Hey, it's Aaron. This week on the pod, we're playing the full audio of the City Council candidate Forum held Tuesday at Calvary Spokane, a conservative church north of town. It makes the show longer than usual. We're doing this because of the crowd there, which was more receptive than the avid audience to some unvarnished rhetoric from the conservative end of the spectrum. In Spokane Fair warning candidates, Jonathan Bengal and Christopher Savage make some comments that might be considered harmful to queer communities. That being said, here's the show. Each candidate is going to share for five minutes about themselves and what difference they're gonna make. Um, we did have it open to other candidates if they wanted to send us a short video. Cody ar, how do you say his last name? Ar Welles AEs had sent in a video. So after you guys do your five minute intros, then we'll uh, have a chance to see his two minute video. And then, um, after those introductory, um, statements from you guys, I got a series of questions here provided by our Calvary political committee. So yeah, there we go. They said they didn't want to throw any softballs at you, so love it. Alright. You're not gonna get any softballs there. Okay. So, uh, why don't we start out, uh, Jonathan with you. Um, you got five minutes. Uh, tell us about yourself and why you're running for Spokane City Council. Yes, I'll do my best to keep it in five minutes. Okay. I was a, a pastor before this and now an elected official. There's not a microphone I don't like, so, uh, keep that in mind. But, um, yeah, so my name's Jonathan mle. I'm currently a city council member in the city of Spokane. I represent Spokane's best district, which is why they call it district number one, but, uh, that's right, number one. Okay. But, uh, yeah, so I, I got into politics because, um, simplest way to put it is like, this is what God made me for. And I always knew it. Ever since I was a kid, I knew I was gonna be in politics, always thought it was gonna come later in life. And then COVID kind of changed the game for, uh, for me. My wife and I, we own an events in entertainment business and, uh, the state of Washington was in a state of emergency for over 900 days, longer than every other state in the union. My business was illegal for years. My family's future was stolen from me overnight with the swipe of a pen. Okay? And that kind of stuff needed to be represented in government. And, um, my wife and I honestly were, were planning to leave. I thought we were moving to Tennessee because did we want to rebuild in Washington state? Honestly, no, we did not want to be here anymore. Um, but we prayed about it and it felt like the Holy Spirit ministered to us, do not see this territory physically or intellectually to these people. And so then I shared that with my wife, who did not love that. But, uh, but she said, okay, and, you know, she trusts. In that, uh, in, in my relationship with God to believe, okay, if that's what God is saying, then let's do this. I ran for city council and I won, and in the first month in office, I got kicked out of the building and CED for not wearing a mask at City of Hall, and my seatmates had the gall, the one of the people that Christopher Savage is running against had the goal to pass a resolution asking for me to be thrown in jail because I was so sick and tired of the overreach that was happening at the governmental level. I put my foot down and said, we are done with this. We are not hanging out with this nonsense anymore. It's time to move on, like the rest of the world has moved on. So ever since that time, it was actually really freeing, believe it or not, right? Like my first month in office. Unfortunately, I didn't have any other elected representatives really reaching out or helping or anything like that. They all left me on an island. And that was a really lonely place. Uh, but what ended up happening is in that moment, they threatened, uh, you know, to take all my committees away. They threatened to recall, they threatened. I thought my political career was gonna be the briefest in history. And like, I was gonna stand up before God and be like, sorry, I, I thought that was the right thing. All the worst things they could do to me. They did to me my first month in office. And then it was like, oh. That's all you can do game on. Right? And then it just really freed me up to be who I knew God called me to be and really, uh, allowed that, that boldness to come, you know, to the forefront in, in a lot of the courageous fans that we've been able to take since. And we pass an abortion resolution at the city level. And we don't say women having access to abortion, we say pregnant individuals, right? That's the kind of stuff we're dealing with. That's the nonsense we're dealing with. And, uh, instead of saying, Hey, maybe only boys should be in, uh, you know, maybe no boys should be in girls' sports. Maybe men shouldn't be in women's restrooms. When we say those kinds of things, I get ethics complaints filed against me, right? Because now I'm supposedly, uh, discriminated against trans individuals. That's the kind of stuff that we're up against right now. And that's not gonna be a place where weak people are gonna be able to make a difference. We need strong men and women of courage, strong men and women of God who know exactly who they are and what they represent and are not afraid to say it. And that's gonna be the thing that I think helps turn the city of Spokane around. And let me tell you what, everybody, we are this close. We are this close to turning Spokane around. All right. Sorry, I'm getting all fired up. I gotta stand up right now. But, uh, Zon won his race by 262 votes. Okay? That is not all that much. Even after Zach gerrymandered the districts okay, and made it more favorable to him, Navy Woodward still won that district by six points. In the gerrymandered district that is more favorable to them. They are incredibly winnable districts in the city of Spokane, and I have a challenge to the rest of you. Okay? Now I may go over a minute, Steve, don't be mad at me. But, uh, so Matthew 14, Jesus feeds the 5,000, okay? Very great story. Miracle. There's a second miracle in here that I think we all need to remember. Okay? So Jesus, after everybody's fed, Jesus gives the disciples, baskets, and he says, go pick up the crumbs. They all come back and their baskets are full. Okay? If you are like me and in the state of Washington, you have probably said to yourself at some point, my vote doesn't matter. Okay? And let me tell you, you could not be more right. You one vote does not matter, but you start putting it together. We start collecting these crumbs. It's not just your one vote anymore. If we all think that my vote doesn't matter, there's a hundred votes in here. Okay? Now, not just only that, you start thinking to yourself, my vote doesn't matter, but let me start gathering these up. My first election, my opponents were separated by two votes. You and your wife, you and your husband, guess what? You start flipping elections as you start putting crumbs together. Okay? 262 votes is what Axone won by. Everybody in here, we decide that we're gonna be the the disciples. We're gonna take the baskets out, we're gonna gather the crumbs of all the spaces that we're in. You're flipping elections. Okay. You are doing God's work. You were doing kingdom work by going out and convincing people and telling them and reminding them how important their vote is because guess what? 1.3 million Christians didn't vote in the state of Washington last year, and we actually don't need to convince other people. We just need ourselves to believe that we should be involved in this space, that our vote matters and you watch as we flip elections. Amen. Thank you, Jonathan. Chris, I to follow, my name is Christopher Savage and I am a lifelong resident here of Spokane. I've lived here for about 31 years. I wasn't born here, but I was raised here. One of my first and best memories is going to Northwest Christian. I went there for about a couple of grades there and it laid the foundation for my faith. I still use it to this day for helping to be more resilient, have grit my teeth, and have persistence. One of the things about me is that that's what you're going to get is persistence and dedication to your city. I've been going down to City Hall for six years now, partly for about four because the pandemic kind of shut that down. I had to watch from, uh, the TV for a while, but they finally opened it back up. 'cause we all know that wasn't the right thing. But I showed that my dedication to the city, I'm on the, uh, board of Meals on Wheels. I've helped deliver 600 to 800 meals per day for our senior citizens and our limited income people in, in the city of Spokane. Not only that, but I have also learned about many of the things here in the, uh, city, which is like the nonprofit world. The nonprofit world is a very interesting world 'cause it's also very cutthroat, but it's also very interesting to see because one of the things that we need to do in the city is we need to change our nonprofits that we are working with, jus helping hands in Catholic Charities, is doing the homeless crisis wrong. They're making it worse and pushing it out into the neighborhoods. That is not good. We need to change that by changing it to actual nonprofits like Adult Teen Challenge, where Tyson West, the executive director, has a 12 month program and has a 70% success rates with their addiction program. These are the metrics that we need because when we ask the metrics from, uh, Jules Helping Hands and Catholic Charities, they will not give them. They will not give them. Judge got a Jonathan Bingle and Michael Kakar. It is absolutely despicable that they will not give this information, and it happens multiple times when we have more people up there locking arms with Michael Kakar and Jonathan Bingle. That is the first step on pushing back on this. That is what you'll get from a lifelong resident. I'll not get on you. I have never quit on you. I have been showing people that I've been going down there and showing my persistence because that is what you all deserve. You all deserve a representative that is going to keep the will of the people and not a personal agenda that they're going up there with. That is why my opponent, Zach opponent, needs to be ousted from office. He goes up there with his own personal agenda, trying to help out with the L-G-B-T-Q 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 that was not in the budget. They have two times in the year where they could actually allocate into that budget, and it's gonna cost us $300,000 first year, $400,000 next year and $500,000 to coincide in years after that. That is absolutely dumb. We need to make sure that we are actually using our money in the right way. For instance, filling our potholes, making our streets safe, making sure that you all are not being priced outta Spokane. It is absolutely heartbreaking to hear how many people are almost wanting to move outta Spokane because they're priced out because how many taxes the city council keeps putting on. These people that don't have this money for it. I doorbell someone today that said they had bought a house in 1971. Their mortgage payment was four times less than what they're paying for their property taxes right now. That is absolutely ridiculous. We should not be having people move outta Spokane who are locals. We need locals here. 