Is Spokane Valley City Council defunding the police? County Sheriff, police chief refute Merkel’s claim

Spokane Valley City Councilman Al Merkel is accusing his fellow councilmembers of trying to defund the city’s police department. Law enforcement leaders disagree.

“Council, over the last few years, has done the most significant one-time investment into the Spokane Valley Police Department in its history,” said Spokane Valley Police Chief Dave Ellis. “It created 20-plus new positions for the department that is going to allow us to catch up to population growth and the increasing calls for service.”

The Valley’s police department has 118 officers now, Ellis said. In January last year, the department had 108 officers.

“We’re fully staffed,” Ellis said. “We filled every single budgeted position.”

A spokesperson from the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office also said they weren’t aware of any defunding in the Valley’s Police Department. The Valley contracts its officers from the Sheriff’s Office, rather than having its own police department.

Despite this, Merkel has continued to advocate for the city making more room in the budget to add even more officers to the Valley’s police force. In previous council meetings, including one on Oct. 21, Merkel has said that the city is in dire need of new officers.

“I don’t agree that we’re in desperate or dire need of more officers; we’re less than 10 short,” Councilman Ben Wick said during a council meeting, after Merkel pushed to fund more officers.

It is true that even now, Ellis said he feels the need for 10 more officers, which he will get to hire in January.

The Valley will start hiring 11 new police officers on Jan. 1, which was made possible after 59% of residents voted for Prop 1, a 0.1% sales tax increase in August to fund more law enforcement equipment and deputies, Ellis said. The increase will bring the total sales tax up to 9% in Spokane Valley and will go into effect on Jan. 1.

“From 2007 to 2022, we had a 73% increase in calls for service,” Ellis said. “They went from 29,000 to 50,000 … an increase in population means an increase in calls for service.”

Merkel was against Prop 1 because he didn’t want a sales tax increase.

“We’re holding citizens hostage,” Merkel said. “We know people care about crime and to me, I don’t feel that the council had done the job of finding more money to hire officers without increasing taxes.”

Before the August election on Prop 1, the Valley did a study to determine how many more police officers its department needed. The study found that the department needed 31 more officers, Deputy City Manager Erik Lamb said.

At the time of the study, the department was not fully staffed. Instead of raising taxes after the study, the city cut from other departments to fund 10 more officer positions.

Merkel said the current council is paying lip service to the city by stating their number one priority is public safety. The council’s real priority is building more infrastructure and making bureaucrats happy, Merkel said.

In the 2026 budget, which will be finalized next month, $44.7 million is allocated to public safety and $23.8 million will be spent on every other city expense. The city is anticipating it will spend $35.4 million on infrastructure, but 69% of those projects will be paid for by grants, Lamb said.

This is not the first time someone has claimed the council has defunded Valley police.

In his election interview, Brad Hohn claimed that Councilwoman Laura Padden had voted to defund police and raise taxes for residents in the Valley, referring to the council voting to pull $350,000 from the public safety fund to cover legal costs associated with Merkel on May 27. The council – apart from Merkel – voted to transfer funding away from vehicle replacements and an unfilled civilian analyst position to pay for legal costs. However, the analyst position had not been filled for months and was not needed, according to City Manager John Hohman, who said he and Lamb have been picking up the extra work load the vacancy has caused. Hohman and Lamb are not compensated more for that work.

Merkel said the council is also defunding the police indirectly by not adding police officers to the Valley from 2008-2024. The council, Merkel said, should have accounted for the city’s growth and added a significant number of officers to the department earlier.

“From 2008-2012, the council said they didn’t have the resources to add police,” Merkel said. “The only excuse is, they didn’t want to spend money on that.”

It’s true that there have been years where the police department was not fully staffed, Lamb said.

“It was not because the city defunded the police, but the Sheriff’s Office was having challenges in having enough staffing,” Lamb said. “They had retirements, they had people transferring out. Recruitment was really difficult in this state due to its policies and other reasons.”

In response to that difficulty, the Sheriff’s Office created a recruitment and retention plan, and now Spokane Valley’s Police Department is fully staffed.

Merkel is skeptical.

“It certainly was a task to hire officers in 2024, but it was a task that involved doing things. If the police department couldn’t hire people, we should have marketed … if we had unfilled positions, the question is ‘Why?’” Merkel said.

It is true that hiring new officers takes quite a bit of time, according to Ellis. Every new officer goes through training – four to five months if they’re a transfer officer from another agency and a year if they’re a new officer, Ellis said. Officers are paid while they’re trained. An entry level patrol deputy is paid $75,000, but costs the city over $160,000, Lamb said.

The department has averaged around 20 retirements every year over the past 10 years, Ellis said. Some officers retire in their 50s, others in their 60s. Ellis estimated that around five to 10 officers will retire in 2026. The department’s goal is always to hire new officers to replace retirees as soon as possible, Ellis said.

During a council meeting on Oct. 21, many councilmembers, including Tim Hattenburg, disputed Merkel’s claims that the city is defunding police.

“The drum beating that we don’t have officers or defund the police is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Hattenburg said. “We’re spending 65% of our budget on public safety, I don’t call that defunding.”

Councilwoman Laura Padden also disagreed with Merkel, and stated that in the last five years, the city’s public safety budget has increased by $13 million.

In the end, everyone agrees that the police department should have the resources it needs to serve residents in the Valley.

“I want to make sure that we’re providing the best service possible,” Ellis said. “I’m thankful to the council for investing in the agency to provide us these new officers.”