, and Hold Them Accountable” once elected. The first step in this Mission is the process to either recruit, evaluate, and vett [sic] quality candidates who are challenging or running for an open seat or engage incumbents, evaluate their performance, and determine if further support is deserved.

Whoa! We support you and you will adhere to party ideology or we will replace you! That is a level of authoritarian-speak worthy of the Inquisition, not an American political party, especially one that elsewhere professes a “Big Tent” inclusiveness.

TWO: We Believe We Vote found here: https://webelievewevote.com/ . We Believe We Vote has a new director who has declared WBWV is a “ministry” (see “Notes” here), not a political PAC. As a result WBWV no longer reports to the Public Disclosure Commission, its donors are not named, and it insists that donors may claim an income tax deduction. Be sure to check out the “Core Beliefs and Position” under the “ABOUT” tab and click “VIEW SURVEY RESPONSES” for those candidates who filled out the survey. 

THREE: The Family Policy Institute of Washington Action (FPIWAction)’s recommendations for school board candidates available hereare also useful as a NEGATIVE guide. (For POSITIVE recommendations see below.) FPIW “is holding forums around the state to inform parents on what is really happening the Washington Education system.” These are called “Crises in Education Forums”. On the FPIW website a little digging will take you to a resource guide under “Education” that spells out “Inappropriate School Library Books” and a how-to guide to get them banned; the imagined horrors of Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE); and Resources on “Gender Theory”, including a guide written by Christopher Rufo. As a bonus, take note that FPIW recently acquired a new Executive Director, Pastor Brian Noble, who stepped down from his chairmanship of the SpokaneGOP to join FPIW. 

Do your homework, fill out your ballots, and turn them in. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Expanded Recommendations:

School board races are particularly fraught—and often challenging to research. The recommendations listed below for many of the school board contests in eastern Washington were assembled from a variety of sources by public school advocates led by Petra Hoy. (The municipal candidates recommended below are almost entirely in agreement with the Progressive Voters Guide. They are presented again as a bonus.)

Spokane County Candidates 2023

City of Spokane

Mayor: Lisa Brown Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.8.2023

Spokane City Council 

President: Betsy WilkersonVoters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.11.2023

District 1: Lindsey Shaw  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.29.2023

District 2: Paul Dillon Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.25.2023

District 3: Kitty Klitzke Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.18.2023

Cheney City Council

Position 2: Rebecca Long  Voters Guide Spokesman Review 10.10.2023

Position 6: Jacquelyn Belock  Voters Guide Spokesman Review 10.10.2023

City of Liberty Lake

Mayor: Cris Kaminskas  Voters Guide

Liberty Lake City Council

Position 1: Linda M Ball  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.15.2023

Position 3: Dan Dunne   Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 8.25.2023

Position 4: Travis Scott  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.10.2023

Position 5:     Annie Kurtz Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.21.2023

Position 6: Michael Hamblet  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.20.2023

Position 7: Teresa Tapao-Hunt  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.12.2023

Spokane Valley City Council

Position 6: Tim Hattenburg  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 2023  Spokesman Review 6.4.23  Spokesman Review 9.17.2023

Spokane Valley Fire Department

Commissioner #5: George Orr  Voters Guide  

Spokane County Water District 

Commissioner #3:  Mary Wissink Voters Guide

SPOKANE COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

Central Valley School District 

Director, District 1: Cindy McMullen  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.11.2023

Director, District 3: Debra L Long  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.24.2023

Director, District 4: Keith Clark  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.20.2023

Cheney School District

Director, District 2:   Elizabeth Winer  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.9.2023

Director, District 3:  Henry C. Browne Jr.  Voters Guide  

Director District 4:  John Boerger Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.29.2023

Director District 5:  Mitch Swenson  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.30.2023

Mead School Board 

District 2:  Denny Denholm Voters Guide Spokesman Review 9.10.2023  Spokesman Review 9.28.2023

District 3: Jaime Stacy Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.18.2023

District 4:  David Knaggs Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.10.2023

Spokane School Board District 81

Director Position 5:  Mike Wiser  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 2023 Spokesman Review 9.26.2023

Nine Mile Fall School District

Director Position 3:  Kirsten Foose  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.23.2023

Medical Lake School District

District 2:  Alexis Alexander  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.6.2023

District 3:  Laura Elliot Parsons  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.4.2023

District 4:  Ron Cooper Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.26.2023

Deer Park School District

District 5  Eric Keller  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.22.2023

STEVENS COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

MARY WALKER SD 207

District 3 Jim Cannon Voters Guide

KETTLE FALLS SD 212

Director At Large #4  Thomas (Chip) Johnson  Voters Guide

[District 3 Write-in candidate Debbie Stewart, recommended by a respected reader of The High Ground who is familiar with the race.]

BENTON COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

Kennewick School District 17

Director 3 Michael Connors Voters Guide

Director 5  Lisa Peppard  Voters Guide

Richland School District 400

Director No. 3  Chelsie Beck  Voters Guide

Director Nol 4   Katrina Waters Voters Guide

Director No. 5  Jill Oldson  Voters Guide

CHELAN COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

MANSON SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 19

Director District #2  Aurora Flores  Voters Guide

YAKIMA COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

WAPATO SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 207

Director, District 3  Maria Antonia R. Erickson  Voters Guide

Extra: Musings on the CVSD School Board Election

A Calm, Reasoned Voice in an School Board Electoral Storm

This is worth sharing. The letter was sent to me from several friends on the same day.

Musings on the CVSD School Board Election

Anny Case – October 20, 2023

Remember what our community was like before COVID? We loved our schools; in fact, many of you purchased your homes because you wanted your children to attend CVSD schools. Remember watching your children shine in the marching band? Tirelessly rehearse for a school musical? Remember your little ones over-the-moon excited for a field trip, a class party, or a science project?

As an education professor, I had heard about Central Valley School District’s reputation for academic quality, excellent teaching, and a strong, supportive community. But it wasn’t until my niece came to live with us her senior year and attended CVHS that I realized how special CVSD really is. The school administration, staff, and teachers welcomed us with open arms. We discovered high standards coupled with appropriate flexibility and expansive curricular and extracurricular opportunities. While finishing high school, my niece got licensed as an EMT after taking classes at  Spokane Valley Tech,  and her participation in CVHS’ school musical literally changed her life. Of course, our schools have never been perfect — problems abound in any public school system. But they were — and still are — pretty amazing.

Then  COVID and the culture wars came to town. Acrimony replaced compromise. Fear snuffed out optimism. Misinformation from all sides flooded in. Individually and collectively, we went through the wringer.  (Oh yeah — and the controversy over comprehensive sex education. Who could forget that?)

We are now at another crossroads.  We have, I believe,  six genuinely good people running for the Central Valley School Board. I am convinced that each one cares deeply about education, our children, and our community. Each one has a track record of unselfish service. In this way, we’re very fortunate.

It’s good to have fresh ideas and turnover in public service and I admire Barker, Brooks, and Jerdon for answering the call from their people to enter the race. I also admire Clark, Long, and McMullen for staying engaged — I wouldn’t have blamed them a bit for stepping down after enduring several of the most difficult years in education. People I know and love — and whom I will continue to love and respect — have lined up on both sides.

After studying, observing, discussing, and discerning, I am in strong support of Clark, Long, and McMullen. Here’s why.  I would like school boards to remain the last bastion of political civility, consensus, and compromise — an institution where community members of a variety of persuasions can come together, wrestle with challenges, and practice tolerance. Groups supporting Barker, Brooks, and Jerdon, however, have a very different vision. “Citizens for CVSD Transparency,’’ the organization affiliated with Barker, Brooks, and Jerdon,  is comprised of  a small group of passionate, well-intended individuals who were highly distraught by COVID, scared about exaggerated threats to their children’s safety and well-being, and fed by right-wing media’s relentless obsession with “woke agendas.” During COVID, they were angry about mask and vaccine mandates. In 2021, Rob Linebarger, who shows up on public disclosure documents as a regular contributor to Citizens for CVSD Transparency, went so far as to file a legal petition to recall Clark, Long, and McMullen. Based on frivolous claims, the suit was thrown out of court and he was sanctioned — but only after the district spent tens of thousands of dollars to set the record straight. The stated goal of Citizens for CVSD Transparency was to “elect new school board members to replace current members opposed to our values.” And here we are.

