(jubilant music) - [Announcer] This is a KSPS PBS election special, discussing the Spokane City Parks and Spokane Public Schools ballot measures, know collectively as Together Spokane.

- Hello and welcome to this KSPS Election Special.

I'm your host, Doug Nadvornick.

Spokane Parks and Recreation and Spokane Public Schools are offering an historic proposal on the November 4th ballot.

It's called Together Spokane.

It aligns two separate ballot initiatives to invest in every neighborhood across Spokane.

There are more than 200 projects intended to emphasize youth wellness, recreation, education, and workforce development as well, also arts and culture and public safety.

Joining me to discuss this and what it would cost voters are Spokane Parks and Recreation Director, Garrett Jones, and Spokane Public School Superintendent, Adam Swinyard.

Welcome.

Good to see you.

- Thank you.

- Thanks.

- I wanna start, before you merge the two projects, you each had ballot measures on your own.

And so let's start with Garrett and talk about what were some of the needs that you had in terms of that ballot measure.

- Absolutely.

So, you know, in our organization, we look at performing an update to a master plan about every decade.

And it was about 2020 when we established that next round of asking the community, you know, what are we doing well, what are the trends, what are we missing, what are the gaps?

And rather than drafting something internally, we went out to the public and said, what would you like to see before we put pen to paper?

And that master plan really established those programs and those initiatives that we saw.

And rather than that master plan sitting on the shelf, we decided, you know what?

We really wanna start on that program of what that investment package would look like.

And through that, we shifted from, traditionally we've done bonds and parks and recreation, and we shifted to a levy because we heard from the public, they wanted to see updated maintenance as well as new parks and renovated parks.

And so then we proposed a levy package a couple times and unfortunately got delayed, in which got us here today with the partnership with SPS.

- So the levy would allow you to do more consistent work.

- More consistent work around just added maintenance, higher level of service, replacements, new parks, new restrooms, new playgrounds, new amenities system-wide.

And that's what we heard from the public, that we want to see that system-wide approach and improvements to all our parks.

- So, Adam, the Spokane Public Schools operates kind of on a regular maintenance and that sort of thing.

So talk about where you were in a few years ago with that.

- Yeah, so Spokane Public Schools, we're one of the largest school districts in the states.

We serve around 30,000 kids.

And we do that in 58 buildings, which encompass over 5 million square feet of space on over 600 acres.

So there's a lot of space to manage and maintain.

The average age of those buildings is 40 years old.

And in the early 2000s, a plan was developed to take a steady, slow-as-you-go approach to updating and modernizing our building.

And, Doug, I'm from a small town.

I know Garrett is too.

Smaller communities, they just have a handful of schools.

They can wait 30, 40 years, run a bond, update those handful of schools, and then wait another 30 to 40 years.

With 58 schools, we could not wait 40 years, run a bond, and think that we could update and modernize all those facilities.

The cost, the construction ecosystem, it's just not tenable.

So that's where this, about every six years, since the early 2000s, the school district has run a bond.

We pick a handful of schools to replace or modernize.

Every year we update those older buildings with carpet, paint, HVAC, because we want to extend the useful life of those buildings as far as we possibly can.

And we've been really successful at that.

The old Sacajawea, we got that over 60 years.

We got the old Glover over 60 years.

We've been pretty successful at stretching the age of those buildings.

But about every six years, we run a bond, pick a handful of schools, every year due that maintenance to extend the life of the other ones.

It's been a really successful plan for our community.

In 2018, Former Mayor Condon came to us and said, "What could we do together?

How could we partner?"

And the fruition of that conversation was running a school bond and a library bond together.

We exchanged land as part of that partnership.

They gave us land for Yasuhara and Peperzak Middle Schools.

We exchanged land with the city for them to build The Hive off of Sprague for the new library.

And we even built a library inside of one of our middle schools.

So middle school and a public library, same space.

Really great partnership of two government entities, sharing resources, really trying to stretch the value.

And in the summer of '23, the parks department came to us and said, "We know you're getting ready to run your next bond.

How could we work together?

How could we partner?"

Going into it, we thought that was just gonna look probably at the scale of the library partnership.

As we met, as we studied, as we conducted outreach, it grew at a significant pace.

And the scale has really become quite astonishing.

