Spokane voters will decide this week whether to continue a sales tax they’ve been paying since 2017. It’s two-tenths-of-a-cent, or two pennies on a $10 purchase, dedicated to public transportation. The tax is set to expire at the end of 2028.
"The renewal of it allows STA to maintain the existing bus system as well as all the services that have been delivered and then ultimately deliver on its next strategic plan, Connect 2035, which provides additional transit investments in our region, builds infrastructure, and supports additional riders into the future," says STA Chief Executive Karl Otterstrom.
This is not an increase in the tax. It's just an extension of the existing tax.
The ballot measure allows the tax to be levied for another 20 years. You can read more of the specifics at Spokane Transit’s website.
Making the case for extending the tax are Spokane City Councilwoman Kitty Klitzke, vice chair of the STA board, and its chair, Medical Lake Councilman Lance Speirs.
Lance Speirs: Medical Lake is a bedroom community. A lot of commuters, a lot of students, a lot of retired, and STA provides a great opportunity for either people that can't afford a car, don't want to pay for the insurance, the gas, just they want to help the environment and not contribute to congestion of the roads and those kind of things. It gives us the ability to use an alternative.
STA has recognized that the West Plains is growing and some parts of the West Plains like Medical Lake are kind of this desert. We don't have a lot of services. We're getting more services. We're growing. But we need to have those interconnections between school, work, leisure, the airport. We need to have all of those opportunities.
STA is a cheap alternative. It's convenient and it's on time. You can look either on your paper map or you can look on your phone. You can schedule your trip and you know exactly where it's going to go and you know it's going to be there. So you don't have to worry about whether it's raining or snowing or if it's super hot and you don't have air conditioning in your car and maybe you don't want to walk that far. Take the bus. It's super important, especially for our students.
And with the paratransit services, differently abled people can get that door-to-door service for their medical appointments, for grocery shopping, for just going to Walmart. It's a great resource for us out at the West Plains.
Kitty Klitzke: Most of my adult life in Spokane, I was a non-driver and making that choice made me able to choose the kinds of jobs and trajectories that were the best for the long term of my career, rather than just merely surviving and trying to pay for a car. Being able to live that less expensive lifestyle really opened doors for me later in life. So I've always been super grateful that we had good enough transit service that I could not drive as long as I lived in the right neighborhood.
But over the years, STA has expanded and that possibility is in more neighborhoods than ever and I think it is also more important than ever as our community grows and we continue to face economic inequality.
One of my top goals as a city council member has been to raise the area median income and in order to do that, we really have to give people ways to have access to opportunity that aren't expensive. We have a great community colleges system. We need people to be able to afford to work a job and then also be able to go to community college and improve their outlook and one of the ways to do that is not owning and operating a car, especially with today's gas prices and insurance prices.
DN: Why should people who drive and never use the bus pay for the use of the bus?
KK: I think congestion management is a big part of it. Every growing city, when they're looking at economic opportunity, congestion management becomes a thing. Do you ruin the aesthetics and the livability of your city to provide more infrastructure for cars? Or do you look for alternatives to driving?
I think Spokane has sometimes chosen a both-and strategy, but most people don't want to sacrifice aesthetics and livability for more cars just so more people can move to Spokane. So what else do you do? You provide public transit, you provide safe infrastructure for biking and walking.
But I think that just because someone doesn't necessarily ride transit doesn't mean they don't care about the larger concerns of their community. A lot of people still care about a social safety net, they care about having access to opportunity for everyone in the community, and they want a place to park. When they get somewhere, the less people taking up parking spaces and taking public transit, the more you have a place to park and the less expensive that place to park might be.
So those are some of the other considerations. I think a lot of folks that don't ride transit also care about the environment and air quality and when folks are not driving alone every day to everything, that really does improve our air quality and protect from climate change. All of those things matter to people, whether they're the person on the bus or the person in the car.
Some civic leaders oppose STA’s ballot measure, including Gavin Cooley, formerly the city of Spokane’s chief financial officer and the current president of the Spokane Business Association.
"I'm really pro-transit. You know, I've ridden transit a bunch of my life, and I think, frankly, everybody should be pro-transit. It's an important part of any thriving community. And transit is different in every location depending on whether you're a big city like New York or a smaller community like Spokane, but I think we're all pro-transit," Cooley said.
But Cooley doesn’t support this measure because he doesn’t think the agency needs it. He says city officials thought the same thing in 2016, when transit’s current sales tax proposal went on the ballot.
GC: I went back and dug up all my old spreadsheets and everything and it turns out that from 2017 through now, they collected $169 million in tax. But what they did was they added $234 million to the reserves and I thought, wow. They increased their reserves from $40 million to $274 million over that time period, which was way more than the tax. And the closer I looked, the more I realized they didn't spend a single dollar of the tax on what they said they were going to do.
