Together Spokane: Will voters support $440 million schools and parks proposals? Here’s what’s at stake
Voters in Spokane this November will be faced with many decisions, but perhaps the biggest question will be whether they are willing to pay taxes to fund $440 million in sweeping projects at the city’s schools and parks.
There will be two separate items on the ballot, a parks levy and a school bond, but officials from both agencies have decided to wed the two in plans for how the money will be spent, dubbing the twin ballot measures “Together Spokane.”
The proposal will touch every school and park in the city in ways small and large. All told, advocates claim the funding package would have as radical an effect on Spokane as did Expo ’74 more than 50 years ago.
“The Spokane community back then dreamed big. We were the smallest city to host Expo ever, and we still benefit from all of that work that happened a long time ago,” said Nikki Otero Lockwood, Spokane Public Schools board president. “So now it’s our turn. What do we want Spokane to look like in the future?”
It is hard to summarize the hundreds of uses being proposed for this money.
For schools, it involves two rebuilt elementary schools, partnerships with nonprofits that could boost public access, new turf fields and lighting scattered around the district, a new trades high school and at least one project at each of the district’s 58 schools.
Park leaders promise three new parks in areas without much green space, three parks that will see major renovations and systemwide investments in every park, including cleaner bathrooms and an enhanced security presence.
While most of the projects are specific to either the bond or the levy and would proceed if only one or the other succeeds this November, dozens could only exist as partnerships between the two entities. In many cases, the school bond would pay to construct something like an all-weather field on the Dwight Merkel Sports Complex while the parks levy would pay to maintain and operate it. The same is true of a remodeled indoor pool at Spokane Community College that could kick-start swim teams at each high school, which the school bond would pay to rehab and the parks levy would maintain.
Schools Superintendent Adam Swinyard said the package amounts to a massive investment in the lives of Spokane children and their families, whether inside or outside of schools, giving kids easy access to activities that don’t involve a screen. Parks Director Garrett Jones sees the Together Spokane proposal as a way to give every neighborhood park the same kind of attention as downtown’s Riverfront Park.
By linking arms, entities would be able to wring out more juice with less squeeze, officials said, able to accomplish the ambitious 200-plus projects for cheaper than if they went it alone.
It also comes with a price tag that for some is indicative of the ambitious, generational investments being proposed, but for others seems withering.
The squeeze
The parks levy would raise $240 million in property taxes over the next 20 years from city taxpayers. It would raise property taxes by 27 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, so the owner of a $400,000 home in Spokane would pay an additional $108 per year.
The school district is also asking voters living within the district to grant the agency authority to issue $200 million in bonds that would need to be paid off over 20 years.
However, Spokane Public Schools officials have repeatedly said it is misleading to highlight how much taxpayers will pay for these new bonds in a vacuum, instead insisting on only emphasizing how much more taxpayers will pay next year – a fairly nominal increase, as older taxes will be expiring.
Today, a homeowner inside the school district already pays about $1.34 per $1,000 of assessed property value on existing school bond debt from voter-approved bonds in 2009 and 2018 – $536 a year on a $400,000 home. If the new bond is approved by voters, the total bond payment for a homeowner would only go up to $1.36 per $1,000 in 2026, because other debt is being paid off at the same time.
Together Spokane proponents have heavily marketed their campaign around that 2-cent difference, a minor $8 annual tax increase for that $400,000 homeowner. According to district officials, the rate will fluctuate as bonds are paid off, with the average amount being relatively stable when averaged over the next 15 years.
The district recruited Russell Neff to write the “against” statement for the school bond in the city voters’ guide. As the father of a recent Spokane Public Schools graduate and former substitute in the district, he’s been a regular presence at school board meetings since the COVID-19 pandemic, when he spoke out against state mask mandates and advocated against school closures.
In an interview with The Spokesman-Review, Neff said he feels he’s being “taxed into submission,” with over 23% of his property tax bill going towards state school taxes and another 36% to local school taxes.
“Taxation is becoming death by a thousand cuts; it’s just one more,” he said.
“Psychologically, I think that’s why some people may not want to vote for the bond or this levy, is because it gives them some control over that tax burden,” Neff continued.
Former Spokane Mayor David Condon, a supporter of the Together Spokane package who has been deployed repeatedly in recent months by school and parks officials to stump for the proposed investments, expressed sympathy in February when asked about the perspective of financially stretched taxpayers. He argued that, in many cases, the investments would lower the costs of families by offering amenities and attracting athletic tournaments that they might otherwise have to travel for.
“I have kids in youth sports, and it’s very expensive, even going to Yakima for a day and a half, spending a night in a hotel,” Condon said. “All of a sudden to be able to bring those regional tournaments here” could mean substantial savings for those families.