'cause that is what makes Spokane Spokane. I want more of a community that has people that have been growing up here, that have putting blood, sweat, and tears into this community because that is the people I wanna represent. You all. You all have been here, you all have made sure that you have given to your community, and that is the people I wanna represent. That is who I am as Christopher Savage. Okay, thank you Chris. Um, now we've got a video from Cody AEs. Have to do this all night. Go ahead Cameron. Hey guys, I'm Cody AEs and I'm running for Spokane City Council. I'm sorry I couldn't be with you in person today, but I really appreciate the opportunity to introduce myself and share a little bit about why I'm running. I've worn a few hats in my life. United States Air Force sea Specialist, small business owner, husband, father, and I've also experienced homelessness myself, and that's not something I shared lightly, but it's a part of my story and it's why I'm focused so much on finding real solutions that actually help people get back on their feet. United States Air Force brought my wife and I here to Spokane. So that I can serve our country and we've decided to stay so that I can serve you, our community. And in that vein, we built our life here. I started a small business right here in town, and like many of you, I've had to deal with the city's bureaucracy that makes it so much harder than it needs to be in order to succeed. And that's part of why I'm working. I believe city council could be focused on real results, not scoring political points. I've seen how the crime, the addiction, and the rising costs are hurting our city. And I know we could do better if elected. I'll fight to restore public safety, bring accountability to the city government, and make sure taxpayer dollars are going towards. Solutions that actually work. And that means performance based contracts for the homeless services, cutting red tape for local businesses, increasing our police and fire staffing, and keeping our taxes low so that our families can truly thrive. But most of all, I'll listen. I'll be accessible, I'll be honest, and I'll work every day to serve the people of Spokane, not our personal political agendas. So thank you so much again for giving me the time so that you can get to know me. My name is Cody Eric Wallace. I hope to meet you in person one day and I ask him for your support. Thank you. Thank you, Cody. So my first question for you guys tonight is a question of my own, and we'll start with Chris here. So Chris, uh, we get a lot of pushback uh, at the church here. Anytime we do an event like this, people say The church shouldn't be involved in politics. We should stay in your own lane. What do you think about that, Chris? I think the church should actually be in politics. I think it's a very important thing to be involved in, especially when they allow a bunch of other religions downtown to be able to be practiced and freely done. Uh, it seems really reh that when you go down to city Hall, they won't let you read the Bible sometimes. But if you came down there with a Quran or some sort of Buddhist, uh, saing or sutra, they would probably allow it. So we need more people like you and this church to do more of what it's doing. I don't think it's wrong that it's, the church is being in politics. Yeah. So I obviously being a pastor and now an elected official, think that the church has every right to participate in politics. And I think it's moved past the right, and I think it's a responsibility. And the reason why is because growing up, you know, my, my parents were pastors in the, in the eighties, nineties, uh, two thousands. And it was like, you know, churches shouldn't be political. And oftentimes what I hear when people say that is they don't want their churches to be partisan. They don't want them to be all Republican, all Democrats. That what they want them to do is they want them to speak about the issues and the issues that really matter. Um, in our city right now, I think one of the things you're gonna see is that church isn't getting more political, okay? Politics is getting more theological, okay? When they start saying that a boy's, a girl, and a girl's a boy, or vice versa, they can be whatever they want. Whatever they want, they wanna be. That's not a political statement, that's a theological statement, okay? They are attacking the very creation of God, okay? They are attacking the foundations of creation. And now you not only have a right to respond, you have a responsibility to respond. Okay? So there are a number of folks in in the Bible who were great servants of God and were also involved in the government. I think we were listening these, uh, just a minute ago, right? But you've got Daniel, you've got Esther, you've got John the Baptist, you've got Moses. I mean, there is no shortage of lists of people who are affecting the governments of their time while serving their God, okay? While serving our God. And so you do not only have a right to respond at this point, I want you all to understand, and that's why I task you all with going out and finding the people who are like you and getting those votes and getting them turned in because you have a responsibility at this point to represent your God at the ballot box. What are starting with Jonathan, what are the top priorities or issues cited by the citizens that you speak with regularly? Yeah. I mean, it, it, it hasn't changed in, in my entire time on council. It is always public safety first, right? Like the fact that you can openly do drugs in the city of Spokane is a, is a crying shame. I have no idea how it's still totally possible, totally doable. And even when we do address it, then, you know, we, we may take you to jail, okay? But the ordinance we just passed a few weeks ago is so focused on engagement and very little on enforcement. There is no real enforcement mechanism in our city laws anymore. And I know because I wrote the first drug laws that passed in the city of Spokane when the state failed. To pass the drug laws, uh, after the Blake decision. Okay? Um, and I know how we gutted those laws. Now, public safety is always number one. Crime. Oh my goodness, is crime a problem for us? But then it really does come down to homelessness. And, uh, the, the reason why homelessness is such a frustrating discussion is because HUD literally has 10 different definitions for homelessness, okay? And so you could be saying, Hey, people are broken, okay? There is real serious mental illness, or there's real serious drug, uh, addiction that needs to be addressed. Somebody else can be saying, actually homelessness is a housing problem. And you're both 100% right. Depending on what definition you use for homelessness. And so homelessness is frustrating because what most people are talking about, the people who are really in the game, they wanna make it all a housing problem. And it's just not, housing is a portion of it, but that's not the problem. The problem is not it's, it is not a housing problem, it's a human problem. We're dealing with a brokenness in the human spirit in a number of individuals. And those are the ones you typically see downtown screaming at the sky or twitching or, and this is the saddest thing I see. I walk by it every single day. I'm downtown, the person folded over and they call it the fentanyl fold. And they're just folded over and they are just out of their mind. And it is such a heartbreaking thing for me as a child of God, to see another child of God who has seeded their agency to a substance not getting any of the help that they, that we need. Because somehow we think it's more compassionate to let them sit here like this out of their mind, poisoning themselves to death than to take them. Against their will, out of that space and force them into a treatment program because that's what's gonna actually help get their mind clean. Personally, in my family, I saw as a, as a, as a brother of mine, he struggled seriously with addiction. Jail is what got him clean. Jail is what is what helped him get his mind right. And then once he was there, he was like, I have a daughter. I don't wanna do this anymore. And in that right frame of mind, he was able to make right choices. He no longer lives in the city of Spokane. And I thank God every day that he doesn't live here anymore because here was bad for him. He moved out and now he's doing much better. But, uh, it is always those issues, public safety, homelessness, and then housing and, and different affordability issues, um, are a real problem. And, uh, to that, I would say we're doing a lot on the housing front in the city of Spokane. We're doing what we can, but in reality, we want things to be more affordable. Tell the state to stop raising our taxes. My goodness. Chris, from your perspective, what are the top issues citizens are concerned with? Well, it's gonna kind of a little sound like the same. Uh, first one is public safety. Downtown right now is very unsafe, whether it's perception or reality. When I doorbell, uh, doors, uh, especially today, the top concern for a lot of people is downtown. They won't bring their kids, they won't bring their families, they won't bring their parents. That is not good for our city. We need people coming downtown, patronizing our businesses and making sure that they're enjoying downtown because that is their downtown. It's not the homeless downtown, it's theirs. They pay taxes to make sure that they can come and enjoy it. And what we need to do, and why that's important is because I, if you look into the news, our sales tax projection is way down. And that is because people don't wanna come downtown and patronize the business anymore because they're worried about the homeless. We need to make sure that we are actually voting in laws that the citizens voted in. For instance, prop one that was voted in 75% of the voters last year. City Council, not Jonathan Dingle or Michael Catherine, they fought valiantly, but the rest of the city council pretty much watered it down and made it so that it was not viable. We have no protections for many of our facilities right now, which is childcare, our daycares, as well as hospitals, as well as other places and facilities. We need to make sure that we are protecting our families and our future. That is why we started that prop one, and that is why the citizens voted for it. We need to make sure that our city is safe and clean for people to come downtown and experience the gems like Riverfront Park. Those are places that are being now vacated because people don't wanna go there. There is several people that I've talked to that have found Fentanyl on the Red Wagon. That is the symbol of Spokane. It's a symbol of Meals on Wheels. It makes me sick to hear that people have to tell their kids that, Hey, that foil that you see is not for cooking. Well, maybe for something else, but it's for cook, it's for the fentanyl that you see there, and they have to reprimand their kids. And that is not a good first memory for our kids to have downtown right now. And it's also relating to show that, uh, town downtown is being vacated. We have almost a 30% vacancy downtown right now for our businesses. And when I talk to certain real estate developers downtown, they say that they, when they have prospective businesses come downtown, they pull out the map, draw a red ring around downtown and say, I do not want a business down here because it is going to be more expensive and more hard to have a business put down here. Now the second part is that the homeless crisis, we need to make sure that we are changing our contract service providers to actual non-profits who are helping the situation, providing metrics. And making sure that they're actually helping these people out of addiction. We also need better and more stabilization facilities that will help these people out of addiction. Another thing that we really need, it's a big ask from the city because it failed about, uh, two years ago, but we need a new jail. We need a new rehabilitation and accountability center that has wraparound services, that has addiction services, mental health, as well as job site training. We really need to update our jail because right now it is unsafe not only for the people who are there, but also for the people who work there. We need to do this sooner rather than later because when it was first proposed, it was at $300 million that it was going to cost assistance. It's ballooned to 600 million. So if we keep waiting, it's going to cost us more and more, not only in cash, but also in lives. We need to focus that. And also on affordability, I. So Spokane County has one of the highest median property taxes in the country. What will you do to bring Spokane property taxes back in line with the national averages, Chris? Well, one of the things that I will do is that every time that we have that once a year that we have a 1% property tax that we can do at the city council, I will promise all of you that I will never approve of that until we have an actual better Spokane going on right now. It's a very small kind of bandaid that we can do, but it will help in a little bit of a way to help you all out with your property taxes because you all are being taxed way too much right now. When I look at my property tax bill, it is way too much, especially when we're paying so much in the schools and you're not getting as much, especially when they shut down the schools for two years and they still ask for that property tax that does not make sense. We need to make sure that we are helping our people stay here with affordable taxes, and that means that we need to make sure that we don't take those taxes when we're asked for it. Go ahead John. Yeah. So, uh, in my time on council, I have voted against that 1% property tax increase. And one of the things that I would, I would challenge you to do is when you look at your property tax bill, look at where it's going. Okay? In the city of Spokane, almost 70% of your taxes are going towards schools. There was a decision that said teachers weren't getting paid enough. There is no cap on, um, the amount that they can take in your property taxes, whereas everybody else, it's 25 cents for a thousand, whatever it is. And you know, it's that total amount that, you know, titrates over, over the years until it gets re-upped. That is not the same for your schools. And so if you wanna see a true real reduction in your property taxes. You're gonna have to get your state legislature to vote and to change that law because that is what is number one, driving your property taxes. But again, voting against, uh, property tax increases especially, and until we get our budget in order at the, at the city, okay? There is an incredible amount of waste, uh, in the city. Now, a lot of it is contractually obligated, and so we have to look at our contracts and make sure we're coming up with good, fair contracts for our, for our employees. But, uh, we spend $4 million a year out of our general fund on homelessness, right? Uh, the city of Houston, which is touted, is like the gold standard on, on how to address homelessness, just not spend a dime out of their general