Latest news with #ZackZappone
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Conservative Spokane council candidates attack liberal majority at church's candidate forum
Jul. 23—Voters got a better look Tuesday at some of the conservatives running for Spokane City Council at a forum hosted by Calvary Spokane, where they were asked about a wide range of topics, including the church's role in politics and whether buses are worthy public investments. The two candidates who attended — Chris Savage, running in northwest Spokane, and Jonathan Bingle, an incumbent running for re-election in northeast Spokane — railed against the council's liberal supermajority to an applauding crowd of roughly 100 packed into the spacious church. The conservatives criticized the majority's advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community, incentives to boost apartments and dense housing over single-family units, investments in bus lines and reforms to prioritize outreach over enforcement for homeless people camping in public. And though there are currently four members of the council majority coalition, and two more progressives running for a seat, Savage and Bingle focused almost exclusively on a single man: Councilman Zack Zappone, who Savage is running against. Bingle made no mention of his own opponent, abortion rights organizer Sarah Dixit. "Four years ago, we had a $4 billion surplus at the state level, and this year, they're asking for $17 billion in state taxes, something (Savage's) opponent supported ...and that's why Zack Zappone's got to go, right?" Bingle said. "... Zappone needs to be ousted from office," Savage said at another point. "He goes out there with his own personal agenda, trying to help out with the LGBTQ and all these small groups that really don't have a huge population here in Spokane, and wasting your tax dollars on stupid stuff like transgender bathrooms ..." The council has not approved any spending on "transgender bathrooms." Savage later clarified in a brief interview that he was referring to stray comments made during debate over an April ordinance Zappone sponsored that, among other things, guaranteed continued insurance coverage for gender affirming care for city employees; Bingle introduced a failed amendment to prevent transgender people from using the bathrooms of their choice. In an interview, Zappone rejected what he called "DOGE-like cuts" to state or local services in order to balance the budget and called Savage's comments troubling and personally hurtful. Zappone was the first openly gay candidate ever elected to the Spokane City Council. "That is, sad and troubling ... that Christopher Savage is talking about people, particularly minorities in our community, not mattering," Zappone said. "I believe that we've seen people under attack. I've personally been a victim of these sorts of attacks — I've had people throw things at me while I'm walking down the street holding my partner's hand." Private cigar lounge co-owner and retired Air Force instructor Cody Arguelles — whose last name moderator Pastor Drew Johnson first struggled to pronounce and later had Bingle say for him at every mention — is also running against Savage and Zappone. Arguelles did not attend due to a scheduling conflict, but sent in a brief video introduction discussing his background and platform. Alejandro Barrientos, chief operations officer for the SCAFCO Steel Stud Company and candidate for south Spokane running against former prosecutor Kate Telis, was originally listed as an attendee but did not attend the event for "personal reasons," he said. Ballots have already been mailed out for the upcoming Aug. 5 primary election. While all three Spokane council districts have a seat up for election this year, only the northwest district, where Zappone is facing challenges from Savage and Arguelles, has more than two candidates and will appear on the primary ballot. Homelessness Bingle and Savage argued that the city council had significantly watered down homelessness laws by prioritizing service provider outreach instead of enforcement, pointing to the package of laws approved by the majority in July to replace a voter-approve anti-camping law struck down by the state Supreme Court on technical grounds in April. "There is no real enforcement mechanism in our city laws anymore," Bingle said, arguing that many of the chronically homeless were suffering from a "brokenness of the human spirit" that required forced treatment and potentially jail to extract them from a death spiral. "Personally, in my family, I saw as a brother of mine who struggled seriously with addiction, jail is what got him clean," Bingle said. "Jail is what helped him get his mind right." He conceded that high housing prices were contributing to homelessness, but argued the first step to make housing more affordable was for the state to stop raising taxes. Savage argued the City Council should reinstate the exact language of the voter-approved anti-camping law and that the city, particularly downtown, would benefit from increased law enforcement presence and "harsher laws" to remove the homeless. "We need people coming downtown, patronizing our businesses and making sure that they are enjoying the downtown, because that is their downtown," Savage said. "It's not the homeless' downtown, it's theirs." The city should also change which nonprofit service providers the city works with, moving away from housing and shelter services like those provided by Jewels Helping Hands and Catholic Charities and toward providers like Adult and Teen Challenge, a year-long faith-based residential addiction recovery program, which Savage claimed had better rates of success for their participants. Bingle, meanwhile, argued the city should get out of funding homeless services altogether. "Government should not be in the