Over 200 projects, 30 of those projects are featured partnership opportunities that wouldn't be available if these two ballot initiatives weren't developed through collaboration.

- So to both of you, what were the challenges of merging those two and trying to put together of 200 projects?

How many of them could be done together?

- You know, I think some of the challenges weren't necessarily there originally because it's a great partnership when you look at, not only does the school district and parks department really manage the majority of publicly owned land within the city of Spokane, but also around our mission alignment as far as programming, infrastructure for youth, adults and seniors.

And then that methodology of, you know, this is the public's land, we want them to use it as much as possible.

And really going into it and saying, how can we activate every space that we manage for the public 365 days out of the year?

And so it was a very natural partnership and a very longstanding partnership too.

In the 1970s, we established a joint use agreement with the school district, one of the first in the state that a lot of jurisdictions still model after as far as jointly using spaces and collaborating together.

So when we did the rainbow schools, they said, "Let's maybe make the gymnasiums a little bit bigger so we can have more program space and more opportunities."

So it was really building off of the past and really taking it to that next level.

- And we were very fortunate, the school board, the mayor were very supportive in saying, "Go conduct this study, leave no stone unturned, develop as many different opportunities and as many different potential experiences and assets for our community as possible."

And that really centered around a couple of different objectives.

The one was, we have to, as a community, get off of screens.

Kids are addicted to smartphones.

Many adults are.

We're spending way too much time isolated away from each other inside of our homes on a screen.

And since 2008 when the iPhone has come out, we've noticed a really concerning drop in the wellness of kids.

Whether that's suicide rates, self-harm, anorexia, bulimia, anxiety, depression, you name it.

We've seen a deterioration amongst our kids.

A primary antecedent of that is they're addicted to screens.

Just the sleep deprivation alone should have us really concerned, let alone what they're ingesting.

So what do we do as a community?

We're not gonna be able to go out and confiscate all the phones.

They're here to stay.

They're part of our lives.

What we can do is prohibit them in schools, which we've done.

It's been wildly successful.

We can also say every kid, every day, should be doing something after school that's active.

A club, a art, an athletic experience.

Every kid, every day, let's get them off of their screens, out of their homes.

Let's have them spend as many of their waking hours as possible, not on a screen.

We know that's gonna be good for them.

And we're already seeing the data in our schools.

Kids that are in extracurriculars, their attendance gets better, their grades improve, and behavior issues go down.

We know it works.

The challenge, we're out of space.

We have eight soccer teams practicing on a one-hour time slot on one field.

We're turning kids away who wanna play middle school baseball.

We're bursting at the seams.

And the parks department is having a similar challenge because adults are hearing this message that we should get off the screens, we should do active activities together in real life.

It's not just resonating for kids, but it's resonating for adults as well.

- Yeah, so a great example is we perform an adult volleyball league.

And typically we're able to schedule 120 teams.

And that's always been enough to schedule that with our joint use agreement with the school district.

And this year, we didn't only see the 120 teams sign up at record pace, we had 131 teams on a waiting list.

So double the capacity.

So when you look at, you know, 10 adults per team, that's a massive amount of our community wanting to get together, whether it's after work, on the weekends, and recreate together.

So we're starting to see that movement not only from the kids, but the adults and the seniors as well.

- So tell me about that process of merging, the parks department says, "Here's what we need."

The school district says, "Here's what we need.

How can we work together to make sure we all get what we need?"

What was that process like?

- Well, it's really about, you know, first looking at feedback.

The School District has collected a lot of feedback before the 2024 bond and after when it failed, almost 57%.

So bonds take more than a majority.

Most decisions in our republic take a 50% majority.

School bonds take 60%.

Lot of listening.

What do people want?

What do they wanna see in the value of these projects?

How do they wanna see them be used?

And the parks department has done an incredible comprehensive process to collect input.

So then looking at what the community wants and then going and looking for where those opportunities.

Aquatics is a great example.

There's lots of interest on the School District side for kids around aquatics, whether that's swim lessons, high school swim team.

There's lots of demand on the park side.

To build a new aquatic center indoors is 60 to $80 million.

We have some great outdoor aquatic centers, but they're only used for a small part of the year.

So when you hear people talk about indoor aquatic center, that feels pretty daunting.

