Latest news with #SpokaneCityCouncil
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Alejandro Barrientos, business executive and independent Democrat, running for Spokane City Council
Jun. 25—Alejandro Barrientos, chief operations officer for the SCAFCO Steel Stud Company, is making a bid for the Spokane City Council. Barrientos is running for a seat occupied by Councilwoman Lili Navarrete, who recently announced she is not running for a new term. If elected, he would be one of two council members representing District 2, which includes most of the city south of the Spokane River. Councilman Paul Dillon is the district's other representative and is serving a term through 2027. He is running in the Nov. 4 election against Kate Telis, a former prosecutor who has more recently worked on the campaigns of several Spokane-area candidates, including Dillon's. Barrientos is a self-described Democrat, but likely one of the defining pitches of his campaign will be his independence from the progressive cohort that has taken a supermajority on the Spokane City Council and works closely with Mayor Lisa Brown. He opposed most of the recent package of homelessness laws Brown proposed , which were meant in large part to replace the 2023 voter-approved anti-camping law struck down earlier this year by the state Supreme Court. He argues that they failed to deliver the immediate response voters had asked for and would have left people on the streets to die. While city council positions are ostensibly nonpartisan, party politics still animate the positions, and the South Hill is one of the city's most reliably Democratic voting blocs. This may explain why it has been years since a self-described Republican has made a serious run for one of District 2's seats; Dillon's opponent in 2023 was Katey Treloar, who ran as a self-described moderate unaffiliated with any party and tried, not always successfully, to avoid being associated with more right-leaning candidates and politicians. Whether Barrientos' explicit alignment with the Democratic Party will spare him the same characterization remains to be seen, including whether he can manage to secure a county Democratic Party's endorsement, which eluded Treloar. Many of his donors are reminiscent of Republican-affiliated candidates of years past: RenCorp Realty owner Chris Batten, Alvin and Jeanie Wolff of the Wolff real estate empire, and unsuccessful county commission and city council president candidate Kim Plese. Treloar has donated $100. Barrientos acknowledges that some have pointed to his employer, developer and SCAFCO owner Larry Stone, a well-funded opponent of Spokane progressives for years, to question his Democratic bona fides. But he believes that when voters meet him, they will know that he is a sincere believer in Democratic values. For instance, with family ties to Colombia, he says supporting immigrants amid the current campaign of mass deportation is important to him . He attended the June 12 protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detainment of 21-year-old Cesar Alexander Alvarez Perez, who is seeking asylum from Venezuela, and Joswar Slater Rodriguez Torres, a Colombian national also in his 20s. "I am a Democrat because those are the values that align more with who I am and how I grew up," he said in an interview. "I had a conversation with (former Democratic Senate Majority Leader) Andy Billig about that specifically, because he's somebody that works for (Spokane Indians and Spokane Chiefs teams owner) Bobby Brett." "He said, 'You know what? Sometimes you just have to prove it over time.' And so I just need to build that trust with people." Barrientos has lived in Spokane off and on for the past 17 years, and with his two children, the oldest of whom is 8, he said he has planted roots here for the long haul, prompting him to consider getting politically involved. It was on the Big Red Wagon last year, after his young daughter grabbed a piece of foil and Barrientos was gripped by fear that she may have come into contact with fentanyl, that he decided to run for Spokane City Council. He was born in Miami, where his grandfather and parents moved when his grandfather, a prominent attorney in Colombia, fled from a cartel he had been prosecuting. He moved to Medellín, Colombia — the country's second-largest city — at a young age. He attended Gonzaga University, drawn by a smaller university with a Jesuit tradition familiar from growing up in Colombia. He studied abroad in Italy for a stint, then moved to Mexico City to work in an international relations liaison position with Rocky Mountain Construction, a roller coaster designer and manufacturer, where he was promoted into various executive roles. Through that job, he had also lived in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, each for short periods. Throughout this jetsetting career, Barrientos said he regularly returned to Spokane, but returned for good after being offered a job by CWallA, another business in Stone's Stone Group of Companies. "I've lived in a lot of places, and a lot of big cities as well," Barrientos said. "And big cities, you know, at a young age, really attracted me for the different pace of doing things, but when you're raising kids and having a family, for me, there was no better place than Spokane." But Barrientos also believes that things have changed in the city in the past 17 years, some positives, but also some challenges that he has "seen and witnessed here in Spokane that I never saw growing up in Medellín." He believes that current leadership has struggled, or failed to try, to collaborate successfully with right-leaning governments in the county and surrounding jurisdictions. "We know that our county commissioners hold most of the mental health resources, and our city holds the housing resources, and I think it's crucial that we get our city and county working together," he said. "And sometimes party and politics gets in the way of that. "I can be that bridge to come to the table and connect people and work together."
