Spokane eyes defunding police by $9.38M, $4.75M from fire, more from courts

(The Center Square) – Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown told her fellow officials they could pull the city out of its deficit; all it would take is extensive personnel and funding cuts, which could diminish public safety.

Brown has alluded to this option several times already: first when proposing her Community Safety Levy and then when announcing a two-book outlook for next year. The mayor confirmed many people’s suspicions during Thursday’s budget meeting but noted that the cuts aren’t set in stone.

The effort is a part of balancing Spokane’s structural deficit, which has grown to around $50 million since 2019, according to Brown’s prior statements . However, Matt Boston, the city’s chief financial officer, referred to it as a “$25 million structural gap” yesterday, ignoring the roughly $25 million in depleted reserves that the city spent in addition to the general fund deficit.

“The structural gap projections are a moving target,” Boston said. “Obviously with revenue fluctuating from month to month, year to year, we’re keeping a pretty honed-in focus on our revenue numbers, sales tax being the most fluctuating of all the ones we really review.”

Spokane’s structural gap, or deficit, may decrease over the next year if things go according to plan, though it won’t disappear altogether. Instead, Boston said the city anticipates ending 2025 with a general fund deficit of $14 million. That amount would increase again to $19 million by the end of 2026, according to Boston’s presentation on Thursday.

Still, the city expects its revenues to increase by approximately 3% over the biennium, which is typical outside of shifts due to the pandemic and various lockdowns.

Current cost-saving measures include mandatory furlough days for Brown’s cabinet, shifting contracts and training to a more cost-effective format, delaying the 2024 Fire Academy and propping up a “Salary Savings Plan” for the Spokane Police Department, which incentivizes officers to retire despite SPD experiencing issues with understaffing.

“The expenditure reductions taken by the administration are continuous, and are included, and does not include any Community Safety Sales Tax,” Boston said.

Brown recently proposed a new sales tax after pulling her Community Safety Levy from the ballot shortly after the city council approved it. The measure could bring in about $7.7 million annually with 15% going to the county, though the city could’ve received around that same amount if voters had passed another measure last November.

Now, Brown wants to plug a fraction of the deficit with her new tax measure while mitigating the extent of personnel cuts. Meanwhile, the county is attempting to renew its Juvenile Detention Facility and Jails Tax. If the city succeeds and the county fails, Sheriff John Nowels said it could make Spokane even more dangerous .

Around 73% of the general fund expenditures are on community safety, with the vast majority going to law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services, or EMS. This means that if the city intends to close the structural gap, many of the cuts could come from those departments.

When Brown proposed her levy in April, she said that if it wasn’t passed, around 200 people could lose their jobs, which would significantly impact public safety. Then again, when announcing her book-one budget outlook, she said it would include a 10% citywide cut, which would undoubtedly include personnel.

“I don’t want to sugarcoat it, as I’m starting to review these 10% reductions, they aren’t pretty,” Brown said. “If we did the 10% across the board, we would solve the structural deficit ... However, I don’t see a way to do that without employing reductions or service-level reductions.”

According to data from Thursday’s presentation, SPD is facing the most significant funding cut at $9.38 million, with Fire/EMS being the second largest at $4.75 million. Then, Parks & Recreation at about a $950,000 cut, Legal at $567,000, Municipal Court at $528,000, Public Defenders at $366,000 and Community Justice Services at $364,000.

The library system is facing a larger cut than parts of the court system, at about $487,000; still, Spokane’s capacity to prosecute offenders is already greatly diminished, on top of a lack of capacity in the jails and juvenile detention facilities.

Thursday’s presentation also included several other cuts outside of police, fire and court services, adding another $2.46 million in cuts to the budget. This is on top of the $17.39 million in cuts between the justice system, police, fire, libraries and parks and recreation.

“I just wanted to make it clear to everyone that we’ve asked every department to identify the 10% reduction; we haven’t taken all those reductions yet,” Brown said. “This 10% reduction exercise identifies what would happen if we took 10% equally from each department; that’s not necessarily the budgeting practice that we would actually incorporate into our budget proposal.”

“But it gives us options,” she continued; however, Brown also said that she asked a few departments not to participate in the 10% reductions.

The city officials will decide which cuts to adopt and other cost-saving measures in the coming weeks and months as they prepare for the forthcoming biennial budget.