1. Stop House Bill 1380: Another Lazy Fix That Fails Spokane and Our Most Vulnerable

We’ve covered HB 1380 in Three for Thursday before, but this reckless attempt at a shortcut to addressing Spokane’s deeply complex health and safety crisis is still advancing through the legislature—so we’re sounding the alarm again.

If passed, the bill will bring public camping back to Spokane with vague and unenforceable standards, while failing to provide real solutions for homelessness, addiction, and mental illness.  At the same time, it will continue to devastate our local businesses, driving away customers, threatening local jobs, and deterring investment in Spokane.

Cities like Boise and Houston have tackled homelessness with real solutions while maintaining strict no-camping laws. How?  Because when community leaders stop pretending they’re solving our critical health and safety issues by allowing camping on the streets, they must actually address those problems.

In my 17 years as the City of Spokane’s CFO, I was always amazed by what we were able to accomplish when we stopped making excuses and focused on real solutions.

There is no more urgent issue.   Remember, nearly one person dies every day from a drug overdose—but allowing camping on Spokane’s streets in near-zero temperatures isn’t just bad policy, it’s inhumane.  The only good policy is the one that actually fixes the problem.

If you want to stop a bill that threatens Spokane’s future while failing those who are most in need of real help —tell your legislators to reject HB 1380 before it’s too late.

Make your voice heard today: https://app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/1380

2. Facing a Crisis – It’s Time for Leadership to Reverse Engineer Success

The prior story reminds me of the times when real progress happened at the City of Spokane. Time and again, the key to making things happen wasn’t asking for more money or finding excuses—it was leadership setting a nonnegotiable goal and forcing their team to reverse-engineer a solution.

Spokane is failing tragically at managing homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health crises. For years, we have had one of the highest homelessness rates in the country, and nearly one person dies every day from a drug overdose. At the same time, our local businesses are also struggling with customers and employees feeling unsafe. If that’s not enough to demand urgent and immediate action, what is?

So, here’s one example of how leadership could drive this much-needed turnaround:

Imagine if the mayor announced to her cabinet of top city executives that, starting tomorrow, they would meet every morning at 4 AM for a one-mile walk through downtown Spokane. After that first walk, she would make it clear: these walks would continue every single day, weekends included, until they could complete that mile without seeing a single person sleeping on the streets or struggling with addiction.

It’s easy to imagine what would happen next:

Very quickly, these city leaders—exhausted and desperate to end the brutal early-morning walks—would soon begin working together with a sense of urgency never seen before. Not just within their own departments, but across agencies and throughout the broader community. They would be forced to reverse-engineer a solution, collaborating intensely with county leadership, medical institutions, mental health providers, and every key part of our (outstanding) homelessness response system.

This kind of high-pressure, results-driven collaboration is exactly what has enabled certain other cities to successfully manage these crises. They refused to accept failure, made the consequences of inaction unacceptable, and forced key players to work together until real solutions emerged.

I recall a former City Administrator – someone who excelled at this kind of reverse engineering thinking – succinctly commenting on why important things too often didn’t get done:

“It’s hard…really hard”

That leader was right. It’s really hard. But it’s also critically necessary.

This is what a real emergency response looks like. It’s not about identifying a process—it’s about defining success and demanding that it happen.

It’s the thinking that got us to the moon—set an “impossible” goal and reverse-engineer solutions until it happens.

It’s also the kind of thinking that’s in Spokane’s DNA. We just need to decide to do it.

3. Turning Progress into Momentum: Success Stories We Can Build On

We’ve spent a lot of time highlighting what’s not working in Spokane—because ignoring our biggest challenges won’t make them go away.

But it’s just as important to recognize that real progress is happening in public health and safety all around us.

Every day, dedicated individuals and organizations are making tangible, meaningful impacts—from innovative programs reducing homelessness to public health and safety initiatives that are truly working.

Next week, I’ll be sharing some of these success stories – looking at ways we can leverage them into even greater success, and exploring how we can all participate and help these efforts grow and thrive. Because when something is working, we should do everything we can to make sure it keeps working—even better.