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Protesters, including former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart, blocking bus from taking refugees
Jun. 11—More than 100 demonstrators were blocking federal agents in Spokane early Wednesday evening from leaving a downtown immigration office reportedly with refugees who were detained at court hearings earlier in the day. About 75 people, including former Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart, gathered outside the facility in the afternoon just north of Riverfront Park to prevent a bus with the young men from departing to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma. Later, they deflated the bus' tires and blocked law enforcement from leaving in patrol cars on the opposite side of the building. The fracas is arguably the most extreme local showing of resistance to President Donald Trump's sweeping immigration crackdowns since he took office for the second time in January. Stuckart began sitting in front of the bus parked on Cataldo Avenue in front of the former Broadview Dairy Building about 2 p.m. The demonstration was sparked by the Wednesday morning detainment of the two men, identified by Stuckart as 21-year-old Cesar Alexander Alvarez Perez, who is seeking asylum from Venezuela, and Joswar Slater Rodriguez Torres, a Colombian national also in his early twenties. The crowd began forming just before 2 p.m. following a post on social media from Stuckart in which he called on members of the community to join him in obstructing the bus bound for Tacoma. Stuckart said he officially became the Venezuelan's legal guardian three weeks ago, and arrived with him and the man from Colombia for a scheduled "check-in" appointment at the Spokane facility this morning. The two were in the United States on work visas and had full-time employment at the Walmart in Airway Heights until Friday, when their "work permits were revoked," he said. They're both hard workers who have been diligent about following the legal process and building better lives, Stuckart said. "You can't help spend time with them and not understand just what great young men they are," Stuckart said. "They've done everything right, and they're escaping horrible situations, and then to have them come in for a checkup and be detained illegally is morally reprehensible." For the first few hours, most of the demonstration was peaceful, aside from a masked person who covered the driver's side of the bus' windshield with a layer of white spray paint about a half hour into the demonstration. More than a dozen protestors joined Stuckart in sitting in front of the doors to the bus, despite warnings from a pair of uniformed men who came out of the building earlier to warn the crowd that obstructing their pathway could lead to arrests and charges. Protesters also parked their vehicles in front and behind the bus. "I don't want this bus to leave with my friends," Stuckart said. "And I told everybody I was down here, and if people wanted to join me, they could. It's not right. It's not morally right, what's happening." The crowd includes several prominent politicians, activists and community leaders, including Spokane County Democratic Party Chair Naida Spencer; state Rep. Timm Orsmby; Spokane City Council candidate Sarah Dixit; union advocate and a former Democratic candidate for local, state and federal offices Ted Cummings; Thrive International Director Mark Finney and Latinos en Spokane Director Jennyfer Mesa. Mesa said both of the young men are clients of Latinos en Spokane, but her presence Wednesday was to be there for her friends, not just her clients. "They're good kids," she said, choking back tears. "They have been volunteering, they're doing the process and everything legally. I just don't understand why they're being detained." Stuckart said the federal employees in the office denied him from accompanying Alvarez Perez during his appointment, and did not disclose why either young men were being detained. Stuckart estimated it took around seven minutes from when they went back for their appointment for federal officials to come out and inform him they were being detained. "And each of them has a stack of legal paperwork at least 2 inches thick, with all their asylum paperwork and their guardianship paperwork, and they clearly didn't look at it," Stuckart said. "They just said, 'We're detaining them.'" Stuckart said he started the legal guardianship process earlier this year after a call from Latinos en Spokane for local residents to assist local "vulnerable juveniles." He volunteers with the organization regularly and said he has greatly enjoyed getting to know Alvarez Perez, who's lived in Spokane for six months. He came by way of Miami, after walking through nine countries on his way from Venezuela and meeting Rodriguez Torres along the way. Stuckart said his main responsibility as a guardian is to provide mentorship. "He's not living with us, and I'm not in charge of his finances or anything," Stuckart said. There were about 100 people at the protest about 5 p.m., including about 15 blocking the bus. Stuckart was not in front of the bus at the time, but still at the protest. Around 5:25 p.m., a group of roughly 150 ran around the back of the building to obstruct three unmarked police vehicles from leaving a fenced-in parking area abutting the public parking area for Riverfront Park. Protesters