fund. On this, we misappropriate funds. We passed a property, uh, tax, or not a property, but a, uh, public safety levy Last year, an extra one 10th of 1% in your sales tax. First thing we did, the first thing the mayor says after that passes is we're giving a million to the arts. Those kinds of things. There's a lot of things in city government right now that are nice, okay? We have a lot of niceties that we're paying for, and we need to be focused more on our necessities. So pulling back on the niceties, focusing on the necessities, getting back to what government exists to do. Government is not a charity. Government should not be in the homeless business at all, okay? That should be done by other entities, not by government. What government exists to do is to provide for the public safety and provide for the infrastructure while our roads stink. While our, uh, public infrastructure stinks, while our roads don't have, or, uh, while our streets aren't safe, there's nothing else that we should be focused on. Until Spokane is safe and clean, your services are being delivered to you. Well, those are the things that we need to do other things on. This is really focusing on making Spokane, and this is a byproduct. We can't do what I'm gonna say next until the first part is done. We have to make Spokane safe and clean when businesses do want to come back here again, okay? Because they're not wanting to come here. They're wanting to leave here. That 30% vacancy matters more than, you know. Those buildings are now worth a third of what they were. Where is that property tax now going? It's going onto your homes. Okay. And that needs to be understood is that the property tax reduction from the decrease the series decrease in the values of buildings and things like down downtown really do hit you in the wallet. And so downtown is something that needs to be, uh, corrected so that business want to come here. Um, and that will help reduce your property taxes as well. Thank you. Uh, starting with Jonathan, the city's considering a public safety sales tax, increased police staffing in order to fight the increasing drug and crime is issue in Spokane. We're already faced with some of the highest taxes in the country. What's your position on the increased tax to our citizens? So the, I know the valley right now is considering when the city passed. One last year. And so, um, on for the city of Spokane, I, I debated the mayor. I opposed this measure. And the reason why I opposed it isn't because, uh, we don't need more police. We absolutely do Spokane, or not Spokane, but Washington state is 50th out of 50 when it comes to, uh, police per capita. Okay? We are dead last of the nation. If you count Washington, DC we're 51st, okay? We could not be lower than what we are on the amount the state pays us or, uh, or helps us to fund our police. And so that obviously is something that needs to be done, but that doesn't need to be done through property or, uh, through a tax increase. Again, there is so much money. Remember four years ago we had a $4 billion surplus at the state level, and this year we are asking for $17 billion in state taxes. Something his opponent supported and wrote a letter from the City of Spokane with council member Paul Dillon saying, Hey, we need those $17 billion in taxes. And that's why Zach's opponents got to go. Right. If you want to see a real impact on your, on your wallet, we gotta get rid of some of those people. Okay? But, um, absolutely yes, hundred. And that was real aggressive when I was pointing at him. I wasn't saying that about Chris, I was saying that about his opponent, but. But, uh, but the reason why I opposed it is there was a number of reasons. We have a fake sunset on it. We promised people there was gonna be a sunset. It's a fake sunset. We said we were gonna create a separate account. We created a separate account, and there's one entry and one, uh, one exit. There's one credit, one debit. Okay? All of that money goes in and then we immediately transfer it to our general fund. It's all smoke and mirrors. Okay? It is all smoke and mirrors. And this is how they can lie to you without lying to you, is that everything they're saying is technically true or kind of true or somewhat true. There's enough truth in it to make it possible, but so much about it that's wrong. But the other thing that's a problem is that, that one 10th of 1%, by taking that, we effectively and procedurally blocked the county from being able to run a jail measure, okay? Because they cannot run a measure, uh, in good faith without us rescinding our one 10th of 1%. This mayor and this administration do not want a new jail. They do not want people getting arrested. They do not want people held accountable for their crimes, and so they procedurally blocked it. By setting this out, making you think that you are gonna get more police, you are gonna get more firefighters. Guess what? This budget you lost. At least six time, six full-time employees from Spokane Police Department. You lost at least six, and I think it's as many as 15. But the budgeting gets weird because of all the entries and the exits. Okay. Not only did you not get what you voted for, you are not going to get what this city really needs in being able to hold people accountable. So all that to say, I opposed it, I debated the mayor on this to say this is not something we should be doing for a number of reasons. But, uh, yeah, you're, you're not getting what you're paying for, Chris. So one of the things that I would like to let everyone know is that the average for a two, uh, for a thousand people, for having police officers for that kind of people to do that, is the national average is 2.5. Spokane is 1.3 for a thousand. We are well below what we need to. Now, that would sound like I would support new taxes to help out with new police. I would say no on that. Like for instance, community safety proposal. Jonathan is totally correct. What they did was a bunch of smoke and mirrors and a bait and switch. They said that they weren't gonna use what they were gonna use for those funds and they went against it. They said they were gonna go for, uh, firefighters and fire engines and, uh, 300 officers that we got, but that's not what happened. They put 4 million into the general fund and it was just not good. So what we can do is we can actually look at the city of, uh, city council budget. There are several things that we can do to reduce our own budget. We have, we could probably reduce our own budget by 3% by saying, for instance, the city council. I don't know why it needs a spokesperson. We all speak perfectly fine and we all speak well enough and long enough for everyone to understand us. So that's $120,000 right there. That's just one position that we've cut. Another position that we can cut. Christopher Wright is there. He's also the husband of Karen Stratton. So there's a little bit of impropriety there that I would think about. So we need to remove these positions because we have plenty of 'em, especially with attorneys. We have over 40 to 50 attorneys that we could actually talking to in the city that we could actually be consulting with that we don't need this one attorney who costs us a hundred thousand dollars. We can look into our own budget and pass on those savings to help out more people and more officers become part of the SPD because that is definitely what we need right now. We are. Understaffed majorly. We need more officers in the city of Spokane right now, and we can do that by also helping people put people like myself up on City Council. They are really demoralized right now because they know exactly where everything is coming from. City Hall has tied their hands so much that they don't wanna do their jobs. They've made so hard that we need to have people up there that is backing our SPD. We need to focus on them so they can help focus on the community. So I would say no to a proposal because we can actually look inward into our budget as well as the city council budget and cut where we need to and pass on the savings other places. The city continues to support legislation from last session that creates an office of independent prosecution within the State Attorney General's office, which helps investigate. And prosecute criminal conduct and arising from police use of force. Some see this as an additional layer of bureaucracy and additional cost. What's your position on the issue, Chris? Well, I think we already have enough police oversight already. We have a police os Buds that is, uh, Bart Logan, and he has pretty much a lot of oversight over the SPD. We don't need any more people looking into what they're doing because they're doing a fine job already. You talk to these people, you do on the ride alongs and they're doing everything correctly. They're trying to do the job the best they can, so we don't need to keep looking over their shoulders because everything that they do. They run through citizen committees. Like for instance, uh, this is a little bit while ago, but in 2019, a c assembly major Ken King came down and updated us on the, uh, use of force that the SPD was using. Everything was fine in there. They told us everything that they were using and everyone on the city, uh, on the community assembly, which is 29 neighborhood councils that are around Spokane. Said, oh, that is totally fine. If there was anything that was wrong, it would've been brought up in that meeting and no one said anything. So we are totally fine with our SPDI trust our SP that they are doing their jobs correctly, so we don't need any more oversight or any more bureaucracy making their jobs harder. Yeah. So funny story. So, uh, Chris said Ombuds because that's technically the name now, because we need to remove the gendered language because it was originally ombudsman. Okay. And just so everybody knows, ombudsman is actually a Swedish word, meaning agent or a representative. And uh, so we took the Swedish word and made it meaningless. And, uh, that's a lot of what we're doing at the, at the city level right now. I listen. So here's the deal. We have incredible police at SPD, and I think also it's important to remember that the Ombudsman's office is there because the people of Spokane voted for citizen oversight over there. And there is a balance when it comes to police. You need to make sure that you have effective and supported police. And there is also a special responsibility that must be understood as a, uh, for our police officers, as you have the ability to take people to jail at gunpoint, right? And so, uh, there is effective oversight and we, I think, do a very good job of this in the, in the city of Spokane. Um, but it's also important to remember that people like Chris's opponents, uh, Mr. Saxon, who sits on there, signed a pledge to defund the police. Okay? The, there's a, the majority of people on the city council right now signed pledges or made public statements saying yes. It is time to defund the police and here's how we're going to do it. And so you're gonna hear a lot of people saying things along these lines like, oh no, look, we're totally supportive of police. Look, we did this. No. What ended up happening is the political winds changed. You got caught looking really bad and now you're trying to make up for it. But again, you've already told us who you were, right? As the Bible says, from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. You spoke Turkey and we saw who you were, and so you can't try and come back from that. You told us that you're not, you're not in on this, um, uh, on this idea when it comes to the special prosecutor, I think that there are much more nefarious purposes that that could be used for. The state of Washington passed a hate speech law last year, and this is where I start to get really concerned as a citizen of Washington. Whereas the things that I say by specifically saying that a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl right now, harm as they're defining it now, doesn't necessarily need to be physical harm, right? Emotional harm or, or whatever. You know, that sort of thing. I think they start to stretch that law. To say that, uh, by the way, you saying obviously true things, biologically accurate things, those are hateful statements. And this is where I start to get really concerned, uh, for the future of Washington and for people like us in our way of life, that it really is something that could be, uh, under attack. Um, because we obviously are going to be the people like Chad Ney. Jack and Abednego said, we will not bend our knee. We're gonna stand in the fire. And I don't know how we're gonna make it outta this, but the thing that I do know is that my God has never let me down. I don't expect he's gonna let me down now. And then when the fourth is in the fire, we'll be able to say. Our God was right the entire time. I'm gonna move on to, uh, like individualized questions here. So, uh, Jonathan, during your time in office, what did you do to involve citizens in the decision making process in our team? Yeah. No, this is a, this is a fun question. So we have a, a really cool neighborhood council system, um, in the city of Spokane, and it's really cool to get to go and engage, uh, with the neighborhoods because they're the most boots on the ground people that you have, where it's