Although the school board technically is — and should remain — non-partisan, it’s interesting to consider how official endorsements have lined up. Republicans of Spokane County (the mainstream Republican group that broke off from the Spokane County Republican Party when it was taken over by ultraconservative Republicans), local leaders,  including Mary Kuney and  our past and current county sheriffs, Ozzie Knezovich and John Nowels, as well as the 4th district Democrats, and Cris Kaminskas (Liberty Lake Mayor) all support Clark, Long, and McMullen. The organizations for educators and staff representing CVSD employees endorse them, as do past CVSD superintendents. In other words, people who have a long history working with the current school board advocate for them staying on another term — not because they agree with every position the board has taken, but because they know they can work with them. They also recognize how Barker, Brooks, and Jerdon sometimes misrepresent and oversimplify how the school board operates, how school budgets work,  the role of parental involvement, and the process for policy setting. They also know that CVSD is made up of thousands of families with many different opinions on hot button issues. The ability and desire for peacemaking is paramount.

On the other side, Barker, Brooks, and Jerdon are endorsed by Citizens for CVSD Transparency, the Spokane County GOP and the Family Policy Institute of Washington. While these groups may share some values with the larger CVSD community around safeguarding children and maintaining parental influence in schools, they also represent some extreme positions and individuals that concern me. For example, the Family Policy Institute has direct connections to Matt Shea, a local politician and pastor who was expelled from the Republican Party for his link to domestic terrorism. On his own re-election website, it states “Matt Shea was the co-founder of the Washington Family Foundation, which later merged with the Family Policy Institute of Washington.” Moreover, when she was in the midst of her sex ed campaign, Barker was a guest on Matt Shea’s podcast and spoke at a gathering hosted by him where Shea introduced her as a “great patriot and a good friend.” Strangely, Barker put out a video denying any connection to Matt Shea. Perhaps she didn’t fully realize who he was and what he stands for. If so, she should explain that.

I am very confident that Barker, Brooks, and Jerdon would vigorously advocate for like minded families. However, given the company they have kept and things I heard them say at the League of Women Voters candidate forum, I am worried about tactics they might use. ( I don’t, however, think they would espouse violence and I doubt Brooks’ unwise statement about “civil war” was intended to be taken literally.) While I admire and respect Barker’s tireless advocacy to adopt sex ed policy and curriculum consistent with values and preferences held by herself and others, I was dismayed at the exaggeration, fear mongering, and inaccuracies swirling through that campaign. I’m also concerned that they speak about  “what parents want” as though “parents” in our community are one, unified group. I wonder if they would be willing to negotiate and compromise when one group of parents, for example, may want  comprehensive sex education (and there are many who do) and another parental group is adamantly opposed. They’re all parents who love their children! But instead of recognizing this reality, I feel that Barker, Brooks, and Jerdon have set up a false conflict between “parents” (meaning them and their allies) and the school board (because the board has a history of trying to build consensus among diverse swaths of the CVSD community).  

In short,  in the face of hotly contested opinions among good people, I strongly believe in the principle of “moderate and unify.”  I have seen Clark, Long, and McMullen do so repeatedly. It’s already hard enough to lead a public school system, teach and work in a school, and be a student in today’s complex and contentious world. It doesn’t seem wise to replace three members of the board (who represent different strands in  our community) with a block of three new, inexperienced directors (who represent one segment of our community and who have shared histories with groups and individuals further to the right than mainstream Republicans). Moreover,  if we learn from other communities who have tried similar experiments, it could lead to chaos and conflict and push out good, competent people working in the district.

Spokane County Measure 1 Doesn’t Measure Up

It is a blank check–send it back to the drawing board

If you live in Spokane County you will receive a ballot with (at least) one ballot measure: Measure 1, asking the voters to approve an increase in county-wide sales tax to be used for any of a wide range of purposes related to policing, incarceration, criminal justice, and “behavioral health”. (Note: this is NOT City of Spokane’s Proposition 1—Prop 1 relates to criminalizing homelessness within the city.)

Measure 1 is written to sound as though it would provide money for Spokane County and city governments within the county for efforts to improve criminal justice and behavioral health systems, but those are just among the efforts that could be funded. In failing to clearly state what portions of the new tax revenues would go to what purpose Measure 1 constitutes a blank check. The enabling legislation for Measure 1, Resolution No. 22-0824, was passed on December 13, 2022, solely by Spokane County Commissioners Al French and Josh Kerns—just eighteen days before the Spokane County Board of County Commissioners was expanded to five members from three. Commissioner Kuney was out of town. Nonetheless, within the three commissioner system, two commissioners constitutes a quorum for business. Here is the complete text of Resolution No. 22-0824 as originally passed by French and Kerns:

In the matter of calling an Election within Spokane County to be held on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, and submitting to Electors a Proposition to impose a Two-Tenths of One Percent (0.2%) Sales and Use Tax equal throughout Spokane County, as authorized by RCW 82.14.450, the proceeds to be used by the County, Cities and Towns within Spokane County for Criminal Justice, Public Safety, and Behavioral Health purposes.

Notice that, as passed, there is no mention whatsoever of building a new county jail or remodeling the old one. Nine different local organizations petitioned the Superior Court of Spokane County to require that the ballot language of Measure 1 acknowledge that money from this new sales tax would be, at least in part, spent on “building and improving jails or correctional facilities”. On Tuesday, August 29th, Superior Court Judge Tony Hazel ruled in favor of the petitioners. That’s what it took to overcome the original obfuscatory language of French and Kerns.

So that fixes it, right? Not so fast. A huge amount of ink and electrons has been spilled on how various people and officials imagine the proceeds of this new tax will be usedbut Measure 1’s only specifics are these, quoted directly from the Measure 1 language we voters are asked to approve. (See the whole text copied at the bottom of this post.):

…to be used by the County and Cities and Towns within Spokane County for criminal justice, public safety, and behavioral health purposes, including building and improving jails or correctional facilities

How much will be spent on a new jail? How much on a remodel of the current jail? How much on hiring more police or providing them with equipment (covered under “public safety”)? How much will be left over to spend on all the non-jail, non-police, criminal justice and “behavioral health” purposes? Measure 1 is silent. Measure 1 is a blank check to be filled in later by what are often the out-of-sight, out-of-mind majority votes of the County Commissioners and majority votes of the various municipal entities that will (by state law, RCW 82.14.450) receive 40% of the proceeds. 

Measure 1 is a provocative action by two conservative county commissioners in the waning days of the three member commission. It was intentionally vague in its first incarnation and it remains vague in its litigated form. Vote NO on Measure 1—and ask the Commissioners to go back to the drawing board and provide us with a proposal that specifies how the money will be apportioned between punitive and smart justice alternatives. Then, and only then, will I consider voting in favor.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. The “Explanatory Statement” in the voters guide (click it to read) makes it sound as though Commissioners French and Kerns had spent a great deal of time parsing out a variety of details to put in Measure 1. Why, one might ask, did they decide to apportion 60% of the proceeds to Spokane County and 40% (on a per capita basis) to the cities and towns of Spokane County? Why are certain motor vehicle purchases and leases exempt from the new tax? It turns out that all of that detail comes right out of the Revised Code of Washington, i.e. Washington State law, passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor in times past. Click RCW 82.14.450 to see the actual law that governs sales and use tax ballot measures that can be used by county governments in Washington State to raise money. Note that the RCW specifies that such ballot measures “must clearly state the purposes for which the proposed sales and use tax will be used”. It is fair to argue that French and Kerns’ Measure 1, even as modified by litigation, should fail based on the lack of such a “clear statement” alone.

Here’s the amended Measure 1 text, right out of the Voters’ Guide

[I’ve added relevant hyperlinks to basic documents. The hyperlinks are underlined.]:

Measure No. 1
Spokane County
Two-Tenths of One Percent Sales and Use Tax for Criminal Justice, Public Safety, Correctional Infrastructure, and Behavioral Health Purposes

The Board of County Commissioners adopted Resolution No. 22-0824concerning a sales and use tax increase pursuant to RCW 82.14.450.

If approved the County may impose an additional 0.2% county-wide sales and use tax, commencing April 1, 2024, and terminating December 31, 2054, to be used by the County and Cities and Towns within Spokane County for criminal justice, public safety, and behavioral health purposes, including building and improving jails or correctional facilities as provided in Resolution No. 22-0824.

Should this measure be approved?

