NPI talks to Spokane Mayor-elect Lisa Brown as she prepares to begin leading the Lilac City

Next week, a huge change will take place in Wash­ing­ton’s sec­ond largest city, as pro­gres­sive leader Lisa Brown offi­cial­ly becomes May­or of Spokane after more than a decade of Repub­li­can con­trol of the city’s exec­u­tive branch.

Brown is set to assume office on New Year’s Day, Jan­u­ary 1st, suc­ceed­ing Repub­li­can Nadine Wood­ward, and will have no short­age of tough issues to tack­le. Her tran­si­tion team has been meet­ing fre­quent­ly the past few weeks to help her get ready. May­or-elect Brown kind­ly took time out of her packed sched­ule before the hol­i­days to talk to NPI about the road ahead. The fol­low­ing is the tran­script of our con­ver­sa­tion, light­ly edit­ed for clarity.

CAYA BERNDT: Thank you so much for tak­ing the time on this Mon­day evening to speak with me on behalf of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute. And I just want­ed to say again, con­grat­u­la­tions on your suc­cess in Spokane.

LISA BROWN: Thank you.

CAYA BERNDT: I know that I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to what you’re going to bring to Spokane and I’m sure that you’re also real­ly excit­ed for what comes next.

LISA BROWN: Yes, and we have some new city coun­cil mem­bers as well. So it’ll be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for some new team­work and coop­er­a­tion between the coun­cil and the may­or’s office. Yes, I’m ready.

CAYA BERNDT: I just want to jump right into some of the ques­tions that we have. So the first is that — and this is some­thing that I’m curi­ous about — you have a deep back­ground in pol­i­tics and pub­lic ser­vice. There’s so many direc­tions that your career could have tak­en you. What con­tin­u­al­ly brings you back to Spokane and what inspired you to run for may­or this year?

LISA BROWN: Spokane for me is a place that I came to in an inter­est­ing part of my life. I was real­ly still a stu­dent – a grad­u­ate stu­dent of eco­nom­ics – but also start­ing my pro­fes­sion­al life. I was fin­ish­ing my dis­ser­ta­tion and I got a job teach­ing at East­ern Wash­ing­ton University.

And so Spokane, for me, was a place where I quick­ly saw the incred­i­ble nat­ur­al beau­ty of it, but also the size of it was a place where you can make an impact.

And it was a place where, although I was­n’t born and raised here, ten years after liv­ing here, I was elect­ed to the state leg­is­la­ture. So I’ve been able to play all these real­ly inter­est­ing roles as an activist, as a col­lege pro­fes­sor, then, ulti­mate­ly, as a state leg­is­la­tor and oth­er things. And so what I real­ly loved about all those dif­fer­ent roles that I had were that there were peo­ple in Spokane that had visions for how to make the com­mu­ni­ty better.

It has chal­lenges, espe­cial­ly [the] eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty of a large per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion, but it also has amaz­ing orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ple that are com­mit­ted, that have great ideas, and the roles that I was able to play, [I] was able to help learn about those ideas and maybe facil­i­tate some of them hap­pen­ing. So at this point, I thought local gov­ern­ment would be hard, but it would also be a very reward­ing place to be to help make change hap­pen and to have it be kind of that old adage from the sev­en­ties, you know, “think glob­al­ly, act local­ly?” So this is the place I’m doing that.

CAYA BERNDT: I real­ly liked what you said about Spokane [being] just the right size to make an impact because I feel like once you get into larg­er gov­ern­ments, there’s big­ger bod­ies of peo­ple, and more peo­ple that you have to make hap­py and com­pro­mise with and com­pete with, just on a scale. And when we talk about mak­ing big changes that leave big impacts, you real­ly do have to start at the micro local lev­el, and Spokane is just at that place where it is get­ting to be a big city.

We’re the sec­ond most pop­u­lat­ed city, but we’ve nev­er felt like a big city. And I feel like we’re just right on the verge of being there.

LISA BROWN: Yeah… I guess I would also add I ran for Con­gress unsuc­cess­ful­ly in 2018 and the dis­trict is the ten coun­ties of East­ern Wash­ing­ton, and the rur­al urban divide was real­ly obvi­ous in that election.

Although we tried to tran­scend it, we did­n’t real­ly suc­ceed in doing that. Con­se­quent­ly, I was very suc­cess­ful in the elec­tion in the city of Spokane. [I] won over­whelm­ing­ly both here and in the col­lege towns of Cheney and Pull­man, but lost in the rur­al areas. And I think for the future of East­ern Wash­ing­ton, demon­strat­ing that we can do good pol­i­cy in Spokane is real­ly important.

We’re always going to be a lit­tle bit of an inter­sec­tion, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, because we’re so close to the Ida­ho bor­der, and so at least for the fore­see­able future, those are going to be very dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments in terms of state pol­i­cy. Nev­er­the­less, we’re a region with North Ida­ho, and so it’s a real­ly fruit­ful, inter­est­ing place to work, and you can’t take for grant­ed that the peo­ple that you’re work­ing with are going to just be liv­ing in the same ide­o­log­i­cal bub­ble that you live in. I think that’s a good chal­lenge for me, and for every­body, actu­al­ly, to try to get things done and not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­ing from the same place when you start.

CAYA BERNDT: That’s a fan­tas­tic answer. So, vot­ers often have high expec­ta­tions for the peo­ple that they vote for. But as we know, deliv­er­ing on cam­paign promis­es can take time. So for our read­ers, walk us through the first three-to-six months of a Lisa Brown admin­is­tra­tion. What can vot­ers expect from your team when they assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for gov­ern­ing Spokane in 2024?

LISA BROWN: Well, I think that you’re absolute­ly right, that many vot­ers are a lit­tle bit cyn­i­cal about big pro­nounce­ments of major things that are going to occur that actu­al­ly are very unlike­ly to occur in the very begin­ning of an admin­is­tra­tion. So I tried to set the for­mat for this even dur­ing the elec­tion with my cam­paign theme which is: there’s a bet­ter way.

I took the inspi­ra­tion from Ben Harper’s song, “A Bet­ter Way.” So instead of pro­claim­ing that Spokane would be the best at this or that these prob­lems would com­plete­ly go away, I con­sis­tent­ly said: I think we can do better.

And I think that res­onat­ed with peo­ple, because it’s quite realistic!

We don’t expect the unhoused pop­u­la­tion to be addressed imme­di­ate­ly, but we could cer­tain­ly do bet­ter than we had been doing in Spokane. So in the first 60 days, my agen­da will be set part­ly by a tran­si­tion team that has been put togeth­er. It’s actu­al­ly rather large. There’s five work groups and there’s nine­ty-some indi­vid­u­als that are part of it, and they are in the process right now of dis­till­ing down two or three key rec­om­men­da­tions for me to try to take action on with my admin­is­tra­tion, with the city coun­cil and with com­mu­ni­ty partners.

Those are in the areas that you would be not sur­prised to see in almost any city of chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties. So, afford­able hous­ing, home­less­ness, and the unhoused pop­u­la­tion is one of the areas we def­i­nite­ly need to make changes in right away. It’s Win­ter. And we have a very large unhoused population.

So that is an area that we need to work on.