like, again, I know that there are many neighborhood leaders in here, right? I know many, uh, who've participated. I think I saw some others they might have left. Um, but uh, but who have been a part of that system. And it's a great way to say, Hey, by the way. What's going on? It's like, Hey, the goats are many ha ha hearts. You should come check it out. But that's a really great way to do, I try to be really active on social media. Um, when it comes to different issues. I know the, uh, the, the different people that as I've spent my time on city council, I've been able to engage with. Something comes up, I get to call 'em, Hey, what are your, uh, opinions on this? What's your perspective on this? Uh, when it comes to particularly difficult issues, I'm thankful for men like Pastor Ken and my brother Josh, who is my pastor, where it's like, Hey, man, I need you to really build me up. I need some courage on this one right here and, and, and help talk me through this. And I'm really thankful for, uh, for the men in my life who, who've been able to help me be like, listen, like you got this. Go ahead and do it. And so, reaching out to constituents, there's a, there's a number of ways you can do it. I think really as a city council member, you get a lot of phone calls and oh my God, the emails, the emails, my Lord responding to the emails, I think is, uh, is a really great way to stay, to stay engaged as well. And so, um, I do everything I can to find ways. To reach out to folks and, uh, for everybody in here, even though I've just denigrated the emails, please do email me if you have a problem. Okay. And or call me if you have something you need to get on. I would get on it. I have an assistant as well, uh, who really helps me make sure that I'm responding to all those things because people in this room need somebody that they feel comfortable going to when they have an issue. And I want you to know that I think I'm that guy that you can feel comfortable with and having to go out to coffee or lunch or whatever it is, and talk about the city and the, and the future that it has, and ways that you'd like to be represented. 'cause I do wanna be that guy for you and, uh, want you to feel that you have at least one champion on the city council. And definitely after this year, you'll have more than one champion on the city council, uh, because again, we are going to turn this town around. Absolutely. Chris, what differentiates you from your other opponents? There's two other people running. Zopone the incumbent, and then also another conservative Cody AEs. AEs. It's gonna be a joke. Now. What differentiates you from Zach and then from Cody? What differentiate me from both of 'em right now is I'm a lifelong resident, but what you're getting is this journey starting in 2019. This has been a six year long journey. It shows. What I keep on showing all of you is that I am not, I'm never gonna quit on Spokane. You're going to get a dedicated persistence grip in their teeth person that has a resilient spirit that is never going to quit on any of you all. So whenever the chips are down and it seems like it's your darkest days, I'm going to be there to stand there and say, I'm gonna be the man in the gap. That is what makes me different from everyone else, as well as I know the city like the back of my hand, not only from living here for so long, but by going down and persistently going to every city council meeting almost. I mean, almost every city council meeting I've been there. There's probably been one or two that I've missed, but I know the city because I've gone down there and I've done the reports. That's one of the reasons why. I know so much about it. I try to help others be informed as well as I am. I was a bit probably upset when I first started 'cause I thought, where's everyone else? Why doesn't anyone come down here? And then it changed into, well, what can you do about it? What can you do to help out these people? Because it is difficult to come down there when I see Jonathan Bingle up there in Michael Kafka fighting for our city, and they constantly are getting beat down and Axon is using Roberts rules of orders as a casual to beat them over the head. It makes you want to say, what can I do to help these people out? Because that's what we need to do. We need to come together and make sure that we are helping one another, push back on the city and make sure that we have a city that we are proud of, and that a city that I grew up in can become the same city again. So that's what may be different about these different candidates in this race is that I have never quit on you all. And I won't ever quit on you all. Chris, in a SP public radio interview, you mentioned citizens concerns about the decline of our downtown. What are you going to do to revitalize downtown? Well, what we can do is we can reform prop one. That's gonna be a bit difficult because we are in the minority right now. But with certain things that are happening in the future, I believe we can bring back the original prop one. That was voted in by the citizens, and all we have to do is take the old prop one and vote it into law. What another thing that we can do is this more of an economic incentive, is one of the things that is one of the top concerns when coming downtown when I talk to people on the door, is that they hate parking downtown. It is absolutely ismal. They're taking out more parking spaces and asking more money from y'all, and it is making it difficult for people to patronize downtown. There's a lot of people in this room that want to park right in front of the retail store that they want to patronize. They don't wanna walk a half a mile to a mile maybe. 'cause I'm a cross country runner. That's not a problem for me. But I want to make sure that people are coming downtown and giving them an economic incentive to say, Hey, here you go. This is what we can do to help out. It's a small little thing, but I think that will help out a lot with some people patronizing the restaurants, the retail stores. A lot of the places that we love to go to, like Boo Ratley or Atticus Suspension Coffee Shop, or even Riverfront Park Square, we need to make people come downtown, and that is one of the ways we could do that. Another thing that we can do is we could become harsher on homeless with what the laws we are doing. We need to make harsher camping laws. We need to make harsher pedestrian sent lie laws. That Jonathan Bengal has put out there several times, and the city council has kept putting it down. They keep saying that they're trying to help out, but they are not. They keep shooting down the right proposals that will help our city because they want the city not to be the way that it is right now. They want to make sure that this city is going to be the Spokane that we don't know anymore, and that is the whole point about that. So we need to make sure that we are doing things and policies like that will bring people downtown as well as make it safe. We need to make sure that we are also making sure that the SPD is fully staffed, and that is by helping bring up their morale, by getting a City Council member up there that supports them and make sure that they have their back. Thank you, Jonathan. Public Transit. The question here that I have says, people have seen as little as three or four rider on a bus at a time, and they want to continue to increase funding for it. What's going on? What are you gonna do about it? How much time we got? Three minutes. Goodness. Alright, so SDAI think serves a purpose. And I also think that SDA is largely living in the past and I think there are much better ways that we can provide public transit for what the people are paying for. Now, keep in mind six tenths of 1% of your sales tax are state law, permanent. It was voted in, that is permanent, always funding going there. Now there's another three tenths of 1% that you'll get to vote on in the next couple years as to whether or not you want to keep it. And I think that that's something that's important for you. But the people in my district, many people do use STA, right? We have the highest ridership, we have the highest need in district one. And so I don't wanna say that public transit is bad. A lot of my people use it, but there's definitely more efficient ways to use it. I think that 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 light rail to Seattle and all this nonsense, like, what are we talking about? Okay. Fly there like an adult. Okay, now, okay, but I'm the only person on the city council who voted against the bus rapid transit. Um, that would eliminate a lane on either direction on division. And there are a lot of things that they're doing on the transit perspective, and they'll always come to you and say, oh, it's a chicken or the egg situation, right? Like, will people ride it if it's not there? Or do we need to build it for people to ride it, right? I mean, it's this, that's the sort of argument that comes to it. But I agree. I, I think that, um, the buses are incredibly inefficient. I don't think they justify the amount of money, uh, that they're getting. They're building new campuses. And they're investing in things like the Central City line. And again, people are using it, but is it worth the a hundred million dollars, $120 million or whatever it was that it cost, uh, to build that? I don't think so. I think when you look at, you know, there's, there's a lot of great technology out here. I think we could probably save a bunch of money and just contract with Uber and just say, okay, here you go. You know, for our tax dollars, they'll come pick you up. They'll go take you to wherever you want to go. And it's far more efficient and convenient, um, without having to stand at a bus stop in the snow or in the rain, or God forbid there's somebody who's sleeping in there or it's a mess or whatever. So, SDA has the ability to serve the community Well, I don't think that we're doing that right now. As a matter of fact, we have four representatives on SDA. There are only six council members, by the way. There are four representatives on STA and there's one person they will never let onto the SDA board because it'll get spicy in those meetings. Okay. I was there for one meeting, and let me tell you, their goal is to have 20% of their, uh, budget come from fares. Okay? They were at like 7%. And so what did they do? They redefined what it means to pay a fair. Okay? And so now we're hitting our 20% number because we just said, okay, that one's not working. What can we say to make it look like it's working? And that's what we're doing. And so again, we just need, again, men and women of integrity who are gonna be in those spaces being like, that's nonsense. Let's just do it. Right. Jonathan, how can Spokane increase housing availability and affordability without unduly burdening neighborhoods with excessive multi-unit housing? Yes. This is such a good question and I'm so thankful that you asked it. Now I'm endorsed by like every housing organization there is. Okay. The housing builders, the people who are selling the houses, uh, the people who are building multifamily, all that kind of stuff. With that being said, okay, there is a way to achieve density without them having to be rentals. Okay? For whatever reason, and again, I'm not knocking rentals, there are people who in their life they want to rent, but when I voted for things like Boca and the BOH and stuff like that, what I was told is, Jonathan, it's going to allow for a lot more home ownership opportunities. It is like 0.002% of the housing that's getting built through these special programs is for purchase. Which to me is an absolute shame. If we're going to be giving tax breaks to people building housing, there should be more community benefit than just building, uh, rental housing. Because again, these are going into spaces and really it's a lot for a neighborhood to absorb. I live next to an apartment complex that just got built and it's 500 units. Okay. I live next to it, so anybody who wants to talk about the industry, I get it. I really do get it. There are ways to achieve density in for purchase, and so one of the things I'm trying to do right now. Is, uh, is a tweak, our MFTE program, which is a multifamily tax exemption. But if you instead, right now the way that you qualify is you have to have a level of affordability in this. Sorry, I'm getting too in the weeds on this, but, um, the idea is I want to change that to where it's incentivizing home ownership. Because home ownership is where you start to build equity in your housing, right? Your rent and your mortgage are gonna be super similar. You start building equity, you start building your generational wealth, you start closing some gaps in some things that I think is really important. And when you have owners, okay. The amount of, uh, community benefit from ownership is insane because now you don't have kids moving from district to district, moving all over the city, being in a different school system, being around a different friend system, a different support system all the time, which is detrimental to kids. Uh, but you have neighbors that you know for 10 years and it's like, well, yeah, that's Dan, and that's Marsha, and that's John. And, sorry, those are my actual neighbors names. But, uh, but you know, your