SPOKANE, Wash. — Mayor Lisa Brown and Council President Betsy Wilkerson announced a proposal on Thursday for a Community Safety Fund and a 10-year sunset provision for the proposed Community Safety tax proposal.
According to numbers released by the mayor’s proposal, the new tax would cost the average Spokane resident and visitor around $1 for every $1,000 they spend. Several necessities such as food and prescription drugs would be exempted.
In the original proposal, the mayor said the roughly $6.5 million per year that stays in the City of Spokane will be “dedicated to community safety enhancements." In Thursday’s proposal, Brown and Wilkerson said that money would now be put into a dedicated Community Safety Fund. They say the fund would “increase transparency and segregate the use of funds exclusively for improving community safety.”
They also proposed a 10-year sunset provision on the tax. "By proposing a sunset provision on this sales tax proposal, we ensure it is only in place when truly necessary. My administration has made significant progress reducing our structural budget deficit outside of this proposed sales tax, but implementing it for the next few years will ensure our ability to make new public safety investments our community wants,” Mayor Brown said.
According to a press release, the Brown Administration says they intend to use the funds to re-launch the Spokane Police Department’s Neighborhood Resource Officer, stand up a traffic safety unit, replace the Spokane Fire Department’s outdated vehicles and equipment, reinstate the Fire Academy, increase staffing in the Office of the Police Ombuds, and sustain Municipal Court operations to reduce strain on the jail, failure to appear rates, and re-arrest.
The proposal is set to go before the Spokane City Council in the coming weeks.