Pub­lic safe­ty is some­thing that we hear all over the city from down­town to neigh­bor­hoods. Peo­ple want to under­stand: what is the emer­gency? Or the response to crime, and how can we both mea­sure it and improve it.

Eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment is a place where I think we can have some wins, if you will. There’s some good things that can hap­pen in the work­force and econ­o­my front. Then, each of the work groups will be com­ing up with some more spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tions that I’ll be able to take to my cab­i­net and say, “okay, how do we come up with a game plan here to have some tan­gi­ble results with­in the first 100 days, and with­in the first six months?”

CAYA BERNDT: So like, strong del­e­ga­tion, and mak­ing sure that you have like you said, one to two rec­om­men­da­tions, that prob­a­bly makes it a lot eas­i­er to keep track of every­thing. I feel like success…you real­ly have to be orga­nized in order to accom­plish all the myr­i­ad things that Spokane needs.

LISA BROWN: And to some extent, it’s also about get­ting the table set in a way so that voic­es that have been his­tor­i­cal­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed or mar­gin­al­ized are part of the deci­sion-mak­ing process. I don’t want to pre­sume that I come in, I have ideas–I’ve lived here for many years and come with ideas and cam­paign plans, but I don’t want to just assume that it’s about what I think. I want to real­ly do that lis­ten­ing process, and that process of bring­ing peo­ple into the deci­sion-mak­ing rooms and at the deci­sion-mak­ing tables, so that the dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hoods, the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties in Spokane are also part of it.

For exam­ple Spokane has a large urban Native pop­u­la­tion as well as rela­tion­ships with and…who are his­tor­i­cal­ly here, and part of our geography.

So I want to hire a trib­al liai­son and have trib­al voic­es [be] part of the deci­sion-mak­ing process when we’re talk­ing about the future of our region, both in terms of its nat­ur­al resources and its economy.

CAYA BERNDT:​ No, that’s fan­tas­tic. It is very heart­en­ing to hear an elect­ed leader specif­i­cal­ly men­tion­ing the Native pop­u­la­tion in Spokane.

And this actu­al­ly leads very well into my next ques­tion, because I am a queer per­son, so I pay very close atten­tion to how my elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives talk about my com­mu­ni­ty and, by exten­sion, myself. As you’re aware – and this is par­tial­ly inspired by a ques­tion that you were asked dur­ing one of the debates in Octo­ber – there’ve been numer­ous instances of van­dal­ism of queer art­works and spaces, includ­ing the Odyssey Youth Cen­ter down­town. As well as efforts in Lib­er­ty Lake and Mead to cen­sor books dis­cussing queer themes in pub­lic libraries.

Often, for queer youth, the library is one of the only resources that they have to find infor­ma­tion about them­selves. So how do you plan to com­bat hate and uplift Spokane’s LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty as Mayor?

LISA BROWN: Well, that will be mul­ti­fac­eted. I will say that it’s part of what I’ve always been about as a leader. In 1993, or 1992, actu­al­ly, [I] marched in the first Spokane Pride Parade, and then was able to, in the leg­is­la­ture, be part of that jour­ney [of] vot­ing against dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al orientation.

My very first year in the leg­is­la­ture in 1993… but then see­ing it fail again and again. It would pass the House and fail in the Sen­ate. And going through the whole twen­ty years of my time in the Leg­is­la­ture was also the jour­ney from that of that, going from just work­ing towards anti dis­crim­i­na­tion through to mar­riage equal­i­ty. And I got to be part of that, work­ing with activists all over the state, real­ly all over the coun­try, as well as in Spokane.

And I come back to that because [..] the Spokane City Coun­cil actu­al­ly passed non-dis­crim­i­na­tion before it passed at the state lev­el! And I think a lot of peo­ple were sur­prised about that. What? That hap­pened in Spokane? Yes, it did! And there was a cit­i­zen ini­tia­tive to over­turn it, and it was upheld by the peo­ple in the city. So this, the val­ues of sup­port­ing the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty, it’s what has been vot­ed on by peo­ple in Spokane. It’s an impor­tant val­ue that I will want to uphold.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in the last year […] the cur­rent may­or actu­al­ly uti­lized the rain­bow cross­walks that were cel­e­brat­ing both pride and diver­si­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty, and [crit­i­cized them] say­ing, “why are we wast­ing mon­ey on that?”

And then, not sur­pris­ing­ly, the van­dal­ism occurred. I think that real­ly shows how lead­er­ship mat­ters, in terms of elect­ed lead­ers, busi­ness lead­ers, non­prof­it lead­ers, stand­ing up and being there for the com­mu­ni­ties, and also mak­ing sure that, offi­cial­ly, we uti­lize our enforce­ment pow­ers to make sure that cer­tain activ­i­ties are not accept­able. Like that vandalism.

And the com­mu­ni­ty com­ing togeth­er and speak­ing out against the threats that are there, or that are hap­pen­ing in state law right now.

As I said, maybe even across the bor­der in Ida­ho with respect to LGBT or trans rights, or with respect to repro­duc­tive free­doms, those are things, I think, that will be incum­bent upon me as the may­or to stand up and be a voice, as well as to make sure that our city’s offi­cial that we’re offi­cial­ly there to be sup­port­ive, and to resist any threats that may be there for providers, or for peo­ple that come here seek­ing ser­vices they can’t receive in neigh­bor­ing states.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Yeah, as a leader you are set­ting the exam­ple… this is where our city stands. You’re set­ting the exam­ple for how peo­ple talk about and treat those com­mu­ni­ties. I think you’re absolute­ly right that lead­er­ship is a lot more impor­tant than I think peo­ple give it cred­it for.

So, turn­ing to men­tal health. Back when I worked answer­ing a cri­sis line, I did that for over a year, I worked with a sur­vivor who, in my esti­ma­tion, need­ed a well­ness check. But, due to the time of day, there were no men­tal health cri­sis response teams avail­able to check in on her. I called one of the local men­tal health providers and asked if there was some­body who could do it.

And they said no, only law enforce­ment was avail­able. And law enforce­ment can be very dan­ger­ous for vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple like her. Espe­cial­ly for folks who are going through men­tal health crises, who are dis­abled, hav­ing a police law enforce­ment check in on them can be very dangerous.

How do you plan on address­ing these prob­lems in polic­ing and do you have any plans for addi­tion­al cri­sis response services?

LISA BROWN: Well, I’m glad that you tell me this, because for one thing, it takes me back to my own under­grad­u­ate days.

One of the first things I did was vol­un­teer with the wom­en’s cri­sis line. And that was an impor­tant part of my under­stand­ing of the dif­fer­ent chal­lenges that are out there, and the sig­nif­i­cance of hav­ing some­body to call, and to hav­ing those ser­vices avail­able when you need them. So, thank you for remind­ing me of that.

I think it’s very clear that our resources for peo­ple with severe men­tal health chal­lenges, or just the reg­u­lar behav­ioral health issues peo­ple go through in their life, or when par­tic­u­lar things occur like the pan­dem­ic we all just went through, or oth­er chal­lenges that relate to the kinds of stress that peo­ple expe­ri­ence when they have eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty or come from a fam­i­ly with fam­i­ly vio­lence, all of those things…mean that we’re very under-resourced, not only in Spokane, but as a soci­ety in hav­ing ser­vices avail­able and in des­tig­ma­tiz­ing seek­ing out help when you need it.

