The Safe & Healthy Roadmap
Thirty-three regional leaders spent nine months on one question: what would it actually take? Their answer is 14 recommendations.
The Safe & Healthy Spokane Task Force — convened by Greater Spokane Inc., the Downtown Spokane Partnership, the Valley Chamber, Avista and Waters Meet — worked from September 2025 to June 2026 and delivered its final report on June 11, 2026.
What is the Safe & Healthy Task Force?
In 2025–2026, thirty-three leaders from business, government, the courts, law enforcement, service providers, philanthropy, and lived experience — supported by 120+ volunteers — spent roughly a year building one shared roadmap for the region’s health-and-safety crisis. The result, published in June 2026, is a set of fourteen recommendations: an independent regional accountability council, a shared data system, formalized cross-system coordination, an integrated facilities plan, and unified regional funding. It is the most serious cross-constituency convening this region has produced — exactly the kind this map argues the crisis requires.
What the 14 recommendations add up to
Collaboration, integration, regionalization: one accountable governance body (the RACC — see Governance), unified crisis response, the missing treatment beds, and outcomes with dates attached. Measured against the system map, the 14 recommendations would directly advance 41 of the 66 documented crisis-to-justice gaps — and recommendation A1, the regional council, is what makes the rest reachable.
The 14 recommendations
“Across the country and in Spokane, people with complex needs routinely fall through the gaps between crisis response, treatment, housing, and reentry services. Each transition between providers is a moment when the system either holds someone or potentially loses them… every handoff is a chance for connection or a point of failure. Right now, the system in Spokane is losing far too many.”
— Task Force Recommendations, June 2026, p. 37 (recommendation B4, “Warm Handoffs”). In other words: the crisis lives in the seams — the Task Force’s own finding, in its own words, verified against the published report. Also verbatim: “Taxpayers pay for the same person to enter the same system again and again, never receiving the connected care that would have stopped the cycle the first time.”
Verified findings from the report (checked against the June 2026 PDF)
- Of Medicaid enrollees booked into the jail: 58% have mental-health needs, 61% substance-use disorder, 41% co-occurring; over one-third of the jail population has serious mental illness, ~40% on psychotropic medication. The report’s words: “jails have become the de facto behavioral health system.”
- Supportive-housing gap: 1,000+ units; housing named “the fulcrum of the system… the single most significant barrier.”
- High utilizers: 5–10% of people drive 40–60% of system costs — in Spokane, “a few hundred individuals” (this map’s Sam and Dave receipts, as an official finding).
- Treatment ROI: $7–12 saved per $1 invested. Workforce crisis: >90% behavioral-health worker burnout, 44% turnover (2022).
- On 2023’s failed Measure 1: “not a verdict against change… a signal that the community needed a more honest, more complete, and more genuinely community-built roadmap” — and the Task Force explicitly rejects the jail-versus-services false choice. Its leaders traveled to Whatcom County to study how a coalition there passed a justice/crisis facilities funding measure.
- Process: 120+ volunteers, 9 months, 12 advisory committee leads — among them Maggie Yates (City of Spokane), whose earlier Community Safety Workgroup (2024) focused on exactly the high-utilizer, cross-system population the final report centers; as Deputy City Administrator she briefed Council on convening this Task Force. The “gaps” thread from that workgroup runs straight through the Leifman assessment into these recommendations.
The through-line: the “gaps” work behind this report
This report didn’t appear from nowhere — it’s the third generation of a single line of work. In 2024, the City’s Community Safety Workgroup, led by then-Deputy City Administrator Maggie Yates, mapped the population cycling repeatedly through healthcare, jail, and social services — the high utilizers — and the places the system dropped them. That work also produced Spokane’s Sequential Intercept Map (2025) — the intercept-by-intercept diagram of where the justice and behavioral-health systems can catch people, from 211/988 calls through reentry; it is, in effect, the criminal-justice lane of this map drawn by the practitioners themselves. That framing fed the Leifman Group asset assessment (Jan 2026), which turned it into a formal countywide gap analysis: crisis response, diversion, reentry, housing, workforce, data-sharing. And the gap analysis became these Recommendations (June 2026), with Yates serving as an advisory-committee lead. Three documents, one finding, sharpening each time: Spokane doesn’t lack programs; it loses people between them. This map’s red "gap" boxes (see the full system map) are that same finding, drawn.