shouted "Shame" repeatedly, and about 10 in the front line near the front of the gated parking lot linked arms in front of the gate. Around five law enforcement agents, faces covered by ski masks and sunglasses, began to push the human chain of demonstrators, their glasses and handmade signs scattering on the ground. Protestors and officers shoved each other in a mass of yelling and chanting for around a minute until the agents retreated into their parking lot and the gate closed. Not long after, a handful of protesters hauled Lime scooters and park benches as a barricade to block vehicles from leaving from the gate. Spokane police officers arrived shortly before 6:30 p.m. A group of around 15 to 20 Spokane Police Department officers formed a sort of protective barrier for an exit on the Washington Street side of the building. They were carrying weapons to shoot less-lethal munitions, what appears to be tear gas canisters and large hip bags with unidentified materials inside. Protesting is an intergenerational affair for Alicea Gonzalez, 27, who brought her 5-year-old son Javell and father, Adam Betancort, 46. She wore a Mexico T-shirt to the protest, and the pair brought flags, one of Mexico, the other half-Mexican, half-American. The latter flag is representative of Betancourt and his identity, he said while holding the flapping fabric towards passing cars on the corner of Cataldo Ave and Washington Street, right outside the ICE facility. "I'm American and I'm a Mexican," he said. Though they don't know either of the men detained by ICE, they're familiar with their story; Gonzalez's maternal grandmother crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the 1950s, floating across the river in a car tire, she said. Betancort's parents are also immigrants from Mexico. "I appreciate that; I wouldn't have the life that I live without her," Gonzalez said. "So I'm just showing my support, letting people know that they have people out here that will stand behind them, and use their voices to speak up for them." The family was not involved in the shoving at the gate between protestors and agents. This report is developing and will be updated.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Abortion rights organizer Sarah Dixit running for Spokane city council
May 29—Reproductive rights organizer Sarah Dixit is running for Spokane City Council in the seat currently held by Councilman Jonathan Bingle. Bingle is one of two conservatives in the minority of the seven-member council. Fellow conservative Michael Cathcart and Bingle represent council District 1, which covers the northeastern third of the city — east of Division and north of Trent. The district also includes almost all of downtown Spokane. Bingle is running for re-election for the first time after winning his first four-year term in 2021. Last year, he unsuccessfully ran for the Republican nomination of Spokane's Congressional seat. Cathcart announced Wednesday that he's running for Spokane County Auditor in 2026. In challenging the incumbent, Dixit said she wants to bring a young voice to city council that will uplift marginalized communities and those who may not be civically engaged. "A lot of folks are working jobs," she said. "They have kids at home. They can't follow what's happening at city council. We need to make this whole process more accessible for people, and especially for communities of color, immigrant populations and young people." At 29, Dixit believes she can reach these underserved populations as a young, queer woman of color. Dixit said she does not see that kind of advocacy from her opponent. "I don't see Jonathan in the community. At the events I'm at," she said. "I just haven't heard that type of advocacy from him when it comes to transit, bike safety investment, other issues." A big focus of her nascent campaign will be accessibility to public transit . Dixit wants to increase investments in public transit and have fares on a sliding scale, allowing those with the least resources to get the most access. Though firmly aligned with the council's progressive majority, Dixit said she would not be a "cookie-cutter" version of those already on council. Having grown up in Southern California, Dixit came to Spokane to attend Whitworth University. While in college, the first election of Donald Trump spurred her into activism. She went on to found the Christian college's first pro-choice club. Since graduating in 2018, she has advocated for reproductive and abortion rights full time at Planned Parenthood and as organizing director of Pro-Choice Washington. At Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, Dixit worked under Paul Dillon, who now serves on Spokane's city council. Dixit called Dillon a "mentor" who encouraged her to run. As a potential representative of downtown Spokane, Dixit said she has pride for the city center. "There's a lot of rhetoric about downtown that I don't necessarily agree with," she said. "I love downtown, and it's a place that makes Spokane really special." When addressing homelessness, the city should have a "multipronged approach" that uses less incarceration and more resources to prevent someone from becoming unhoused in the first place, she said. "A lot of the issues stem from the dehumanization of folks who are unhoused. I really want to make sure that we are working on issues in a way that recognizes these folks are Spokanites too. And their humanity needs to be a part of the conversations we're having," she said. Asked about concerns she might be too young to effectively serve, Dixit said there is no shortage of older voices on council. "I approach the work in a way that comes from all my lived experiences — being the daughter of immigrants, being someone who really loves the culture and the heart of Spokane. That lends itself to me being a different type of council member for Spokane," she said. Her parents emigrated from India. Endorsements for Dixit include Council President Betsy Wilkerson, Dillon, state Rep. Natasha Hill, state Sen. Marcus Riccelli and others.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Spokane City Council seeks applicants for four-month stint on council