60, 80 million for an indoor center.

So we scoured the community.

We asked around.

We found out that Spokane Colleges has an indoor aquatic center that they mothballed.

It's just sitting empty.

We went to the colleges and we said, "How do we work together?

Could we use this space for free if the school district supports modernizing it with bond dollars and the Parks Department operates it?"

And next thing you know, we've got a indoor aquatic center that is part of this initiative.

It's the example of when everybody gives a little bit of something.

When people aren't concerned about who gets the credit, who gets all the control, there's a lot of assets in our community.

The days of us trying to go off alone and accomplish things are a thing of the past.

The future is collaboration, working together.

Who owns the land?

Who could do the best job with the programming?

Who could then help with marketing and getting people connected to it?

Who can help with transportation?

Coming together as a community, collaborating is what's made these projects possible.

- So that's one of the more high-profile projects in the portfolio.

Pick two or three others that maybe have third parties involved that are gonna be, that you think are gonna be pretty significant in the city.

- You know, one of the ones that makes me most excited is about what we're doing at Madison Elementary School in Franklin Park.

And really the thought process of, let's not really think of it as just a standalone elementary school anymore.

It's really that community center, that community hub, gathering place with an elementary school in it.

And that's really grown into something with private partnerships, public partnerships.

That's really taken a new shape of what that facility is.

So that'll be our headquarters of the North Side Boys and Girls Club, to really activate that space.

When you look at that location at Franklin Park, really in the heart of the city, you couldn't ask for a better location adjacent to a park to really activate a space within our community.

And then we had Hoopfest come with to us and say, "You know, we're seeing record numbers, whether it's in youth basketball, again in volleyball, pickleball, exploding, and all these other kind of racket, indoor sports.

How can we come together?"

So now, rather than having a one gymnasium section within a school district, now we're able to expand that to a five-court facility, a rec facility, that during the day when classes are going on for elementary school, there'll be a partition that goes down so they can have their one gymnasium, and then we can activate that fourplex next to it, whether that's senior pickleball or other programming activities.

And then when school is up, we can open up that partition.

Now, we have that fiveplex.

And then that just continued to build on.

We went to the PNQ, so we're the largest volleyball tournament here regionally, and said, "You know, you have a lot of, you know, these temporary courts that you put down for two weeks out of the year.

What do you do with them?"

And they said, "Well, we just put them in storage."

And we're like, "Well, could we use that?"

So rather than, you know, investing $10 million into a wood floor, they said, "Absolutely.

That's great.

We love it so much.

We'll buy new ones for this facility because we love the vision."

So the synergy of just partnerships, building on partnerships now, and these have always been these priorities within the community, but we just financially have not been able to get there.

And now these partnerships between public and public and private and public.

And it really started as, man, two government agencies are working together.

And then that continues to layer on all these organizations coming to us, whether it's capital dollars or programming, to help and want to be a part of that.

And we're still getting a lot of outreach now of organizations saying, "How can we help?

How can we be a part of this?"

And when we look at that Franklin Park Complex and the updates to the ball fields and really that being the youth ball field mecca of the Central Spokane and that activation, it's really going to change that region of Spokane in a very positive way.

- And when you play that out, so what does that look like on a snowy January day?

In the old way of doing things, that building would be sitting there and it'd be full of kids learning to read and write, and go through their school experience, which is great.

But the future is that building sitting there on a snowy January day, kids are in classroom, learning how to read, learning how to write; adult seniors on the pickleball courts, recreating; a court devoted to toddler playtime where young parents can bring their toddlers in to move around and socialize, 'cause it's too cold outside.

In the evening, that school, instead of sitting empty, now it's full of kids through K-8 grade.

At a Boys and Girls Club, there's adults playing volleyball on several courts.

There's a youth basketball team playing on another court.

Those are starkly different visions.

And we're really excited for that opportunity.

Another really great partnership project is the new Trades High School, partnership with Spokane Colleges.

And we know there's a huge demand amongst kids wanting to be in the vocational trades experiences sooner in their academic journey.

We know from business and industry that they are desperate to find trades, you know, people that work in the trades.

And through a partnership, we'll have a new Trades High School on the Spokane Community College campus.

They have some incredible technical programs.