neighbors, you look out for each other. Then it's like, okay, I, I don't mind watching their kids. And, uh, and so home ownership is really where we should be focused, and you can achieve the density goals that the state is mandating on, on municipalities like Spokane. You can achieve those goals without them having to be, uh, rentals. And so that's what I'm hoping to do. What I'm hoping to accomplish, and again, we'll see what's going on. I will say in a unique way, housing is where people in the city are most aligned, right? Left center. I think everybody understands that housing is too expensive right now. It's not really affordable. Particularly for young people, particularly for old people who are on social security, and their rent legitimately went up five or $600 in a year, but social security didn't keep up. I mean, they're having issues with that. I knocked on a gal's, uh, door not all that long ago, and she's 65 years old and she's living with two 20 something year old men because that's what she can afford. Um, and so it is something that we need to focus on. Like I said, I'm proud to have the endorsement of all these groups because we, uh, they know that, you know, I have the ability to bring some about it. So. Your time is up. Yeah. Uh, in a similar vein, Chris, your website states that housing costs are out of control. What can you as a city council member do to make housing more affordable? Well, what we can do is we can work within the, our comprehensive plan, which is dictated by the Growth Management Act. That's a whole nother thing that if I was a state assembly or rep representative, I would try to reform that 'cause that is hemming a lot of our housing that is happening in the city of Spokane. But what we can do now is we can actually work with our comprehensive plan. There are 10 areas around Spokane that we can help in annex from Spokane County. Now, there's several levels of this, which is fully developed, undeveloped, and slightly developed. But we really need to work on the underdeveloped part where we can actually have. Undeveloped land where we actually built more. And what we need more of is single family residential houses. We don't need more apartments right now because when people want a family, they want the American dream. Yes, many people can say that the American dream is dying, but there's still people out there that want the white picket fence, the yard and the house, because that is where you want to grow your family. That is what we need to focus on, and in these areas, we need to focus more on those developments rather than on the apartments that we're seeing across Spokane, because especially what's happening across Spokane is you can actually see at the Garland area right now, the Garland Street Apartments, because of my opponent, Zach's opponent and his removal of parking minimums. It has made a safety concern over there right now. Not only for the people who are trying to get down there to patronize the businesses. The businesses are really pissed off right now because. Now all their parking is being taken up by the people who are actually living there, and that's not good. But what is also happening is now all those streets, because now they're gonna be filled with cars, is unsafe. We can't even fit our fire trucks and our paramedics through those streets now. So when there's a fire, because that's becoming more and more prevalent as we move on in the city, we need to make sure that they're safe and that is not happening. So we need to make sure that we are actually building houses and not apartments because we are far more, we need, we have far more than apartments than we need right now. People want houses. I would like a house for my own self. It would be great for having a family when I go grow up. But I mean, grow up. It would be great to have a family soon, but right now I'm married to the city and I'm trying to focus on the city. But we really need to focus because people in my generation don't want to have a family right now because they don't have housing options. They don't wanna start their family in an apartment. They wanna start their family in a house. This, there's been a lot of frustrations with education in the last few years. What can you do on city council to help the education situation? Well, what we can do right now to help out with the health, housing or the education is to try to make sure that our kids are safe and safe Going to schools right now, what we need to do is making our safe, uh, safe. Our streets safe right now. Our safe, our streets are not really safe right now, so we need to add more RFB beacons, which are rapid flashing beacons. Those are the things that you see like on Hamilton where you press the button and it shows all these lights that show that you can cross. A lot of our kids are not having a safe trip trip to school, and we need to make sure that they get there because that is the beginning of their day and the end of their day. We wanna make sure that they're getting home and getting to school in a safe manner and not traumatizing them, where they're almost getting hit by a car. I live on Indian Trail and it is like a river running through that neighborhood right now. We need more of those to help out kids cross the street because right now, and we need to actually listen to our neighborhood councils. Like for instance, I'm on the Balboa South Indian Trail Neighborhood Council. We asked Zach Sapone several times to put a crosswalk in an RF beacon on a street called Beacon, which is kind of funny. It's redundant, but it was not put there. It was put on Woodside and it was put on Holyoke. Two different places that the neighborhood council said it was not going to work. Because we live in the neighborhood and we know how traffic forms in there. So we need to have people, we need to have our council listen to our city council or our neighborhood councils a little bit better so that we can actually protect our kids better so they can have a better education. Uh, Jonathan, earlier this year, you tried to restrict. Certain provisions of an ordinance protecting gender affirming care. Yeah. By adding five amendments that would restrict certain amount aspects of the ordinance. Yeah. Can you explain your intent and your general philosophy toward the subject? Yeah. So first and foremost, this is not a city issue, okay? This is heavily regulated by the federal, its state government. We waited into this because we wanted to score some political points, okay? And by we, I mean, not me, uh, but the city council wanted to score some political points, okay? So, uh, what happened was the ordinance basically was coming forward to designate Spokane as a shield city, okay? What the Shield City would mean is that it's very welcoming to folks who are transgender. Now, what my amendments did was it said five things. Okay? So it said, uh, number one, no, uh, cross-ex hormones, no gender affirming awful language, gender affirming surgeries for kids. And no puberty blockers for anybody under 18. Okay? So number one, boom. Right off the top number. And as a part of that, if you choose to do that as an adult, the city of Spokane is definitely not paying for it. Okay? So that was amendment number one. Amendment number two was every treatment that happens to a child to a minor must, the parent must be notified, not just physically, but any psychological treatment that is being given to a child because we know that now, uh, in the school, speaking of education, there are things that kids are being told about themselves that are lies and, and parents aren't being notified about it. Okay? So that was a mess. So number two is parents must be notified. Number three, provided for conscientious objection. Okay, so people like us. Who believe that this is a violation of the creation of God. We get to not participate without any, without any consequences. Number four was in city property. No men in women's bathrooms. Okay? And it was biological men. And they threw out that, that stupid attack, which is like, are you gonna make 'em pull down their pants and show you before they go in there? What a dumb argument. But, uh, that was it. And then lastly, in any city sponsored event, there can be no men playing in women's sports. Okay? So those were my five amendments to that, and they all failed, which is, which is, uh, you know, no shock whatsoever. But, uh, but actually I did receive my first ethics complaint in the city of Spokane for running those five amendments. So now it was unanimously dismissed and I appreciate our ethics commission for, for seeing the, the truth of the situation. But that was basically what it was. And again, the problem is, is to me, like this law that we were doing was performative at best, right? It actually wasn't gonna do anything. All of this stuff had actually already been implemented at the city level because the state mandated it. And so we didn't really have a shot there. We didn't have a chance. So it was performative at best. And at the same time, right? What City Council does have control over is the drug problem. We have 500 people this year that are going to die on the streets of Spokane, and what we're focused on is a performative nonsense ordinance. That's not gonna make any difference whatsoever. Okay? Your cars are getting broken into, over and over. Your garages are being broken into over and over and over. And what are we focused on? Things we can't affect. And that's why we need new leadership at the City of Spokane. Thank you. I'm gonna ask that you state your name, um, who the question is towards, and then ask your question, make sure it's a real question and it is short as well. So I'm gonna move around the room now. Got one here. Hi, my name's. My name's Kelly Cruz. And this question is for both of you. If elected the city council, would you support the current effort to get a ballot initiative on to. Enshrine prop one into the city charter, which means it cannot be charged or changed by politicians in the future. 73% of the citizens city of Spokane voted for that, and I'm sure you get an ear info when you're out there. So I just wanna know straight up, if that ballot initiative comes to you, will you put that on the ballot? This will be a short answer. Yes. Uh, without a doubt, I will support it. So the language from Prop One actually came from an ordinance. Again, I co-wrote with, uh, my, my bash brother, council member Michael Kakar. And, um, the language about a thousand feet within schools, parks, daycares, um, you know, that all came from an ordinance that we wrote that failed, which was, uh, uh, you know, uh. Asinine that it, that it failed. But, uh, some citizens took that up and ran it as a ballot initiative. It passed. Now the thing about doing it as a charter amendment as opposed to a code provision, there is a massive difference here, and I want people to understand the difference. So our, uh, Spokane municipal code is, uh, is subordinate to the charter. Okay? So the charter has been described as like the citizen's constitution and the, uh. Uh, the municipal code has been, uh, described as the politician's constitution, and so the reason why we want it to be in the charter is because then no, no amount of majority, no amount of votes on the dais can change this. Only the people can change this. And so it's important for us to get this into the charter because then people like me who come and go cannot change it. Only the people can change it. We're gonna run it as a, uh, as a ballot initiative. Uh, I believe it absolutely will pass this time. It won't just be within a thousand feet of schools, parks, daycares, that sort of thing. It'll be citywide, which is gonna be great. And, uh, it actually mandates funding for certain portions of this problem, which is we do need to invest more in, um, in substance use, uh, facilities and mental health facilities because a lot of the people that we have on the streets. Um, are people who are taking up jail space simply because they, they need a place where they can go because they have schizophrenia or something like that. And we need to put it in there, and it, it does a lot. That's gonna be really good. So, yes, it needs to be done and it should be in the charter and not in the code. Jay Botter, uh, a Vista. Their bill keeps going up and up and up. They always charge more, but at the same time, I notice on my bill that they're charging me $10 a month for rental on their power. And I'm trying to figure out, with every person in this room paying $10 a month, $120 a year, where's that money going to? Uh, I would ask you, would you please ask them where our rental money is going and why they need an increase in money funds if they're getting rent already? Yes. That's for both of you. Well, what we can do is that we can actually do what I've heard of. I actually talked to Gavin Cooley, who is A-C-C-F-O of Spokane a while ago. We can make sure that we go to our streets department and talk to Marlene Feis and make sure that we actually go to her and say, Hey, we need to make sure that these people are not paying as much utility taxes. And that was happened with c uh Gavin Cooley. He was able to go to with David Kon and go to Marlene Feist and say, Hey. We can't, uh, afford a 12% tax on our utility CapEx, so how can we bring it back down to about 2%? They said