Letters for Friday, May 15

Healthcare negotiations

The LEOFF Health and Welfare Trust provides healthcare coverage for firefighters and law enforcement officers and their families. Recognizing clinicians as first responders, we greatly value the care teams who serve our members every day.

Rising healthcare costs are putting pressure on benefit systems like the trust. Hospital pricing is a major driver of those costs and increases. The trust does not negotiate provider contracts directly. We rely on our health plan provider Premera Blue Cross, to advocate on our behalf. This is the case right now. Premera and MultiCare are in active negotiations, and without an agreement, MultiCare could leave the Premera network on June 1.

Our call to action is simple. We urge both parties to reach an agreement that protects access to care and keeps costs sustainable. Meanwhile, policy makers need to focus on transparency and accountability so affordability can improve.

Ted Rail

Spokane

Bloomsday charity of choice

Wow! The celebration of the 50th Bloomsday Race was amazing and inspirational. The Lilac Bloomsday Association did a phenomenal job of hosting more than 40,000 racers and showcasing our community.

As the 2026 Bloomsday Charity of Choice, the Riverside State Park Foundation wants to thank Bloomsday organizers for selecting us for this special honor and supporting us by encouraging racers to donate to our nonprofit foundation. And we thank all the racers who made donations topping $22,000, which will allow us to do even more to support Riverside State Park.

These donations will help us provide free educational events like Wednesdays in the Woods in June, interpretive signage throughout the park, refreshments for hard-working trail volunteers and special park improvement projects chosen by park leadership. Since our foundation was formed in 2002, we have raised more than $500,000 to support the park.

Riverside State Park offers outdoor adventures for everyone with more than 9,000 acres of forest and natural areas along the Spokane and Little Spokane rivers. And all of this is just 20 minutes away from the heart of our city. With the generous community support, our 501(c)3 nonprofit foundation will continue to provide education, events and project funding for this special local treasure.

When you invest in the park, you invest in the future.

Russ Schwartz

Spokane

Downtown business supports downtown residents

My wife and I have lived in downtown Spokane for 27 years. We evicted pigeons – not people – to convert a warehouse/auto-body shop into six loft apartments and two art gallery spaces. Our place of residence, work, shopping and entertainment is downtown Spokane. We have enjoyed downtown life without an automobile for 25 years.

We chose to live in downtown because it had all we needed: department stores, drug stores, banking, finance and legal services, and miscellaneous other small businesses that allowed us to walk to meet our basic needs. We enjoy proximity to services, the active sidewalks and buzz of a vibrant urban setting. We live in the West End and feel fortunate with the public and private investments in our neighborhood.

Now that vibrancy is being threatened. Vacant offices and storefronts mean fewer people on the streets; fewer people to support local restaurants and cafes, and fewer people to shop and support the small retail and service shops. Daily workers are being replaced by transients and disheveled people sleeping in doorways. People are intimidated. The safety and attractiveness of downtown is diminished.

Converting offices to residential spaces and filling surface parking lots with new residential buildings is great in concept and we fully support. Again, the more people living downtown, the greater the vibrancy and the safety of the streets. But if the businesses that provide the variety of services that draw people to downtown.

Jim Kolva and Pat Sullivan

Spokane