School Board Elections

CVSD as an example of a broader extremist push

Last Monday evening, October 16th, the League of Women Voters held a student- moderated candidate forum for six candidates for three positions on the Central Valley School District (CVSD) Board of Directors. The forum was held atUniversity High School in Spokane Valley. The coverage in the Spokesman by Elena Perry was published the next day. It requires careful reading—and some background the article does not provide. The three culture war crusaders trying to gain majority control of the five member CVSDBoard presented themselves with varying degrees of moderation. Since the three already have an ally on the Board, Pam Orebaugh, a win by any two of them would produce a 3-2 majority and likely usher in a period of ongoing school board upheaval like that in Richland, Washington, and West Bonner County, Idaho

The three incumbent CVSD Directors, Debra Long, Keith Clark, and Cindy McMullen, have selflessly served CVSD long, well, and successfully. Serving as a School Board Director is an unpaid position traditionally undertaken by civic-minded individuals with a background and particular interest in education—not ideological culture warriors. 

The contest between incumbent Debra Long and challenger Stephanie Jerdon for the District 3 CVSD seat illustrates the hard right turn the SpokaneGOP took last December. Debra Long, a life-long Republican, was appointed as a Legislative District 4C leader in the Spokane County GOP in 2022. She served as the elected chair of the Republicans of Spokane County, a separate but related group of Republicans, from 2021-2023—and she now serves as vice chair of the same organization. In spite of that level of dedication and involvement in local Republican politics, Debra Long was replaced as 4C District leader by a Citizens 4 Liberty candidate in the SpokaneGOP’s purge of moderates last December. Her position was one of a number of casualties in the extremist makeover based on Steve Bannon’s “Precinct Strategy”. (See Rob Linebarger and the CVSD for more on Citizens 4 Liberty.)

This fall for the November election the SpokaneGOP endorsed all three challengers to the incumbents on the CVSD Board of Directors. Notably, the SpokaneGOP’s endorsement committee is led by Rob Linebarger. In the 2021 elections Linebarger was a conspicuous ally of Pam Orebaugh in that year’s attempt to take over the CVSD Board. Since 2021 Linebarger has doggedly pursued an effort to have a petition approved to gather signatures for a recall election of the incumbent Directors Long, Clark, and McMullen from the CVSD Board. His prime accusation: the incumbents followed state mandates during the Covid pandemic. The Spokane County Superior Court Judge was not impressed. Linebarger’s legal efforts have cost the Central Valley School District more than a hundred thousand dollars and vast amounts of time and effort. Now, while continuing his bogus legal efforts, Linebarger is behind the SpokaneGOP’s endorsement of the three challengers. 

All three of the challengers received support from “Citizens for CVSD Transparency”, an issue PAC that arose during the Covid pandemic and is supported by Linebarger.

Pay attention to the school board elections on your ballot. The integrity of the public schools depends on your attention and your vote. 

Below is a copy of an excellent Spokesman Review Guest Opinion on the topic of school board elections this fall. It is definitely worth your time in case you missed it in the Spokesman. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Protect our kids by paying attention to school board elections

By Randall B. Michaelis

Guest Opinion

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

The self-inflicted calamity we are witnessing in the West Bonner County School District and North Idaho College is moving to a district near you, courtesy of ideologically driven school board members. Our school board elections have serious consequences, which is why it is essential that level-headed citizens pay attention to the hotly contested school board races in our area. If we don’t, we will see Spokane area districts take similar paths to a crisis.

The Mead School District is at a crossroads. It already has two far-right board members and two more running this year on similar platforms. One of these board members, Michael Cannon, took the district on a wild goose chase last year rooting out the evils of critical race theory. The most disturbing part is not that CRT had never been taught in Mead nor were there plans for it to be taught. No, the most concerning aspect is that the proposal was lifted almost verbatim from far-right state and national political groups who have set their sights on taking over the public schools.

The other far-right Mead board member, BrieAnne Gray, raised over $42,000 in a successful bid for a seat on the board. How do you spend that much on a school board race? Glad you asked. Almost $30,000 went to an Arizona political strategy group specializing in running ultra-conservative candidates. Who is really in charge of the Mead board?

If Mead voters are not paying attention, they will have four far-right board members who will follow an agenda to remove anything that doesn’t fit their very conservative worldview. The board member who brought the CRT proposal claims he was just listening to concerned parents. It is more accurate to say that he was not listening to the needs of the district, but rather listening to his own far-right political agenda.

Mead isn’t the only district at a crossroads. Almost every district in the area has far-right candidates running this year. Voters should examine candidate statements carefully for code words they often use. They claim they want to rid schools of “culture wars.” That is code for they want to change the culture of the schools so that they are the only voice. NIC and West Bonner are prime examples of how they will end “culture wars” through the oppression of dissenting opinions.

“Parental rights” is another one. That sounds great until one examines just how that is playing out across the country. Far-right groups like the Moms of Liberty are pressuring board members to enact policies where a book or curriculum item can be blocked by the complaint of a single parent. Even if it is later returned to the shelves, the sheer volume of complaints means it was essentially removed from circulation. Examples of offending titles: “Whacky Wednesday” by Dr. Seuss; “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” by Judy Blume; “The Paper Bag Princess” by Robert Munsch (“Love You Forever” author). And my favorite, “No, David!” by Spokane native David Shannon for showing a bare cartoon butt.

Watch for statements saying schools should only teach facts and not indoctrinate students. Of course, they would control which facts are taught. Florida just put forth new social studies standards containing the language, “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Imagine a history teacher trying to assess students with this standard. “Class, what are the ways that slaves personally benefited from being owned by white people? Anyone? Anyone?”

Watch out for a manufactured crisis intended to emotionally incite voters and deflect from real problems. Politicians excel at this, but the governor of Florida has perfected this technique. The standards in Florida schools never included teaching about gender identity or sexual orientation in elementary grades. But state legislators passed laws to stop such teaching anyway. Based on the publicity of this legislation, many parents wrongly assumed these topics were routinely taught in elementary schools.

Candidates will often tell us they want to bring “change.” But their statements give scant information on what they will bring to the board, and a lot on what they are against. Candidates with hidden agendas will not benefit Spokane area schools.

Change can be good, but if your district is running well and you have board members who understand their role as nonpartisan public servants, then now is not the time to gamble on the kinds of changes these far-right candidates will bring.

Watch carefully. We don’t need more ideology; we need levelheaded dedicated board members. Our kids have a lot to lose.

Randall B. Michaelis lives in the Mead School District. He retired in June 2022 as dean of the School of Continuing Studies and Graduate Admissions at Whitworth University, where he was on the faculty of the School of Education at Whitworth University. He also taught elementary school and has served on both state and district curriculum committees – mostly in math and technology.

Voters’ Guides and Tips

Your Ballot Is in the Mail

Ballots in Washington State for the Tuesday, November 7th, Election should appear in your mailbox by tomorrow, Saturday, October 21st, or at the latest by early next week. These are the “non-partisan” municipal and school board elections with a few ballot measures sprinkled in—just the sort of off year election that historically garners little attention and low voter turnout. Don’t let that happen this year. Thanks to Republican culture war operatives, think Christopher Rufo (anti-“CRT” and DEI) and Steve Bannon (the “Precinct Strategy”), the future of public education is at stake—as is control of many local governments.

Doing your homework, filling out your ballot, and turning it in this weekend has many advantages, including these: closer to the election deadline you won’t be wondering where you put your ballot—and the sooner you submit your ballot the fewer pesky phone calls you’ll receive urging you to vote. (The fact that your ballot was received, but NOT for whom you voted, is public knowledge.)

These odd-numbered year elections are nominally “non-partisan”, so we don’t have “Prefers _______ Party” following each candidate’s name for orientation, something some ideological candidates seek to exploit. (For example, Katey Treloar, candidate for City of Spokane City Council District 2 [South Hill], fields blue campaign signs that proclaim “supported by Democrats and Republicans” while she raises record amounts of money from Republican interest groups and the endorsing “Democrats” are never identified.]

My go-to voters’ guide is the progressivevotersguide.com powered by FUSE Washington. I encourage you to read FUSE’s well-considered recommendations. The only problem I find with The Progressive Voters Guide is that it doesn’t go all the way down ballot to those extremely important (especially this year) school board races. It also misses some important municipal races among the smaller cities and towns. (See below for recommendations in many of those local races.)

Ballot Measures

I will vote NO on the City of Spokane’s Proposition 1 for reasons I detailed here. Proposition 1 pretends to “protect children” by establishing an unworkable anti-camping law based on a 1000 radius from “any public or private school, public park, playground, or licensed child care facility”. Those radii cover more than 60% of ground area of the city, guaranteeing an expensive court battle paid for with our tax dollars. Furthermore, neither potential homeless campers nor the police charged with enforcement will have any clarity on the boundaries. 

