The Spokane Valley City Council held a special meeting and budget workshop on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, beginning at 8:30 a.m. at City Hall. The workshop was the second of 13 public touches on the 2027 budget. The primary focus was reviewing department budgets, discussing financial challenges—particularly the uncertainty surrounding the Spokane County law enforcement contract estimates—and considering supplemental requests, revenue options, and long-term planning. The meeting concluded with several consensus decisions on staffing, facility upgrades, and next steps.
That's what it is. It's 8 30 when you'd like to start. Thank you. So thank you. We will call to order the Spokane Valley City Council special meeting, budget workshop on Tuesday, June 9th, 2026. So welcome to this 2027 budget workshop. This is the second of 13 public touches the council will have on the 2027 budget. It is a thorough, transparent, robust, and reflective process with many opportunities for staff, council, and the public to weigh in. In the end, this will deliver a budget in the black that complies with our requirements of having recurring revenues greater than recurring expenses and maintaining a general fund balance of at least 50% of the recurring expenses. Achieving this along with compliance with our other guidelines, like uh minimizing debt has allowed Spokane Valley to provide a very stable environment for growth, the ability to provide necessary services and enhance the quality of life for our residents. But there's a lot of work to do, so we best get started. Can the the uh clerk call the roll, please? Certainly. Mayor Padden here, Deputy Mayor Hattenberg. Here, Councilmember Yeager here, Councilmember Kelly? Present. Councilmember Haley? There. Councilmember Wick? Here. And Councilmember Merkel. Here. Thank you. Thank you. If you stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance with me. We do have a couple of action items today. The first is uh interlocal agreement with Robert Blagan. Move to authorize the city manager to finalize and execute the interlocal agreement between model irrigation district number 18 and the city for 32nd Avenue Preservation Project. Second. Would you like to read the title? I can read the title. Uh agenda item title, interlocal agreement with model irrigation district number 18 for the 32nd Avenue Preservation CIP number 355. All right. Uh Mayor Padding Padding, Council Members, Robert Blegan, Public Works Director. So uh model irrigation district number 18 uh needs to install an 18-inch water main within the limits of the described project and requested that that main be included as part of the project to minimize impact uh on the traveling public. Their work was identified as Schedule C in the bid proposal and construction documents uh to pay for the water main interlocal agreement uh needs to be executed by the district and the city. Uh this interlocal agreement uh allows the district to pay for the cost of the water plus a portion of some of the other prorated costs associated with the project. Bids were received on June 3rd. The model irrigation board uh examined the bids at their board meeting on Friday, June 5th and approve their portion of the bid, the schedule C and staff is seeking your approval for the city manager to execute the interlocal agreement with the district. Any questions from council? Councilmember Kelly. Yeah, so I was reviewing the bid and I was uh wondering you seem like there was a couple of bid items that were way out of whack with both estimates and other bidders. Um I'm just wondering how do we typically approach that if we feel like either we have an unbalanced bid or maybe something that the contractor missed, and does that ever I guess uh create uh a questions of their ability to perform or anything like that. I mean, we don't want to get you know you don't want them to get over their head and get halfway through the project and realize this is gonna lose money and they walk away. I know they have bid bonds and all that performance bonds and such, but obviously that we drive that's something you want to avoid. So how do you look at that? And is that any concern in this particular instance? So this particular part of the estimate was um was less about half of what the um water district's engineer estimate was. Um so we look at the bids. We also looked at the bids from the second bidder, and they had a very similar estimate, which which gives us um a reference point.