SPOKANE, Wash. — The city has plans to make Spokane’s downtown streets cleaner now that the 2025-2026 budget has been approved.
Mayor Lisa Brown’s 2025-2026 budget was approved by City Council on Monday night. $500,000 of the budget accounts for the creation of three new code enforcement positions to create a dedicated downtown team.
Currently, the Downtown Spokane Partnership is one of the groups that regularly works to keep downtown clean, but they said even their team isn’t enough to get the job done.
“We have a clean team that works seven days a week, picking up garbage, removing litter, removing illegal dumping, graffiti, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, we continue to see the need continue to grow,” said Emilie Cameron from Downtown Spokane Partnership.
Spokane’s Code Enforcement currently has a homeless outreach team that also responds to calls about trash and vandalism. They said, because they respond to calls all over the city, it is difficult to spare resources specifically for downtown.
“When we talked to code enforcement, we asked them what they need and they said, ‘If we had three more positions, we can make a significant difference,'” said Spokane City Council President, Betsy Wilkerson.
The new downtown team will work alongside the existing entities to help make downtown Spokane cleaner and safer.
The budget also prioritizes making the streets safer to walk and drive on.
In 2023, Spokane implemented the ‘Safe Streets 4 All’ fund to help improve transportation safety across the city by adding more bike lanes, ADA ramps, red light cameras and other traffic safety features.
The new 2025-2026 budget will use some of that funding to hire a dedicated Director of Transportation and Sustainability to oversee the traffic safety projects.
City Council President Wilkerson said having a dedicated person for the fund will provide the city with more time and resources to focus on making the streets safer for everyone.
Overall, the 2025-2026 budget is focused on improving conditions downtown for pedestrians, bikers and cars.
“It’s about making streets quieter, more vibrant and just making people feel safer and more connected,” said Erik Lowe of Spokane Reimagined, a local organization focused on Spokane’s transportation systems.
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