I will also vote NO on Spokane County’s Measure 1. Measure 1 was put on the ballot as a last ditch effort by County Commissioners Al French and Josh Kerns a month before the Commission expanded from three to five members. Measure 1 pretends to raise money for a broad range of criminal justice efforts—but, since the specifics are slim, the likelihood is that the majority of the money will go to doubling the capacity of the County jail. Note that nearly all of the people incarcerated in the county jail system are people accused of crimes and unable to make bail, not convicted criminals serving court ordered sentences. On that observation alone it seems that the money would be better spent on bail reform and efforts to speed up the court system. Measure 1 increases the sales tax, a notably regressive tax (putting the greater burden on those who can least afford it), without clearly delineating how the money will be spent. Vote NO. Later, I will gladly support a tax to fund a clearer plan. Measure 1 is a blank check. I’m reminded of “If you build it, they will come [they will fill it]” when contemplating additional jail cells. 

School Boards

School board races are particularly fraught—and often challenging to research. The recommendations listed below for many of the school board contests in eastern Washington were assembled from a variety of sources by public school advocates led by Petra Hoy. Much effort was made to screen out candidates whose rhetoric and endorsements suggested sentiments derived from the right wing culture war issues of “liberal indoctrination”, “CRT”, “DEI”, book bans, so-called “parental rights”, anti-sex ed, and opposition to the state level Covid pandemic rules. Much of this encapsulates the agenda of “Moms For Liberty”, a right wing astroturf group designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Spokane County Candidates 2023

City of Spokane

Mayor: Lisa Brown Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.8.2023

Spokane City Council 

President: Betsy WilkersonVoters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.11.2023

District 1: Lindsey Shaw  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.29.2023

District 2: Paul Dillon Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.25.2023

District 3: Kitty Klitzke Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.18.2023

Cheney City Council

Position 2: Rebecca Long  Voters Guide Spokesman Review 10.10.2023

Position 6: Jacquelyn Belock  Voters Guide Spokesman Review 10.10.2023

City of Liberty Lake

Mayor: Cris Kaminskas  Voters Guide

Liberty Lake City Council

Position 1: Linda M Ball  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.15.2023

Position 3: Dan Dunne   Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 8.25.2023

Position 4: Travis Scott  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.10.2023

Position 5:  Annie Kurtz Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.21.2023

Position 6: Michael Hamblet  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.20.2023

Position 7: Teresa Tapao-Hunt  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.12.2023

Spokane Valley City Council

Position 6: Tim Hattenburg  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 2023  Spokesman Review 6.4.23  Spokesman Review 9.17.2023

Spokane Valley Fire Department

Commissioner #5: George Orr  Voters Guide  

Spokane County Water District 

Commissioner #3:  Mary Wissink Voters Guide

SPOKANE COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

Central Valley School District 

Director, District 1: Cindy McMullen  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.11.2023

Director, District 3: Debra L Long  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.24.2023

Director, District 4: Keith Clark  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.20.2023

Cheney School District

Director, District 2:   Elizabeth Winer  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.9.2023

Director, District 3:  Henry C. Browne Jr.  Voters Guide  

Director District 4:  John Boerger Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.29.2023

Director District 5:  Mitch Swenson  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.30.2023

Mead School Board 

District 2:  Denny Denholm Voters Guide Spokesman Review 9.10.2023  Spokesman Review 9.28.2023

District 3: Jaime Stacy Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.18.2023

District 4:  David Knaggs Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.10.2023

Spokane School Board District 81

Director Position 5:  Mike Wiser  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 2023 Spokesman Review 9.26.2023

Nine Mile Falls School District

Director Position 3:  Kirsten Foose  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.23.2023

Medical Lake School District

District 2:  Alexis Alexander  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.6.2023

District 3:  Laura Elliot Parsons  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 10.4.2023

District 4:  Ron Cooper Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.26.2023

Deer Park School District

District 5  Eric Keller  Voters Guide  Spokesman Review 9.22.2023

STEVENS COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

MARY WALKER SD 207

District 3 Jim Cannon Voters Guide

KETTLE FALLS SD 212

Director At Large #4  Thomas (Chip) Johnson  Voters Guide

BENTON COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

Kennewick School District 17

Director 3 Michael Connors Voters Guide

Director 5  Lisa Peppard  Voters Guide

Richland School District 400

Director No. 3  Chelsie Beck  Voters Guide

Director Nol 4   Katrina Waters Voters Guide

Director No. 5  Jill Oldson  Voters Guide

CHELAN COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

MANSON SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 19

Director District #2  Aurora Flores  Voters Guide

YAKIMA COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD RACES

WAPATO SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 207

Director, District 3  Maria Antonia R. Erickson  Voters Guide

Homelessness in Spokane Broadly Considered

The Catholic Charities Analysis

I linked to this pamphlet last week on Wednesday. Today I present a complete copy in the hope that my readers will shared it widely. The article puts the visible homelessness of downtown Spokane into perspective of the larger issue—and it highlights (without exactly saying so directly) the ineptitude and hollow political posturing of the City of Spokane’s current mayor.

Last Sunday, October 15th, the Spokesman carried Shawn Vestal’s front page article centering this Catholic Charities pamphlet, making the pamphlet an even more essential read. 

One paragraph from near the end of the document copied below stood out for me:

Homelessness is a solvable problem. The idea that “this can’t be solved…it’s too big of a problem and there’s no way to fix it” is simply not true. We can drop a Mars rover on a dime 60 million miles away and we can read the entire Library of Congress on our cell phones…of course we can solve homelessness in this country and in this community.

Read, ponder, and vote accordingly. We are better than the inadequate, reactive, punitive response to homelessness that we have seen over the last four years out of the Woodward administration.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Everything below is copied directly from the Catholic Charities pamphlet. It is NOT my writing even though some of the material lacks the customary left-sided vertical quote bar. (Putting the quote bar in a document with bullet points is beyond me.) Rob McCann, president and CEO of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington, is the likely lead author (although his authorship is not specified). Note that you could also access the original by clicking the title below. 

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT:
CATHOLIC CHARITIES HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS SERVICES

INTRODUCTION:

Homelessness has become one of the biggest, most talked about, most argued about issues of our community in the past four years. The overwhelming majority of the region identifies homelessness as the top issue in local politics, news cycles, and community conversations. We all care about the issue of homelessness, and we care about the people who struggle with that circumstance.

In this public discourse, almost all the focus is actually only on the smallest segment of people experiencing homelessness. People visibly in homelessness. The people we see on the streets, camped under railroad bridges, in alleys. The people we see when we drive to work or go to dinner and a movie downtown. The people we saw at Camp Hope for over a year. These are the people visibly in homelessness. For better or for worse, this is the group of people we are really talking about, worrying about, arguing about.

Most of us will actually never see or encounter the overwhelming majority of the people who experience homelessness locally.

There are likely over 7,000 people experiencing homelessness in our region. They are individuals and families who are doubled or tripled up in a multi-generational house or an apartment. They are couch surfing, bouncing between friends and families, a few months here, a few months there. They are living in old RVs or campers on cinder blocks behind a friend’s house. They are living in their cars or vans.

This group of somewhat invisible folks is by far the biggest group of those experiencing homelessness. One school district in our region reported well over 3,000 students who had experienced this kind of homelessness recently. And that’s only one school district. Every school district, every neighborhood, every town, every part of our region has members of this homeless group. However, this group does not present a direct threat to retail, quality of life, businesses, commercial real estate, or downtown business profits. This group does not represent a threat to elected officials or their campaigns. This group does not meet the threshold for being newsworthy enough, controversial enough, divisive enough, or sensational enough for local media or social media and as a result this group hardly exists for most in our region. But it is a very real group, living a chaotic existence marked by suffering and distress.

These are not the people that receive all the attention. For all intents and purposes, the people we are talking about most of the time when we discuss this issue are the people visibly in homelessness.

However, within the group of the visible homeless, which is itself a very small fraction of all people experiencing homelessness, is yet another even smaller group.  This is the tiny subset that really gets the greatest amount of attention and perhaps the focal point of the community’s fear, anger, and concern. This is the group that sometimes chooses to engage in dangerous, criminal activities. This small portion of the visible homeless population is the group that seems to concern us the most; this small group of maybe a few dozen people is the group that flashes into all of our minds when we think about and talk about the entire “homeless population” in our region.