So we need to make progress on both those fronts in Spokane. Specif­i­cal­ly, one of the things I start­ed to work on dur­ing the cam­paign with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers is how we might build up our street med­i­cine and cri­sis response as a spe­cif­ic alter­na­tive to a sole law enforce­ment response. And this is peo­ple that are poten­tial­ly unhoused, but who may be hav­ing vis­i­ble or invis­i­ble, in their homes, var­i­ous kinds of crises or challenges.

CAYA BERNDT:​ So sor­ry to inter­rupt… For some of our read­ers who may not be as famil­iar, can you tell us what a street med­i­cine response team is?

LISA BROWN: There are var­i­ous approach­es to it, but for exam­ple, one of our fed­er­al­ly qual­i­fied com­mu­ni­ty health clin­ic sys­tems here in Spokane, known as CHAS, has street med­i­cine response. And I’m in the posi­tion right now of want­i­ng to learn from them, how it works, and how we could poten­tial­ly coor­di­nate bet­ter. Because it’s sort of iron­ic, you’ve got on the one hand, peo­ple told me when I knocked on their doors dur­ing the cam­paign, if they see some­one in dis­tress, they want to have some­one they can call to request help, but they’re often afraid.

What will that mean? Will that mean sev­er­al police cars and a fire truck show up? And will it actu­al­ly, ulti­mate­ly be help­ful? Is it the appro­pri­ate response? And so I think that’s one of my key goals over the next few months, is to fig­ure out what that looks like. And poten­tial­ly, I’ll be work­ing with oth­er cities in Wash­ing­ton state to get some state leg­isla­tive sup­port for street med­i­cine, or home­less, and/or oth­er types of behav­ioral health out­reach that is an accom­pa­ni­ment to what we cur­rent­ly have, more coor­di­nat­ed than what we cur­rent­ly have.

And clear­ly, that ties into hav­ing detox and recov­ery ser­vices also avail­able when peo­ple are ready to access them.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Thank you very much for that. That’s great. And, relat­ed­ly, there’s the issue of inti­mate part­ner vio­lence, which has risen recent­ly, as you not­ed on your cam­paign web­site. I think if I’m not mis­tak­en, we have some of the high­est rates of inti­mate part­ner vio­lence in the state, as a city. What fac­tors do you think are con­tribut­ing to this rise? And what can the city of Spokane do to com­bat this problem?

LISA BROWN: I think we all know that some of these issues are inter­gen­er­a­tional. So if you don’t inter­rupt the cycle, then you see it repeat­ed. That is def­i­nite­ly one of the ser­vice respons­es that we want to have in place.

Anoth­er is eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty. As many as one in three house­holds are eco­nom­i­cal­ly inse­cure, and with par­tic­u­lar­ly the tight­en­ing of the hous­ing mar­ket and the insta­bil­i­ty of so many peo­ple being hous­ing inse­cure– peo­ple move, they lose con­nec­tions to tra­di­tion­al sup­port sys­tems at the same time, the cri­sis fac­tor goes up in their lives, and all of these things can result in more inti­mate part­ner violence.

So pub­lic edu­ca­tion and hav­ing the resources in place has got to be part of what we do. Hav­ing good rela­tion­ships between our orga­ni­za­tions that pro­vide sup­port for peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing fam­i­ly vio­lence and also ongo­ing rela­tion­ships with law enforce­ment or oth­ers who are called into those situations.

I did a police ride-along dur­ing the cam­paign and the pri­ma­ry call that we were called to respond to was an inti­mate part­ner vio­lence call. It was pri­mar­i­ly a law enforce­ment response. And we’ve got to sur­round that sit­u­a­tion, also, with the appro­pri­ate, if nec­es­sary, legal and coun­sel­ing and eco­nom­ic sup­port for vic­tims so that they can not have it be a repeat cycle.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Yeah. And I real­ly appre­ci­ate what you say about sup­port as well, because that was one of the things that was real­ly dif­fi­cult, as some­body on the cri­sis line, feel­ing like there real­ly was­n’t a whole lot of eco­nom­ic sup­port because anoth­er thing that leads to home­less­ness is inti­mate part­ner vio­lence. That’s kind of anoth­er one of those cycles is peo­ple sur­vivors are often left with nowhere else to go once they leave an abu­sive rela­tion­ship. I just want­ed to com­mend you for your com­mit­ment to keep­ing, includ­ing that in your pri­or­i­ties as a leader.

LISA BROWN: One of our goals is to coor­di­nate the providers of a vari­ety of ser­vices and cre­ate a coor­di­nat­ed entry sys­tem, and we’ve already made progress in this area in Spokane and oth­er places in Wash­ing­ton state with youth expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness. But the coor­di­nat­ed entry mod­el would make sure that when some­one does inter­act with an orga­ni­za­tion or any part of the sys­tem, that we take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate the infor­ma­tion to then con­nect them to the right provider or ser­vice. Oth­er­wise, right now, a lot of these things are dis­con­nect­ed so the indi­vid­ual who’s seek­ing sup­port may have to go five dif­fer­ent places, depend­ing on the nature of the dif­fer­ent things that they’re expe­ri­enc­ing and the cat­e­gories and silos of state, local , and non­prof­it assistance.

If we could only coor­di­nate and weave that togeth­er bet­ter, and it would be a lot more friend­ly and I think effec­tive for the resources, both the human resources and the dol­lars that we put into it.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Absolute­ly. So, kind of in the same wheel­house: as Nadine Wood­ward leaves office, one of the unfor­tu­nate lega­cies of her admin­is­tra­tion will sure­ly be the dis­as­trous Trent Resource and Assis­tance Cen­ter shel­ter, if you’ll for­give me for say­ing so. You have indi­cat­ed, in pri­or inter­views, that you would like to see changes to the shel­ter. Are there any con­crete plans com­ing togeth­er for the future of this facility?

LISA BROWN: It has been the pri­ma­ry… it’s not the only shel­ter in Spokane. There are oth­ers that are tar­get­ed for cer­tain pop­u­la­tions, or pro­vide ser­vices to cer­tain pop­u­la­tions and do a good job. But I think the goal orig­i­nal­ly was to cre­ate a very large facil­i­ty relat­ed to, I believe, the con­vic­tion that if there were enough spaces, that then encamp­ments could be cleared by law enforcement.

So I think there was sort of an under­ly­ing moti­va­tion that was real­ly just look­ing for a place where you could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly shel­ter hun­dreds of peo­ple. And so that’s what it is. It was a ware­house that was clear­ly not built for human habi­ta­tion with­out facil­i­ties like show­ers and bath­rooms, etc.

Con­se­quent­ly, just to make it bare­ly able to sup­port human habi­ta­tion, [it] has been a very expen­sive propo­si­tion. Also, to have a sin­gle provider pro­vide ser­vices has proven to be, repeat­ed­ly, not a good outcome.

Just to cut to the chase, mil­lions of dol­lars have been spent and it’s a place where hun­dreds of peo­ple can spend the night… not outside.

