On Thursday morning, more than 100 people gathered inside The Hive, a non-traditional library in the East Central neighborhood designed for arts education and community events, to hear a “proposal to improve parks, schools and neighborhoods across Spokane.”
Excited chatter filled the room before it was announced that the city of Spokane’s Parks & Recreation department and Spokane Public Schools plan to partner to complete more than 200 projects throughout the city.
The proposal, titled “Together Spokane” includes school, park and playground replacements and renovations, new and updated all-weather, lighted sports fields and additional planning for future projects.
“[We] worked to develop plans so Spokane Public Schools and Parks [& Recreation] would both succeed, resulting in the best outcome for our Spokane community,” Spokane Park Board President Bob Anderson said. “This partnership will drive the critical resources to make our community better, not only for students, but for us all.”
In November, Spokane voters will likely see a 20-year $240 million levy from Parks & Recreation, and a 20-year $200 million bond from the school district (that would pay for projects over the next five years) on their ballots. While this proposal is supported by city and school leaders, the Spokane School Board, the Park Board and Spokane City Council will have final approval of the ballot items that are presented to voters.
If both measures were to pass as proposed on Feb. 20, taxpayers could expect an increase of about 29 cents per $1,000 of assessed home value. To calculate how the measures could impact your taxes, go to togetherspokane.org/cost.
The measures together, plus private contributions totaling $11 million so far, would fund more than 30 joint projects in Spokane. However, they’ll be voted on separately, meaning one request could pass while the other fails. If that happens, independent projects that would be funded through the measure that is approved would still proceed, while any joint projects would need to be modified or postponed.
This isn’t the first time the city and the school district have worked together like this. In 2018, voters approved both a six-year $495 million school bond and a $77 million public libraries bond — both with more than 65% voter approval.
“With the 2018 school bond, the Spokane city and library worked with the school district to serve our community, allowing shared space, land trades and smaller class size at every level, and a stadium that's widely used and very accessible,” Spokane School Board President Nikki Otero Lockwood says. “These past accomplishments stand as reminders of what we can do together locally.”
Last year, Spokane Public Schools asked voters to approve a $200 million bond that would've funded elementary school replacements, significant modernization at North Central High School, and planning for future school replacements. Though a majority of voters supported it, the 2024 bond failed to reach the 60% threshold required to pass.
The new bond proposal would fund all of those projects and more, with a focus on building community hubs in the region. For example, previously the school district hoped to just replace the aging Madison Elementary School, but now the district hopes to co-locate the school and a community center.
“The world has changed dramatically. Too many people are on their phones, too often inside of their homes and isolated. We need every member of our community, from the cradle all the way to our seniors, active together in community, building relationships, in conversation with each other, sharing ideas, sharing experiences, sharing memories,” Spokane Public Schools Superintendent Adam Swinyard said. “In order to do that, we need programming and infrastructure.
“If you just have programming and no infrastructure, then you have to turn people away,” he continued. “And we've been doing that. We have historic demand for some of our recreational spaces. If you have just infrastructure, no programming, then you have spaces that sit empty. You need both to have a vibrant community.”
WHAT WILL THE JOINT MEASURES FUND?
Though there are tons of innovative projects within the proposal, there are also a bunch of small updates that would be funded. Within Spokane Public Schools, 54 schools will see some kind of facility improvement. Additionally, every restroom (85 of them) and every playground (54) within Spokane parks will be repaired, renovated or replaced.“This plan will benefit not only all of our students in one way or another, but really it impacts every neighborhood. All 29 neighborhoods get a project in this, no one is left out, and all our parks will see improvements. That's all 90 parks,” Mayor Lisa Brown said. “It's really about health and activity and community as Spokane gets larger. A larger city has city problems, and what ties it together as a community, what brings us to our roots of who we are, [is our] neighborhoods, schools and parks, and by doing all of this work together, we save money for taxpayers. … And we just create more than we ever could have done on our own.”
Here is a list of some of the larger projects within the Together Spokane proposal. A full list and more information can be found at togetherspokane.org.