In truth, what we are most often talking about and concerned about is actually a very small fraction of a very small subset of the overall homeless population. That reality is one of the most essential and most troubling elements of this entire conversation. We need to care about and intentionally address the other, much larger, invisible group of homeless because these are the children, teens, adults, and families that will continue to enter the visible street homeless population if we don’t focus on them too. We also need to care about and intentionally address the otherwise compliant and well-behaved majority of the visible street homeless population.

Finally, for this smallest group—that visible street homeless group who also choose to continue to be a danger to themselves or to others, and who continue to sometimes engage in overt criminal activity—we need to support law enforcement interventions, corrective and restorative justice interventions, and most importantly, behavioral health treatment interventions.

FACTS ABOUT CATHOLIC CHARITIES & THOSE WE SERVE:

  • Catholic Charities serves more than 55,000 people each year in 15 different programs at 102 locations in 13 counties across Eastern Washington. The overwhelming majority of our clients are served through maternity support programs, senior services, counseling, emergency assistance (rent, utilities, gas, food), childcare centers, food security programs, immigration legal services, disaster relief, and the Christmas Bureau.
  • 97.8% of the people we serve are individuals, families, children, seniors, people with disabling conditions, veterans, farm workers, immigrants, and other people suffering the general day to day effects of inter-generational poverty. Only 2.2% of all the clients we serve are actually in homelessness when they engage in our services.
  • Catholic Charities owns and operates over 3,000 units of housing. Most of those units are basic affordable housing for families, the working poor, people with disabilities, seniors, and veterans. 5,145 men, women, and children will put their heads on Catholic Charities pillows tonight. Of our 67 apartment communities, 6 serve single adults who have exited from homelessness – that is only 310 units out of 3,000+ total units. These supportive housing communities have mental health & substance use disorder counseling on site, as well as security staff, life skills training staff, case management staff, property management staff, maintenance staff, healthcare coordinator staff, and other staff whose job is to help single adults coming out of homelessness to find safety, sobriety, employment, and an overall more stable life.
  • Our Homelessness Service programs are highly effective. In 2022, we exited 771 people from homelessness, and we diverted 2,873 people from ever entering into homelessness in the first place.
  • In Eastern Washington, close to 23% of the population lives at or below the federal poverty line, meaning they are often one broken down car, one unexpected medical bill, one lost shift at work, one surprise rent increase, or one family financial emergency away from becoming homeless themselves. In just the past five years, rents in the greater Spokane region for low income individuals and families have gone up nearly 50%, and have in some cases doubled. That reality, coupled with the fact that there is a massive housing shortage of close to 10,000 units needed in our region, has placed a large segment of the population at risk to lose their housing stability at any moment or be priced out of housing completely.
  • Spokane’s homeless system is helping more people than ever before, and homelessness is still rising. The increase in people experiencing homelessness is directly caused by rising housing costs. In 2018, a household needed an annual income of $26,000 to afford a one-bedroom apartment. In 2022, that same household would need to have an annual income of $37,000, a 42% increase over four years. Homelessness has increased 52% during that same period of time. There is a massive shortage of housing inventory. The working poor and low-wage members of our community simply cannot find landlords who will rent to them or housing they can afford. There has been a massive increase in untreated and undertreated mental health illnesses in recent years. There has also been a massive increase in addiction and crime that comes with the recent fentanyl explosion in our midst. All of these realities factor into the increase in homelessness we have seen, especially the increase in those visibly experiencing homelessness. Every single one of these problems is solvable if our community and our elected officials have the conviction to do it.

FACTS ABOUT CATHOLIC CHARITIES’ HOMELESSNESS PROGRAMS:

  • Catholic Charities operates five emergency shelter environments, designed to serve five different populations. All five have zero tolerance for possession or use of drugs/alcohol on site. Two of the five shelter environments carry specific emphasis on recovery, and one of the five requires people staying in the shelter to be actively engaged in recovery and sober living. We operate several different shelter models very intentionally—because every person’s circumstances are different and because choice is a key component of human dignity. The overwhelming majority of shelter clients have respected our rules and behaved appropriately in our shelters for more than 50 years.
  • Catholic Charities owns and operates five “Haven” properties in downtown Spokane for people who have exited from homelessness and want stable, supportive housing with comprehensive services onsite. These properties seem to get the most attention of any of our 67 properties because, often, that smallest group of homeless persons who refuse our help and who are engaging in dangerous or criminal activities congregate in front of these properties trying to gain entry or prey on our residents. All of our downtown single adult Haven properties have 50 units each and all are within a block or two from the House of Charity. Each Haven has mental health & substance use disorder counseling on site, as well as security staff, life skills training staff, case management staff, property management staff, maintenance staff, healthcare coordinator staff and other staff and volunteers whose job is to help single adults coming out of homelessness to find safety, sobriety, and employment, and begin an overall more stable life. Each Haven property has comprehensive house rules and expectations surrounding behavior, crime, drugs, and any activity that presents a risk to the community. All residents agree to follow these rules when they sign their lease and move in. If they break these rules, they immediately become at risk of being evicted.
  • Our shelters and our housing work—and people who move into our housing make great strides toward healthier, more stable lives:
    • ​In our downtown Haven properties, 93% of residents maintain their housing for two years or longer.
    • 86% of residents engage in on-site services provided by our staff.
    • After one year of housing, our residents show a 33% drop in vulnerability measures.  This translates to better health, higher levels of self-sufficiency, lower reliance on emergency public services, and increases in income.
    • After one year of housing, our residents increase their income by over $700 per month on average.
  • Our Havens use Housing First principles, which we are required to follow by federal, state, and local funders—including the City of Spokane. Housing First is an approach that prioritizes housing for people experiencing homelessness, where safe housing becomes a platform where basic needs are met, and from which people can access the services and supports they need to pursue goals and move toward healthier lives. Until a chronic street homeless individual or family is stably housed and knows where their next meal is coming from, where they will sleep each night, and where they can go to a safe “home”, it is very difficult for them to focus on the work of addressing the challenges in their lives that might have caused them to become homeless. This all begs the question of why some groups continue to say that “housing first is a failure,” citing “studies” that show that homelessness has increased in the U.S. since the Housing First program was started nationally. Homelessness has increased in our country in the past 20 years. There is no doubt about that. However, that increase is not due to the fact that more housing for the homeless has been built. That is simply illogical and inaccurate. Homelessness has increased nationally due to many documented, common-sense realities including increased costs of housing, housing inventory shortages, unemployment and under-employment, lack of living wages, economic events such as recessions and inflation, increases in untreated substance use disorders nationally (cocaine, meth, opioid, and fentanyl crises in the past decades), and the COVID pandemic.
  • Nobody WANTS to be living on the street. Sadly, elevating the idea that some people want to be in homelessness has become a convenient way to avoid the responsibility the community has to care for people with serious medical illnesses. The overwhelming majority of people experiencing homelessness in the Spokane region want to change their circumstances. They want access to quality medical care, and they want to be on a path to stable, permanent housing. There is a small percentage of that population who choose to refuse shelter or housing options and unfortunately engage in inappropriate and sometimes criminal activity that harms themselves and others. This group is an extremely small subset of the overall population experiencing homelessness; however, they are often highly visible, highly mobile, highly active, and highly problematic throughout downtown Spokane. Not surprisingly, the entire population of people experiencing homelessness is often unfairly painted by and identified with this very small group of very ill and very troubled people.
  • It is this small group that can often be seen loitering on the street in front of or near our Haven Properties because this group is often trying to sneak into these properties, where they can target our vulnerable residents who are trying to stabilize their lives. We engage with this group of 40-60 individuals on a daily basis. We invite them to come inside the House of Charity and get a meal, a bed, a shower, and other services. We invite them to allow us to help them get the behavioral health services that could help them. We invite them to work with us to let us get them into emergency housing and permanent supportive housing. Unfortunately, they refuse and often continue to camp and loiter in the vicinity. Unfortunately, they also often engage in unsafe and criminal activity that harms themselves and others, especially our House of Charity clients and staff as well as our Haven residents and staff. For this group, or for any person (homeless or otherwise) who engages in unsafe and criminal activity, we believe that there should be an immediate engagement from law enforcement and the criminal justice system.
  • Unfortunately, our local law enforcement, which we believe does a very good job for our community, is under resourced. Due to changes in state and local laws as well as lack of behavioral health inpatient beds and other appropriate beds for community safety, the criminal justice system is often unable to arrest or detain many of the very troubled persons who linger around our properties or in the downtown core and engage in criminal activity that threatens our clients, our staff, our residents, and the entire Spokane community.
  • Catholic Charities invests over $1 million per year on safety and security in and around our facilities, including safety/security personnel, access control, and surveillance camera systems. We have asked law enforcement and local government for assistance repeatedly over the past two years. However, a very small number of bad actors with unfortunate criminal intentions have continued to present significant challenges to the community at large and to our work to feed the hungry, heal the hurting, and welcome the stranger.
  • We often hear the concern that our work serving the poor “attracts more homeless to Spokane.”  Federally mandated Point in Time data as well as our own internal data tracking indicate clearly that over 80% of the chronic street homeless single adults in our region were born and raised within 75 miles of downtown Spokane. These are members of our community. For many years, the continual myths and stories of other cities like Portland and Seattle “busing their homeless to Spokane because we have more services” has been proven false time and time again. The idea that we have too many services for the homeless in Spokane, and that these services attract people from out of state, is not supported by data or our day to day knowledge of this population. More importantly, from the moral, ethical, and religious framework we embrace from Catholic Social Teaching, we consider it important to share that we believe that every human person is made in the image and likeness of God, and as such deserves dignity, respect, and compassion. For Catholic Charities, it does not matter if you are from Spokane, or Syracuse or Syria, if you are hungry, we are going to feed you. If you are hurting, we are going to help you heal. If you are homeless, we are going to try to offer you a bed.
  • We often hear the concern that “you are enabling people who are still drinking or using drugs.”  Again, all our shelters have zero tolerance for drug or alcohol use or possession on site. We feel strongly that people struggling with active addiction absolutely deserve the dignity of a bed, a meal, a shower, and a path to treatment—even if they are not ready for it. When a person moves into one of our Haven properties, we expect that they will engage in services (mental health and substance use disorder) and begin to reduce their self-harm. If they engage in behavior that presents a danger to themselves and others, their continued housing becomes at risk.
  • We enable human dignity first and foremost. We believe that no human being, regardless of any self-identity markers, factors, or conditions they may present with, should ever have to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom outdoors in the richest country in the history of the world.