It’s not real­is­tic to sim­ply walk in on day one and say that “it’s closed,” because there are hun­dreds of peo­ple that are spend­ing the night there every night. We have to start with a plan that puts some­thing else in its place. And I don’t think that’s one facil­i­ty. It does­n’t make sense to have that high, con­cen­trat­ed num­ber of peo­ple all in one place. And it’s cer­tain­ly not a best prac­tice. I’ve gone there with orga­ni­za­tions that pro­vide food and served food, and observed what hap­pens if there is an inci­dent with some­one. Hun­dreds of peo­ple are dis­rupt­ed by the pres­ence of law enforce­ment com­ing to deal with that one individual.

It’s trau­ma­tiz­ing for peo­ple. It’s just clear­ly not an ide­al envi­ron­ment. So we’ve got our work cut out for us. The city coun­cil strug­gled with what to do as we come towards the end of the year and the end of the cur­rent contract.

I think what they ulti­mate­ly did was cre­ate a poten­tial three-to-four month com­mit­ment to the cur­rent facil­i­ty that gives some flex­i­bil­i­ty for the new admin­is­tra­tion to fig­ure out where we’re headed.

I hope to do that in part­ner­ship with non­prof­its, maybe oth­er local gov­ern­ments like the Coun­ty, with the busi­ness community.

This is clear­ly a region­al issue, not just a city issue. So I’m hope­ful that some of the con­ver­sa­tions around a region­al col­lab­o­ra­tion can come to pass, to help bring resources into what­ev­er we use to replace the Trent shelter.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Yes, thank you for that. And along those same lines, one of the mea­sures on the bal­lot this year was Propo­si­tion 1, which was the camp­ing ban, ban­ning camp­ing with­in 1,000 feet of cer­tain pub­lic facil­i­ties and school build­ings. This was a very con­tro­ver­sial propo­si­tion, because accord­ing to a map that East­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty put out, a thou­sand feet around parks and facil­i­ties is pret­ty much all of Spokane, putting peo­ple who have nowhere to go in a real­ly dif­fi­cult position.

The mea­sure’s been passed — it’s law now — so since it can’t be dis­man­tled [unless a court chal­lenge is suc­cess­ful], do you have any plans for how to either adjust it, or at least min­i­mize any dam­age that it may cause if it is some­thing that could cause harm?

LISA BROWN: Well, I was not at all sur­prised that it passed because I could hear peo­ple’s frus­tra­tion. When they see peo­ple liv­ing out­side, either in tents or com­plete­ly unshel­tered under bridges, or in oth­er loca­tions, it’s extreme­ly dis­turb­ing. And it’s obvi­ous­ly life-threat­en­ing in a cli­mate like this.

Regard­less of whether or not it passed, which I expect­ed that it would, I feel like our response has to be cre­at­ing places for peo­ple to go, and cre­at­ing meth­ods of out­reach that real­is­ti­cal­ly can get to peo­ple and give them alter­na­tives that go beyond emer­gency room and jail. So that’s what we will be work­ing on.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Thank you very much. And then the oth­er mea­sure that was on the bal­lot was [Coun­ty] Propo­si­tion 1, which was the coun­ty­wide jail/public safe­ty propo­si­tion. That did not go through. What do you antic­i­pate any poten­tial impacts of the fail­ure of that propo­si­tion being?

LISA BROWN: Well again, I was­n’t sur­prised by the out­come because it was a very large pro­pos­al. It was a very large tax increase, and there were a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent facil­i­ties, essen­tial­ly jails, that were spelled out in it. And a host of oth­er ser­vices not very well spelled out. So it was­n’t a sur­prise to me that the pub­lic said, no, this plan has to go back to the draw­ing board.

We need invest­ments in our cur­rent structure.

Our cur­rent cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ties are inad­e­quate, both from the per­spec­tive of the peo­ple that are incar­cer­at­ed there, but also from the per­spec­tive of the peo­ple who work there and their safe­ty and their work­ing conditions.

For exam­ple, cor­rec­tions offi­cers said, “We need to plan this bet­ter.” They want to see invest­ments, but they want to see them. They want more input into what they are. So I will, in good faith, go back to the draw­ing board with bring­ing city resources and engag­ing with the coun­ty to talk about what we might be able to accom­plish in com­ing up with anoth­er plan with more com­mu­ni­ty input.

It clear­ly would have to have a real­ly well spelled-out invest­ment in behav­ioral health facil­i­ties, and a clear rela­tion­ship between the city and the coun­ty, in terms of if we’re build­ing a new cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, where it is and what it is, and what the pop­u­la­tion is that we real­ly expect to be there over time.

I think we go back to work on that and see if we can emerge with some kind of an agree­ment, and we want to go back to vot­ers and talk to them about that. And if that is not suc­cess­ful, then the city, obvi­ous­ly on its own, will have to talk about what we can do in the pub­lic safe­ty arena.

It’s sort of an uncer­tain path ahead, but I think almost every­one across the polit­i­cal spec­trum agrees that we need more invest­ments in the whole sys­tem, in the jus­tice sys­tem with an empha­sis on the “jus­tice” part, and a lot of that relates to what can we do to reduce the incar­cer­at­ed pop­u­la­tion using things like ther­a­peu­tic courts, and using diver­sion, and pre­ven­tion and pro­grams that help peo­ple suc­cess­ful­ly re-enter after they have been incar­cer­at­ed. So, with a whole spec­trum of those types of best prac­tices, I think that Spokane region­al vot­ers would be will­ing to make invest­ments, but they want to see that they’re going to the things that mat­ter, and that work, and not just to build­ing a new jail.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Absolute­ly. So just a cou­ple more ques­tions for you before we wrap up our inter­view. Switch­ing gears a bit – this is going to be relat­ed to elec­tions and vot­er turnout – Spokane is one of those cities where we have an elec­tion every [odd] year and data shows that vot­er turnout tends to be much low­er in odd year elec­tions than even years. And that always has struck me as a lit­tle unset­tling, espe­cial­ly when you have con­se­quen­tial elec­tions like may­or falling in odd year [cycles], and then you see that vot­er turnout is any­where between twen­ty to forty per­cent, depend­ing on the year. It’s a pret­ty big task, but is tack­ling that, shift­ing elec­tions to only even years, on your radar all as mayor?

LISA BROWN: As I under­stand it, the first thing that would need to hap­pen would be state autho­riza­tion for the shift, and then it would be local deci­sion mak­ing. It’s def­i­nite­ly a con­ver­sa­tion I think is worth hav­ing in Spokane, and ulti­mate­ly, it would be a cost sav­ing mea­sure as well, run­ning few­er elections.

I think there’s prob­a­bly a long path to get­ting there, but it’s def­i­nite­ly a con­ver­sa­tion that I think is worth­while from a per­spec­tive of how do we take more mea­sures to increase vot­er turnout? And peo­ple’s con­fi­dence in the sys­tem, I think, goes up when there’s high­er par­tic­i­pa­tion, and in the outcomes.

CAYA BERNDT: Thank you so much for tak­ing the time on this Mon­day evening to speak with me on behalf of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute. And I just want­ed to say again, con­grat­u­la­tions on your suc­cess in Spokane.

LISA BROWN: Thank you.

CAYA BERNDT: I know that I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to what you’re going to bring to Spokane and I’m sure that you’re also real­ly excit­ed for what comes next.

LISA BROWN: Yes, and we have some new city coun­cil mem­bers as well. So it’ll be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for some new team­work and coop­er­a­tion between the coun­cil and the may­or’s office. Yes, I’m ready.

