Imagine if the federal government gave you $5 million.
You can't put it into savings or use it to pay off your debts — the rules say you have to spend it on projects that you believe will help the community. If you don't find a way to spend it by the end of the year, the feds might take it back.
What are you going to choose?
That is, essentially, the question facing Spokane city government. In recent months, elected officials have proposed several ideas for how to spend the city's remaining $4.9 million in federal pandemic assistance.
The proposals have included a study about downtown public bathrooms; a "clean and safe" litter cleanup program; park amenities; a study about downtown housing; behavioral health programs; municipal court services; youth sports; sidewalk repairs; broadband; neighborhood street lights; and — somewhat controversially — moving homeless services out of the troubled area near Second Avenue and Division Street in downtown Spokane.
There isn't enough money to fully fund everybody's ideas. Some will end up on the cutting room floor, and after months of debate, city leaders appear set to decide which in early June.
The money came from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, a 2021 pandemic relief program that gave U.S. cities and counties a historic influx of cash and broad flexibility in how to spend it.
Spokane's pot of unspent cash puts the city — which is struggling with a $25 million deficit in its general fund — in a somewhat unusual situation. The city is broke, but it also has money it needs to spend quickly.
"Those dollars were given to us to get out into the community," says City Council member Jonathan Bingle. "We can't just use those to plug a budget hole."
Spokane received $81 million total from ARPA, and spent basically all of it. But a few of the projects the city allocated money to haven't panned out — mostly for lack of qualified applicants or concrete plans.
Any ARPA funds that aren't under contract by the end of 2024 might be taken back by the federal government.
With that in mind, City Council members have spent recent months identifying at least $4.9 million in ARPA funds that can be clawed back from stalled projects that are unlikely to launch by year's end or otherwise aren't needed. The list of abandoned projects includes funding for accessory dwelling unit permits, fire chief recruitment, electric vehicle charging stations, improvements to the Municipal Court building and youth behavioral health services.
As the city prepares to make cuts to its operating budget, the ARPA money is one of the few opportunities city leaders will have to fund new projects this year.
A draft ordinance slated for a vote on June 3 proposes dividing the $4.9 million into three projects, the two largest of which center on Mayor Lisa Brown's goal of moving homeless services away from Second and Division.
If passed, $2.6 million would help Catholic Charities close the House of Charity homeless shelter it operates about two blocks from that intersection and open a new facility elsewhere. Another $1.8 million would help Compassionate Addiction Treatment close its nearby facilities and move to a new, bigger building somewhere else. The rest of the money — about $485,000 — would go toward various child care center projects.
But that may change, as some council members have their own ideas for how the money should be spent — and are frustrated with the mayor's ARPA priorities potentially overriding their own.
"We've already given so much of our ARPA dollars toward homelessness," Bingle says. "We have precious few dollars left, we need to get them out into the community for things that I think are going to be really impactful on people's day-to-day life."
Others disagree, arguing that the humanitarian situation at Second and Division makes it a top priority for ARPA spending.
"There's ongoing public health concerns, I think that's what it comes down to," says Council member Paul Dillon, adding that relocating services will make it safer not just for the people who use them, but for the city as a whole.
SECOND AND DIVISION
Moving homeless services out of the Second and Division area has long been a goal of city leaders. The intersection, which sits on the eastern edge of downtown, has several homeless services within a couple-block radius.In recent years, various city leaders have said locating so many services in one small area was a mistake. People often congregate and hang out on the sidewalks, and open drug use is common.
In 2022, former Mayor Nadine Woodward announced during her State of the City address that she had reached an agreement with Catholic Charities to move House of Charity.
The news was met with applause, but the move never happened. Catholic Charities wasn't able to find a new location.
Brown is now hoping to take on the unfinished task.
On Sunday, March 24, Brown sent out a press release announcing her ARPA priorities. Relocating House of Charity and Compassionate Addiction Treatment was at the top of the list.
Council members were surprised. They'd spent months developing their own list of ideas, which did not include moving those services.
"That was news to a lot of us," Dillon said during a meeting shortly after the mayor's announcement, adding that he had questions about Brown's proposed timeline and how her priority list "correlates with our own priorities that we've spent a lot of time laying out."
But Dillon says recent discussions have been collaborative, and that the council and mayor's office are not "as out of alignment as some folks have been trying to make it sound."
"The way the press release went out on a Sunday was a little bit of a surprise. But in terms of a lot of the requests themselves, it does align with our overall goals and strategies," Dillon says. "I think that there was a big lesson learned from that in terms of how we communicate."
