- [Announcer] This is a KSPS PBS Election Special, a debate featuring candidates for Spokane City Council.

(bold dramatic music) - Hello and thank you for joining us.

I'm Dana Haynes.

We are pleased to bring you this debate featuring the candidates running for Spokane City Council District 3.

District 3 covers Northwest Spokane as well as the West End of Downtown and the West Central neighborhood.

Let's meet the candidates who, by the way, are both graduates of North Central High School.

Christopher Savage, we'll start with you.

- Hello, my name is Christopher Savage, and I am running for Spokane City Council District 3.

We need a change-up on City Council right now because what is coming out of the City Hall is not conducive to our community.

We are seeing rampant public safety concerns Downtown, homelessness across our neighborhoods, and an affordability crisis that has not been addressed properly.

We need to make sure that we are making a Spokane where we all belong and for our future generations so that we have a Spokane where everyone is here.

- Moving on now to Zack Zappone.

- Hi, I'm Zack Zappone, and I'm a teacher at North Central High School, the same school I graduated from and the same school my grandpa graduated from.

After graduating, I worked my way at McDonald's to graduate from Georgetown University and Princeton and move back to Eastern Washington to be a teacher in our highest poverty schools.

I created a lot of afterschool programs and saw the challenges kids had and decided to run for City Council to fight for working and middle-class families.

Today, I'm raising two boys with my partner, Tyler who's also a school teacher, and believe that everyone deserves a fair shot, and that's why I'm running to be your City Council member.

- [Dana] All right, thank you to both candidates.

Welcome to you both.

For the debates, the candidates will answer questions from two Spokane journalists, Emry Dinman from "The Spokesman-Review" and Erin Sellers from RANGE Media.

Thank you both for joining us tonight.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Before we begin, here's a quick look at the debate rules.

The panel can ask the same question to both candidates or can direct the question to just one.

The panelists may request a follow up to an answer, and candidates will have one minute for answers and are allowed two rebuttals for the entire debate.

Rebuttal length is limited to 30 seconds.

All right, let's begin.

A coin flip determined that Chris will take the first question, and that first question will come from Emry.

- Chris, three months after the city passed a homeless camping ban replacing Proposition 1, the Council is going back to the drawing board after acknowledging that the law has been unenforceable and didn't successfully encourage people to enter into services.

What changes do you believe should be made to the law and what is your opinion on the city taking another stab at this so soon?

- So this is a perfect example of why we should have reinstated Prop 1 in the way that it was supposed to be.

If we would have just done that, we would have made sure that this HOME ordinance wouldn't have been the same thing that has no enforcement.

And that's what I would be doing different, is we need to have more enforcement so that we can actually have a safe Downtown that not only for our people and our citizens to come Downtown, but for our families and our kids.

That is one of the reasons why Prop 1 was brought about.

It was for our children to make sure that they are safe.

When I am doorbelling out there and I'm hitting the doors, many people are not coming Downtown because they see it as unsafe, and that's why we need an enforcement capability that has stringent, good laws that will show that they are able to be used by the SPD so that they can do their job correctly and not tie their hands.

- So I also voted to reinstate Prop 1, but that failed and there was no votes from the Council majority to get that passed.

So instead of dwelling on things that didn't work, I worked, sat down with the Mayor, her staff, with our community partners and tried to create solutions for our community and try to solve those problems.

And just like I stated at that time, I want to review what's working and not working and improve upon it and make it better.

And so what we're seeing right now is that it's not working and that's unacceptable to me.

I, at the time, voted and wanted to give police officers the discretion to be able to make those changes.

So unlike my opponent who doesn't have any policies and ideas to move things forward, some things that directly that I wanna make sure that are addressed in an update is allowing officers the discretion on the first contact to be able to give a citation or direct people to services.

The second thing I want to address is making sure that it encompasses the whole right of way, all cities, all streets, all parts of our neighborhood, not just around certain schools and parks, but rather across our entire city so that people don't end up in your backyard.

And the third thing I want to address is making sure that there's progressive enforcement and it has some teeth to it and so that it eventually gets people to shelter, services, and jail as an option of last resort.