Each recommendation, in full — tested against both maps
This assessment reads the Safe & Healthy Task Force Recommendations (June 2026) through both maps at once: for each of the 14 recommendations — what it would change on the continuum map, which of the 66 practitioner-named gaps it advances (computed against the Gap Scorecard), and an honest assessment of its strength and its limit. Then the roll-up: what full execution would fix, and where work would remain. Our posture throughout: this report is the best thing the region has produced in a decade — 120+ volunteers, nine months, real courage — and honoring it means assessing it like adults rather than applauding it like an audience.
A. Foundation — sustainable accountability & coordination
A1 · Cross-Sector Accountability & Coordination Council ★ THE ONE THAT DECIDES EVERYTHING this one advances all of the gaps
The recommendation: Establish a Cross-Sector Implementation Accountability and Coordination Council — the regional body this map's "AFTER" view depicts.
What it says: One durable regional body, outside any single government, with IGAs, public reporting, and escalation power.
On the continuum map: This is the continuum map’s missing owner: the entity that would run the ledger, own the Gap Scorecard, hold the two-pillar bargain together across election cycles — and the direct descendant of the work the Spokane Regional Collaborative brought forward in 2023 (spokaneunite.com): detailed, regional, with buy-in from across the region’s jurisdictions. This recommendation is not new. It keeps returning because it keeps being right — and keeps being dodged.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Consistent, measured outcomes
This is the one variable that separates Spokane from the cities that are succeeding. Boise — our near neighbor, similar size, same region, same drug supply — organized; we didn’t. Their streets recovered; ours carry the #2 overdose death rate among America’s large jurisdictions — the single most brutal proxy for our broader failure of structure. Not of compassion, not of spending (we outspend our peers 4–5×), not of talent — of structure. That is why A1 must be understood as the number-one goal of top political, business, and civic leadership — by far — and why this map returns to it from every direction: the ledger needs an owner, the scorecard needs an owner, the measure needs an owner, the handoffs need an owner.
And the moment matters. The Task Force just handed the region the most complete, most community-built version of this recommendation ever produced — 120+ volunteers, nine months, every jurisdiction at the table. This convergence — the report, the evidence, the public’s #1-ranked concern, the remaining tax capacity, the examples one state away — does not come around twice in a decade. This time, the region cannot throw away its shot.
And this is exactly why the SBA so strongly opposes the STA 0.2% sales-tax measure — roughly a billion dollars over twenty years — this August. Not because transit doesn’t matter: it does, we all support it, and nothing here diminishes it. But a community cannot do everything at once; a community that cannot prioritize has no priorities at all. The region’s taxable capacity is finite, and a billion dollars committed to something well down the priority list is a billion dollars unavailable for the crisis this entire map documents — at the precise moment the once-in-a-decade window for A1 stands open. And though this map is built to outlive any single ballot fight, the STA measure deserves naming because it is the timeless pattern in miniature, visible in every community: one part of the community declining to row with the rest on the number-one priority — and the region ending up with exactly the siloed, fragmented response this recommendation exists to end. A billion dollars is not a side bet. It is the shot. We are not throwing it away.
The same warning applies inside city hall. The City of Spokane has signaled interest in going it alone with its own 0.1% public-safety sales tax — its own funding stream, its own programs — while assuring everyone that full collaboration with the county and neighboring jurisdictions will somehow follow. It won’t, and the reason is the oldest rule in public finance: follow the money. If you create silos with the money, you will get silos in the outcomes — separate boards, separate contracts, separate data, separate priorities, each defending its own stream, forever. That is not a prediction; it is the operating history of this entire map. The alternative is not complicated: the city works directly with the county, the funding is broad-based and regional, and every dollar sits under the strategic umbrella of the new regional body A1 describes — where the city has a full seat, a full voice, and a full share of the credit when it works. The funding structure IS the governance structure. Build the money together, or watch the collaboration talk stay talk.