"CATALYST 2.0" AND CONSOLIDATION
When Woodward originally pushed to relocate House of Charity out of downtown, she described the new facility as "House of Charity 2.0."But the new Catholic Charities facility Brown's administration is pitching would be more of a "Catalyst 2.0" similar to the Catalyst Project, a transitional housing facility Catholic Charities opened in the West Hills neighborhood in 2022, says Dawn Kinder, Brown's director of Neighborhoods, Housing and Human Services.
Unlike House of Charity, the "Catalyst 2.0" would be open 24/7, which would help alleviate some of the issues with people congregating outside, Kinder says. It would operate as a transitional housing project where people have their own rooms where they can store belongings.
Before Brown hired her at the start of this year, Kinder worked for Catholic Charities as chief stabilization officer and was heavily involved in the Catalyst project.
"Transitional housing projects are much more effective in many cases in actually engaging folks in robust services," Kinder says. "People have the opportunity to feel safe and stabilized, instead of living in a constant state of chaos by not having a space of their own."
Compassionate Addiction Treatment currently operates out of two buildings on either side of Division Street, which often creates safety issues when people try to cross, Kinder says. The $1.8 million allocation would help the organization consolidate into a larger building elsewhere.
Both Catholic Charities and Compassionate Addiction treatment have toured a number of buildings, but have yet to settle on new sites, Kinder says.
OTHER IDEAS
City Council members are planning to introduce several amendments with alternate ideas on how the ARPA money should be spent.Council member Zack Zappone and Council President Betsy Wilkerson have an amendment that would slightly reduce the amount allocated to Compassionate Addiction Treatment and Catholic Charities, and put $544,500 toward the Community Justice Services department at Spokane Municipal Court, which helps people navigate the criminal justice system. The program is at risk of running out of funding, Dillon says.
Council member Michael Cathcart thinks there's additional ARPA money that could be clawed back from projects that have yet to go out for contract. He's planning an amendment to recapture funds from a proposal to award $100,000 grants for multicultural center projects.
Cathcart also has concerns about the fact that, instead of going through a competitive bid process, the city seems to have pre-selected Catholic Charities and Compassionate Addiction Treatment to receive the money. The draft ordinance doesn't technically mention the organizations by name, but Brown's press release and people in her administration have explicitly said that's where the funds would be going.
"It's supposed to be competitive," Cathcart says.
The package of ARPA reallocations was originally slated for a vote on May 20. But on Monday, Brown's staff asked council members to defer it to June 3 so they could have more time to evaluate questions, including about the competitive contract process.
Bingle is planning to introduce an amendment with Council member Lili Navarrete that would significantly reduce the amount allocated to Catholic Charities and Compassionate Addiction Treatment — from $2.6 million and $1.8 million to $650,000 and $500,000 respectively.
The money saved would then be split among eight new projects: neighborhood lighting improvements, a downtown public bathroom study, Community Justice Services, youth sports, a pond lining project at Cannon Hill Park, sidewalk repairs, a "clean and safe" litter cleanup initiative, and new bathroom and parking lot amenities for Beacon Hill park.
Bingle says youth sports is the one he's most excited about.
"Lots of kids, with club sports or whatever, the cost is a barrier for them," Bingle says. "Being able to give them scholarships and equipment, I think, would be something that would be really cool."
CARLYLE CLUSTER
During a briefing session last Monday, Kinder told City Council members that Catholic Charities had looked at several locations for its new facility and was exploring buying the Carlyle Hotel on Post Street — which is downtown, about a half-mile from House of Charity.News of the potential Carlyle purchase spread quickly — and was met with significant backlash from many downtown business and property owners, who worried the disorder and safety issues they associate with House of Charity would simply be shuffled to a different part of downtown.
Cathcart thinks it's a "terrible idea."
"If the mayor's goal is an improvement of public safety, the goal should be to relocate an organization like this outside of the core," Cathcart says, adding that he's skeptical that the new "transitional housing" model would alleviate the current issues associated with House of Charity.
Kinder disagrees.
"An emergency shelter is a fundamentally different operation than a transitional housing project," Kinder says.
Last week, Kinder told the Inlander she believed that the Carlyle's owner, Pioneer Human Services, was moving forward with a different buyer. She said the city can't control private real estate transactions, but that the administration is "not actively seeking out any locations downtown for new services, or for transferring of new models."
On Monday, a spokesperson for Pioneer said the organization is "currently reviewing several offers" and has made "no formal decision with Catholic Charities or other buyers." ♦