homeless business at all, that should be done by other entities ... what government exists to do is provide for the public safety and provide for the infrastructure," neither of which the city does well, Bingle said. Public transportation Bingle alone was asked about funding for the Spokane Transit Authority, a regional agency which the city is a member of. "People have seen as little as three or four riders on a bus at a time, and they want to continue to increase funding for it — what's going on?" Johnson asked. Bingle noted that his district has the highest ridership in the city and didn't want to say "transit is bad," but argued the agency and advocates for greatly expanded public transit were living in the past. "There's a lot of people who are interested in infrastructure from 1910 for some reason — we're still talking about building trains in 2025, or light rail to there like an adult, OK ?" Bingle said. He argued that buses were inefficient and the central City Line's $82 million cost was wasteful. "I think we could probably save a bunch of money if we just contract with Uber and say, here you go, for our tax dollars," Bingle argued. "You don't have to stand at a bus stop in the snow or in the rain or, god forbid, there's somebody sleeping in (the bus)." Fund the police Both Bingle and Savage argued the city needed more officers, but didn't need to turn to a voter-approved tax increase last year to do so. "I opposed this measure, and the reason isn't because we don't need more police, we absolutely that doesn't need to be done through a tax increase," Bingle said. Both candidates argued that campaigners had misled the public last year when they pitched the sales tax, meant to fund police, fire and related services, arguing it lacked the promised transparency that would make it easy to follow how the money is being spent. Instead, they claimed the city had simply transferred the money into the general fund, implying it had turned into a slush fund. It is true that campaigners claimed it would be easy to track how the money would be spent, though Bingle arguably mischaracterized the purpose of the general fund transfer. City officials had argued earlier this year that portions of the tax spent on staff needed to be transferred to the budgets of the relevant departments, which are contained within the general fund, because salaries would inevitably increase faster than a sales tax, leading to layoffs. City spokeswoman Erin Hut provided documentation to The Spokesman-Review showing the positions the city anticipated funding with the tax for the next five years, which align with how the tax was sold to the public. Hut noted the documentation is available to the public and would be reviewed in upcoming budget discussions. Bingle also claimed that Zappone had signed a pledge in 2020 to "defund the police," but had since distanced himself from that pledge as it became politically inconvenient. Zappone did sign a June 2020 pledge created by progressive organization Fuse Washington that called for, among other things, no longer providing military equipment to the police and to "redirect police department funding to community-based alternatives." Zappone, along with the rest of the city council, approved on Monday a $430,000 purchase of a replacement for a military surplus armored vehicle that was totaled last summer during a high speed chase. He has also repeatedly voted in favor of budget and salary increases for the Spokane Police Department during his first term. "I've been in office for 3.5 years and that's demonstrably false, and the people trying to spread those lies are trying to scare people," Zappone said. Savage argued the city could significantly increase police staffing by cutting other costs in the city, starting with the city council office itself. He specifically called for cutting the positions of Lisa Gardner, the council's communications director, and Christopher Wright, the council's policy adviser. "We can look into our own budget and pass on those savings to help out more people and more officers become part of SPD, are understaffed majorly," Savage said. "We need more officers in the city of Spokane right now, and we can do that by also helping put people like myself on City need people up there that are backing up our SPD." Churches in politics The first question of the evening in Calvary Spokane was not about city policy, but about whether churches like Calvary should be involved in politics. "We get a lot of pushback at the church anytime we do an event like this," Johnson said. "People say the church shouldn't be involved in politics, we should stay in our own lane. What do you think about that?" Savage argued that churches should feel welcome to engage in politics "when they allow a bunch of other religions (at City Hall) to be practiced and freely done." Savage noted that the City Council has intermittently cut off people's testimony at meetings when they have begun to read Bible passages at length. "But come down there with the Quran or some sort of Buddhist sutra, they'd probably allow it," Savage claimed. It's not immediately clear if anyone has ever attempted, at least in recent memory, to read any other religious text beside the Bible at a Spokane City Council meeting. Bingle, a former pastor himself, argued that Christians have not just the right, but the responsibility to "represent your God at the ballot box," arguing their collective voting bloc could significantly sway elections from the local to state level. "I think one of the things you're going to see is that — church isn't getting more political, OK, politics is getting more theological," Bingle argued. "When they start saying that a boy is a girl and a girl is a boy ... that's not a political statement, that's a theological statement. They're attacking the very creation of God."