- Rebuttal.

- Chris, rebuttal.

- Zack just said that he was supposed to, that he had all this ideas of what we're supposed to do with enforcement doing now.

Now my question is, why didn't we do that at the beginning of the HOME ordinance?

That would have been perfect to put in there to make sure that we had enforcement and not have several months of no enforceability, which has caused the state of Downtown the way it is.

We need to make sure that we are protecting our Downtown because it's not only our economic engine, but it's the heart of our community.

So that is my question to Zack is, if you had all these ideas beforehand, why wasn't it implemented at the start of HOME ordinance?

- [Dana] All right, moving on to our- - I'll go ahead and use a rebuttal.

- [Dana] Okay.

- Yep.

As the legislative branch, I looked to experts for their expertise and was assured at that time that this was going to be incorporated when I passed that legislation and voted for it, that it would be enforceable and it would cover the entire right of way, and that did not happen.

And so I am going to keep fighting for working middle class families, people are impacted by this every day to make sure that is implemented the second time around because we need to hold the administration to the table and say that that is what we expect from our community.

That is what I hear from people every day, and that is what I'm gonna champion and fight for because what happened was unacceptable.

- Thank you.

Erin.

- Zack, we're gonna stick with you.

What is a tactic or tool for addressing homelessness that you've seen modeled successfully in another city and would like to see here?

- So before I was elected to Council, in my first two years, the former Woodward administration was focused on congregate shelters, large warehousing of people.

That system has failed here in Spokane and across the country.

It does not connect people to services.

It does not move them to and through and out of homelessness.

I've been a big proponent and supporter of a scattered site shelter model and a navigation center.

What that does is it connects people to services.

At the navigation center, they can go and find out where they can get service that night and where they can stay that night, drug treatment programs and other services.

And then the scattered site shelter model has much smaller shelters, about 30 people per shelter bed, and it has a much less impact on our neighborhoods.

I've been proud to support legislation that is called a Good Neighbor Agreement.

It creates protections for people, residents around those shelters to make sure that the shelters are good neighbors, that it mitigates the impact.

And talking to neighbors across the street, they have told me that the shelters have had very little impact on them and in fact are an improvement to previous residents in those buildings.

- I have a quick follow-up.

Is that something that you've seen work in another city?

- Yep, it's worked in Boise, New York, and across our country.

I look at best practices across the country and want to implement those in Spokane.

- [Erin] Chris, same question to you.

- So I would adopt more of what Boise was doing with their no camping, no sit and lie ordinances.

We need to make sure that we are doing the same exact thing as they are because they saw a dramatic decrease in their homeless population that has made their streets clean, their city vibrant.

And when people go over there they say, "Why can't we be more like Boise?

They're able to do it, why can't we?"

So that is a model that we should do.

And then I would like to point out that my opponent brought up the navigation and the scattered sites model.

That is a failure across Spokane.

I've talked to several people on the doors that are specifically across from these scattered sites and they say that they do not like what is going on.

They have people at all hours of the evening, all hours of the day making problems in their neighborhood, and they just don't like it anymore.

And another thing is our navigation center.

It is just not working.

That is why it's being retooled right now.

It just did not do what it was doing.

We have homeless advocates coming down to City Hall at public forum telling these people that this isn't working and these are the experts that are on the ground that have lived experience, and they are not being listened to.

That is what we need more of, is we need a voice that is going up on City Council that is going to listen to our constituents.

- Emry.

- Chris, how should the city find funding for permanent, reliable treatment services given that the state and federal funding is so unreliable right now?

- Well, we really need to look into our budget.

We can try to bond some of our 1590 dollars as well as bond our opioid settlement dollars.

We need to make sure that we are cooperating with our regional partners like the county to make sure that we are not doing anything that is redundant and that we're going in both different directions.

We need to have cooperation and collaboration with people that are around our municipalities.

That's why I believe that we should have done a regional collaborative model, that was about two years ago, that our current mayor, Lisa Brown, pulled us out of.

That would have helped us out so much in trying to address all these costs because it was going to make everything more in a collaborative model where we would pool our resources and go in one direction and not several.