B. Cross-system coordination — one unified response
B1 · Robust Data & Accountability System advances 4 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Create and leverage a robust data and accountability system (the by-name, cross-system data this map repeatedly flags as missing).
What it says: One integrated, by-name, cross-system data spine — “a system that can see itself.”
On the continuum map: Closes the map’s central finding (city/county systems that don’t talk; audit findings on unmonitored subrecipients) and powers coordinated entry, the high-utilizer roster, and the scorecard.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Coordination / communication / shared data I0 · Standardized eligibility criteria I1 · Coordination between BHU / BRU I2 · Collaboration for suicidal ideation
B2 · Formalized Upstream Prevention Partnerships advances 2 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Formalize partnerships to support upstream prevention (this map's Prevention & Diversion column).
What it says: Engagement starts at arrival (not release); ACEs/trauma focus; schools and families in the loop.
On the continuum map: Feeds the map’s Prevention & Diversion column and the youth inflow nodes — where Maria and Randy’s stories both start.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Youth-based interventions I0 · Family treatment
B3 · Peers at Every Step advances 3 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Integrate peers at each step in the system.
What it says: Certified peer specialists embedded from crisis response through reentry.
On the continuum map: Upgrades the map’s peer node from boutique to backbone; Medicaid billing makes it self-financing — rare in this report.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Peer-based response & support I1 · Peer support at law-enforcement contact I4 · Peer access at reentry
B4 · Warm Handoffs as Standard advances 6 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Formalize "warm handoff" procedures across the system (the jail-release, hospital-discharge, and detox-exit seams this map shows leaking).
What it says: Every transition carries a plan, a navigator, and a destination — “losing far too many” ends here.
On the continuum map: The report’s own words are this map’s thesis. Directly targets the 129× release window, hospital discharge-to-sidewalk, and the SRSC step-down cliff.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Care coordination across the system I1 · Immediate SUD/medical/BH access with financial support I4 · Consistent prescriptions at jail release I4 · Provider "reach-ins" before release I4 · Overnight & weekend releases I4 · Services at book-and-release
C. New or scaled programs — capacity at the pressure points
C1 · Scale Alternative Crisis Response advances 5 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Scale alternative crisis response models (co-responders → PATH).
What it says: Region-wide coverage; evaluate a non-refusal crisis receiving center.
On the continuum map: Extends the map’s crisis lane to 24/7 reality (the Hours Problem) and gives Danny’s night its missing door.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Psychiatric ER I0 · Mid-level intervention (between outreach & crisis) I0 · Behavioral-health ER I1 · 23-hour requirement limiting crisis-stability beds I1 · Expanded 24/7 crisis-team coverage
C2 · Coordinated Intake & Shared Standards advances 3 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Coordinated intake & assessment with shared standards across entry points.
What it says: Validated screening at every entry point, shared criteria across systems.
On the continuum map: Standardizes the map’s front doors (CE, booking, crisis) so eligibility stops being a lottery of which door you hit first.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Standardized eligibility criteria I2 · Adequate time for PSU prior to booking I2 · SUD assessment at intake
C3 · Pre-trial Diversion with Support & Accountability advances 2 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Strengthen pre-trial diversion — support AND accountability (the Enforcement Fork, institutionalized).
What it says: Universal screening at first appearance; end detention-by-omission.
On the continuum map: Strengthens the map’s enforcement-fork and court nodes — the Supported Release 92.5% appearance data says this works here already.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I2 · Additional diversion opportunities (e.g., MAT diversion) I3 · Flag therapeutic-court eligibility closer to arrest
C4 · Focus on High Utilizers advances 1 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Focus interventions on high utilizers of the justice & health systems (the Sam/Dave receipts, as policy).
What it says: Expand Hot Spotters; central docket for city/county cases.