CAYA BERNDT: I just want to jump right into some of the ques­tions that we have. So the first is that — and this is some­thing that I’m curi­ous about — you have a deep back­ground in pol­i­tics and pub­lic ser­vice. There’s so many direc­tions that your career could have tak­en you. What con­tin­u­al­ly brings you back to Spokane and what inspired you to run for may­or this year?

LISA BROWN: Spokane for me is a place that I came to in an inter­est­ing part of my life. I was real­ly still a stu­dent – a grad­u­ate stu­dent of eco­nom­ics – but also start­ing my pro­fes­sion­al life. I was fin­ish­ing my dis­ser­ta­tion and I got a job teach­ing at East­ern Wash­ing­ton University.

And so Spokane, for me, was a place where I quick­ly saw the incred­i­ble nat­ur­al beau­ty of it, but also the size of it was a place where you can make an impact.

And it was a place where, although I was­n’t born and raised here, ten years after liv­ing here, I was elect­ed to the state leg­is­la­ture. So I’ve been able to play all these real­ly inter­est­ing roles as an activist, as a col­lege pro­fes­sor, then, ulti­mate­ly, as a state leg­is­la­tor and oth­er things. And so what I real­ly loved about all those dif­fer­ent roles that I had were that there were peo­ple in Spokane that had visions for how to make the com­mu­ni­ty better.

It has chal­lenges, espe­cial­ly [the] eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty of a large per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion, but it also has amaz­ing orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ple that are com­mit­ted, that have great ideas, and the roles that I was able to play, [I] was able to help learn about those ideas and maybe facil­i­tate some of them hap­pen­ing. So at this point, I thought local gov­ern­ment would be hard, but it would also be a very reward­ing place to be to help make change hap­pen and to have it be kind of that old adage from the sev­en­ties, you know, “think glob­al­ly, act local­ly?” SO this is the place I’m doing that.

CAYA BERNDT: I real­ly liked what you said about Spokane [being] just the right size to make an impact because I feel like once you get into larg­er gov­ern­ments, there’s big­ger bod­ies of peo­ple, and more peo­ple that you have to make hap­py and com­pro­mise with and com­pete with, just on a scale. And when we talk about mak­ing big changes that leave big impacts, you real­ly do have to start at the micro local lev­el, and Spokane is just at that place where it is get­ting to be a big city.

We’re the sec­ond most pop­u­lat­ed city, but we’ve nev­er felt like a big city. And I feel like we’re just right on the verge of being there.

LISA BROWN: Yeah… I guess I would also add I ran for Con­gress unsuc­cess­ful­ly in 2018 and the dis­trict is the ten coun­ties of East­ern Wash­ing­ton, and the rur­al urban divide was real­ly obvi­ous in that election.

Although we tried to tran­scend it, we did­n’t real­ly suc­ceed in doing that. Con­se­quent­ly, I was very suc­cess­ful in the elec­tion in the city of Spokane. [I] won over­whelm­ing­ly both here and in the col­lege towns of Cheney and Pull­man, but lost in the rur­al areas. And I think for the future of East­ern Wash­ing­ton, demon­strat­ing that we can do good pol­i­cy in Spokane is real­ly important.

We’re always going to be a lit­tle bit of an inter­sec­tion, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, because we’re so close to the Ida­ho bor­der, and so at least for the fore­see­able future, those are going to be very dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments in terms of state pol­i­cy. Nev­er­the­less, we’re a region with North Ida­ho, and so it’s a real­ly fruit­ful, inter­est­ing place to work, and you can’t take for grant­ed that the peo­ple that you’re work­ing with are going to just be liv­ing in the same ide­o­log­i­cal bub­ble that you live in. I think that’s a good chal­lenge for me, and for every­body, actu­al­ly, to try to get things done and not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­ing from the same place when you start.

CAYA BERNDT: That’s a fan­tas­tic answer. So, vot­ers often have high expec­ta­tions for the peo­ple that they vote for. But as we know, deliv­er­ing on cam­paign promis­es can take time. So for our read­ers, walk us through the first three-to-six months of a Lisa Brown admin­is­tra­tion. What can vot­ers expect from your team when they assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for gov­ern­ing Spokane in 2024?

LISA BROWN: Well, I think that you’re absolute­ly right, that many vot­ers are a lit­tle bit cyn­i­cal about big pro­nounce­ments of major things that are going to occur that actu­al­ly are very unlike­ly to occur in the very begin­ning of an admin­is­tra­tion. So I tried to set the for­mat for this even dur­ing the elec­tion with my cam­paign theme which is: there’s a bet­ter way.

I took the inspi­ra­tion from Ben Harper’s song, “A Bet­ter Way.” So instead of pro­claim­ing that Spokane would be the best at this or that these prob­lems would com­plete­ly go away, I con­sis­tent­ly said: I think we can do better.

And I think that res­onat­ed with peo­ple, because it’s quite realistic!

We don’t expect the unhoused pop­u­la­tion to be addressed imme­di­ate­ly, but we could cer­tain­ly do bet­ter than we had been doing in Spokane. So in the first 60 days, my agen­da will be set part­ly by a tran­si­tion team that has been put togeth­er. It’s actu­al­ly rather large. There’s five work groups and there’s nine­ty-some indi­vid­u­als that are part of it, and they are in the process right now of dis­till­ing down two or three key rec­om­men­da­tions for me to try to take action on with my admin­is­tra­tion, with the city coun­cil and with com­mu­ni­ty partners.

Those are in the areas that you would be not sur­prised to see in almost any city of chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties. So, afford­able hous­ing, home­less­ness, and the unhoused pop­u­la­tion is one of the areas we def­i­nite­ly need to make changes in right away. It’s Win­ter. And we have a very large unhoused population.

So that is an area that we need to work on.

Pub­lic safe­ty is some­thing that we hear all over the city from down­town to neigh­bor­hoods. Peo­ple want to under­stand: what is the emer­gency? Or the response to crime, and how can we both mea­sure it and improve it.

Eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment is a place where I think we can have some wins, if you will. There’s some good things that can hap­pen in the work­force and econ­o­my front. Then, each of the work groups will be com­ing up with some more spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tions that I’ll be able to take to my cab­i­net and say, “okay, how do we come up with a game plan here to have some tan­gi­ble results with­in the first 100 days, and with­in the first six months?”

CAYA BERNDT: So like, strong del­e­ga­tion, and mak­ing sure that you have like you said, one to two rec­om­men­da­tions, that prob­a­bly makes it a lot eas­i­er to keep track of every­thing. I feel like success…you real­ly have to be orga­nized in order to accom­plish all the myr­i­ad things that Spokane needs.

LISA BROWN: And to some extent, it’s also about get­ting the table set in a way so that voic­es that have been his­tor­i­cal­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed or mar­gin­al­ized are part of the deci­sion-mak­ing process. I don’t want to pre­sume that I come in, I have ideas–I’ve lived here for many years and come with ideas and cam­paign plans, but I don’t want to just assume that it’s about what I think. I want to real­ly do that lis­ten­ing process, and that process of bring­ing peo­ple into the deci­sion-mak­ing rooms and at the deci­sion-mak­ing tables, so that the dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hoods, the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties in Spokane are also part of it.

For exam­ple Spokane has a large urban Native pop­u­la­tion as well as rela­tion­ships with and…who are his­tor­i­cal­ly here, and part of our geography.

