Residents’ Priorities Tug 2 Ways

Spokane residents list preventing crime as one of the city’s top priorities.

In almost the next breath, they rank paying for community centers and their programs at the bottom of the heap.

These at-odds sentiments hail from a report compiled by the Community Partners - a group of 29 residents chosen by the City Council to help the city set spending priorities.

“It’s a paradox,” said Chris Marr, co-chairman of the group. “We heard conflicting opinions.

“People emphasized prevention over punishment. … Community centers provide outlets for youth recreation, but they seemed to get the cuts.”

Said Mayor Jack Geraghty, “We can’t very well talk out of both sides of our mouths. The best way to deal with (crime prevention) is through the community centers.

“Just because we have a budget crisis doesn’t mean we have a brain crisis.”

The Community Partners spent three months sifting through survey results and holding town hall meetings in an effort to gauge what services residents most want from city government.

During that time, the council talked excitedly about how the report would help the city solve its budget crisis by letting residents guide spending choices.

Early projections show the city needs at least $6 million it doesn’t have to provide the same services next year it does now. Cuts have to be made to balance the budget.

The report came out earlier this month, with the group offering several guidelines for budgeting. Those include things such as urging the city to justify every dollar spent, focus on long-term goals and measure the cost effectiveness of each department.

Three surveys showed residents giving standard responses to their priorities: police, fire and street repair.

In a telephone survey of 400 registered voters, 48 percent said they would “probably” or “definitely” reduce spending on neighborhood centers.

At the same time, 53 percent said they considered crime prevention a priority.

Surveys of city employees and newspaper readers showed similar results.

Councilman Joel Crosby sums up the contradiction this way: “Surveys reflect the general public. The general public often doesn’t know community centers exist.”

While lots of people may be indirectly affected by the work of community centers, they aren’t directly affected, Crosby said.

“The reality is that community centers have a certain constituency,” he said.

Councilwoman Phyllis Holmes said survey demographics may have as much to do with the results as anything.

A “somewhat older” crowd answered many of the mail-in surveys, Holmes said. That age group isn’t as likely to visit a community center as a younger person.

Center directors get anxious when they talk about the Community Partners report and possible budget cuts.

They list several reasons they consider the survey results deceiving, especially those that used the term “neighborhood centers” as opposed to “community centers.”

Neighborhood centers historically are linked to services for the poor, such as welfare and food banks, said Don Higgins, director of the West Central Community Center.

Community centers may provide neighborhood center services, but their focus is on “strengthening the neighborhood through preventative assistance,” Higgins said.

The wording “skewed the results,” he said.

West Central offers a variety of services, such as parenting classes and drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs.

“These things translate into kids not getting involved in the criminal justice system,” Higgins said.

The four community centers - West Central, Peaceful Valley, Northeast and East Central - all receive city general fund money but vary greatly in how much they get and how they operate.

This year, city dollars range from the $161,000 East Central will get to the $2,514 for Peaceful Valley. While East Central is owned and managed by the city, the Northeast center serves as a landlord to social service agencies.

“We help support what the neighborhood wants us to do,” said Bill Dillon, director of the Northeast center. Several agencies - Children’s Home Society, Catholic Charities, Northeast Youth Center - rent center space.

Dillon and Higgins flinch at any mention of budget cuts, saying that even small decreases could hurt their programming.

Crosby, an ordained Presbyterian minister, compared community centers to churches. “They serve a valuable service to that constituency, but they don’t serve the whole city.”

Like churches, they must look to private funding, generating “revenues from the people who benefit from their services,” he said.

During the next few weeks, the council will make decisions on the size and place for cuts. Nearly every department is looking at a decrease.

Regardless of what happens to their budgets, community centers must find ways to demonstrate to the council how their programs effect change, Councilwoman Holmes said.

“I want to see measurements,” she said. “Here’s the behavior, here’s how it’s changed.”

West Central’s Higgins doesn’t see that as a problem.

“We’re the one thread that’s weaving together partnerships for the community,” he said. “Do we have a case to make to the council? You bet we do.”

, DataTimes