There are storm clouds on the horizon for Spokane County. It’s facing another big budget deficit next year and county commissioners have directed department heads to cut 7% from their budgets.
But County Commission Chair Mary Kuney says there are rays of sunshine too. She shared some of them at Thursday’s annual State of the County luncheon.
Highlights:
- Tax proceeds from new construction increased to $1.45 billion, their second-highest level ever last year.
- The county finished a variety of road and parks infrastructure projects, including the Bigelow Gulch corridor and the renovation of the Bear Lake recreation area.
- The county's Broadlinc project has been awarded nearly $90 million dollars from the state and federal governments to expand high-speed internet in the county.
- 74% of voters authorized the collection of property taxes for the next 20 years to continue the county's aquifer protection district.
- The county will receive $7.5 million from the state to address PFAS contamination in West Plains drinking water.
Kuney and Sheriff John Nowels also celebrated the most recent crime statistics, which show decreases in most categories, in many cases by double digits.
Nowels credited his office's Real Time Crime Center, a tech-heavy monitoring hub in the Public Safety Building, and its six-car fleet of vehicles that are outfitted with cameras and other technology and deployed to neighborhoods and businesses.
"I am proud to report that to a deployment, every time we deploy these to a crime hot spot or a place where people are complaining about some of the issues that our businesses see today, that activity stops completely and stays gone until we remove those vehicles," Nowels said.
Nowels also praised his department's system of automated license plate readers and the deployment of a newly-acquired helicopter that allows officers to get a birds-eye view of the community and crime scenes.
He says the various forms of technology shared by local law enforcement and private partners are helping authorities solve and prevent crimes.
"Recently, the city of Spokane had asked us to deploy one of our cameras on wheels up to an area around Spokane Falls Community College. As one of our analysts was working, she noticed that there were several 14-year-old girls who were sitting on a park bench and was approached by a man, and they seemed uncomfortable talking to him, and the man had his hands in his pockets the entire time he interacted with them, and our analyst thought that behavior was suspicious," he said.
Nowels says the analyst called Spokane Police to report her suspicions.
"What we learned at the end of this was the man that was interacting with those 14-year-old girls and acting suspiciously, we were able to identify him as one of our registered sex offenders here in Spokane County. These cameras make a difference."
Kuney also pointed to the county's increase in investments in mental health and addiction-related services. That includes grants to increase capacity in the county's Spokane Treatment and Recovery Services facility, its 23-hour crisis relief and sobering center, and Maddie's Place, a nursery where infants born to drug-addicted parents can detox and thrive.
Afterward, Kuney said the law enforcement and drug treatment investments are the two most significant accomplishments of the last year.
"As we looked at those death rates with opioid deaths, I mean, they're starting to flatten out because of the programs that we're putting in place today. So I think we're going to see a more improved community," she said.
Kuney teased an announcement expected in the near future, the creation of a community-wide task force formed to study and make recommendations on the county's criminal justice system, such as how to modernize its facilities.
“It’s about trying to bring our region together around things we can agree on for a common action plan, to make our whole region safer and healthier," said Commissioner Chris Jordan. "It includes criminal justice system improvements, looking at our facilities in detention and treatment, and whatever we can do to address some of the issues of addiction and behavioral health and see better results ultimately.”
Kuney says the group is expected to provide recommendations to the county commissioners by mid-2026. That may lead to a ballot measure with a proposal to fund projects later in 2026.