Others worry whether local governments can guarantee they’ll protect investments paid for with these tax requests.
Joanna Hyatt, a mother of five who homeschools four of her children, said she’s in a different park every week. She’s seen homeless people sleeping in parks, drug use in the open and vandalism that has closed park amenities like bathrooms. Until the city can make the parks feel safer, she’s not sure it’s worth the expense for facilities.
“It just is very frustrating to me to see so much go out in taxes, and yet it’s never enough, and the results don’t speak to that,” Hyatt said. “We don’t have a city and an educational system and a park system that are improving; even as we give more money, it continues to crumble.”
Though a major increase in parks security is a part of the Together Spokane funding proposal, increasing from four park rangers to as many as 12 with some limited authority to make arrests for misdemeanors, some are skeptical that it will be sufficient.
Christopher Savage, a conservative running for Spokane City Council against incumbent Councilman Zack Zappone, plans to vote against both the levy and bond. He worries the legal authorities of park rangers are too limited.
“I don’t know how good it will be to start renovating these parks, make them all new, opening up the bathrooms, when they’re all just going to be destroyed in the future because we don’t have the enforcement capability,” he argued.
Parks officials are keenly aware of these concerns and have been open about their concerns over vandalism, but believe that increased maintenance staff will help the parks system quickly clean up issues and increased security will make a noticeable difference.
“The rangers will be very instrumental in this process,” said Carl Strong, assistant director for park operations, in April. “We’ll be sending them around to shut the bathrooms down at night, and they have the training and the authority to move people on and out of the bathrooms.”
For some in the community, trust in government is thin. Savage says he’s still hearing anger from voters who feel burned by the decision to locate the ONE Spokane Stadium downtown, flouting an overwhelming but nonbinding advisory vote in 2018 to build it on the site of the old Joe Albi Stadium.
Swinyard addressed this yearslong controversy in a February interview, reiterating that new information came to light after that advisory vote was already underway that made a downtown location clearly a better financial move due to offers to subsidize construction, operation and maintenance.
“Either road would have led to a fractured trust, because we had one side saying we did this advisory vote and you’ve broken our trust,” Swinyard said. “And there’s a whole other side of the community that says we trust our elected officials to make smart decisions with the best information available.”
Asked whether there was a version of the tax proposal he would support, Neff said yes, but with a much scaled-back scope and price tag. It is the size and scale and complexity of the Together Spokane proposal – which advocates argue demonstrates sweeping investments in the community – that make Neff skeptical. He proposed the district seek smaller tax proposals for the most urgent projects on their list.
“For example, Adams. I won’t disagree with anyone that needs to be replaced,” Neff said of the elementary school. “Ask for the money for that and stop.”
Savage feels similarly about the parks levy, arguing a shorter term and smaller scope would be more likely to get his vote. This is echoed in the “against” statement drafted by Dennis Flynn, a healthcare IT worker and frequent critic of local government considering a run for Spokane City Council.
“Long-term levies like (the parks levy) are impossible to reverse, even when results fall short,” Flynn wrote.
Flynn declined to be interviewed for this story.
For Hyatt, her vote hinges largely on student success. Once the school district improves test scores to show that the taxpayers’ investments in public schools are bearing fruit, she’d be more inclined to support future tax measures.
“If my children were not doing well, if I was not training them up well as a parent and I decided to focus on a home renovation, ignored that my children were not thriving, then I’m neglecting my primary responsibility,” she said.
In a February interview, Swinyard said standardized test scores are a poor indicator of student achievement. It’s hard to get a student to care about a test that does not affect them personally, he said, and that investing in the schools is an investment in a child’s education.
“A safe and healthy environment correlates to work productivity in the workplace, and it also does in a classroom,” Swinyard said. “We know that being active outside of the school day correlates with better academic performance, physical health, emotional health, social health.”
The juice
Parks and schools officials said every one of the 58 schools in the district and 104 parks properties in the city would receive a piece of the pie from taxes generated under their respective proposals.
Schools’ slices vary from a complete replacement in a couple of cases to smaller projects like replacing flooring or upgrading intercoms, whatever the schools’ capital projects team deems necessary. It’s all according to the district’s long -range facilities plan, which relies on passing a bond every six years.
“The average age of those 58 buildings that we have is 40 years,” Swinyard said in a September town hall event. “We’re not a school district with a bunch of brand new buildings; we’re a school district with a group of aging facilities. So we have the steady-as-you-go approach.”
Similarly, some parks would see more attention than others, from a complete overhaul of Minnehaha and Harmon parks in Northeast Spokane to replacements or repairs promised to every park restroom.