they wouldn't be able to do that. They fought ardently for that and they were able to make sure that they ha that happened. So if we are able to put the pressure on our streets department, we can make sure that we actually bring down the utility costs. Um, so Avista is a, a completely separate organization from the city. And Avista's rates are all, um, subject to the Utility Trade Commission, which is a state, state body. And so they can't raise their rates unless the, the Trade Commission allows them to do so. And every year they submit, some years they go up, some years they go down, depending on, on what the cost is. When it comes to, um, Avista, we can always ask them not to, you know, raise their rates as much as they would, they would like to. But the city of Spokane doesn't really have any, uh, any control over that. Um, it does come down to, I mean, uh, you know, uh, with, with a good enough relationship, you might be able to do it. But again, a vista is, is really out of our control. Um, on that, Carol Davis and Mr. Bele, I. Have an issue with fluoride in the water. Oh, yeah. And I know the city was talking about putting some kind of a research into it. Mm-hmm. Where is that going? So that study was done, um, and, uh, and thankfully for now it's dead. Um, and I think with, um, uh, particularly with the federal government coming out and saying, there is actually research that says that, uh, it can affect, um, you know, IQ and children. I, I, I hope that that. For the most part is a dead issue. But what we studied, it was a, it was a feasibility study. Okay? Now I voted against all these things. I'm just gonna give you some background, but I voted against all these things. I went to Pullman, I went to one of the B cities on the, on the west side, I can't remember which one, but one of those on the west side to, to check out how they were putting fluoride in the water. For us, the, the big trouble for us in the city of Spokane is that whereas other cities might have one central, well, we have seven different wells and we're building an eighth. Well, and so for us to actually implement this in all of our wells would've been incredibly expensive, first off to build, and then incredibly expensive every year to put it into the water. Now again, uh, one of the pros of the, of the budget challenge is that we can't afford to put fluoride in the water, which is very good. Um, but, uh, like I said, for, for now, that issue is dead and I, I, I haven't heard one word, um, from people, um, on the city council about bringing that forward, but stay vigilant. Hi fellas. I'm Jay MacPherson, and this question's for Jonathan. You mentioned earlier that Jack Sapone signed some document to defund the police. Yes. I wasn't aware that, I was hoping you could comment more on that, and you said others did. Oh yeah. Could you list who? Who do we need to know who signed this ridiculous document? Yeah. I want to be careful. I know for sure Axone did. I want to double check on the rest of the council members, but in that. Same timeframe. Everybody, I believe Kitty Ksky did. But again, do not take my my word on this. Check it out for yourself. I believe Kitty Ksky did, uh, Betsy was very favorable to it. Paul Dylan signed it. Um, and so there are a number of people on the, on the city council who did sign that. Um, the person I ran against in my first term, uh, Nazi, uh, posted all kinds of stuff on her official political page. It's time to defund the police and here's how we're gonna do it, which were articles that came out of, uh, you know, different publications throughout the, um, the United States. Uh, but these are, these are well-documented instances of them signing those pledges because at the time they were very proud of 'em. Look at us, look at how great we are standing up for people time to defund the police. Now they're running away from it, but, uh, the internet lives forever, man. So. Hi, Brandon. Casey. I was wondering what can we do to make sure the police chief is a contract position? Hmm. Okay. So this is, this is a difficult discussion, uh, in, in my opinion. I go back and forth on this. I hear a lot of people talk about things like a metro model. Now, the metro model would be the entire county basically has one public safety unit. All run by the elected sheriff. Okay. Now, in some ways that makes a ton of sense. There's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of efficiencies. We could realize if we went to one model. Um, and, but the thing is, in the, in the, in the city, you want to be able to respond quickly when public safety things happen in the city. If I were ever to be mayor, I would never want somebody else to be running the public safety. I would want me and my team to be the ones who are like, no, we're going now. Go and do this. Right? I don't wanna be in the situation that we had a few weeks ago with the no Kings protests and basically the mayor's hand being forced to go in there because the sheriff is saying, I'm gonna go in if you don't do this. And so then the mayor did it. But, um. Uh, it's, it's, it's really difficult because. Like I said, I, I go back and forth on this some days I see the real merits for it. The other days it's like the accountability is at the ballot box. And so you don't like the police chief, get rid of the mayor. You get rid of the mayor, you, you likely get rid of the police chief. And, um, so this philosophically, I don't know where I'm at on that to do it. I mean, you could put it out to the ballot, right? We did it with the, uh, the city attorney. We ran that, uh, ballot measure a couple years ago. And so if people in this room, if that's really what you wanted, you could run a ballot measure. And if it's what the, the people vote for, then it's a, it is a done deal. Go ahead, Chris. I would say the same thing. We need to make sure that it's a ballot measure so that with the, uh, citizens that there are actually picking it, it's not the city council, so, or the mayor. So I would say if we want a contract model, we need to put this vote to the people to make sure that that's what they want. Hi, I am Cheryl Grace, uh, retired police. Officer from Spokane and years ago, I'm old, years ago when people were drunk in the street and the businesses downtown and everything, we picked them up, we took them out to the valley. They got to stay. They got to stay three days, and maybe they hit the drunk tank first before they went out there, so that they're kind of unsold or they're a little bit more sober, but they're meditate mandated for three days. And it was amazing how many people would actually kind of come back to themselves, say, yeah, I need more treatment. Yeah, whatever. But we didn't have all of the drug issue that we have today. So when I hear you talk about a jail that has all of the facilities kind of worries me. 'cause it's like all of a sudden then the city's gonna be doing mental health and the city's gonna be doing drug health and the city's gonna be doing whatever. I don't think that's our job, especially, but getting people off the street and having a place to put them and have them getting the services that they need, that I think that is what law enforcement really is, what their job is. So then they can go on and take care of other things. So the question is, I've been told that now this, that, uh, we can't hold anybody because it's against their will for three days. That's unkind to them or whatever the words are now. So is there something in the process within our state that we can actually do something to help these people? 'cause down by Catholic charities that everything else that you talked about, it's ridiculous and you see it all over our nation. It's ridiculous. But we, we have to have the laws so that the police could actually. Keep them. Not that the police keep them, but somebody, the NGO can keep them and then really get the help that they need. And a lot of people, I saw it, it changed. They came back and the same thing happened with. Yeah, what are you gonna do? No, the question is, yeah, sorry about that. Yeah. Really ticks me off. Yeah, I just, just, that's not a question. Uh, the question is, has the law changed at all? Are we still in the same spot of where Yeah. They fold down for the fentanyl and, you know, well, God bless 'em. You know, or do we have a law? Do we have an access? Is anybody doing anything to change this law? Because I haven't heard about it. Yeah, so this is difficult. The involuntary hold, I believe, is limited to, to 24 hours at this point. Now, if you do it on a weekend, then you can hold them the entire weekend, right? But it's, it's limited to 24 hours at this point. Now there are certain laws that, um, that exist that are not utilized often and with the current administration and the current city council would not be, um, enforced because again, they've already removed the clear mechanism for enforcement when it comes to drugs, um, um, and those kinds of things. So, um, but there are state. Such as Ricky's Law. Okay. Ricky's law allows for the involuntary detention of somebody with substance use disorder if they are going to kill themselves. Okay? Now, that's a bit of a high bar, but I actually don't think it's that high of a bar. So I ran an amendment in the city of Spokane that failed five to two that said, if we Narcan you and we bring you back to life, that's an immediate trigger for Ricky's law because you were going to die and we saved your life. And that failed five to two. Okay? And so with the current leadership that we have, not only in the city, but in the state, uh, we are gonna have real problems that we run into. Now that doesn't mean we, there's nothing that we can do with the right leadership in the city. We can absolutely lean into those laws that make it happen. Go ahead Chris. So I'm on the same vein. We really need to work on Ricky's law and we need to actually reform it to make it sure that it's a lot longer. There's a lot of people that are getting on fentanyl and opioids that need a lot longer hold than just 24 hours. There are several youth that I know of right now that have passed away because they did not have the youth that have the hold that needed them to save their lives. Now, many people think that we're actually taking away their freedom by involuntarily detain, but we're not. We're actually saving them from themselves. By not implementing this law in the right way, we are actually having this toxic compassion that is killing them. They need tough laws, help them get out of their state of mind to show that, hey, you were not in the right place. You needed someone to help you, and this is what was going to happen. And that's why we need to reform Ricky's law so we can have longer holds because especially for fentanyl and opioids, you need a lot longer. To come off. This is not just more than a sweet, it is almost a several week to almost a several month process because once you have the hook of fentanyl and opioids in your body, it is going to be a lifelong journey that you need some help with. And it's not just going to be a little kind of step of, oh, it's 24 hours and you're off cold Turkey. No, that's not gonna work. You need to have a lot longer so that we are helping these people in the right way and not killing them. Gia, McKenzie Spokane. I would, um, I, it's my understanding, if somebody has an update, I appreciate hearing about it, but it's my understanding that Governor Ferguson is, um, working on. The process of providing fentanyl for addicts because it's much better that way. What are your comments on that, please? Uh, we should not be providing drugs to addicts. I am totally behind that. We should not be enabling the problem and we should actually be trying to stop the problem. They don't need to have more fentanyl. They need less fentanyl. And they actually need places and, uh, like stabilization centers that are going to give them the actual drugs that are going to get them off of this like Naloxone, suboxone, or uh, methadone kind of clinic because that is what's going to be needed. 'cause that is a lifelong hook that is going to be in there and they need that kind of support system. But we don't need to be giving them even more fentanyl in kind of the area that sideshow Bob is doing. Yeah. So there, there are a number of measures that are happening at the, at the state level and even at the local level, um, where. We are absolutely working on these harm reduction measures. Okay. So if you've never heard the term harm reduction, harm reduction, uh, is basically your needle exchange programs, your safe injection sites, your safe pipe sites, that sort of thing. And, uh, it's, it's already happening far more than you know. Okay. And this is, this predates Ferguson, so in the county. Okay. The regional Health Department provides a needle exchange program for intravenous drug users, users. Not for testosterone. Not for insulin. There's a, uh, there's a needle exchange site. Would somebody care to venture? A guess how many needles we exchanged in, uh, 2021, which is the last year I looked at 20, 21, 2 million. What was it? 20 million. 