May 23—The Spokane City Council is seeking applicants for a roughly four-month stint on the council to fill a seat being vacated by Councilwoman Lili Navarrete. Navarrete formally announced earlier this week that she planned to resign, citing health concerns and other job opportunities, effective July 1. She already had announced she did not plan to seek election to maintain the seat, and Alejandro Barrientos, chief operating officer at SCAFCO Steel Stud Company, and Kate Telis, a former deputy prosecutor from New Mexico, have filed to run for the seat. The winner of the election in November will be sworn in earlier than normal — as soon as the election is certified mid-November. The person selected for appointment will serve on Navarrete's seat in the meantime. Applications will open May 23 and will be available on the city's website, the council offices on the seventh floor of city hall, or at the service desk on the first floor, according to a city news release. Applications are due 5p.m. June 19 . Public interviews will be conducted by the City Council on July 10. The public will be able to provide testimony on the applicants on July 14. The City Council plans to vote to select the applicant on July 28.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Spokane Councilwoman Lili Navarrete to step down ahead of election
May 15—Spokane City Councilwoman Lili Navarrete, believed to be the first Hispanic or immigrant member of the Spokane City Council, will step down in the coming months, she said Thursday. Navarrete announced in March that she would not run for a new term, citing health concerns. Alejandro Barrientos, chief operating officer at SCAFCO Steel Stud Company, and Kate Telis, a former deputy prosecutor from New Mexico, have both filed to run for the seat. On Thursday Navarrete confirmed recent rumors that she planned to step down ahead of the election. In a brief interview outside City Hall, she cited two recent health scares worsened by the stress of the job and potential employment opportunities that she couldn't juggle with council commitments. She hasn't decided exactly when to step down and hadn't planned on publicly announcing the decision yet, but will fully lay out her resignation plans soon, she said Thursday. Navarrete's resignation opens the door to a short-term appointment to fill her seat, similar to the musical chairs that played out ahead of the council election in 2023. At the time, then-Council President Breean Beggs resigned to accept an appointment as a Superior Court judge, then-Councilwoman Lori Kinnear was appointed to serve as council president, and Priority Spokane Executive Director Ryan Oelrich was appointed six weeks later in August to fill Kinnear's council seat. Oelrich's appointed term was just over two months long; Paul Dillon and Katey Treloar were running at the time for Kinnear's seat, and while election winners are usually sworn in the following January, appointees are replaced immediately after the election is certified, so Dillon took office in mid-November. In a brief interview Thursday, Dillon said neither Barrientos nor Telis should be appointed to fill the seat ahead of their election, arguing it would give the appointee an unfair and undemocratic advantage. Navarrete also was appointed to her seat in January, 2024, to a nearly two-year stint representing south Spokane on the city council, filling a seat vacated when Wilkerson was elected as city council president. At the time of her appointment, she anticipated serving the full appointed term and planned to run for re-election in 2025, she said Thursday. Navarrete immigrated from Mexico City to Spokane in 1988 and wrote in her application for the open seat that while growing up she had not felt represented by city government, noting she had "always wondered why a person of color was not up on the dais" until recently. Prior to her appointment on the city council, Navarrete served as community development officer for the state Commission on Hispanic Affairs and previously as director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood for Greater Washington and North Idaho, where she worked alongside Dillon, the other representative for south Spokane. During her time on council, Navarrete has shepherded an ordinance to encourage the recruiting of more multilingual city employees, worked on a slate of reforms to increase employment and housing rights for the homeless which was ultimately whittled down to the hiring protection dubbed "Ban the Address." Most recently, she introduced legislation meant to prevent federal immigration officers from warrantless raids in city parks.