It'll be a full-day 9-12th grade experience for kids.

When they walk across the stage, we're gonna hand them their high-school diploma and their two-year technical degree, debt-free, ready to enter the workforce.

It's a huge win for kids and their future.

It's also a huge boom to the local economy and our business and industry partners.

- So in our last third of the program here, let's talk about the financing because school financing is not an easy thing, you know, and property taxes are not necessarily well understood.

So you're financing differently.

So let's start Garrett with the city's proposal.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And so before this partnership, so we're looking at a 20-year levy.

Originally, we're looking at a 29 cents per 1,000 just for the parks projects.

And then now working with the school district and those other partnerships, we're able to bring that down to 27 cents per 1,000.

And again, I kind of mentioned the reasons why a levy versus a bond.

We've traditionally always have done bonds within parks and recreation.

And that's really towards capital investments.

But the community came out and said, we wanna see those capital investments.

We also want to see just a higher level of service.

And why we got to the investment package is parks is very unique.

We have our own government body, and a park board outside of the city council with the city of Spokane.

And in the early 1900s, it was established per a public vote saying, you know, parks are so important to our community, we actually want to take it away from the inner politics of local government, have a standalone body that manages their budget and is able to be transparent and accountable for what we're investing back into the community.

And so currently right now, we receive 8% of what the general fund spends.

And the general fund as a whole is about 21% of the entire city budget.

But historically we've seen that general fund amount decrease for the amount of scope and expenditures that we have around maintenance and the updates that we need.

And so when we asked the community during our master plan process, we asked, would you be able to and want to invest more in your parks and open spaces if you were able to receive these benefits?

And we heard that pretty loud and clear at that time that, "Yes, please, look at those options."

'cause right now, we're seeing without this investment where the expenditures and that revenue are starting to cross that line, so then you start need to make those decisions around level of service decreases.

And we don't want to go there because we run our parks and recreation budget as a business.

So if we're over budget, we can't go ask somebody else to say, can you help us with, you know, those added funds?

We have to run it just like you would in your personal household with parks and recreation in our park board.

And so that levy model really gives us that breadth to work with the public, on an annual basis, make those system-wide improvements and those maintenance upgrades.

- Okay.

Well, one of the things, as Garrett highlighted, is these two ballot initiatives by themselves was gonna be 31 cents per 1,000 to the taxpayer, by working together, by partnering, by sharing 29 cents per 1,000, less than $8 a month to the average priced homeowner in Spokane.

So you see that power of partnerships, 30 additional projects over 200 and all, and the cost down 2 cents.

27 cents, as Garrett mentioned, goes to a new park levy, 2 cents goes to the existing school bond tax bill.

One of the things that everywhere that we go, we emphasize, "This is a tax increase."

If these two ballot initiatives pass, there'll be 29 additional cents added to your tax bill in terms of the rate.

People say, "Well, how does that work?

27 cents to the park, that seems pretty straightforward.

But two cents to the school district, that doesn't, that doesn't make sense."

We already have a school bond bill on everybody's taxes.

We add bonds on.

We pay them off.

We add them on.

We pay them off.

That's part of that steady as you go every six years, select a few schools.

We've been doing that since the early 2000s.

If nothing new happens, if no new initiatives are passed, our community will have a school bond bill into the mid-2040s.

This tax initiative adds two cents to people's existing school bond bill, and it continues that long-range plan that is in place.

So that bond bill is not going anywhere regardless of anything that happens moving forward.

We're paying those off.

We've added them on.

This will add two cents to that existing bond bill, and it will stay relatively stable.

The average rate per thousand will stay relatively stable over that 15-year period.

- Okay.

So this proposal's been floating out in the community for months.

You're right in the middle of a group of town hall meetings.

What are you hearing from, you've already talked about the work that you've done in the past with the community.

What are you hearing this time around?

- You know, I think for us, it's pretty amazing that, what we're hearing is what the community told us and that we listened to.

So it's great to see that.

I think just the scope, what we're hearing from the community is, and what we love is like, "Well, what's happening to the school right next to me or where I live?

Or what about this little pocket park next in my neighborhood?"

And it's a very complicated proposal.

So there's tons of information out there.

And I think what we again hear with the community is, how can we strengthen the identity of our neighborhoods?