20 million. Not 20 million. That is, that is the highest number I've ever heard though. So, but okay. Usually when I ask this question, I get like 20,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand, something like that. 2 million needles a year were being exchanged by your county health department. Okay. Your tax dollars are paying for those needles. Those are the kinds of programs that locally we actually can affect. We're not required to provide one of those. We can provide one of those. And the problem with the harm reduction folks is that they'll come and tell you, yeah, but what about aids? We gotta reduce the aids, you know, transmission. And they're not wrong. The, uh, the needle exchanges does help reduce, uh, you know, AIDS transmission in the, uh, in the community. But how many people are dying of AIDS every year in the, in the county? Not very many. Not very many, right? I don't think any last year how many people are dying of fentanyl. Hundreds of people. So when you're looking at the net effects of what we're, what we're doing here in the, in the city and in the county, I think that the programs that we're implementing like this, where they'll say, ah, it's saving lives. I don't see it. It's, it is actually killing lives, uh, killing people. And we need to, we need to shut it down. So what are we going to do about it? State level again, we can do, you know, uh, our purview would be the city. Um, I have lobbied our county commissioners, and this is something you should also lobby Your county commissioners. County commissioners could shut it down tomorrow. Okay. My name is Lila and, um, I, it's about the safety on Division Street. Yeah, on Friday night, Saturday night into Sunday. I live right off of there and it's terrible. I wouldn't even wanna be on the street going downtown at that time. It's scary. Um, I don't know where these people get the money for their gas to do this up and down the street. Is there anything that's ever going to get done about that? It's horrible. Are you talking about people speeding? Speeding. Yeah. They're playing. Yeah. Yeah. Division with your life. Yes. When you're on division, it's horrible. Totally. It's terrible. And, and how can they do that? Uh, police officers can't even do anything about it because it's so outta control. So, so I'll say this on this, this is a, a frequent thing that I run into, uh, when I'm talking to my neighborhood councils about things. Uh, we have a traffic calming fund and the traffic calming fund is intended to, uh, you know, put those, you know, medians or whatever to slow down traffic. Um, but we finally have a traffic unit again. It took us years to get one back. Um, there again, we are so understaffed. Believe it or not, a traffic unit is a luxury like it. It really, really is. When you're responding to tier one, they have three tiers. When you're responding to level one calls all day every day, it's really hard to have the other aspects to keep the the community safe. We finally have one again. We've been pushing this issue for the last few years. We finally have one again, and uh, what we will be able to do then is having officers on the streets writing tickets for speeding. And, uh, and I hope we get really serious about it in the next few months. Uh, but when, you know, this helicopter's flying too. What is that all about? Who's paying for that? The sheriff's helicopter. I don't know. Is it, I I, I'm not entirely sure on the, on the helicopters. The sheriff does have a helicopter Friday and Saturday. That's all you hear Saturday, up and down division all the way to Franklin Park. Oh yeah. It's horrible. It's like, well, what's going on? You know? Can they not hide? Can we not get the protection we need? Can we not get the police protection? Can't they hire more? Why are they cutting these things? Yep. This is horrible. Absolutely. I don't know about the helicopters. I'll look into the helicopters, but, uh, we do have a traffic unit. Again, it is not very big. It's only a, a couple officers, but. This is, it's a step in the right direction, Chris. So I'll just add on to Jonathan's, uh, kind of point that we really need to redo our traffic unit. We only have four officers right now in our traffic unit, and it used to be at 12. We need to really get back at those numbers because that's the amount of people that we need to fo uh, focus on our streets right now. The more officers we have on those streets will definitely put down speed because I know that when I go down Indian Trail and I see an officer in the same place every time that's pulling people over, I slow down a actual cop on the street stop speeding. That too. But that is way better than a speed camera or anything else. And what we can do with the, uh, what we were talking about with the, uh, helicopter is that I've been talking with the SPD and they actually are having new technologies that are using drones. So hopefully with that in the future. That'll be a little bit quieter and not as bad as what, because they actually have a bigger area that they can go over and it's a lot quieter for y'all, I'm assuming, um, city. How much does the city spend a year on Narcan and do you think there should be a limit on how many times we're gonna save their lives? Yeah. Uh, good question. So the question was how much does the city spend on Narcan and, uh, is there a limit on how many times we should save their lives? Yeah. Uh. So on, on the Narcan specifically, I'm not entirely sure. There is a lot of places that Narcan is coming from. There's a lot of private distribution of Narcan as well, so it's really hard for me to understand where it's coming from all the time. Fire does present, uh, an update, uh, once a month, and their numbers are at about 60 a month. I think that they're deploying Narcan, but again, that is a drop in the bucket. Uh, you know, at like the rib path downtown, there's literally Narcan hanging from the lights. Like, it's so prevalent there. That's not, I wish that were a joke, Kelly. I do. I've seen it. I thought that was a great Christmas tree. I know. I, I wish that were a joke. Uh, what, but when it comes down to that, I would say, you know, just for us, I hope there's no limit to how many times we save them, um, because I still always hold out hope that, that God can get ahold of their heart and, and, um, and change their life. Um, and. There's, there's other, I mean, of course. Yeah, totally. Yep. But there's other costs, like my daughter. Um, in a dr. Yep. And they see the same people all the time. Totally. What, you're getting these people in there and you have, uh, 20 people in the waiting room, you know, keeping their guts out or whatever for whatever reason. Yeah. And you having all these people coming in just to get Narcan Totally. Walk out with their pimps. So they're gonna be back tomorrow. You're, you're, you're totally, yep. All the costs from the medical, you know, industry and taking care from away from other people. Yeah, you're totally right. And this actually, I think, brings us to an important point. Which is the amount of your tax dollars that are actually being spent addressing a very small portion of the population. Okay? So the mayor of Portland, not all that long ago, came out and said 40% of their, uh, first responders time was spent addressing homelessness and drug issues. Okay? 40%. Now, in the city of Spokane, we spent almost $200 million a year between police and fire, okay? So in just those two departments alone, that's $80 million a year in taxpayer impact. Addressing drugs and homelessness in the city of Spokane. Okay? We don't need any more tax increases for a long time if we can just get these things under control. You're going to get better responses in your neighborhoods. You're gonna have the traffic units that we're looking for. You're gonna have the things that are making your city safe. If we can get these things under control, because again, not just that, but then we spend about $40 million a year in cash. On homelessness. Okay, so that's about $120 million. Then you start talking about things where taxpayers are paying for it. The ER visits. How do you quantify that, right? The lost businesses or the lost revenue from businesses not wanting to come in here. The lost jobs, the lost wages, the lost tax revenue in sales and property and utility, and all the things. You start looking at it. My estimation is that these two issues impact the taxpayer. Keep in mind our, our total general fund is 250 million. Our total budget overall is 1.2. I put it at about $200 million of taxpayer impact on these two issues. Once we get those things under control, and again, it's not hard and we actually, sorry, I keep rambling. We better get serious about it. 'cause cities up and down the west coast. Are getting serious about this. And Colville closing their homeless camps, right? Moses Lake closing their homeless camps, even Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, starting to get serious about this issue. Where are they going? Sp here. They're coming to Spokane. Okay. And the reason why they're coming here is because we have lax laws. And generous services. And unless we get serious about it, it's only gonna get worse. Chris? Well, first thing I would like to let everyone know is that did you know that every one of you, uh, if you go to your pharmacy, has a prescription for Narcan, you can go to your pharmacy, and that is what the state has done. So now they have provided, so it's hard to find out the exact cost because we don't know if it's being privately used or preferably used, but as when I went on the insurance exchange a couple months ago, each Narcan for one dosage, how much do you think it was. For one dosage, $50, 20, 105. So when you have someone who's getting Narcan multiple times a day, that is going to be hundreds of dollars that they're not, that they're not understanding where that's coming from. So we need to make sure that we're fi figuring out where the public use of our current Narcan is, as well as private, because it's kind of a little convoluted when again, it's. Crazy to me that everyone in this room has a prescription for Narcan waiting for them at their pharmacy. That because they want help to help people out there. And that's another thing that I find egregious is that it shouldn't be your responsibility to carry that around. It is not your responsibility to try to do that for these people. 'cause one of the reasons why. Is that, I don't know if you've seen what happens after you've narcaned someone, but it's not pleasant. They don't wake up and start saying, Hey, thank you for this. They get up and they just sprint away. That's most of the cost is, so that is why we need to make sure that we're doing Narcan in the right way and making sure that we're using it in a cost effective manner. So it's not costing you all money. Okay. I got, uh, I do one more question here before we wrap it up. Uh, what do you know about Spokane being a sanctuary city? Yes. Favorite topic of mine. So, non-binding resolution. So let me tell you this, okay? Spokane is 100% a sanctuary city. Washington State is 100% a sanctuary state. Now, what they will say is, but we never said sanctuary, right? And, uh, the definition for what? A sanctuary. There's actually no clear definition as to what a sanctuary city is. But if you are passing laws to oppose ice coming into your city, if you're passing laws to keep federal law enforcement and immigration enforcement from coming into your city, or your police officers being able to engage with these or your jails for being able to release information to these infor uh, to these organizations, you are 100% a sanctuary state and sanctuary city. 2019 Washington State passes the Keep Washington Working Act. Uh, this year we passed the resolution reaffirming the Keep Washington Working Act. Okay, so these are things that we're doing. Remember, we tried to pass laws to keep ice out of our parks. And then we found out, oh, that's illegal. We can't do that. And so we eliminated that and said, okay, they can't be on our roads. And uh, and what ended up happening is that ordinance did fail, but not because the people who voted with Michael and I thought it was gonna fail. Okay. Council president voted with us and then immediately sent out a press release saying that it passed. Betsy Wilkerson had no idea that her vote made it fail. Okay? These are the people that we're dealing with on the, on the city council. Now, uh, what we need to do again, if you want Spokane to not be a sanctuary city, uh, you really need your state legislators to say, stop this nonsense. And the reason why it matters is because Trump's serious about not bringing money into sanctuary, uh, uh, uh, states. Okay? Your taxes, again, will have to go up to provide the same level of services that are happening. If we lose tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government, it's more than just saying a nice thing. It has real world impacts, and I'm not sure we, we understand that at city Hall. Well, the reason why I said non-binding resolution is because that's what it was when it was ordered, when it was, uh, voted into law. It was a non-binding resolution mean that it's not an ordinance. So it's actually kind of funny when you talk to Lisa Brown, especially like when our sheriff, uh uh, sheriff Knowles actually talks to her about a certain thing that he's trying to get through is when you push the point, depending on who is talking, they'll say, yes, we are a sanctuary city. But then sometimes they'll say, no, we're not a sanctuary city. 