That is what I'll be looking into.

And also we can look into our opiate settlement dollars as well as our 1590 dollars to bond those out so we can do more with less.

- I'm glad my opponent supports policies that I've been championing as your City Council member.

I've been supportive of regional collaboration and have attended meetings in support of regional collaboration.

Just this last week, we had a bipartisan group of community members and elected officials form a task force to look into facilities, the clean and Safe & Healthy Spokane, around improvements for our jail, mental health, sobering, detox beds.

I do think that the facilities question is the ultimate question about, where do people go?

My opponent uses some talking points that are things that we've been doing in the works.

Bonding 1590 money has been things that we've talked about at the City Council level.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have solutions beyond past practices that haven't been working for our city.

I want to keep working to make sure that we're growing and improving and moving our city forward, not just going back to failing policies that haven't been working.

- As a quick follow-up, what do you make of the failure to have moved forward with the regional homeless collaboration as was originally introduced several years ago?

- Yeah, the collaboration didn't move forward as a PDA or a public facility, but it did move forward with other areas of collaboration.

We passed interlocal agreements and other ways that the county and the city and the Valley have all been collaborating on sharing data and resources to move forward.

And I think we need to make sure that we find ways to keep moving forward than rather getting stuck on grudges and staying back.

And I think these local initiatives are ways that we can find the funding to keep moving us forward.

- So my opponent talks about collaboration and talking about being a regional partner, but just at the end of this year, we are going to be out of the Spokane Regional Emergency Communication Center.

That is not going to be good for us.

We're gonna lose calls of service, and there's gonna be a lot of dangerous things that are gonna happen at the beginning of the year because we do not have a collaboration and a partnership with our county.

It is funny that he brings up that we're gonna be collaborative, and when he shows that he has not been doing that, especially with the Spokane Treatment Center that's out in Spokane Valley, the Spokane Regional Collaborative, and that just shows that we just need to do more with collaborating with our partners and not just being adversarial or holding grudges, like my opponent said.

- All right.

Thanks, Chris.

And just a reminder, that is your final rebuttal, Erin.

- Great.

Zack, what changes, expansions, or creative approaches to public transit would you champion while on Council?

- Yep, my opponent says I haven't collaborated, and I think public transit is a perfect example of collaboration that I've accomplished, working in a bipartisan manner with people across our region.

I've sponsored legislation with conservative council members, Michael Cathcart and Jonathan Bingle, to address our biggest crises around homelessness, affordability, and charter amendments.

So these are things that I think I have a proven track record of working together about.

When it comes to public transit, I've been a big advocate for more accessibility, more affordability, and more transit.

It took me three years to champion policies that created an Opportunity fare, which is getting implemented this fall.

It's a low-income fare where people who are struggling to get to work, struggling to pay rent, are able to get a reduced rate to pay for transit.

That connects them to job opportunities and access to healthcare and other opportunities.

And so that's the type of investment we want, and that helps people stay housed.

I think when we think about homelessness, we need to think about it holistically across different sectors, and that's the type of energy and creative solutions that I'm looking at in Spokane Transit and other areas.

- [Dana] All right.

- So for public transportation, we really need to focus on putting more funding and more taxes into our roads.

That is the number one thing that I hear about on the doors is not only is it public safety, homelessness, and affordability, but the potholes across our city are one of the biggest concerns that our citizens have.

Those cost people a lot of money because of making sure their alignment is out for the car, popping a tire.

We need to make sure that we are saving our citizens a bunch of money.

I also don't support the Division Street diet plan.

That is not good for our transportation.

We are gonna cut down the main arterial and main artery of our economic prosperity that goes Downtown and up from Downtown.

With the North-South corridor not being finished, that is not a good plan, and a lot of people take their cars to work.

We need to make sure that we are focusing on listening to the citizens and their concerns.

And when they give us what they're talking about, we need to go up to the dais and make sure that we're not making the wrong decisions.

- As a quick follow-up, are there any investments in public transportation that you would support?

- No, not right now.