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Northwest Spokane features only City Council race on August primary ballots
Jul. 11—There are three seats on the Spokane City Council up for election this year, but only one has enough candidates to appear on ballots for the fast approaching August primary: northwest Spokane. Liberal incumbent councilman and high school teacher Zack Zappone is fending off two conservative challengers: Meals on Wheels board member Chris Savage and private cigar lounge co-owner Cody Arguelles, who retired as an Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape specialist. Zappone is one of two council members representing council District 3, which covers the northwestern third of the city stretching north from the Spokane River and west of Division Street, and after redistricting in 2022 also includes Browne's Addition. Councilwoman Kitty Klitzke is the district's other representative, and her term runs through 2027. The seat was fiercely competitive when Zappone first ran in 2021, when he edged out his conservative opponent Mike Lish by only 1.3%. The district has since become more likely to elect liberals after the map was redrawn in 2022 — a map Zappone created, sparking accusations of partisan gerrymandering. A judge ruled in April 2023 that the map was not illegally gerrymandered — but also ruled that council members should not have that level of involvement in the process going forward. Voters in 2024 approved reforms to create more distance between the council and the creation of City Council district boundaries. Klitzke won her election in 2023 against Earl Moore by nearly 20 points, though redistricting appears unlikely to account for the majority of that margin. With two challengers who have never served in elected office, the election has become a referendum on Zappone's role in the City Council's progressive supermajority that legislates in close coordination with Mayor Lisa Brown. Zappone has frequently stood shoulder to shoulder with Brown during her larger policy proposals, including two recent reform packages for affordable housing and homelessness laws. Both Savage and Arguelles have argued in favor of restoring the 2023 voter-approved anti-homeless camping law that was struck down by the state Supreme Court on technical grounds in April. The council majority rejected an attempt by its conservative minority to restore the law — though, notably, Zappone was the sole left-wing council member to join the minority to try to bring that restoration forward. Still, Zappone later joined the majority in adopting a modified version of Brown's proposed replacement, which greatly expanded the areas where it is illegal for the homeless to camp but also prioritizes social service engagement over criminal enforcement. Arguelles and Savage believe the city's enforcement of homelessness laws lacks accountability. They also argue against tax increases, with limited exceptions. This election is a rematch for Savage, who ran against Zappone for the same seat in 2021, coming last in a five-way primary. The two also served in student government together at North Central High School, where Savage was elected treasurer and Zappone was president. Savage said he is running to better support law enforcement with a "fully vetted" tax measure to fund a new jail after a 2023 effort criticized for a lack of transparency flamed out. He also wants to fight visible homelessness with "tough love" measures, including using the new jail, while opposing most other tax increases and calling to cut city spending where possible, first by getting rid of positions in the council office. He believes there have been unintended consequences from the council's push to allow higher residential density — which had unanimous council support — and a removal of parking requirements for new developments, which were sponsored by Zappone and approved nearly unanimously. A lack of dialogue has created contention in some neighborhoods seeing that development, Savage said. "For instance, in the Emerson Garfield or North Hill area, there is a lot of apprehension and not good discussion in how some properties went up," Savage said. "If there was a little bit more community conversation with the developer and the neighborhood, there wouldn't be so much animosity." This will be Savage's fourth bid for a seat on the council, but he believes the experience he has gained from past runs and from being a frequent audience member at council meetings in recent years has given him the edge to win this November. He has been endorsed by Councilman Michael Cathcart, former City Council President Steve Corker, politically active businessman Chud Wendle and a slate of former candidates for public office. Arguelles, meanwhile, is new to politics. He is currently an architecture student at Washington State University and a medically retired Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape instructor for the U.S. Air Force whose private cigar lounge, Late Arrival Club, is