On the continuum map: The Bill’s arithmetic as policy: 5–10% drive 40–60% of cost — the chronic core this map prices at $13.4M to house vs $90–100M to cycle.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Civilian-based overdose teams
C5 · Culturally Responsive Supports advances 4 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Expand culturally responsive supports for targeted prevention populations.
What it says: Tribal, POC, LGBTQ+, immigrant/refugee-led services.
On the continuum map: Fills gaps the map flags at four intercepts; NATIVE Project and tribal reentry as prime contractors, not afterthoughts.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Immigrant support I0 · Culturally specific services I4 · Culturally specific treatment I5 · SUD treatment with interpreter services
C6 · Youth & Young Adult Prevention System advances 2 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Establish a youth & young-adult prevention and response system.
What it says: School-centered, three-tier model for ages 16–25.
On the continuum map: The map’s youth inflow nodes, systematized — HEART’s 1,300+ identified students become a caseload instead of a statistic; Anchor’s certified 20% reduction proves the method.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Pediatric psychiatric beds I0 · Youth-based interventions
C7 · Strategic Workforce Investment advances 4 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Strategic workforce investment across justice & behavioral health (the staffing shortages that closed detox beds and strain every node).
What it says: Pay, retention, pipelines, state advocacy.
On the continuum map: The quiet constraint under every box on both maps — four separate intercepts named workforce; 44% turnover and >90% burnout are the system’s real capacity ceiling.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Workforce shortage I1 · Workforce shortage I2 · Workforce shortage I3 · Workforce shortage
D. Facilities — infrastructure for an integrated system
D1 · Modern, Integrated Justice & Community Facilities advances 3 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Invest in modern, integrated justice facilities AND the coordinated network of community-based facilities — "two halves of one investment... proposals that fund one without the other do not meet this standard."
What it says: Replace the 1986 downtown jail / 1952 Geiger with integrated facilities.
On the continuum map: Touches the map’s jail cluster — where 60% BH involvement meets 1980s architecture; also the in-custody evaluation and MAT gaps.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I2 · Robust evaluations in jail I4 · Adequate MAT in jail I4 · Anti-psychotic injectables at release
D2 · Strengthen Housing Options advances 3 of the 66 gaps
The recommendation: Strengthen housing options (recovery housing, Section 8 barrier removal, scattered-site, landlord supports, 1115 Medicaid waivers).
What it says: Address the 1,000+ supportive-housing unit gap — “the fulcrum of the system.”
On the continuum map: The continuum map’s entire housing lane; the Bill’s $13.4M answer; the LRA-built-on-sand problem in Tasha’s journey.
Practitioner gaps it advances:
I0 · Housing I0 · Medically supported housing / services I0 · Safe place to sleep
Wording per the June 2026 report, pp. 3–4 & 27–28. Nearly every recommendation maps onto a gap already documented on this continuum map.
Executed well, the fourteen recommendations directly advance 41 of the 66 practitioner-named gaps — including the deadliest ones (the release window via B4, the hours problem via C1, the data blindness via B1) — and A1 creates the owner every prior effort lacked. The report’s deepest cuts land exactly where this map’s red boxes cluster: the seams. If the region does nothing but B1, B4, and C1 with real money, the system Danny and Tasha walked becomes measurably harder to fall through. That is not faint praise; no prior local document could survive this test at all.
Where work remains — 20 open gaps the report doesn’t directly reach: mostly the concrete, contract-level fixes — bridge prescriptions, 24/7 MAT, transportation to court, jail phone calls, injectables at release, safe parking, tiny homes, INBH access, DV-treatment providers, sex-offender housing — the Gap Scorecard’s “best answers” cover each one. And four structural absences the region must supply from outside the report: (1) the money — no rate, no mechanism, no date (this map’s answer: the remaining 0.2%, once, regionally); (2) the sequencing — the enforcement-first forcing function the successful cities testify to (the left pillar); (3) housing production scale — D2 names the fulcrum but not the lever; and (4) the federal key — nowhere does the report weaponize the uncapped entitlement funding behind the disability determination (see the Master Key map): the cheapest big money on the table.