And it's gonna be pretty hard to find those kind of dollars because we are in a $13 million deficit this year for the city, so trying to find out, trying to make sure that we get that funding is gonna be very difficult in the near future.

- I have questions regarding City Council staff.

There are different questions for each of you.

You will have an opportunity to respond to each other's answers.

But first, to Chris, you have suggested that you could find multiple millions of dollars of budget cuts from the City Council Office.

You've repeatedly mentioned two positions in particular totaling around a quarter million dollars in salary savings.

Where would you find the rest?

- Right, so there's 20 positions that I've identified that will have this kind of, about a multimillion dollar effect on our budget, which will save about 2 to $3 million.

And what you pointed for was the Director of Communications.

We don't need that.

People pretty much talk pretty well, good for themselves up on City Council as well as our parliamentarian up on City Council.

All of us on City Council know Robert's Rules of Orders or should know Robert's Rules of Orders, and that is why we don't need those.

Another couple of positions that I've identified is like the Director of Sustainability.

We do not need that at the City Council right now.

It's a redundancy.

We are not doing anything sustainable with our programs and/or anything in the city that has anything to do with that.

And another position that I've identified is the Director of Transportation.

We do not need a person who is saying that we can have all these subcommittees, like the Transportation Committee.

It runs perfectly well.

It has its own leadership there.

So just having another person there is a redundancy that we don't need, and it's just costing our city more money.

- [Emry] Zack, would you like to respond?

- Yeah, I'm not... What are you talking about?

You just named two positions that are the same person.

The Director of Transportation and Sustainability is the exact same person, so that's not a cost savings.

He's gone around talking about 20 positions, but he's only been able to name two, and he just now created the same person doing the job twice.

I'm concerned that my opponent doesn't actually know the budget, doesn't actually know policies that we're working on.

There are real conversations that we're having about with staffing at the City Council Office.

I do believe that we need to make reductions in our City Council Office and I've been talking about that over the course of the year.

There are other reductions across the city that we have to talk about, and there need to be strategic cuts.

We don't wanna have blank cuts across departments that could impact our public safety when it comes to police and fire.

I don't wanna make those cuts to our critical public safety, but we do need to look at where we can be strategic and efficient, and that's working with department heads about how they can find efficiencies and reduce positions.

- Would you like to quickly clarify what those two positions were that you were talking about?

- Yes, so the Director of Transportation is the person who's overseeing a lot of our subcommittees.

The Director of Sustainability are actually two different positions 'cause I saw that on an Instagram post today so if that's the case, then the mayor, Lisa Brown, and the City of Spokane needs to rectify that on their social media posts.

- Just to clarify, as far as I know, Jon Snyder is the Director of Sustainability and Transportation for the city.

- [Emry] But the City Council does have a Sustainability Initiative manager.

- Yes.

- [Emry] No longer?

- No.

- [Emry] Was that position cut?

- That was Kelly Conway, and she moved to the Mayor's Office.

- Who moved.

- And we never filled it.

- [Emry] Got it.

- Okay.

- Zack, you've advocated for City Council pay raises, and stated that you believe that being a City Council member should be a full-time job.

Why?

- Yep, I think there's no question about it that our City Council members are... Our community expects a lot from our City Council members.

I think it's important for people to do that.

I did an audit of my calendar to see what community events, what community meetings, meetings one-on-one with people that I'm doing.

And it is regularly about half of the nights of the month that I am at meetings until eight o'clock at night in addition to constituent meetings, calling people, following up.

Regularly, I am working over 40 hours a week.

And if you look at the hourly breakdown of that, that would make City Council members the lowest paid people in City Hall.

And so, I think that we get what we sow.

And so I've been a big advocate for raises for City Council members because we deserve a city that represents everybody in our community.

The only people that can afford to do that are people that are in retirement or have the wealth and background that they're able to serve in part-time jobs.

We see another candidate running for City Council that's making over $200,000 a year and someone else that has those relationships.

And so we need council members who represent working and middle class families- - All right.

- And we have to pay for that.

- Time's up.

Sorry about that.

- Would you like to respond, Chris?

- Yes.

So you just heard my opponent say, "We deserve."

We don't deserve the taxpayers' money.