set to open in August. He believes Spokane is in a "downhill spiral" and that the current council and city administration need to be held accountable to measurable metrics for improving homelessness, public safety and other issues. "We need to be able to have people on council that are held accountable and they're transparent with where money is going, and that are driven by measurable goals, rather than just saying, 'Hey, here's a four-point plan to fix this,' and then there's no measurable metric," Arguelles said. After a short bout of homelessness early in his life, Arguelles acknowledged that he needed "compassion and sympathy" to help him back on his feet, but believes that city leadership is addressing the issue by "just throwing out, 'Here's housing,' and then that's it." Arguelles also believes that the city needs to streamline its system for business permitting, arguing that the red tape he navigated to start his business was onerous and unnecessary. He has also been endorsed by Cathcart, as well as Spokane City Councilman Jonathan Bingle, former Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward, Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels and a slate of politically active businessmen including Chris Batten of RenCorp Realty, Dave Black of NAI Black and Bill Bouten of Bouten Construction. Zappone is the first openly queer leader elected to the council and has spent much of his first term supporting reforms to increase housing density, advocating for pedestrians and bicyclists, trying to eliminate fares to ride Spokane transit and reducing barriers for community festivals and fairs. In an interview, he also highlighted his work to help secure funding for CHAS health clinics in low-income high schools and for neighborhood business districts, which fund investments to benefit local businesses, as well as behind-the-scenes efforts to bring forward a compromise version of the failed 2023 jail proposal. Though the progressive politician has frequently publicly clashed with conservatives in city government, he has also on occasion worked with them on policy. He and Bingle, a conservative, have traded barbs on the dais, but the two have also co-sponsored legislation, such as to relax parking requirements and potentially lower costs for new development near bus routes. Zappone joined others on the council to later expand that reform citywide. "I've been reflecting on my first term, and I think that one area I've really come to understand better to be effective as a council member, is it really does take a lot of compromise to do stuff," Zappone said. "Being an advocate or activist really pushing for a position, I think that's an important role, but I'm much more pragmatic than purist in my approach." Zappone has been endorsed by Brown, the current and former members of the council's liberal majority, state Sen. Marcus Riccelli and Democratic Spokane County Commissioners Amber Waldref and Chris Jordan. Primary election ballots will be mailed to registered voters beginning Wednesday. Ballots are due on Election Day, Aug. 5. The top two vote-getters will advance to the Nov. 4 election.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Spokane block parties will often be cheaper after City Council waives fees
May 19—Neighborhoods in Spokane will soon be able to more easily and cheaply close down their block for a party or community event between June and Halloween. Championed by City Councilman Zack Zappone and cosponsored by Councilwoman Kitty Klitzke, the Spokane City Council on Monday voted unanimously to approve the "Play Streets" program, which authorizes the mayor's office to reduce the barriers to blocking off a residential street for a block party. The proposal was first unveiled in April during a news conference touting a number of measures to increase pedestrian and bike safety on Spokane's streets, including banning right turns on red lights on Main Avenue downtown. "Whether it's neighbors wanting to come together and close our street to allow kids to play on the street, do a spontaneous chalk art festival, close down the street and have a barbecue ... this is an opportunity for people in your neighborhoods to come out, meet your neighbors, have that connection and bring back that life to our neighborhoods," Councilman Zack Zappone said at the April event. Outside of the cost of the festivities themselves, local leaders have identified two costs for hosting a block party that the city would like to eliminate in many cases: application fees for a permit to shut down the street, and the physical road barriers themselves. While it will mostly be up to the administration to craft the program, Monday's ordinance does specify that application fees will be waived for closing down a residential, nonarterial street so long as it is open to the public and limited to a single block. Administration personnel have expressed interest in the purchase of signage and road barriers that residents could check out from the local library for free, further reducing costs for a block party, though this purchase would likely have to be approved by the City Council at a later date. "I think we need this," Klitzke said at an April committee meeting where the ordinance was briefed. "I think it will be an improvement over the folding chair with an 8.5 -by -11 sign that my neighborhood has been using for a decade." Councilman Jonathan Bingle, who noted he owns a trivia business, argued that the program would spur events and encourage neighbors to meet each other and better appreciate their neighborhood. Neighborhood councils often also don't have much money to put on events, so easing those costs could allow for more activity, he added.