Verdict: necessary, admirable, and not sufficient — by design. The Task Force built the blueprint of the house. The region still has to buy the land (funding), pour the foundation (enforcement + housing), and hook up the utilities (the federal money). And say the quiet part of this map’s purpose out loud: one of the key reasons this map exists is to help people understand why these recommendations matter so much — and why it is so important that the region come together and actually follow through on them. A report can be shelved; a report the whole community can see, walk, and price is much harder to ignore. Beyond that, this map exists to help with exactly those three remaining pieces.
How this assessment works the report, tested against both maps
This view takes the Task Force’s fourteen recommendations one by one and tests each against the two maps on this site: the continuum map (all 70 programs and their seams) and the Sequential Intercept Map (the 66-gap scorecard). For each recommendation you’ll see what it would actually touch, which documented gaps it would advance, and what it would cost — followed by a roll-up verdict across the whole report. The point is not to grade the Task Force; it is to show the community, in checkable detail, why these recommendations matter and what declining them costs.
★ Priority recommendations DRAFT
The core recommendation here is not ours — it belongs to everyone who studied this system before us. We affirm it first, then add what this map’s aggregation surfaced. Walk the steps in order.
The overarching recommendation was written long before this map: collaborate and integrate FIRST — THE AFFIRMATION
We want to be plain about authorship. The central recommendation — that Spokane’s response must become one collaborative, integrated, regional system — is not this project’s invention. It is the consistent conclusion of nearly everyone who has seriously studied this system: the Safe & Healthy Task Force and its 120+ volunteers, the Leifman Group assessment, the City’s Community Safety Workgroup under Maggie Yates, the Marbut review, and the Spokane Regional Collaborative’s eighteen months of volunteer work (spokaneunite.com) — where, as early as 2023, these recommendations first came forward in working detail and with buy-in from across the region’s jurisdictions, the City of Spokane being the notable holdout in early 2024. Different authors, different years, different methods — the same finding, every time. This map affirms those recommendations; it does not replace them.
What follows is the addition: aggregating everything on this map — the ledger, the benchmark, the jail data, the seams, The Bill — points to a set of more specific moves that stand out from the exercise. The list is deliberately not exhaustive, and it is open: as this map circulates, recommendations submitted through the 💬 comment button and other avenues will be weighed and, where they earn it, added. These are the initial ones.
Sources: SHTF Recommendations (June 2026); Leifman assessment (Jan 2026); Community Safety Workgroup (2024); Marbut report (2025); Spokane Regional Collaborative / spokaneunite.com (2023).
Create the regional accountability council — before any new money 1 · ONE TABLE
Stand up the cross-sector council the Task Force designed (recommendation A1): one durable regional body, outside any single government, with intergovernmental agreements, published progress reports, and the authority to escalate stalls. Governance first. Money second.
Every failure documented on this map — the seams, the duplicate systems, the invisible ledger — survives because no one owns the whole board. The Task Force said it plainly: this work “cannot live inside a single government entity, and it cannot rise and fall with any single election cycle.” 120+ volunteers spent nine months designing exactly this. The design exists. It needs adoption.
Sources: SHTF Recommendations A1 (June 2026); this map’s Safe & Healthy view (before/after).
Publish the region’s full homelessness & behavioral-health ledger — every year 2 · ONE LEDGER
Roughly $120–150M flows through this system annually, and no public document shows it in one place. As far as we know, this map is the first attempt. Make an official version — every source, every administering entity, every outcome — an annual, audited publication.
You cannot manage what nobody can see. Spokane governments spend ≈$56 per resident on homelessness operations against ≈$12–13 in same-size Wichita and Boise — a fact no one could check until the ledger was assembled. Sunlight is a prerequisite for every other reform, and it costs almost nothing.
Sources: this map’s 💰 Funding Map (with control tiers + 3-city benchmark); state audit findings on subrecipient monitoring.
Build the by-name, cross-system data spine (and make city & county systems talk) 3 · ONE DATA SYSTEM
One integrated data system across crisis response, jail, courts, shelter, treatment, and housing — by-name, real-time, publicly dashboarded (Task Force B1: “a system that can see itself”).