So I want to hire a trib­al liai­son and have trib­al voic­es [be] part of the deci­sion-mak­ing process when we’re talk­ing about the future of our region, both in terms of its nat­ur­al resources and its economy.

CAYA BERNDT:​ No, that’s fan­tas­tic. It is very heart­en­ing to hear an elect­ed leader specif­i­cal­ly men­tion­ing the Native pop­u­la­tion in Spokane.

And this actu­al­ly leads very well into my next ques­tion, because I am a queer per­son, so I pay very close atten­tion to how my elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives talk about my com­mu­ni­ty and, by exten­sion, myself. As you’re aware – and this is par­tial­ly inspired by a ques­tion that you were asked dur­ing one of the debates in Octo­ber – there’ve been numer­ous instances of van­dal­ism of queer art­works and spaces, includ­ing the Odyssey Youth Cen­ter down­town. As well as efforts in Lib­er­ty Lake and Mead to cen­sor books dis­cussing queer themes in pub­lic libraries.

Often, for queer youth, the library is one of the only resources that they have to find infor­ma­tion about them­selves. So how do you plan to com­bat hate and uplift Spokane’s LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty as Mayor?

LISA BROWN: Well, that will be mul­ti­fac­eted. I will say that it’s part of what I’ve always been about as a leader. In 1993, or 1992, actu­al­ly, [I] marched in the first Spokane Pride Parade, and then was able to, in the leg­is­la­ture, be part of that jour­ney [of] vot­ing against dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al orientation.

My very first year in the leg­is­la­ture in 1993… but then see­ing it fail again and again. It would pass the House and fail in the Sen­ate. And going through the whole twen­ty years of my time in the Leg­is­la­ture was also the jour­ney from that of that, going from just work­ing towards anti dis­crim­i­na­tion through to mar­riage equal­i­ty. And I got to be part of that, work­ing with activists all over the state, real­ly all over the coun­try, as well as in Spokane.

And I come back to that because [..] the Spokane City Coun­cil actu­al­ly passed non-dis­crim­i­na­tion before it passed at the state lev­el! And I think a lot of peo­ple were sur­prised about that. What? That hap­pened in Spokane? Yes, it did! And there was a cit­i­zen ini­tia­tive to over­turn it, and it was upheld by the peo­ple in the city. So this, the val­ues of sup­port­ing the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty, it’s what has been vot­ed on by peo­ple in Spokane. It’s an impor­tant val­ue that I will want to uphold.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in the last year […] the cur­rent may­or actu­al­ly uti­lized the rain­bow cross­walks that were cel­e­brat­ing both pride and diver­si­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty, and [crit­i­cized them] say­ing, “why are we wast­ing mon­ey on that?”

And then, not sur­pris­ing­ly, the van­dal­ism occurred. I think that real­ly shows how lead­er­ship mat­ters, in terms of elect­ed lead­ers, busi­ness lead­ers, non­prof­it lead­ers, stand­ing up and being there for the com­mu­ni­ties, and also mak­ing sure that, offi­cial­ly, we uti­lize our enforce­ment pow­ers to make sure that cer­tain activ­i­ties are not accept­able. Like that vandalism.

And the com­mu­ni­ty com­ing togeth­er and speak­ing out against the threats that are there, or that are hap­pen­ing in state law right now.

As I said, maybe even across the bor­der in Ida­ho with respect to LGBT or trans rights, or with respect to repro­duc­tive free­doms, those are things, I think, that will be incum­bent upon me as the may­or to stand up and be a voice, as well as to make sure that our city’s offi­cial that we’re offi­cial­ly there to be sup­port­ive, and to resist any threats that may be there for providers, or for peo­ple that come here seek­ing ser­vices they can’t receive in neigh­bor­ing states.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Yeah, as a leader you are set­ting the exam­ple for, this is where our city stands. You’re set­ting the exam­ple for how peo­ple talk about and treat those com­mu­ni­ties. I think you’re absolute­ly right that lead­er­ship is a lot more impor­tant than I think peo­ple give it cred­it for.

So, turn­ing to men­tal health. Back when I worked answer­ing a cri­sis line, I did that for over a year, I worked with a sur­vivor who, in my esti­ma­tion, need­ed a well­ness check. But, due to the time of day, there were no men­tal health cri­sis response teams avail­able to check in on her. I called one of the local men­tal health providers and asked if there was some­body who could do it.

And they said no, only law enforce­ment was avail­able. And law enforce­ment can be very dan­ger­ous for vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple like her. Espe­cial­ly for folks who are going through men­tal health crises, who are dis­abled, hav­ing a police law enforce­ment check in on them can be very dangerous.

How do you plan on address­ing these prob­lems in polic­ing and do you have any plans for addi­tion­al cri­sis response services?

LISA BROWN: Well, I’m glad that you tell me this, because for one thing, it takes me back to my own under­grad­u­ate days.

One of the first things I did was vol­un­teer with the wom­en’s cri­sis line. And that was an impor­tant part of my under­stand­ing of the dif­fer­ent chal­lenges that are out there, and the sig­nif­i­cance of hav­ing some­body to call, and to hav­ing those ser­vices avail­able when you need them. So, thank you for remind­ing me of that.

I think it’s very clear that our resources for peo­ple with severe men­tal health chal­lenges, or just the reg­u­lar behav­ioral health issues peo­ple go through in their life, or when par­tic­u­lar things occur like the pan­dem­ic we all just went through, or oth­er chal­lenges that relate to the kinds of stress that peo­ple expe­ri­ence when they have eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty or come from a fam­i­ly with fam­i­ly vio­lence, all of those things…mean that we’re very under-resourced, not only in Spokane, but as a soci­ety in hav­ing ser­vices avail­able and in des­tig­ma­tiz­ing seek­ing out help when you need it.

So we need to make progress on both those fronts in Spokane. Specif­i­cal­ly, one of the things I start­ed to work on dur­ing the cam­paign with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers is how we might build up our street med­i­cine and cri­sis response as a spe­cif­ic alter­na­tive to a sole law enforce­ment response. And this is peo­ple that are poten­tial­ly unhoused, but who may be hav­ing vis­i­ble or invis­i­ble, in their homes, var­i­ous kinds of crises or challenges.

CAYA BERNDT:​ So sor­ry to inter­rupt… For some of our read­ers who may not be as famil­iar, can you tell us what a street med­i­cine response team is?

LISA BROWN: There are var­i­ous approach­es to it, but for exam­ple, one of our fed­er­al­ly qual­i­fied com­mu­ni­ty health clin­ic sys­tems here in Spokane, known as CHAS, has street med­i­cine response. And I’m in the posi­tion right now of want­i­ng to learn from them, how it works, and how we could poten­tial­ly coor­di­nate bet­ter. Because it’s sort of iron­ic, you’ve got on the one hand, peo­ple told me when I knocked on their doors dur­ing the cam­paign, if they see some­one in dis­tress, they want to have some­one they can call to request help, but they’re often afraid.

