Crime Check funds tied to aid from cities

Spokane County commissioners Tuesday adopted a 2008 general fund budget that includes money to restore the Crime Check crime-reporting program – if cities agree to pay their share of the $2 million-a-year program.

The nearly $155 million budget already included $244,228 for the scaled-down Spokane Crime Reporting Center that replaced Crime Check in late 2004 when the city of Spokane cut its support.

Commissioners added $251,798 more to cover the cost of beefing up the current program to Crime Check standards. Either way, the county government would pay only for service in unincorporated areas.

Unlike the round-the-clock nonemergency dispatching service, the Crime Reporting Center merely takes reports – and only for 12 hours a day on weekdays and nine hours on Saturdays.

Voters last month rejected a 1 percent sales tax that would have covered the Crime Check costs as well as a new radio and data network for police, fire and other emergency services.

The general fund budget also includes $1.2 million in grants to outside agencies – about $200,000 more than commissioners originally intended to allocate, and $50,000 more than Commissioner Bonnie Mager thought was appropriate.

Mager dissented at a budget meeting Monday when Commissioners Todd Mielke and Mark Richard voted to increase Greater Spokane Inc.’s tentative allocation from $200,000 to $250,000. Mager said she was “very disappointed that I had no idea this was going to come forward.”

Mager said the county’s grant program needs firmer deadlines and procedures.

Richard said he notified Mager last week about the plan to increase Greater Spokane’s allocation, but the state open meetings law prevented him from discussing it with her. He said he agrees, though, that “we need to work more on formalizing the process.”

Mager also objected that Greater Spokane, along with Connect Northwest and the Institute of Systems Medicine, already had been awarded the largest of next year’s grants. She called Greater Spokane’s award “inappropriate” in view of the fact that Project Access, which arranges free medical services for poor people, got only $150,000.

But Mielke said he objected all along to giving Greater Spokane less than the $250,000 it received in this year’s budget. He said the county is Project Access’ first and largest public donor, and commissioners gave the organization all the money it requested.

Mielke said the county spent about half of 1 percent of its budget on economic development, which he considers a “legitimate” investment.

Jim Huttenmaier, Greater Spokane’s public affairs manager, told commissioners they received a $15 million return on their investment when his organization helped lure a Blu-ray video disc manufacturing plant and encouraged Sonderen Packaging to undertake a $2.3 million expansion.

As a compromise, commissioners adopted Richard’s suggestion to require Greater Spokane to use the extra $50,000 on a training program he hopes will help young people find jobs.

Outside the general fund budget, commissioners decided by the same 2-1 split to reject a call from Spokane Mountaineers and others to collect about $10,000 in “banked capacity” in the Conservation Futures property tax voters overwhelmingly supported in an advisory ballot last month.

Banked capacity refers to property taxes that are still available because the county didn’t take all it was entitled to collect in the past.

The amount in question would have had little effect on next year’s levy of almost $1.6 million to purchase and maintain land for open space and recreational use. However, it would have padded the base on which a 1 percent annual levy increase is calculated.

Mielke and Richard objected that the county has no specific use earmarked for the extra money. Mager argued that voters showed they wanted a maximum collection when 62.5 percent of them supported permanent renewal of the tax.