We deserve to make sure that we are being public servants and being available to our constituents.

So what that means is yes, I think it's a full-time job.

I would like to commend my opponent for being there and doing a lot of stuff 'cause it is a huge responsibility, a lot of meetings go to and sometimes you have to sacrifice a lot so I appreciate that.

But we need to make sure that we are looking at the budget and the salary.

I was a former Salary Review commissioner, vice chair, so I've been on several of these salaries that we've approved, and each time that we've approved of it has been for a salary of four, median income of four, a family of four.

So they are making about more than 50% of what our people here in Spokane do so I think we should actually do less with our salaries because right now we're being in a $13 million deficit.

It may just be a little bit of a Band-Aid, but it'll go a long way to the citizens of cutting our own salary or making that recommendation when the Salary Review Commission comes into play about saying, "Hey, we don't need this.

Actually reduce it because we need to make sure that we are passing these savings onto the taxpayers."

- [Erin] Okay.

- All right, moving on.

- Zack, in the last few years, we've seen public seating areas on the Monroe Street Bridge welded over.

We've seen a volunteer group step up to provide their own benches after the Spokane Transit Authority declined to provide accommodations at many bus stops.

And we've seen a City Council president who has been banging the drum for public bathrooms with seemingly little interest from the Council.

What responsibility does the city have to provide public amenities like seating, shade, and bathrooms?

When is it appropriate for the city to remove access to these amenities for everybody because of the misuse of a few?

- Yeah.

Really quick, I just have to clarify that my opponent, again, doesn't seem to know what he's talking about.

The salary of a median family of four is over $68,000 in Spokane.

City Council members make $50,000 so it does not match what he believes it matches.

And again, we, the citizens of Spokane deserve council members who represent them.

Yes, we absolutely have a role.

The city has a role in investing in public infrastructure and amenities.

As a City Council member, we got a surplus of funds from the federal government in the form of the American Rescue Plan.

And I was a big proponent of using those funds for those one-time facility improvements.

I'm enthusiastic to see people that are creating benches in our community.

My sister just texted me this week saying that these are really awesome.

And so I think the city should look for those creative solutions from our partners, whether they be private sector, non-profit sector that can add those facilities.

As a council member, I did invest in those types of improvements.

We invested in districts such as Garland and North Monroe Business District so that they can make those types of improvements in their districts that are economic generators and that promote business in our community.

- [Erin] All right, Chris, I know it was a long question.

Is there any bit you need me to repeat?

- Yes.

(laughs) - Great.

What responsibility does the city have to provide public amenities like seating, shade, and bathrooms?

When is it appropriate for the city to remove access to these amenities for everybody because of their misuse by a few?

- So, the city is responsible for creating those amenities and for providing those amenities.

It's good to have those there.

But though with the city being in a $13 million deficit, I think we're gonna have to be creative in how we do that in the future.

For instance, I'm going up Indian Trail, and I see that there's a lot of private interest.

There's an actual someone who donated and created two little benches, wooden benches that are now at two of the bus stops.

By looking into our private partners like that, there are some citizens who may have the resources that could help us out so if we actually parlay with them, talk with them and ask what we can do, we can actually fill in some of those holes that we won't be able to do because we're in a $13 million deficit.

- Before we begin the next question, this will be the last question.

- All right.

Chris, three years ago, the city set restrictions on how often and how much residents can water their lawn in the summer but has never issued fines, relying instead on education campaigns.

This year we saw the Spokane River run dry.

Should the city issue fines for violations of those watering regulations?

Should high water users pay more of a premium?

Should the city cut back on watering local parks during drought season?

- So what we need to do is we need to make sure that we are having a good enforcement with laws that we make on the books.

If we don't have enforcement for the laws we make on the books, then why are we making the laws in the first place?

We are gonna have a very difficult time on doing any sort of enforcement or any sort of penalties.

Our code enforcement right now is very lacking.

We don't have enough people there to do the staffing.

That is why it won't be really good.

We need to also make sure that we are going to the source of the problem, which is Washington Department of Ecology.