What will that mean? Will that mean sev­er­al police cars and a fire truck show up? And will it actu­al­ly, ulti­mate­ly be help­ful? Is it the appro­pri­ate response? And so I think that’s one of my key goals over the next few months, is to fig­ure out what that looks like. And poten­tial­ly, I’ll be work­ing with oth­er cities in Wash­ing­ton state to get some state leg­isla­tive sup­port for street med­i­cine, or home­less, and/or oth­er types of behav­ioral health out­reach that is an accom­pa­ni­ment to what we cur­rent­ly have, more coor­di­nat­ed than what we cur­rent­ly have.

And clear­ly, that ties into hav­ing detox and recov­ery ser­vices also avail­able when peo­ple are ready to access them.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Thank you very much for that. That’s great. And, relat­ed­ly, there’s the issue of inti­mate part­ner vio­lence, which has risen recent­ly, as you not­ed on your cam­paign web­site. I think if I’m not mis­tak­en, we have some of the high­est rates of inti­mate part­ner vio­lence in the state, as a city. What fac­tors do you think are con­tribut­ing to this rise? And what can the city of Spokane do to com­bat this problem?

LISA BROWN: I think we all know that some of these issues are inter­gen­er­a­tional. So if you don’t inter­rupt the cycle, then you see it repeat­ed. That is def­i­nite­ly one of the ser­vice respons­es that we want to have in place.

Anoth­er is eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty. As many as one in three house­holds are eco­nom­i­cal­ly inse­cure, and with par­tic­u­lar­ly the tight­en­ing of the hous­ing mar­ket and the insta­bil­i­ty of so many peo­ple being hous­ing inse­cure– peo­ple move, they lose con­nec­tions to tra­di­tion­al sup­port sys­tems at the same time, the cri­sis fac­tor goes up in their lives, and all of these things can result in more inti­mate part­ner violence.

So pub­lic edu­ca­tion and hav­ing the resources in place has got to be part of what we do. Hav­ing good rela­tion­ships between our orga­ni­za­tions that pro­vide sup­port for peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing fam­i­ly vio­lence and also ongo­ing rela­tion­ships with law enforce­ment or oth­ers who are called into those situations.

I did a police ride-along dur­ing the cam­paign and the pri­ma­ry call that we were called to respond to was an inti­mate part­ner vio­lence call. It was pri­mar­i­ly a law enforce­ment response. And we’ve got to sur­round that sit­u­a­tion, also, with the appro­pri­ate, if nec­es­sary, legal and coun­sel­ing and eco­nom­ic sup­port for vic­tims so that they can not have it be a repeat cycle.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Yeah. And I real­ly appre­ci­ate what you say about sup­port as well, because that was one of the things that was real­ly dif­fi­cult, as some­body on the cri­sis line, feel­ing like there real­ly was­n’t a whole lot of eco­nom­ic sup­port because anoth­er thing that leads to home­less­ness is inti­mate part­ner vio­lence. That’s kind of anoth­er one of those cycles is peo­ple sur­vivors are often left with nowhere else to go once they leave an abu­sive rela­tion­ship. I just want­ed to com­mend you for your com­mit­ment to keep­ing, includ­ing that in your pri­or­i­ties as a leader.

LISA BROWN: One of our goals is to coor­di­nate the providers of a vari­ety of ser­vices and cre­ate a coor­di­nat­ed entry sys­tem, and we’ve already made progress in this area in Spokane and oth­er places in Wash­ing­ton state with youth expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness. But the coor­di­nat­ed entry mod­el would make sure that when some­one does inter­act with an orga­ni­za­tion or any part of the sys­tem, that we take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate the infor­ma­tion to then con­nect them to the right provider or ser­vice. Oth­er­wise, right now, a lot of these things are dis­con­nect­ed so the indi­vid­ual who’s seek­ing sup­port may have to go five dif­fer­ent places, depend­ing on the nature of the dif­fer­ent things that they’re expe­ri­enc­ing and the cat­e­gories and silos of state, local , and non­prof­it assistance.

If we could only coor­di­nate and weave that togeth­er bet­ter, and it would be a lot more friend­ly and I think effec­tive for the resources, both the human resources and the dol­lars that we put into it.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Absolute­ly. So, kind of in the same wheel­house: as Nadine Wood­ward leaves office, one of the unfor­tu­nate lega­cies of her admin­is­tra­tion will sure­ly be the dis­as­trous Trent Resource and Assis­tance Cen­ter shel­ter, if you’ll for­give me for say­ing so. You have indi­cat­ed, in pri­or inter­views, that you would like to see changes to the shel­ter. Are there any con­crete plans com­ing togeth­er for the future of this facility?

LISA BROWN: It has been the pri­ma­ry… it’s not the only shel­ter in Spokane. There are oth­ers that are tar­get­ed for cer­tain pop­u­la­tions, or pro­vide ser­vices to cer­tain pop­u­la­tions and do a good job. But I think the goal orig­i­nal­ly was to cre­ate a very large facil­i­ty relat­ed to, I believe, the con­vic­tion that if there were enough spaces, that then encamp­ments could be cleared by law enforcement.

So I think there was sort of an under­ly­ing moti­va­tion that was real­ly just look­ing for a place where you could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly shel­ter hun­dreds of peo­ple. And so that’s what it is. It was a ware­house that was clear­ly not built for human habi­ta­tion with­out facil­i­ties like show­ers and bath­rooms, etc.

Con­se­quent­ly, just to make it bare­ly able to sup­port human habi­ta­tion, [it] has been a very expen­sive propo­si­tion. Also, to have a sin­gle provider pro­vide ser­vices has proven to be, repeat­ed­ly, not a good outcome.

Just to cut to the chase, mil­lions of dol­lars have been spent and it’s a place where hun­dreds of peo­ple can spend the night… not outside.

It’s not real­is­tic to sim­ply walk in on day one and say that “it’s closed,” because there are hun­dreds of peo­ple that are spend­ing the night there every night. We have to start with a plan that puts some­thing else in its place. And I don’t think that’s one facil­i­ty. It does­n’t make sense to have that high, con­cen­trat­ed num­ber of peo­ple all in one place. And it’s cer­tain­ly not a best prac­tice. I’ve gone there with orga­ni­za­tions that pro­vide food and served food, and observed what hap­pens if there is an inci­dent with some­one. Hun­dreds of peo­ple are dis­rupt­ed by the pres­ence of law enforce­ment com­ing to deal with that one individual.

It’s trau­ma­tiz­ing for peo­ple. It’s just clear­ly not an ide­al envi­ron­ment. So we’ve got our work cut out for us. The city coun­cil strug­gled with what to do as we come towards the end of the year and the end of the cur­rent contract.

I think what they ulti­mate­ly did was cre­ate a poten­tial three-to-four month com­mit­ment to the cur­rent facil­i­ty that gives some flex­i­bil­i­ty for the new admin­is­tra­tion to fig­ure out where we’re headed.

I hope to do that in part­ner­ship with non­prof­its, maybe oth­er local gov­ern­ments like the Coun­ty, with the busi­ness community.

This is clear­ly a region­al issue, not just a city issue. So I’m hope­ful that some of the con­ver­sa­tions around a region­al col­lab­o­ra­tion can come to pass, to help bring resources into what­ev­er we use to replace the Trent shelter.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Yes, thank you for that. And along those same lines, one of the mea­sures on the bal­lot this year was Propo­si­tion 1, which was the camp­ing ban, ban­ning camp­ing with­in 1,000 feet of cer­tain pub­lic facil­i­ties and school build­ings. This was a very con­tro­ver­sial propo­si­tion, because accord­ing to a map that East­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty put out, a thou­sand feet around parks and facil­i­ties is pret­ty much all of Spokane, putting peo­ple who have nowhere to go in a real­ly dif­fi­cult position.