'cause it's a non-binding resolution. So we are not a sanctuary city. We have no laws that makes us a sanctuary city. And it's funny when they kind trying to push it because we have no protections to make it that way. So we need to make sure that we remove those laws off the books of the resolution because it just makes everything confusing and it also makes it so that we have a target on our back when it comes to federal funding. Lisa Brown right now is actually making a huge stink about how we may lose our CBDG funds, our community building and development grant funds, which are come by the federal government. And that's because we are saying we are designated as a sanctuary city. Well, that's the thing that is kind of funny is that it's depending on who you talk to, we don't know. And that's coming from city leadership. So. We need to make sure that we are making, that we're moving these laws, which is the Keep Washington Working Act, which did nothing to do anything to help anyone. So we need to make sure that we are making sure that we are not a sanctuary city. 'cause we now have a target on our back that we may lose a lot of our federal funding. That helps a lot of our, especially our neighborhood councils with some of their neighborhood activities. Um, I have the microphone so I have some more questions. Uh, so, uh, we were all, um, really seriously affected by COVID. Mm-hmm. Um, and it seemed like the city just went, uh, lockstep with whatever came down from state WHO. Um, I know kinda like west coast politicians. Um, are we poised right now to do the same thing or the same thing to happen? Um, I, I actually, so the city is being sued on some of these things, so I have to think about my answers so that I don't get, uh, myself in any legal trouble. So you take this one first and then I gotta think about how I can respond. Can you repeat the question then? Yeah. So, um, would, uh, were the COVID. Outbreak happen again? Would the city respond the same way it did four or five years ago with who's on current leadership right now? I would say yes because they really like to make sure that they're telling you they know what is better than you. But I would be against that and I would be one of the major people that would push back against that. For instance, back on the City Salary Commission. That is why and the reasons why I'm not on the City Salary Commission anymore, back during COVID and the pandemic during 2021. They thought that they were going to get salaries, uh, increased as well for the city, uh, council, the city council president and the mayor, respectively. Jonathan didn't come to those. He was very, very honorable about what was going on, and he wasn't asking for a raise. My opponent did because he thought he didn't get paid enough. He said that several times in several neighborhood council meetings that he didn't get paid enough to represent you all. But that is one of the reasons why I'll be pushing back against that when that happens, because when that car decision came, I made sure that I put the motion forward that said, no, you all do not need a salary increase right now, because the citizens Spokane do not, cannot afford some of the stuff that they're doing. So by increasing your salaries, it would be really bad and it would be spinning on the citizens of Spokane to do that. So by pushing back against that, I lost my position. There's both commissioners that are on there right now that have been on there since when I was on there. But that's what I'll do to push back against that and make sure that that doesn't happen. To piggyback off that, I was the only city council member who did not show up, and even when they tried to trick me into some of those meetings, I left those meetings, whatever it was. Um, but, but on this. I was, I was disappointed by just about every elected representative in this area. Like I said, my business was totally crushed. Um, I lost millions of dollars. Um, personally, I was incredibly affected by this. We didn't qualify for any PPP, we didn't qualify for, um, uh, any state. Um, um. Reimbursement. And by the time it got to the city, I was on the city council and it would've been improper for me to receive, uh, money for my business even though my business is in the city. So we got hit real hard. Um, I was disappointed by just about everybody. Um, and, uh, it absolutely could happen again, um, in the city of Spokane, um, with this current leadership. I think that what again you are going to need for, uh, the future. Is you need people who are, um, are self-assured, believe in what they're doing, have some real gusto, um, got, uh, got, you know, courage running through their veins. Uh, 'cause that's what, um, is gonna be needed. Um, now I will say I think Council Member Kakar, who at least voted to not censor me, uh, in that time, Michael Karts been a great partner and, uh, with a majority on the city council, um, the direction of the city and the response to the city. Could be much different. Now, what that comes with, and I wanna share, so I was threatened with $14,000 a day in fines every day that I refused to wear a mask while I was, uh, at the city council. And because I was knowingly breaking a law, the city would not indemnify me. So for months I was worried that the health department would show up. I would get fined $14,000 a day for not having worn a mask. And when you're actually in the moment, it is really easy to say, yes, I will absolutely do this. When you're in the moment, it's much more difficult. And I'll say, I definitely, uh, would not, uh, uh, wilt again. Uh, we didn't, I didn't wilt the first time. I won't wilt again. And I think having gone through that process, I would help be the extra courage necessary for our other council members to say, it's gonna be okay. We're gonna get through this. We're not playing this game. Amen. Um, what place does the Lord have in your life? Obviously God is first and foremost, uh, in my life. Uh, after that it is my wife and my kids. After that is my business, um, and making sure that I can provide for my family. After that, it is my, my church and all the work that I do there. And then down here is my work at the city, and I love every one of those. I'm, I'm honored that God has, uh, given me all the things that I have in my life. I'm honored for the wife that God brought into my life. Um, I'm honored for, uh, you know, the ways that God has blessed the work of our hand. I'm honored that God trusted me enough to be in this position, in this moment in time, that we needed real fighters in there. I'm honored that God, uh, trusted me. I would love some help, but I'm honored that God believed in me to get here. But, uh, everything we do here, obviously we are citizens of heaven. First. We're here temporarily. That is our eternal home. Uh, he's our father and. Yeah, Chris, faith is the focal part of my life and it goes faith, family, and country. That is what is Lays the foundation of who I am, is that it is my faith in God that helps me go forward. If it wasn't for my faith in God, I don't know if I would be here right now because it takes persistence, resilience, and a courage that only God can give you to keep pushing forward to. Let everyone know, this isn't my first time running for office. This is my fourth time, and if it wasn't for God, I don't think I would have the courage to keep going forward of knowing that. Do not stop quitting on your, uh, do not quit on your community. You need to make sure you're there for them, you're defending them and you're being a champion for their rights and for their interests. Okay, um, Ken, do you have anything you want to say? I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Absolutely not. No. You always have something to say. You've been up since four this morning, haven't you? So, um, my last question, just to wrap up the evening, what, um, we talk about a lot of the issues in the city. Um. Okay. What positive things are you looking forward to? Um, after this election, I'm looking to represent my district better than my opponent right now, and also tapping into the great potential that is Spokane. We have such a great potential that is being wasted right now, and that is what I look forward to once we actually can tap into that ground swell. Of amazing things that are happening here in Spokane. We can make it back to what I can remember when I was growing up, where you could run from the top of five mile to the edges of the South Hill and feel safe in every portion of the city. That's what I wanna re, that's what I want to bring Spokane back to, and that's what I look forward to is 'cause I know it is still there. It is not gone. We still need to fight for it, and that's what I'm gonna be doing. I'm gonna be fighting to bring that back so we can all remember a Spokane that we all enjoy. The question was, what are you looking forward to after the election? A vacation for sure. Yeah. Um, no, uh, I, I, I mean, I am looking forward to a victory. I've, you know, I've done a good job for my, for my people. Uh, you know, it, it tends to trend in our direction and so I feel really good about that. But honestly, the amount of phone calls I get from people who are so desperate and so ready, so like on the edge of their seat, ready for Spokane to make that turn toward normalcy again, toward common sense and toward reason. Again, I mean, it's insane. The amount of people I talk to every single day are like. Okay. How's downtown? I mean, I get calls from international companies that are like, Hey, we're interested in investing in Spokane, but we see all these articles, we see all this stuff. What's downtown like or what's, you know, the city like, what are your neighbors like? How, how's the north south freeway coming along? All this kind of stuff. The amount of people who are ready for Spokane to become, uh, you know, uh. A, a place of a, become an economic driver for this region. Again, I mean, it's insane. The amount of jobs, the amount of opportunity, the amount of income, uh, uh, all the things that are cut, that are, that are ready to come into the city once sanity is restored, um, I mean, it really is encouraging and Spokane's best days are 100% ahead of it right now. I know that there are times where we get frustrated and we're like. God, how's this gonna work out? And honestly, I don't exactly know how it's gonna work out, but I do wanna share one thing. I feel like the Holy Spirit ministered to me, uh, if I could as we're talking about this, because there are a lot of times in my life where I feel like God ministers to me, and it doesn't quite make sense. Uh, but, uh, but God has never let me down in that regard. Uh, for those of you who don't know, my, uh, my wife and I were infertile for many years, but God spoke to me and told me that we were gonna have kids naturally. And now I have a five-year-old son named Samuel, obviously, because God has heard. I have almost 2-year-old twins. They're gonna be two in a week. And, uh, so absolutely that same voice that told me that is the same voice that told me to stay and fight and I got elected. And that same voice is the, is the one that, uh, pointed me towards Isaiah 14. Uh, as I'm finding Isaiah here, forgive me. My goodness. You're a pastor and you can't find Isaiah. There it is. Found. Oops. That's right. Uh. I kept seeing Song Solomon right before. I'm skipping that one, but, uh, just kidding. Uh, but Isaiah 14, uh, you know, it basically talks about this is the devil, uh, or yeah, the devil saying, I will ascend, I will be like the most high. Um, but then it says, um. You know, but you said in your heart, this is verse 13. I will ascend to heaven. I'll raise my throne above the stars of God, and I'll sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I'll ascend above the heights of the clouds. I'll make myself like the most high. Nevertheless, you'll be brought down to shol, to the recesses of the pit. Those who see you will stare at you. They will say, they will closely examine you. Saying, is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a wilderness and overthrew its cities who did not allow his prisoners to go home? Right. As I was praying one day, because this is like six months into office, I was like just really upset, like, God, why would you put me here if this is really what it's like? And I felt like the Holy Spirit minister to me and said, Jonathan, they will be made low. Okay? I don't know how it's gonna happen. I don't have the answers for you, but I hold onto that every single day and believe that the people who are working and bringing wickedness into this city will be made low and once again. God will be honored here. Reason will find its way back. Your government will be working for you again, and, uh, I think it's much closer than we realize. If you guys want to find out more information about Jonathan and Chris, um, they've got tables out here in the front. Stop by, grab some of the material. If you really like what they said, you want to grab a sign and put it in your yard. Or on somebody else's property and blame it on somebody else. You can do that too. All right, folks. That was the end of the candidate forum. free Range is a weekly news and public affairs program presented by Range Media and produced by Range Media and KYRS Community Radio,