They are allowing with water rights that have a certain amount with, if you have a water right up to 5,000 gallons per day, and they make you use it 'cause if you don't, you lose it.

So we need to make sure that we are going towards the origin of the problem of why we are having low or what we're looking at the Spokane River being low.

It seems that we're putting a burden on a lot of our citizens who just want to take care of their lawns, make sure that they have good property values because those are reflected in those lawns.

But make sure that we are also having the correct laws that it's not a rules for thee and not for me.

If we have an exception for the city, then there should be exception for everyone else.

But if the laws are being put on everyone else, there should be laws on the city as well.

If the city is overusing and going against the law, they need to be penalized as well.

- [Emry] Zack?

- Yeah, just like everyone else in our community, I was horrified by the sight of the river running dry.

And as a council member, I've been supporting and advocating for conservation efforts, including the ordinance that I've helped pass that educated or created some enforcement.

I do think that there's more education and more enforcement that needs to go along with it.

And I think we need to pass some investments in our parks that allow them to water during the cool parts of the day.

Unfortunately, my opponent has been advocating for land use changes that increases sprawl across our community and creates more congestion and more draw on our water resources.

I've been a champion of housing policy that has advocated for infill development, getting rid of single-family zoning that is... Sorry, upzoning so that we have middle missing housing throughout our city, not just the single-family zoning.

Those types of failed policies lead to more congestion, increased water rates on every single person in our community, and benefits the wealthiest developers in our community who are able to profit off the city by expanding on our communal resources.

- All right.

Time now for closing statements.

- Can I still use my rebuttal?

- (laughs) Can you use your rebuttal?

No.

(laughs) - [Zack] Okay.

- All right.

- [Zack] It was worth a try.

- Sorry about that.

Chris, you're gonna go first here with the closing statements.

- Thank you.

My name's Christopher Savage.

I'm running for Spokane City Council District 3.

We need a better City Council right now.

We need a council that is listening to the voice of the people and not going up with their personal agendas.

That is what you're getting with me.

You're getting a citizen council member who is going to take your interest and your concerns up to the dais and making sure that there are laws that are reflecting what you want.

We need to make sure that we are addressing our public safety Downtown as well of across our city, the homelessness crisis that has spread into our neighborhoods, and the affordability crisis that is really hampering our future generations living here in Spokane.

We need to make sure that we have a city that we all belong in, and that's what you're gonna get with me.

I'm gonna be your champion.

I'm gonna be your defender.

I'm going to listen to you even if you are on the other opposing side of what we have because that is what we need to do.

We need to have open dialogue.

We need to have conversations because that's what Spokane is all about.

We're all neighbors.

We're all family.

Thank you.

- All right, Zack?

- Yep.

I want to make it clear what the choice is in this race.

My opponent says he'll be a champion, and you should look at who he champions for and who his donors are.

Just this week he said that he would support paying $100,000 of reimbursing a required sidewalk that was required by every property owner in our city for one of his biggest campaign donors, Larry Stone, who's donated over $75,000 this election.

These types of wealthiest donors in Spokane expect a return on their money, and my opponent has said that he would fund a reimbursement of $100,000, but that wouldn't help anyone else, especially the poorest residents in West Central neighborhood.

I'm proud to deliver results for working and middle class families in our community.

I'm supported by firefighters, teachers, nurses, healthcare workers, grocery store workers, and bus drivers.

They know that I'm a champion for working and middle class families, and we have real struggles in our community, but we've made progress, and we don't wanna move backwards.

On public safety, we brought back neighborhood resource officers, traffic patrol.

On housing, we have record permits for three years in a row, and on safer streets, we've made investments that improved our crossings in our neighborhoods.

We need to keep moving forward as a community so that everyone has a fair shot.

- All right.

Thank you, Zack.

Well, that will do it for this debate for Spokane City Council.

Our thanks to the District 2 candidates, Christopher Savage and Zack Zappone, as well as our journalists today, Emry Dinman and Erin Sellers.

Thank you for joining us.

This and other KSPS debates are available for viewing anytime at ksps.org.

From all of us here at KSPS PBS, thank you for watching.

(bold dramatic music)