The mea­sure’s been passed — it’s law now — so since it can’t be dis­man­tled [unless a court chal­lenge is suc­cess­ful], do you have any plans for how to either adjust it, or at least min­i­mize any dam­age that it may cause if it is some­thing that could cause harm?

LISA BROWN: Well, I was not at all sur­prised that it passed because I could hear peo­ple’s frus­tra­tion. When they see peo­ple liv­ing out­side, either in tents or com­plete­ly unshel­tered under bridges, or in oth­er loca­tions, it’s extreme­ly dis­turb­ing. And it’s obvi­ous­ly life-threat­en­ing in a cli­mate like this.

Regard­less of whether or not it passed, which I expect­ed that it would, I feel like our response has to be cre­at­ing places for peo­ple to go, and cre­at­ing meth­ods of out­reach that real­is­ti­cal­ly can get to peo­ple and give them alter­na­tives that go beyond emer­gency room and jail. So that’s what we will be work­ing on.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Thank you very much. And then the oth­er mea­sure that was on the bal­lot was [Coun­ty] Propo­si­tion 1, which was the coun­ty­wide jail/public safe­ty propo­si­tion. That did not go through. What do you antic­i­pate any poten­tial impacts of the fail­ure of that propo­si­tion being?

LISA BROWN: Well again, I was­n’t sur­prised by the out­come because it was a very large pro­pos­al. It was a very large tax increase, and there were a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent facil­i­ties, essen­tial­ly jails, that were spelled out in it. And a host of oth­er ser­vices not very well spelled out. So it was­n’t a sur­prise to me that the pub­lic said, no, this plan has to go back to the draw­ing board.

We need invest­ments in our cur­rent structure.

Our cur­rent cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ties are inad­e­quate, both from the per­spec­tive of the peo­ple that are incar­cer­at­ed there, but also from the per­spec­tive of the peo­ple who work there and their safe­ty and their work­ing conditions.

For exam­ple, cor­rec­tions offi­cers said, “We need to plan this bet­ter.” They want to see invest­ments, but they want to see them. They want more input into what they are. So I will, in good faith, go back to the draw­ing board with bring­ing city resources and engag­ing with the coun­ty to talk about what we might be able to accom­plish in com­ing up with anoth­er plan with more com­mu­ni­ty input.

It clear­ly would have to have a real­ly well spelled-out invest­ment in behav­ioral health facil­i­ties, and a clear rela­tion­ship between the city and the coun­ty, in terms of if we’re build­ing a new cor­rec­tion­al facil­i­ty, where it is and what it is, and what the pop­u­la­tion is that we real­ly expect to be there over time.

I think we go back to work on that and see if we can emerge with some kind of an agree­ment, and we want to go back to vot­ers and talk to them about that. And if that is not suc­cess­ful, then the city, obvi­ous­ly on its own, will have to talk about what we can do in the pub­lic safe­ty arena.

It’s sort of an uncer­tain path ahead, but I think almost every­one across the polit­i­cal spec­trum agrees that we need more invest­ments in the whole sys­tem, in the jus­tice sys­tem with an empha­sis on the “jus­tice” part, and a lot of that relates to what can we do to reduce the incar­cer­at­ed pop­u­la­tion using things like ther­a­peu­tic courts, and using diver­sion, and pre­ven­tion and pro­grams that help peo­ple suc­cess­ful­ly re-enter after they have been incar­cer­at­ed. So, with a whole spec­trum of those types of best prac­tices, I think that Spokane region­al vot­ers would be will­ing to make invest­ments, but they want to see that they’re going to the things that mat­ter, and that work, and not just to build­ing a new jail.

CAYA BERNDT:​ Absolute­ly. So, as a final ques­tion for you, at the begin­ning of this inter­view, you men­tioned that one of the things that you loved about Spokane was how beau­ti­ful it is. It’s one of the things I love about Spokane as well. I think that we live in one of the most beau­ti­ful areas, which is why the recent sum­mers with the wild­fires, and the smoke, have been so dev­as­tat­ing because it seems that the cli­mate that I live in as an adult is much dif­fer­ent than the one that I lived in when I was a kid.

Cli­mate action and envi­ron­men­tal mea­sures [are pri­mar­i­ly thought of as] big, nation­al issues, but just like any­thing else, there’s a lot of things that we can do on the local lev­el to help in the fight against cli­mate damage.

What are some cli­mate actions, if any, pri­or­i­ties in your administration?

LISA BROWN: Well, it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing that’s impor­tant. And one of the five work groups of the tran­si­tion com­mit­tee is focused on cli­mate action and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Spokane has a sus­tain­abil­i­ty action plan, but I don’t think it’s got­ten a lot of atten­tion in the last admin­is­tra­tion. So com­ing up with, what are the action­able items there that we need to pro­ceed on, is one of the things I’m hope­ful will come through with the tran­si­tion process.

I know for sure that there are some great plans in place with respect to build­ing our urban tree canopy. That will be impor­tant because of stud­ies that show that we real­ly have these heat islands, and they tend to be in the low­er income parts and neigh­bor­hoods. So being able to address that and take that on is important.

The Spokane Riv­er is absolute­ly the lifeblood of the region. And so… [there’s] work that we need to con­tin­ue to do to safe­guard and clean up the Spokane Riv­er, but also to con­serve water. And I think that there’s more that the city needs to do to walk its talk there, when it comes to good water use.

So that will be some­thing that we’ll work on. And we’re a very high risk com­mu­ni­ty when it comes to the inter­face with wild­fire and res­i­dences. That is def­i­nite­ly an area that we need to con­tin­ue to work on as well.

On the plus side, we have a lot of research and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment hap­pen­ing in clean ener­gy, in updat­ing the grid, and in alter­na­tive ener­gy. And so I’d like to see us do more there, and more to con­nect our young peo­ple to poten­tial work­force oppor­tu­ni­ties in that sec­tor. So there’s pos­i­tives that we can take a lead on in decar­boniza­tion and the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels.

I want Spokane to be absolute­ly at the cen­ter of that both from a per­spec­tive of doing our share of prepar­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cli­mate change, but also as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple that grow up here to be part of it.

CAYA BERNDT:​ All right, that’s anoth­er fan­tas­tic answer. So that is every­thing that I had for you. I just want­ed to thank you so much again for join­ing me to answer these ques­tions and for your very thought­ful answers! I Think that I speak for a lot of peo­ple when I say that I’m very excit­ed for the next few years of Spokane under a Lisa Brown administration.

LISA BROWN: Great. We have a tran­si­tion web­site, betterwayspokane.com. I look for­ward to peo­ple giv­ing me sug­ges­tions, ideas, and feed­back, and would real­ly wel­come peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing with that website.

Or, of course, after I’m sworn in, the offi­cial city web­site. Reach out to us and look at oppor­tu­ni­ties to be part of boards and com­mis­sions and job oppor­tu­ni­ties, or to pro­vide feed­back and sug­ges­tions to the administration.

Lisa Brown’s new term as May­or of Spokane will begin on Jan­u­ary 1st, 2024.