HOUSE OF CHARITY 2.0

  • There has been a great deal of discussion about relocating the House of Charity to well outside the downtown core—a project called House of Charity 2.0.  Here are the facts on the project​​​
    • In the spring of 2022, the City of Spokane encouraged Catholic Charities to begin working on a plan to potentially relocate the House of Charity out of the current downtown location. Our underlying principle in taking on the project was, and remains, an effort to continuously improve the quality and effectiveness of services for people in the community who need to access shelter services.
    • Last year Catholic Charities signed a Letter of Interest with the City of Spokane that included our intention to find a new location and to design, build, and operate a new shelter.
    • Since the spring of 2022, CCEW has identified three different sites well outside of the downtown core and has spent over $50,000 on costs such as Phase I environmental work on the sites, architectural design for a new facility, and contractor pricing.
    • All three sites identified by Catholic Charities were shovel ready, zoned correctly, and viable for the project. Two of those sites were rejected outright by the mayor. The third site was determined to be too close to the end of the Spokane Airport runway to be an appropriate location to provide adequate care and human dignity.
    • In the past year, Catholic Charities has on multiple occasions requested that the city:  (a) provide a listing of all city owned property so that Catholic Charities could investigate more sites; (b) provide basic information about where the funding for construction and operation of a new shelter was going to come from within the city; and (c) to reimburse Catholic Charities for the $50,000+ that has already been spent on securing sites and designing the facility. To date, Catholic Charities has not received substantive action on any of those requests from the mayor or her leadership team. As a result, there has been no movement whatsoever on relocating the House of Charity.

SOLUTIONS FOR A HEALTHY EASTERN WASHINGTON

Homelessness is a solvable problem. The idea that “this can’t be solved…it’s too big of a problem and there’s no way to fix it” is simply not true. We can drop a Mars rover on a dime 60 million miles away and we can read the entire Library of Congress on our cell phones…of course we can solve homelessness in this country and in this community.

To solve this problem, as a community:

  1. We need more units of housing. We need to either build more housing or repurpose more buildings and hotels into housing for people coming out of homelessness. It is difficult, if not impossible, to help people stabilize from behavioral health issues until they have a roof over their heads, a front door, and a safe place to live. We need to build homes and apartments for all levels of the community. We need more workforce and affordable housing, not just for the homeless and for the poorest of the poor, but for the working poor, young families, first-time renters, and every stratum of our community. There is not enough housing for the homeless or for the lowest-income members of our community because there is also not enough housing for the working poor, the middle class, for young people just starting out in life, for seniors, for everyone. There is too much stress on the housing market because of a profound lack of inventory overall. This makes affordable housing impossible to find. Exploding home and rental prices makes the problem even worse and forces more people at the lower ends of the economy into housing instability, doubling and tripling up, couch surfing, and becoming part of the visible street homeless.
  2. We need more inpatient residential behavioral health treatment beds. The untreated and undertreated diseases surrounding mental health and addiction have reached a crisis level. When mental health struggles are not treated early on, fragile people become more unstable as they age. Then it is often not long before those fragile people begin to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. That path, especially when it leads to substance abuse, almost always ends up in unemployment, food insecurity, the loss of custody of children, the loss of support systems, the breaking of families, and ultimately homelessness. We need more facilities where vulnerable people can receive treatment for these behavioral health issues in a residential setting. Mental health and addiction treatment beds are almost non-existent in our community. With more beds in this area, we can help people get well, get stable and get on a path to housing and employment.
  3. We would be interested in moving the House of Charity out of the downtown core. When we built it 24 years ago it was in a forgotten, abandoned part of downtown which has now been turned into the University District. We have wanted to relocate the House of Charity. We have tried for 18 months to do this. A more trauma-informed, less congregate, “dorm like” setting is needed that allows for more personalized spaces, more treatment beds, more medical respite beds, and more homeless hospice beds. A relocated House of Charity will need continual bus service so clients can continue to access services in other parts of the region. We have had a Letter of Interest in place with the city for 18 months to move the House of Charity out of downtown. Catholic Charities has spent a great deal of time and money to design a new facility and plan for this move. We have identified multiple sites that were zoned correctly and appropriately located. We have asked the city to respond to us with basic requests to move this project forward. Unfortunately, there has not been any genuine or meaningful movement from the city’s leadership to proceed with this proposed relocation, but we are still prayerfully hopeful.
  4. We need to encourage all of our elected officials and all of our local governments to make data-driven, outcomes-based, trauma-informed decisions about how to spend tax dollars in our community. The combined budgets of the City of Spokane, Spokane County, Airway Heights, Liberty Lake, and the City of Spokane Valley are well over $3 billion per year. Homelessness is a regional problem that requires a regional solution, such as a Regional Authority, that makes collaborative decisions to mobilize the resources needed to address this problem. Decisions about how to spend federal and state homelessness dollars locally is only one part of this essential decision-making process. Our local governments also need to look at zoning laws, land use, combatting the “not in my backyard” ideologies, and other issues that affect the community’s ability to locate essential services and housing that help people exit from, and avoid, homelessness. We also need to find more reasonable and effective ways to address criminal challenges. This will take elected leaders, law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and the community working together to find better paths forward.
  5. We need to stop criminalizing and vilifying the poor and people experiencing homelessness. It has become a divisive issue in our community, and although the overwhelming majority of our community are kind, generous, compassionate people, we cannot fall victim to the small percentage of the community that wants to use fear, anger, and hate to drive our perceptions and actions when it comes to addressing homelessness. We need to prioritize both human dignity and accountability for all segments of our community, including people who use services, homeless service providers, the business/real estate communities, and other key stakeholders. We can’t listen to the voices that want us to blame people in homelessness themselves. We can’t be seduced by the ideological voices that tell us “it’s their own fault…they haven’t tried hard enough or worked hard enough.” We can’t listen to the voices that want us to be angry at or blame the service providers who dare to feed, shelter, or house the homeless. At the same time, we also can’t listen to the voices that want to tell us that “anything goes” and “this is America – we need to let everyone make whatever choices they want to make and do whatever they want wherever they want” regardless of how it may allow people to become a danger to themselves or others.”  The answer is in the compassionate, reasonable middle.

Larry Stone, TRAC, and the “Curing” Videos

The Promotion of Mis-information and self interest

Larry Stone’s latest video opens with a simplistic lie. A deep-voiced male narrator intones:

In Washington State, akin to Oregon and California, the allowance of camping on public property and open drug use in cities has resulted in a surge of homelessness, escalating crime rates, business closures, and compromised public safety. 

