David Condon, Mayor, No Phone Number Available
Tuesday, August 5, 2014 at 4:56 p.m.
Today is an exciting day in Spokane. We launched the 2015 Program Budget and announced a new North Police Precinct along Hillyard's Market Street.
Like the successful Downtown Precinct, the location at Market Street and Diamond Avenue will house a police captain, detectives and officers, specifically working to drive down crime and address quality of life issues in north Spokane.
Overall, crime in the City of Spokane is down more than 11 percent year-to-date. That includes dramatic decreases in violent crime – down more than 21 percent; decreases in Residential Burglary – down more than 29 percent; and decreases in property crime – down more than 10 percent.
That success has reaffirmed our belief in the distributed policing model, implemented through police precincts, and is something we have the opportunity to replicate with the North Precinct. Providing a home for these police resources by establishing the new precinct will continue to drive down crime and give citizens better access to their police department.
The precinct is expected to be open by the end of the year and provides an important cornerstone moving into 2015. The draft 2015 Program Budget, released today, eliminates the gap between revenue and expenses without having to make staffing cuts. It drives toward a long-term solution for street improvements and maintenance relying on smarter, more integrated approaches, and continues to make Spokane the safest city of our size by evolving the police and fire departments to better meet the needs of citizens. The work underway on getting to a cleaner river faster intensifies in the next phase of that works. In addition – for the first time ever – we have added prioritization and $162 million in funding to our six-year Capital Improvement Plan to fulfill our capital needs.
Finally, I sent a letter to the City Council responding to their list of budget priorities. The budget we delivered today aligned to many of those goals.
