Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Spokane Valley City Council met on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall to consider a property acquisition related to a terminated affordable housing grant, receive updates on retail recruitment and economic trends, and review state-mandated development regulation changes. The council unanimously approved two motions related to property transfer and maintenance funding, and discussed participation in a regional homeless grant RFP.
And with me tonight is Tony Beattie, senior deputy city attorney, and also Gloria Mance, the City Services Administrator. So tonight's motion uh has been outlined in RCA passed out for you, but I'm gonna give a little bit of a brief brief um background on this topic back in 2023. The city released an RFP for affordable housing and homelessness services to allocate general fund grants that were made possible through the ARPA revenue replacement program at the time. And that was for the purpose of starting up one of their programs here in Skoken Valley. One was for a home base, which was a multi-purpose facility that would house their office space. Yeah, in their program. So the grant agreement has been amended to better align with their program as things evolved and support the success of their project. And one such amendment was done in 2025. What that did is it executed a deed of trust on the property for the city. So of the one point four six million dollars, uh, over nine hundred sixty thousand dollars was reimbursed for allowable costs for these programs to reclaim. And they were meeting performance objectives within the first three years of their program. Uh but a combination of administrative challenges really contributed to where we're at today. That really stalled and they were unable to complete that project. So while we reimburse that 960,000, the deed of trust helps us recover approximately the value of 600,000 of that money. So this is a great asset to the city to have those. The remaining 360,000 that was spent of that 960, it really was reimbursed for allowable costs and community benefits that reclaim provided during those first three years of starting up that program. So I'm going to turn it over to Tony. He's going to walk through some of the legal the legal stuff with the deed of trust and talk about how that settlement works. Yes, thank you. Normally with the deed of trust, what would happen if there is a violation of the promissory note or the or a contract, uh, you would go through a foreclosure process that would take anywhere from you know, usually it would take up to a year uh to get that resolved. Um through discussions with reclaim, uh, we were able to come to a solution where they would deed us back the property in lieu of foreclosure, and we would uh settle any claims between the two through that same process. So this really does uh resolve all everything from the grant agreement with reclaim, and it does end up giving the city that property that was secured uh by the Dita Trust. Okay. So after that property transfer, the city will own the property and can use it for purposes that align with council goals, um, the original council goals of affordable affordable housing and homeless services. Um for example, the city could issue an RFP uh for projects that meet those goals and include a property transfer, and that would be similar to what was previously done back in 2025 with the property transfer grant that was ultimately awarded to Habitat for the property owned by the city over on Cartahan and first. And so many of you recall that. Um benefit to doing that is that with the changes coming down from the state on the code, uh transitional housing may not allow it, it doesn't allow the restrictions or requirements that the city has previously put on those on those type of properties. And um, if the city owned property was transferred through a grant agreement, we are able to put some requirements in that grant agreement that would have to be met, such as um community engagement and maybe some management of the house and different safety measures. So that is a good benefit to that. Um the unspent 500,000, the grant award was for 1.46 million, and they were reimbursed 960,000. So there's approximately 500,000 that sits in the assigned Clifford ARPA bucket category that council had assigned for that purpose. It kind of just goes back from the grant into that same category until council allocates it differently. So the second motion on this item tonight would be to ask council if they would allocate some of the just a small portion of that to cover the closing costs of this property transfer agreement. Those are gonna total about $6,500. And then there will there will be some costs associated with utility bills and securing the property, um, kind of maintaining it, cutting the grass, things like that. Um, so that it's secure, right? While the city does own it until we do something with that. Uh we anticipate that shouldn't be more than 20 or 25,000. So we did include in the motion a total of 30,000 to be reallocated for that purpose. So uh I guess with that, unless anyone has anything to add, we're open for questions. So maybe we should deal with um the first portion questions and vote on the first portion and the second. So this would be questions on um authorizing the city manager to finalize and execute any of the documents for the property transfer back to the city. Any questions? I see none.