What we thought back in 2016 is that they didn't need that additional two-tenths, because they already have a permanent six-tenths, which, as this tax expires, is over $100 million a year. They didn't need that additional two-tenths and it went all into the bank. So now we're hearing, oh, we desperately need that $274 million to show we're financially worthy. And I'm thinking, no, that's definitely – as the CFO of the city, that's not the case.
You know, the $40 million was enough for them to get grants back in 2016 and now they're saying, well, we need $274 million. We're debt-free. We have $274 million. That's about two-and-a-half to three times the reserves that the entire city of Spokane and county of Spokane combined general funds have.
So you have these huge public organizations, the city and the county, facing big budget deficits coming up and they're under the gun. I mean, if public safety is a priority right now, people are concerned that there's a lot of disorder in the community. We're actually looking at cutting public safety at the city and the county. It's impossible not to because over – in the city, it's 63, I think, percent of the budget in the general fund comes from public safety. So if you're facing a big deficit, you're looking at cuts. So those two organizations, the city and the county, are in big fiscal trouble, and they're scrambling for dollars.
And now we have STA coming out and asking for a billion dollars, which is what that two-tenths is for the 20 years they're asking it for, and probably more if you have – I've used really conservative growth assumptions. And you're thinking, well, do I put a billion dollars to a transit organization that is saying that they will have to cut services if it isn't passed, which is absolutely untrue. They've funded services at the current level with the existing six-tenths. They didn't use a single dime of the two-tenths.
Transit officials dispute that. Spokeswoman Carly Courtright sent us a statement that says STA collects about $122 million in sales tax revenue, while its operating budget is $143 million. She writes that the agency balances its bottom line with passenger fares and grants. She says, over the years, STA has built its reserve by saving money from project grants and COVID relief funds and by benefitting from stronger than usual sales tax collections.
Another of Gavin Cooley’s points: is this the right time for Spokane to allocate this much money to public transit?
GC: Is that the priority right now when Spokane has the second highest overdose death rate in America? And they have either the second or first highest rate of hospitalizations for non-lethal, non-fatal overdoses.
I mean, we're just in a terrible position and it's just stunning to me, and I'm fearful that we're getting used to it because if you come off the Division Street exit, and if you ever come off it by yourself, you're just kind of anured to it. But if you come off that exit with, in my case, I have 14 grandchildren, and if I come off it with a grandchild, I start to see it through their eyes.
I hope we, as a community, can continue to see this health and safety crisis that we're in through the eyes of those children or through the eyes of a visitor to Spokane because it's not – people say, oh, it's not that bad. I'm like, no, we're number two in the nation of jurisdictions over 300,000. That's like number two out of, I think, 238 jurisdictions and it’s getting worse.
I just don't think that's the time to be talking about expanding, whether it's STA or any other service, until we deal with – it's almost like if I came home and I saw my house was on fire and then I decided to go grocery shopping because that's important too and I may not have a house when I get back.
Cooley and others believe Spokane Transit is trying to win a race to the ballot for public dollars, at a time when other agencies are preparing their own tax proposals. The Safe and Healthy Task Force, for example, is preparing a plan to fund more public safety and behavioral health-type programs. It recently decided to wait until next year before submitting something to voters.
"If we vote for this now, that won't pass next year. It's just we don't have those billions of dollars to pass one and pass another and then pass another. We're approaching double the rate of sales tax in Spokane that Kootenai County 20 miles away has and we need to reasonably compete. And so I don't think we can say all of the above. We have to make tough choices, tough, prioritized choices. And so that's what this conversation is about," Cooley said.
Transit officials say their agency has been planning this ballot measure since 2024 and targeted the August election, even though it is competing against two of those other public asks, the Spokane County Library District levy and the creation of a West Plains Aquifer Protection Area.
As for waiting until other public priorities are identified, spokesman Carly Courtright says her agency believes the community’s priorities should be determined by the public through the way people vote.
Gavin Cooley is not the only community member to speak out against Proposition 1. The Downtown Spokane Partnership and the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce publicly oppose it. It’s even an issue in some local political races. 6th District state House candidate Alan Nolan brought it up, unsolicited, in our interview with him.
"If they're looking to renew it for another 20 years and ask for another billion dollars over that time period, they need to provide a better answer as to what that is actually going to do to make that system better for the community," Nolan said.
Transit officials counter that their budgeting process is open to the public, including hearings where people can testify.
Proposition 1 is on Spokane County’s August 4 primary election ballot. If it doesn’t pass, Spokane Transit officials say the agency would lose $30 million a year in annual funding, beginning in 2029.