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Spokane City Councilman Zack Zappone running for reelection
Apr. 24—Spokane City Councilman and high school teacher Zack Zappone is running for re-election, saying he wants another four years to work on public safety, homelessness, housing affordability and city infrastructure reforms. Zappone is one of two council members representing council District 3, which covers the northwestern third of the city stretching north from the Spokane River and west of Division Street, and after redistricting in 2022 also includes Browne's Addition. Councilwoman Kitty Klitzke is the district's other representative, and her term runs through 2027. He already has two opponents: Meals on Wheels board member Chris Savage, who ran unsuccessfully against Zappone in 2021, and private cigar lounge co-owner and retired SERE specialist Cody Arguelles. Asked for his priorities in the next four years, Zappone said he has learned not to predict what city government will need to respond to. But he did highlight behind-the-scenes efforts to bring forward a compromise version of a failed 2023 sales tax package to build new jails and other, often unspecified, public safety initiatives. Zappone was among those across the aisle in 2023 saying the $1.7 billion ballot measure lacked specifics. "I think both the left and the right realize we can't make any meaningful progress without some meaningful collaboration and compromise to move forward," Zappone said. "It would likely be a detailed proposal to voters about what community health and safety would look like in the next decade or so in Spokane." Zappone also said he was excited to see further reforms to encourage development, particularly residential, and reduce the burden of vacant lots and nuisance properties on neighborhoods. Zappone is the first openly queer leader elected to the council and has spent much of his first term supporting reforms to increase housing density, advocating for pedestrians and bicyclists, trying to eliminate fare to ride Spokane transit, and reducing barriers for community festivals and fairs. In an interview, he also highlighted his work to help secure funding for CHAS health clinics in low-income high schools and for neighborhood business districts, which fund investments to benefit local businesses. Though the progressive politician has frequently publicly clashed with conservatives in city government, he has also on occasions worked with them on policy. He and conservative Councilman Jonathan Bingle have traded barbs on the dais, but the two have also co-sponsored legislation, such as to relax parking requirements for new development and potentially lower costs near bus routes. Zappone joined others on council to later expand that reform citywide. He was the only left-leaning council member to join Bingle and fellow conservative Councilman Michael Cathcart in supporting the reinstatement of Proposition 1, the voter-approved ban on homeless encampments near schools, parks and day cares that was recently struck down by the state Supreme Court on technical grounds. "I've been reflecting on my first term, and I think that one area I've really come to understand better to be effective as a council member, is it really does take a lot of compromise to do stuff," Zappone said. "Being an advocate or activist really pushing for a position, I think that's an important role, but I'm much more pragmatic than purist in my approach." Zappone has also been accused of partisan gerrymandering after he drew the map of council districts that was approved by the City Council, notably drawing a liberal neighborhood into his district and theoretically making it easier for him to be re-elected. A judge ruled in April 2023 that the map was not illegally gerrymandered — but also ruled that council members should not have that level of involvement in the process going forward. Voters in 2024 approved reforms to create more distance between the council and the boundaries of which voters got to elect them. The district was fiercely competitive in 2021, with Zappone edging out his conservative opponent Mike Lish by 1.3%. Klitzke won her election in 2023 against Earl Moore by nearly 20 points, though redistricting that happened between those two elections appears unlikely to account for the majority of that shift.