It is an absurd proposition on its face. The narrator asserts that the surge in homelessness many cities have seen in recent years is the result of people being “allowed” to camp and use drugs in the open. I have a stable place to live—and I am going to abandon that shelter to take up life on the streets because government now allows me to camp and openly use drugs on city property? Really? Consider the absurdity. 

Mr. Stone follows up with an interview of a homeless woman who declares that being homeless is “a piece of cake”. Could he find a homeless person living on the streets of Spokane for this insight? Apparently not, since the interviewee is one individual on the streets in Portland, Oregon. The whole eight minute video, “Curing a Broken Spokane”, goes on like this. How many people click and watch this slick bit of propaganda uncritically, nodding their heads? Impossible to know, but, as of last Saturday, it had racked up 10,446 “views”. 

The difference between run-of-the-mill disinformation and Mr. Stone’s latest polemic video is simply this: Larry Stone happens to have a quarter of a million dollars to promote incarceration for homeless people—his cure. His motivation? Five years ago he felt threatened by “five or so ‘rough-looking people’” hanging out near an ATM he wished to access across from the STA Bus Plaza. The fear and discomfort he felt drove him the next year (2019) to finance the production and provide the narrative for the YouTube video “Curing Spokane”. “Curing Spokane” is a 17 minute, slickly produced polemic posted just before the last City of Spokane mayoral election in 2019. Stone modeled his video after “Seattle Is Dying” a similar polemic composed by KOMO News in advance of the Seattle municipal elections. 

Stone (and KOMO) circumvented election law by not openly promoting a candidate by name, although it was perfectly clear that Stone was backing candidate Nadine Woodward. Arguably, Stone’s video may have made the difference in the close election as uncritical potential voters absorbed Stone’s message.

Stone is a developer with a substantial financial interest in the outcome of this November’s election. Don’t let him determine that outcome. 

On October 12 the Inlander published an article by Nate Sanford on Larry Stone, an article well worth every voter’s time to read. I have taken the liberty of copying it below. (I encourage you to click on the title for the article and associated photo.)

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Who is Larry Stone and why is he spending so much money trying to influence Spokane politics?

By Nate Sanford

October 12, 2023

Larry Stone is a unique force in Spokane politics.

He’s a major donor to conservative causes that fund attack ads against progressive politicians. This summer, he paid for the signature-gathering efforts that put the initiative to ban homeless camping within 1,000 feet of schools, parks and child care facilities on this year’s Nov. 7 ballot.

All told, the businessman, developer, manufacturer and lifelong Spokanite has spent at least $223,400 on independent expenditures and direct contributions this election cycle.

And that’s not counting advertising and production costs for his two recent big-budget videos attacking the Spokane City Council over bus lanes and homelessness — expenditures that Stone says don’t need to be reported to the state Public Disclosure Commission because the videos aren’t directly advocating for a candidate.

Stone’s outsized role in local politics makes a lot of people on the left uncomfortable. Council President Lori Kinnear describes it as “disturbing.”

“I’ve watched this escalate over the years not really understanding, ‘What’s his endgame?'” Kinnear says. “What does he really want to have happen here?”

Critics argue that Stone is using his wealth to push misinformation and an agenda that’s hostile to homeless people. There’s also a maze of conflict-of-interest questions and allegations of poor conditions at the warehouse on East Trent Avenue that Stone owns and leases to the city for use as a 350-bed homeless shelter. (“It’s actually nicer than my fraternity house,” Stone says. “I can honestly say I’d rather live there.”)

Paul Dillon, a progressive activist running for City Council this year, thinks Stone’s political spending shows the need for tougher campaign finance laws.

“He’s behind the scenes with funding efforts that are creating a very toxic atmosphere in Spokane and dividing neighborhoods and communities,” Dillon argues.

Stone’s supporters, however, see a man with a singular focus on improving his city and whose charitable activity goes far beyond politics.

“He’s definitely influential,” says conservative City Council member Jonathan Bingle. “I just think he’s a guy who’s trying to make his city a better place. So God bless him. I hope he continues to do that. And I hope others follow his lead, especially those who have the ability to put their money where their mouth is.”

Stone himself often avoids the spotlight. He rarely talks to reporters — especially during a string of negative news coverage this year about his ownership of the Trent shelter. (He did, however, find one Spokesman-Review headline about him “Stonewalling” City Council funny enough to frame.)

But Stone is a key player in this year’s election cycle. Who is he? And what’s his vision for the city?

“I’m not making friends with the far left people,” Stone says. “But I’m doing what I think is right.”

“I USED TO BE A DEMOCRAT”

Stone, 68, was born and raised on Spokane’s South Hill.

After graduating from Walla Walla’s Whitman College, Stone started working at a pipe manufacturing company owned by his father, which he took over and later expanded to include property management and other manufacturing companies.

In 1985, Stone came out as gay. It was a different world.

“We were hated,” Stone says. “‘AIDS’ and ‘gays’ were one and the same back then.”

In 1993, Stone founded Stonewall News, a gay and lesbian newspaper for the Inland Northwest.

“It was a pretty big deal for Spokane,” says Dean Lynch, a member of Spokane’s LGBTQ+ community at the time who currently sits on the Spokane County Human Rights Task Force. “That was a way for members of the LGBTQ+ community to meet other people, to hear about what was going on.”

Stone sold the paper several years later, but continued to be active in the gay rights movement and made significant financial contributions to the fight for marriage equality in Washington state.

“He was very involved,” says Lynch, who was also briefly a City Council member in 2001. “He wasn’t the leader, but he was one of a number of leaders.”

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Stone regularly gave money to Democrats, mostly at the state level. He says he barely paid attention to city politics.

“The city just ran, I never knew if they were Democrats or Republicans, I didn’t care,” Stone says. “But after what happened to me in March of 2019…”

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon.

Stone was running errands downtown. He needed cash and decided to drive to a Bank of America ATM near the Spokane Transit Authority Bus Plaza.

A group of five or so “rough-looking people” were hanging out nearby, he says. Stone felt nervous, and decided to stay in his car and circle the block. They were still there when he returned, so he left.

“It was the first time in 63 years I didn’t feel comfortable getting out of my car,” Stone says.

That’s the whole story. But Stone says the incident shook him profoundly and, more importantly, opened his eyes to Spokane’s growing homelessness crisis.

“That’s when I woke up to what was going on downtown,” Stone says. “That’s when I did the first video.”

“Seattle is Dying” — a KOMO-TV special that generated controversy for its portrayal of Seattle’s drug and public camping problems — had come out that same month. Stone was inspired and started drafting a script in his head for a Spokane version.

Kinnear recalls Stone complaining about the ATM incident at a Downtown Spokane Partnership meeting that spring.

Her recollection of the story is slightly different — something about a homeless person asking for cash while a friend of Stone’s was at an ATM. But the core message was the same: Stone, for the first time in his life, felt scared in downtown Spokane. He saw a growing problem being swept under the rug and was determined to make sure everyone knew about it.

“What I learned from being a gay man is, the closet never works,” Stone says. “It’s why the AIDS crisis killed so many of us. … And when we have a problem downtown, and throughout our low-income neighborhoods… we’ve got to face up to it and talk about it.”

A CURE FOR SPOKANE

Stone released “Curing Spokane” in late August 2019, in the run-up to the election that would put Nadine Woodward in the mayor’s office.

The 17-minute video features mournful piano music and bleak montages of people in varying states of drug and behavioral health crises downtown. It called on city leaders to build a new, bigger jail, enforce misdemeanors, sell the STA Plaza and move the bus station underground.

The reaction was swift and polarizing. Some, like Woodward, expressed support and thanked Stone for shining a light on what was going on. Others saw it as fearmongering and criticized its conflation of homelessness and crime.

To this day, Stone is defiant.

“I was the canary in the mine,” Stone says. “It’s only gotten radically worse in four years.”

Last month, on the precipice of another mayoral election, Stone released “Curing a Broken Spokane,” the sequel to the 2019 film. The main message — that the City Council and a lack of accountability “made being homeless easy” and led to a rise in crime — is much the same.

Advocates have been critical. Ryan Oelrich, an interim City Council member who previously led Spokane’s Homeless Coalition, says Stone’s new video is “incredibly harmful.”

A pie chart in the video claims that 50% or more of “arrests of criminal homeless” involved someone who moved to Spokane. The data source isn’t made clear in the video, but Stone says it comes from a public records request his team filed for a list of people arrested one recent afternoon downtown.

The request came back with 12 names. Of those, police said six people were not from Spokane. One person was marked as “unclear.”

It’s not exactly a statistically valid sample, but Stone says he’s still skeptical when the “far left” insists that most unhoused people are, in fact, from Spokane.