Of Medicaid enrollees booked into the jail, 58% have mental-health needs and 61% substance-use disorder — but no system can follow one person across those doors. “Every system touches the same people, but no system can see the full picture.” Boise assigned a data manager and built this; Spokane’s city and county systems still don’t connect.
Sources: SHTF B1; SBA Data-Systems Analysis (July 2026); county dashboard verification work in this map.
Make the warm handoff mandatory — a plan, a navigator, a destination, every time 4 · CLOSE THE SEAMS
No one leaves jail, the ER, detox, or crisis stabilization to a sidewalk. Every transition carries three things — a plan, a navigator, and a destination — as standard operating procedure, not charity (Task Force B4).
The Task Force’s own words: people “routinely fall through the gaps between crisis response, treatment, housing, and reentry services… Right now, the system in Spokane is losing far too many.” The deadliest seam is measurable: the first two weeks after jail release carry a 129-fold overdose-death risk. The seams are where the dying happens — and seams are cheap to sew relative to everything else on this map.
Sources: SHTF B4 p.37 (verbatim, verified); Binswanger WA post-release mortality data.
Protect the public rights-of-way — and pair every enforcement contact with a real offramp 5 · BOTH PILLARS, ALWAYS
Hold the line the successful West Coast cities hold: streets, parks, and doorways belong to everyone, enforced consistently — and every contact comes with an immediate, warm-handoff offramp to shelter, treatment, or diversion. Neither half without the other. Ever.
Enforcement without offramps is the $150-a-day carousel back to the same sidewalk. Services without standards produce streets that exhaust public compassion until voters revoke it. Spokane’s early returns show the gap: 125 camping citations in two weeks, 34 acceptances of services. The ratio is the metric to manage — both pillars, one policy.
Sources: this map’s bookends (stages 1 and 10); Hard Questions #1; enforcement reporting Oct–Nov 2025.
Aim the first dollars at the few hundred people driving the most cost — and house them 6 · THE CHRONIC CORE FIRST
Adopt the Task Force’s high-utilizer focus (C4) and Boise’s arithmetic: identify Spokane’s chronic core by name, and move them into permanent supportive housing with services — deliberately, publicly, and first.
5–10% of the people drive 40–60% of the cost — in Spokane, “a few hundred individuals.” The Bill on this map prices the status quo at ≈$90–100M a year (benchmarked against five comparable communities); housing the 536 chronically homeless would run ≈$13.4M — a seventh of the price, for the population generating most of the bill. This is the rare policy where compassion and fiscal conservatism give the same order.
Sources: SHTF C4; 🧾 The Bill (Funding Map menu); 2024 PIT chronic count.
Fund it once, regionally — and refuse the pile of fragments 7 · ONE MEASURE, NOT FRAGMENTS
When the funding question reaches voters, it should be one unified regional measure that purchases the council, the ledger, the data spine, the handoffs, and the housing — with published outcomes as a condition. Not a city tax here, a transit tax there, and a county program somewhere else, each with its own board and none accountable for the whole. And name the quietest failure mode plainly: the county passing its public-safety sales tax alone while the city passes its own alongside. Two ballots, two boards, two plans — that is fragmentation by definition, even if both measures win. Separate money hardens separate systems; a jointly-funded Safe & Healthy plan is the only version that buys integration, because the funding structure IS the governance structure.
Measure 1’s failure was “not a verdict against change” — the Task Force’s words — it was a demand for a more honest, complete, community-built roadmap. Whatcom County passed its measure by building the coalition first. The region’s taxable capacity is finite; every fragment spent separately makes the unified solution harder to fund and easier to doubt. And the return is real: $7–12 saved per $1 invested in treatment. The instrument exists: under RCW 82.14.450 the county still holds roughly 0.2% of voter-approved public-safety sales-tax capacity — at current yields (the 0.1% BH tax produces ≈$15.6M) that is on the order of ≈$30M a year. The SBA’s position: aggregate that remaining two-tenths into the one unified Safe & Healthy measure — it is the region’s last large, clean financing lever, and it should be spent exactly once.
