Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown faced city leaders and other community members at the Garland Theater Tuesday, giving her third annual statement of conditions and affairs for Spokane.
She focused on several items, including the Spokane Complex Fire, housing and homelessness and the city’s transition to its independent Spokane United Network (SUN) 911 emergency system.
The first third of the speech mainly focused on August’s devastating wildfires.
“I will never forget the call I got from Chief Williams on July 31 after the particularly dangerous situation notification was issued,” Brown said. “He somberly said that they wanted to staff up in advance of the next day.”
She then walked off the stage as a video made by city staff played up on the movie screen. The city’s video on the Spokane Complex Fire can be found here.
Afterward, Brown reiterated that one of her main priorities now is rebuilding.
“I pledge to you, as we recover and we rebuild, we will continue to show up,” she said. “The city of Spokane will continue to show up, and I believe that neighbors will continue to show up for neighbors. Right now, our development services team is working out of not only City Hall, but a remote office in Shadle Library to help families navigate the rebuilding process.”
Next up for Brown’s speech: Spokane’s housing and homelessness system. She said the city is “overhauling” its system to give those experiencing homelessness easier access to the services they need, by creating a navigation center and city-operated small shelters.
“We refuse to accept that homelessness is an inevitability and that homeless people should simply be shuffled from one location to another,” Brown said. “We saw in previous iterations where things were either warehoused or put in one single location and everybody was expected to need the same thing at the same time, and we saw that was not effective.”
You can find the city’s latest video on its approach to ending homelessness here.
Brown’s final video was on the city’s transition to its own 911 center, called the Spokane United Network 911, or SUN 911. Through that system, a resident can call 911 inside the city limits. Their call will be answered by a call taker who works for the city. They’ll process the request without transferring the caller to anyone else.
Starting on October 27, non-emergency calls in Spokane should be directed to 311 instead of Crime Check. Brown said that over the course of the year, SUN 911 will take on fire dispatch as well.
You can find the city’s video on SUN 911 here.
Brown also highlighted multiple topics that she considered successes over the past year: the city’s efforts to create emergency assistance funding for immigrant families, use incentives in the Parking to People program and establish the Spokane Urban Native Advisory Council.
Brown will give her formal address to the Spokane City Council on October 7 at City Hall.