“Those that are from Spokane we should take care of, but when most people feel that more than half are from out of Spokane, we have got to do something,” Stone says.

Stone’s assertion is wrong, says Matthew Anderson, the director of the urban and regional planning program at Eastern Washington University.

“There’s no evidence there,” says Anderson, who has also worked on the annual census of unsheltered people in Spokane, which found that 74% of respondents lived in Spokane County before becoming homeless. Other point-in-time counts consistently have similar findings, Anderson says.

The police record Stone obtained shows that one of the people officers categorized as not from Spokane had lived in the city since he was 5 years old. He moved to Seattle at age 16 and returned a few years later. Another immigrated to Spokane from Honduras five or six years ago. One person categorized as not from Spokane had been here for 26 years.

Regardless, Stone pushes back on critics who say his videos are divisive.

“I feel like I’m being informational to the public, and the public can make their own [decisions],” Stone says. “The films are provocative, they aren’t meant to be boring. They’re provocative, but I don’t think they’re divisive.”

Stone supports calls for a new jail, but he argues that it should be built out of town near the Geiger Corrections Facility — not in the central city where it’s currently planned.

“We just dump it on the poor, and that’s what really upsets me,” Stone says.

It’s a point Stone comes back to time and time again, across multiple interviews.

He ties his concern for the poor not just to the new jail, but also to the issue of bus lanes and the homeless services that are disproportionately placed in lower income neighborhoods. He stresses that it’s the driving force behind his recent political efforts. He says he’d be happy to have the new jail built in his Manito Park neighborhood but knows wealthy neighbors would never allow it.

“I feel like I’m being informational to the public, and the public can make their own [decisions]. The films are provocative, they aren’t meant to be boring.”

‘HE CARES ABOUT THE COMMUNITY’

As a child, Stone recalls sleeping in the backyard to escape a dysfunctional home and a mother who struggled with alcoholism. He’d fall asleep to the sound of the wind blowing through the ponderosa pine trees overhead.

Those trees became a fixation. As an adult, Stone started a nonprofit that planted more than 100,000 ponderosas across Spokane, and he successfully lobbied the City Council to designate the ponderosa pine as Spokane’s official tree in 2013.

“He worked with us really cooperatively, it was truly a group effort,” says Kinnear, who was then an assistant to former Council member Amber Waldref. (Waldref is now a county commissioner.) “It was a really good experience.”

Kinnear is one of many progressive politicians who, in a different era, benefited from Stone’s financial support. He even threw a fundraising party for her City Council campaign at his house in April 2019.

Stone also supported Lisa Brown when she was a Democratic state senator in the early 2010s. But during her run for mayor this year, Stone has spent heavily on the Spokane Good Government Alliance, a political action committee that runs attack ads and billboards claiming Brown will bring “MORE CRIME” and “LESS COPS.”

Brown calls it “polarizing and unproductive.”

“I believe he cares about the community,” Brown says. “But I’m really puzzled by why he thinks this is the right way to improve it.”

Stone calls himself a centrist and insists that it’s the left that’s grown extreme. But he still has a soft spot for Kinnear and smiles when asked about their collaboration on the pine tree project.

“I like her as a person,” Stone says. “But I’m disappointed with our City Council.”

Like many on the left who recall working with Stone before 2019, Kinnear is puzzled — even a little saddened — by Stone’s political turn.

“I would like to still have him as a friend, but I can’t have somebody as a friend who thinks I’m responsible for the homeless crisis in Spokane when it’s blatantly not true,” Kinnear says. “He just doesn’t pay attention to anything unless it’s STA or homelessness.”

He is singularly focused on those subjects. Though he says it’s been about 24 years since he rode the bus, the Spokane Transit Authority is a frequent target of his ire.

This summer, Stone released a video in opposition to plans to add bus-priority and protected bike lanes to North Division Street.

“Do you want to be forced to ride the bus?” the narrator asks, ominously.

Stone argues that the planned changes will increase congestion and harm local businesses.

“Does anybody really think that making a bus-only lane on Division is going to get more people to take the bus?” Stone says. “I’m very thankful that we have a good bus system, but I don’t see how it helps them to stop all 20 cars behind them.”

BATTLE OF THE DONORS

Stone isn’t the only wealthy Spokanite who uses their fortune to push a political vision for the city.

In some cases, Stone’s spending pits him directly against Sharon Smith and Don Barbieri, a wealthy Spokane couple that founded the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund, which advocates for a variety of liberal causes in Spokane.

For example: Stone has given $115,000 to Clean and Safe Spokane, the PAC that worked to place the homeless camping ban on this year’s ballot. On the other side, the Smith-Barbieri fund has donated $10,000 to the Spokane Community Against Racism PAC to fund a lawsuit that unsuccessfully tried to challenge the proposed ban in court.

Stone doesn’t like being compared to the couple.

“I live in Spokane 12 months of the year. I’ve lived here for 68 years… I’m downtown all the time,” Stone says, before shifting focus to the couple’s second home in Hawaii. “How do you know what’s going on in Spokane when you’re sitting in Maui?”

Lerria Schuh, the executive director of the progressive fund, confirms that Smith and Barbieri are, in fact, residents of Hawaii, and that the couple spends the winter months there. But she argues that someone can still care about improving a city even if they don’t live in it year-round. She says the couple are retired and have limited involvement in the fund’s day-to-day operations.

Schuh stresses that the couple also supports a variety of charitable causes outside of politics. The same is true of Stone. In many cases, the donors’ interests converge: Both have donated to the Odyssey Youth Movement, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ+ youth in the Inland Northwest.

TURMOIL AT TRAC

Stone continues to face criticism for his ownership of the Trent shelter. Some council members have argued that Stone got a friendly deal and is profiting off taxpayers.

Stone denies this and says he only bought the building because the city was struggling to find a spot for a permanent homeless shelter. He’d spent the past three years telling anyone who would listen that homeless services should be located in industrial areas, and he was happy to help.

Council member Zack Zappone says he believes Stone’s desire to help the city solve a problem was genuine. But he still has concerns about Stone’s deal with the city being “done behind closed doors without trying to negotiate in good faith a better deal for taxpayers.”

The shelter was previously vacant and available for sublease at $21,000 a month. But Stone says the owner was wary of the city’s plans to use it as a shelter. So in March 2022, Stone stepped in and bought it for $3.5 million. After a period of negotiation, he began leasing it to the city for $26,100 a month.

Stone says the lease price is fair, and points to the fact that he held it off the market for months and that his contract with the city required he make improvements to make the building habitable, which cost $580,000. He says the warehouse represents just 1.6% of the total square footage he owns.

“It’s nice to do things for government, but I don’t pretend to be a charity,” Stone says. “I give money to charitable organizations, but I can’t run my business like a charity. I’ll be bankrupt.”

Basically, Stone was willing to give the city of Spokane a hand up, but not a handout.

“I don’t see it as an unfair deal,” says Bingle. “What I do see is a person, again, who cares about the situation trying to be of service to the community.”

Other council members are talking about abandoning the city’s lease with Stone next year, citing the high lease and operator costs and broader concern about the congregate shelter model. Plans to install much-needed indoor bathrooms have stalled, as council members fret about putting taxpayer money into a building the city doesn’t own.

Council members say Stone tried to ask for $8 million — more than double what he purchased the building for — when they tried to exercise an option-to-buy clause in the contract this winter. Citing the confidentiality of real estate transactions, Stone declined to comment on whether or not the $8 million figure is accurate, but says he was still willing to negotiate in good faith.

“They’re tearing me down for not selling it, but what if they’d bought it?” Stone says. “They didn’t have the money, and now they’re talking about abandoning the building after a year. Tell me how crazy that is?”

Stone also pushes back against allegations of bad conditions at the shelter, which are mainly the responsibility of the city and its contractors, as he says. He notes that the Trent shelter offers free food, internet and other services.

Last week, I texted Stone photos that showed the shelter’s outdoor porta-potties in a poor state, with trash and feces in places they shouldn’t be, a toilet lid snapped in half and other visible damage.

“I do not find any of this repulsive,” Stone says, looking at the photos. “I find it unfortunate.” (He suggests, however, that people at the shelter “deal with it” because they stay there for “free.”)

Stone has spent the past year at the center of some of Spokane’s most contentious political debates. He says he’s tired and doesn’t plan on releasing any more “Curing Spokane” videos. He’s done what he can to educate people and call on leaders to take a stand.

“I’m 68,” Stone laughs. “So the good news to the far left is that I’m getting worn out.”