Sources: SHTF Recommendations (Measure 1 reframing, Whatcom precedent); Public Safety Tax Capacity memo + Sales Tax Breakdown workbook (Other menu); the crossroads section (ⓘ Information).
The Intercept Map recommendations — 66 named gaps, 66 written fixes THE PUNCH LIST
Everything above is the frame: the table, the ledger, the data spine, the seams, the money. This card is the work-order list that flows out of the ⚖ Sequential Intercept Map — the city’s own 2025 analysis of how people move between crisis and the criminal-justice system. At each of its six intercepts, this map’s scorecard names the specific gap, its current status, and a written fix with a mechanism, an owner, and a cost. As of July 2026 the tally reads: 50 gaps open, 13 in progress, 0 closed. Not one is closed.
A few of the highest-leverage items, to show the flavor: universal MAT in the jail on the Rhode Island standard — screen every booking, continue every prescription, release with meds in hand and a community prescriber attached (the single strongest overdose-death intervention available to county government, and a claim now independently affirmed by clinical staff inside the jail); a true no-wrong-door crisis receiving capacity running 24/7; a warm handoff at every jail release — a plan, a navigator, a destination; pre-arrest deflection so the first responder isn’t always a police officer; and long-acting injectable medications at release for people with serious mental illness. None of these requires new science. Each names its owner. What they await is the structure the previous cards describe — which is exactly why the punch list and the frame are one set of recommendations, not two.
⚖ Open the full 66-gap scorecard →
Sources: Spokane Sequential Intercept Mapping (Yates, 2025); this map’s Intercept lens — gap scorecard with best-practice fixes, owners and costs on every line; status tally as of July 2026.
It all reduces to one word: together THE STATEMENT
Seven moves, one direction. A council so someone owns the board. A ledger so everyone can see it. A data spine so the systems can, too. Handoffs so people stop dying in the seams. Both pillars so the public’s trust and the public’s compassion survive each other. The chronic core first, because that’s where the suffering and the spending concentrate. And one regional measure to pay for it — once, honestly, with receipts.
None of these is a new idea. Every one is already written down — in the Task Force’s report, in the assessments, in this map. What Spokane has never done is the wrapper: collaboration, integration, regionalization. The holy grail isn’t a program. It’s a decision — and it’s available to us right now. And the clock matters more than comfort: at current rates, nearly every day of delay is another neighbor dead of overdose, another dark storefront, more livelihoods gone. Urgency is not haste — it is what taking the outcome seriously looks like. What can you do? Open 🤝 “What can YOU do?” — and pick your door.
Developed by the Spokane Business Association — Gavin Cooley, President · Gavin@SBASpokane.com · (509) 995-3376
Investments & funding
The investment package — deliberately unpriced
The Roadmap names the pieces but attaches no dollar figures, bed counts, or jail sizing — by design ("appropriately sized," "adequate funding"). A county-hired consultant began evaluating the jail June 10, 2026, with analysis due in 4–6 months; that study prices the package.