Do we feel safe and that our parks and our open spaces and our schools are inviting and that are open to the public?

And then, you know, we see some special interest of whether, you know, I'm really interested in our trail system and our natural lands and, you know, the hiking, and what are we doing here?

Or I'm really interested in the racket sports, what those improvements are you seeing?

So we're seeing that investment and ownership at that neighborhood level, which is a little bit different than what we've ever done because they've always kind of been these kind of bigger regional projects.

And so seeing this now at that neighborhood level and that investment in ownership in these type of questions has been great to see because that's where it starts.

It starts in our neighborhoods, building that investment, building that ownership, and that positive activation really then creates that larger community benefit that we're looking for.

- So we're talking about two distinct bills or two distinct proposals.

What happens if one passes and the other one doesn't?

- Well, if one passes and the other doesn't, then our respective boards will go back and look at those partnership projects where we're pooling resources.

Those partnership projects won't happen.

And so then they'll look at the community feedback and make the best decision possible with, if there's no partnership, if those 30 additional projects are not gonna happen, what do we do with the dollars that we're looking to pool together to make those happen?

So they'll have to do some reevaluation, but we continue to just hear, you know, as Garrett mentioned, lots of positive feedback.

People really are excited about the partnerships.

They're excited about the almost $15 million of private funds that are being added to this.

And really what we're hoping is every member of the community looks at these over 200 projects, and they ask themselves, does anything in here save me money?

Does anything in here reduce the cost?

Maybe you don't have to drive my kids across the county to get to practice.

Am I gonna be able to access a public facility that I was paying a private membership for?

Maybe it's lowered a program cost because there's more spaces and we kind of able to manage the demand.

Does it save me money, and/or is there something in those 200 projects that I feel like I would gladly pay less than $8 a month because I care about aquatics or I care about trails?

Two of the concerns we hear is a lot of concerns about the economy and the tax burden.

And that's just a real challenge.

And we recognize that.

And that's why people need to look at this.

And they need to determine, is the investment, is the tax increase worth it to them for the return?

And we recognize the tax burden.

And then we hear lots of concerns about public safety.

And certainly we're not suggesting that this partnership is going to solve all the public safety challenges in our community, but public safety is a layering of multiple strategies.

We need kids to be active outside the school day.

We need to activate our parks and public spaces.

And I know that that's something that Garrett and his team have thought a lot about in terms of park safety.

- Yeah, when we look at park safety, I always use an example of this small little pocket park in West Central called Dutch Jake's Park.

And a number of years ago, our community came to us and said, "We don't want this park anymore.

Like we're seeing negative activity.

Families aren't using this park."

It was in the highest call for service locations within the city of Spokane.

And when we looked at the public safety with that concern, it's really a multifaceted approach of, one, just that engagement with the neighborhood.

We came to them and said, "Let's take back your park, take back that ownership, and so the neighbors are starting to talk with neighbors."

And then we said, "If we're able to invest in this park, what do you wanna see?

Like what do the kids actually want to play on?

What do families want to see in this park?"

And then so when you're able to then invest in that park, then create that positive activation and then that starts limiting that negative responses that they've seen in traditionally.

And then we have this patrol piece, and a part of this partnership as well is expanding our park ranger program.

So currently we have four limited commissioned park rangers within our system.

This partnership would expand that almost fourfold to then have, we have a precinct park ranger district, up to four park rangers in Northeast Spokane, an additional in Northwest, Downtown and South Hill.

So it's has those proactive patrols.

You're starting now to have relationships with the community and you're able to respond, rather than being reactive, we can be proactive.

And then also just through all our investments that we look at, it's called crime prevention through environmental design, whether that's lighting, how a building is designed and functions, where the building is, what are your sight lines?

So each one of those improvements would look at it through that lens to make sure that we can create a safe environment.

- Garrett Jones is the director of the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department.

Adam Swinyard is the superintendent of Spokane Public Schools.

Thank you both for your time and thoughts.

And thank you for joining us.

To learn more about the Spokane Parks and Recreation Levy and the Spokane Public Schools bond on the November 4th ballot, visit togetherspokane.org.

And property owners can find a calculator to see what these two ballot initiatives would cost you again at togetherspokane.org/cost.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Doug Nadvornick.

(jubilant music)