Spokane City Council again considers shifting meetings away from Mondays

The Spokane City Council is once again eyeing an end to 112 years of tradition, considering moving its weekly legislative meetings from Mondays to some other day of the week, and possibly holding them every other week.

Whether meetings are rescheduled and to which day may depend on the results of a resident survey released Tuesday by the council, which can be accessed at bit.ly/46fcg76.

According to archived copies of the Official Gazette of the city of Spokane, where the city publishes minutes from council meetings, the council has typically held its regularly scheduled legislative sessions on Mondays since Oct. 7, 1912.

The proposal to change when meetings are held first surfaced in December, when members of the council majority argued that too many were being canceled because of Monday holidays.

Notably, however, a majority of canceled meetings are not because of holidays.

The Fourth of July fell on Friday this year, but the council canceled the meeting that would have fallen on July 7 for “Fourth of July Week.” The council also takes two weeks off in the summer for “summer break” and a week off in the spring for “spring break week,” and two weeks off at the end of the year for “Christmas Week” and “New Year’s Week,” though neither holiday lands on a Monday.

Only five of the eleven canceled meetings this year land on holidays: Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day and Indigenous People’s Day, though, notably, City Hall is open and staff work on both President’s Day and Indigenous People’s Day.

In the past, if council meetings landed on a holiday, the council met the next day instead, rather than wait until the next week. Christmas landed on a Monday in 1916, for instance, so the council met for its legislative session the next day. Today, the council waits a full week to have its next legislative meeting, where pending laws are debated and voted on.

The council’s conservative minority argued last year that the proposed schedule change was actually intended to undermine their already limited power. The proposal being considered would have moved council meetings to Tuesdays, when Councilman Jonathan Bingle would not have been able to attend because of family conflicts. Bingle noted that it would be unfair to a sitting council member to change the schedule when they had run for office with the expectation of a Monday obligation.

The proposal, which had seemed likely to pass, was postponed later in December following a contentious meeting in what appeared to be an attempt at conciliation after heightened tensions and accusations of partisan gamesmanship.

The renewed rescheduling proposal would also appear to address some of those earlier concerns, as it would not take effect for nearly a year after it was approved, and no specific day of the week has currently been chosen. Bingle is currently running for reelection against Sarah Dixit.

The council is also considering whether to move to biweekly meetings, and residents are asked to weigh in on that proposal in the posted survey.

The survey closes at midnight on Sunday, Sept. 21, and results will be presented to the council the next day. A vote on any changes is anticipated on Oct. 20 and would come into effect next August.