| Facility ecosystem element (D1/D2) | Cost | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Modernize/replace 1986 Downtown Jail & 1952 Geiger | TBD | Both called unable to support reforms; no new-vs-modernize determination made |
| Non-refusal crisis stabilization beds | TBD | Beyond PATH; report notes 20+ bed inpatient psychiatric shortfall & limited detox even with PATH |
| Sobering / 23-hr observation; detox; residential SUD treatment | TBD | "Co-located campus" ecosystem approach |
| Secure diversion receiving sites; reentry housing | TBD | The jail-release seam, built |
| Courtrooms with daily on-site magistrate inside intake facilities | TBD | Justice speed at the front door |
| Housing incentives folded into facilities packages (D2) | TBD | Recovery housing, landlord supports, voucher barrier removal |
| SUBTOTAL — capital package | Unpriced | Pending facilities study (fall 2026) |
| Report's stated return benchmark | $7–$12 : $1 | Savings per dollar spent on treatment (report, p. ~46) |
Funding mechanism
The report's only explicit language: "Enact a funding mechanism, such as a public safety sales tax, that adequately supports this integrated facilities plan." No rate, structure, or ballot date. The capacity analysis (SBA, June 2026 — Public Safety Tax Capacity memo) identifies the instrument: the county retains roughly 0.2% of voter-approved public-safety sales-tax capacity under RCW 82.14.450 (≈$30M/yr at current yields, est. from the 0.1% BH tax's $15.6M). The SBA recommends aggregating that remaining two-tenths into the unified regional measure rather than letting fragments consume it — see ★ Priority recommendations, step 7. Context: Measure 1 (0.2%, $1.7B/30yr) failed in 2023; a November 2026 measure remains possible (August filing deadline); the county would receive the lion's share with cities getting portions. ⚠ The live risk this map's "Who leads?" lens predicts: both the city and the county are separately considering councilmanic (non-voted) public safety sales taxes — competing, siloed funding streams instead of one regional package.
Governance & the politics
A1 — the Cross-Sector Accountability & Coordination Council
Three functions: cross-system coordination; accountability for completion (a "named accountability pathway, independent of any single ballot measure or election cycle," public reporting on a defined cadence, "standing to escalate when implementation stalls"); and continued cross-sector convening. It must sit outside any single government and survive election cycles; formal authority stays with jurisdictions via intergovernmental agreements, including data-sharing. Composition pairs expertise with "power and authority to make decisions" — public, private, nonprofit, philanthropic, Tribal, victims'-rights, and lived-experience members. Timeline: design 3–6 months, stand-up 6–12 months — operational within a year.
Judge Tony Hazel on why past efforts failed: coordination was "always temporary… key stakeholders are missing… focus goes away."
The politics — the silo problem, live
Mayor Brown's June 1 letter (with Chief Hall) said the city "generally supports" the recommendations but urged fixing existing jail operations before "costly" new capacity; Commissioner Kerns accused her of sending a letter "to torpedo" the proposal; Brown's office responded that she "supports all of the Safe and Healthy recommendations." At the rollout, task force co-chair Chud Wendle asked electeds not to let "personal agenda supersede our work"; Brown answered that demanding a coordinating entity and data "is not a personal agenda. That's responsible governance." The city's 2024 withdrawal from the Regional Homeless Authority is the precedent everyone cites. This page exists to make the cost of that pattern visible — see the Governance page’s Before / After and watch the patchwork either stay a patchwork, or become one system.
Reports & documents
All Task Force publications
- 📄 Final Report — "Safe and Healthy Spokane Task Force Recommendations" (June 11, 2026, 65 pp.)
safehealthyspokane.org/s/Safe_and_Healthy_Spokane_Recommendations_June-2026.pdf
Mirror (verified Jul 2026): static1.squarespace.com/…/Safe_and_Healthy_Spokane_Recommendations_June+2026.pdf - 📄 Summary One-Pager ("Okay, Four-Pager") (June 2026)
safehealthyspokane.org/s/Safe-and-Healthy-One-Sheet.pdf - 📄 Leifman Group Asset Assessment — Assessment of Spokane County's Behavioral Health, Homelessness, Crisis Response, and Justice Systems (Jan 8, 2026)
safehealthyspokane.org/announcements/spokane-county-assessment2025
Direct PDF: static1.squarespace.com/…/Assessment+of+Spokane+County's+systems.pdf - 📄 Advisory Committees: Moving the Work Forward (~Feb 2026)
safehealthyspokane.org/s/SH-Website-Copy-2926_letterhead.pdf - 🎥 Assessment webinar recording (Jan 15, 2026)
youtu.be/0vVYgnv0DeQ - 📄 Task Force update to City Council Public Safety Committee (Mar 2, 2026)
spokanecity.org (presentation PDF) - 📰 Coverage: Spokesman-Review · Inlander · KHQ
Task force site: safehealthyspokane.org. Compiled July 2026.