SPOKANE, Wash. — City of Spokane spokesperson Brian Coddington announced in a press release Tuesday night that the mayor's office will be restarting the process to select a provider for a new night-by-night drop-in shelter.
According to the city, the process will start over after a "conflict of interest and a breach of the process."
In the press release, Coddington said members of the Continuum of Care board who were parties to one of the proposals participated in a board discussion on April 15 about which proposal to recommend. Coddington said those board members did not vote on the proposals, however their participation violated the board's conflict of interest policy. Coddington also said the three proposals were shared outside of the board evaluators before the board completed its process, which creates the potential for outside influence.
“Homelessness and the process of selecting a provider to meet the basic shelter needs of those in crisis is an emotionally charged challenge the City has been working exhaustively to meet,” Mayor Nadine Woodward said. “It’s really disheartening to get this far and to have it disrupted by even the potential appearance of outside influence in this competitive process.”
The Continuum of Care Board was asked to review responses to the request for proposals for a shelter operator issued on March 10. The board's RFP committee reviewed and scored the proposals and made a recommendation for the full board to review. Coddington said the voting and recommendation process from the full board to the Community, Housing and Human Services Department was never completed.
Concerns about the process were also brought up by city staff on Monday and Tuesday.
“The decision to start over was the right one even if it was extremely difficult because it potentially delays the opening of needed additional shelter space and hurts those who need help the most,” Woodward said.
The restarted process and timeline will be announced soon.