The Spokesman-Review is publishing a weeklong series highlighting projects in each of the five high school neighborhoods. That series will start running Oct. 12. There are also a handful of major projects designed to benefit the entire city rather than just the neighborhood where they’re situated.
Schools
News of a potential new trades-focused high school spurred emphatic applause from the residents in attendance at a recent town hall event hosted at Rogers High School.
“We have more kids than ever that want to get directly into the trades,” Swinyard told an audience of around a dozen. “What we’re hearing from business and industry is, as the baby boomers are retiring, we have massive openings in the trades. It’s hard to find plumbers, it’s hard to find electricians, it’s hard to find welders, it’s hard to find carpenters.”
Kids would learn under high school teachers in the first two years, then pursue one of Spokane Community College’s existing two-year technical programs taught by educators at the college. In four years, students could graduate with their diploma and a technical certificate “debt-free and ready to enter the workforce,” Swinyard said.
The district plans to move the new school into a state-owned property on the Spokane Community College campus.
Also touching each high school district would be a new lighted turf field, specific locations to be determined if the proposals pass. After the school district’s initiative to get kids off their phones and into an activity has spurred more students to join sports and clubs, the district is running out of space for kids to play, Swinyard said.
“Kids want this,” he said. “They want to be active. They want and desire to be with each other off the screens, but we’ve got to provide the spaces for them to do that.”
In a bid to make their spaces more appealing to midsize conferences and locals looking to host events, the district would revamp the audio and sound systems in all five high school auditoriums for easier public use. It’s part of the district’s efforts to reconceptualize schools as community centers, Swinyard said.
“It’s a lot of technical expertise to run the lights and sound,” he said. “Well, there’s upgrades that you can provide for a pretty modest cost that allows people to rent them, go to the panel and click music performance or town hall or debate or whatever the case may be, and the lights or the sound autoconfigure.”
Parks
Depending on who you ask, the highest priority in the parks levy is either bathrooms or park rangers.
Often closed due to vandalism or frozen pipes or a collapsed sewer line, Jones said, parks would replace 40 of their 85 bathrooms over 20 years, while the others would get improvements and more could be added.
Jones said they’d be monitored by parks staff, like one of the eight new park rangers or 14 extra maintenance staff that would be hired under the levy. In design, they’d consider “best practices,” to deter would-be vandals, like building restrooms near playgrounds or other busy spots in the parks.
“Between the infrastructure upgrades, the added maintenance, and then also having that public safety patrol mechanism is really transforming what our public restrooms are,” Jones said.
Park rangers would be assigned to specific quadrants of the city to better establish themselves in the neighborhood, familiarizing themselves with local history, giving directions in the park and “discouraging negative activity from even getting started,” said Jennifer Ogden, Spokane Park Board president, at a recent town hall.
“They’re ambassadors for our parks and our city, as much as limited commission police officers,” Ogden said.
Partnered projects
If voters approve both the levy and the bond, there are a handful of projects the entities could fund jointly and work out a deal on how they’d share it. One notable example is a “mothballed” indoor pool owned by Spokane Community College, which would pass it off to schools and parks. Officials would determine how the public could use the pool in due time, but Swinyard said he plans for every second-grader in the district to get swimming lessons, plus the prospect of high school swim teams.
The Museum of Arts and Culture could expand exhibit space under the bond and levy as the city, schools and museum intend to share the cost and use of a storage facility away from the MAC. This way, the museum could convert existing storage space into rooms to show off some of the local artifacts that are currently in storage, Swinyard said.
A brief history
at the ballot box
Recent history gives mixed messages on how voters might feel about the Together Spokane proposals.
Spokane parks hasn’t gone out to voters to raise taxes since 2014, with a $64 million bond to make major improvements to Riverfront Park basically for the first time since voters approved taxes to create the park after Expo ’74. Voters overwhelmingly signed on with over 68% of the vote.
When the school district’s February 2024 bond failed to garner 60% voter support, board members and administrators held lengthy discussions about when to run and how much they should seek in their next bond proposal, relying on decades-old plans to run a bond every six years as “care and feeding” of their extensive property holdings.
Eventually, leadership formed the “Together Spokane” plan now on ballots as a resuscitation of their last successful bond in 2018, which raised $485 million for projects including the ONE Spokane Stadium and six new middle schools. The school district didn’t accomplish this lofty package alone, either, again linking up with the city seeking a library bond.
The city handed off two plots of land for new middle schools in exchange for public library branches embedded inside schools, accessible by both the general public and schoolkids.
That vision is now realized with a branch inside Shaw Middle School, among other partnered locations. Now parks and schools seek to similarly partner, if voters give them the thumbs up.
“Our goal was for all the projects to be collaborative, to work together, for our governments to work together,” Lockwood said. “And then we also want to position the city of Spokane as a city of choice.”