Indoor Public Aquatics Center
Through a partnership with Spokane Colleges, this funding would renovate the empty aquatic center at Spokane Community College to be used by Spokane Public Schools students. This would allow the district to include swim lessons for students and also offer winter swimming options to the community. Additionally, this would allow the school district to have swim teams and offer lifeguard certifications to its students.
“Our goal is to have every second grader participate in an in-the-school-day swimming experience,” Swinyard said. “No family in Spokane should ever lose a child to drowning because they don't know how to swim. That should never happen, and we should never accept that.”
School and Recreation Center at Franklin Park
Madison Elementary, which sits on the northwest corner of Franklin Park, will become more than just a school, it’ll also serve as a community recreation center. If voters see fit, the school will be replaced by a building that houses the school, alongside a five-court indoor “field house,” which will be open to the public. Plus, the new building would also be home to the Spokane Boys and Girls Club.
Adding these indoor basketball courts will help the district as more students are playing sports.
“We're bursting at the seams,” Swinyard said. “We went from 900 kids playing youth basketball to 4,000.”
New Trades High School
In addition to reviving the indoor aquatics center at Spokane Community College, the school district hopes to establish a trades-based high school there, too. This would add more technical education options for the district’s nearly 30,000 students.
“These kids are going to walk across the stage with their high school diploma and their two-year technical degree,” Swinyard said. “Amazing opportunity for kids and it also meets significant workforce demands that we have in our local economy.”
Citywide All-Weather Lighted Fields
Through this partnership, the city and the school district hope to expand the evening and off-season use of sports fields. Many area fields aren’t built to weather Spokane’s unpredictable weather in the fall and spring, when sports are most popular, according to Spokane Parks & Recreation Director Garrett Jones.
“This really expands on the opportunities around youth sports, high school sports and community sports,” Jones said.
Right now, the plan is to provide at least one all-weather rectangular field and at least one turf field with lighting within each high school boundary.
Neighborhood Park Additions & Renovations
Three of the city’s parks, Minnehaha, Grant and Harmon, are set to be completely renovated to ensure they are more safe and inviting for folks.
“Last year, I walked across our playgrounds and many of the parks in District 1, and I just saw the state of disarray in a lot of those playgrounds. Well, not anymore,” said Spokane City Council member Michael Cathcart. “We're going to have play equipment that is safe, that is high quality and that our kids want to play on. No longer the wooden boarded up pieces because something's broken and we don't have the means to fix it. With this partnership we are going to have the ability to address those things and to really improve our parks.”
In addition to improving existing parks, the city hopes to build three new parks in neighborhoods that don’t currently have access to a park within a 10-minute walk. The new parks would be built in the North Indian Trail, Shiloh Hills and Latah/Hangman neighborhoods. The city would also use funds to acquire land in the Lincoln Heights/East Central area for a future park.
Latah Valley School & Park Planning
The city and school district plan to work together to mitigate the impacts to the Latah/Hangman neighborhood as its population continues to grow. To do that, the two entities hope to fund master planning for a new elementary school and adjacent park.
“The school district has owned property in this part of the community since 1996, and so as part of this partnership we're going to be doing some master planning for what a future elementary would look like there,” Swinyard said.
The city also owns land in the area, so the plan would include a five-acre school and a 10-acre park.
Indoor Tennis Courts
Prior to even announcing this proposal to the public, the city and school district secured funding from local and national organizations for some projects. For example, the U.S. Tennis Association will fund an indoor tennis facility at Shadle Park High School. This would be built atop the school’s current outdoor tennis courts and add an extra two courts.
“This is going to be an amazing opportunity for Shadle Park. Part of the partnership will contribute to some restrooms and some amenities to make it very accessible,” Swinyard said. “There are zero public tennis facilities in our region, this will be the first one.”
Storage for the MAC
In another ambitious partnership, Spokane Public Schools hopes to build and operate a new facility that would address the storage needs of the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture.
“We need more kids, more families, more people from out of town coming to see this incredible asset, but they have a challenge. … The vast majority of their facility is used for storage. They're our local historical society, and all of our local history is in storage because they don't have the space to display it,” Swinyard explained. “We want that local history out for the community, and so we're really excited about this opportunity.”
