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Spokane councilors, chiefs and residents spar over traffic enforcement, sidewalks and red-light cameras
Summary
Town-hall speakers pushed for more traffic enforcement, faster sidewalk repairs and installation of cameras; police outlined a new centralized traffic unit and councilors described funding and program constraints.
Residents and council members used a Spokane City Council town hall to press for more traffic enforcement, faster sidewalk infill and expanded red-light and speed-camera coverage. Chiefs and staff described a mix of increased patrols, technology and long-running infrastructure challenges.
Chief Kevin Hall said the department is “reconstituting a centralized traffic unit” funded by the public-safety levy, combining dedicated officers, reconstructionists and technology such as drones and cameras to change driving behavior and follow data on hotspots. “We wanna combine that because we are limited in our capacity and the number of officers we have with technology,” Hall said.
Council members and residents pressed for both short-term enforcement and long-term engineering fixes. Several speakers urged rapid responses after serious collisions. Spokane resident Eric Lowe pointed to WSDOT crash data and urged a council resolution directing adaptive traffic measures within 48 hours of traffic fatalities; he said Spokane had 22 traffic fatalities in 2024.
Sidewalks and missing connections were a recurring concern. Council members and staff said the city has about 650 miles of missing sidewalks and has explored a “sidewalk utility” to spread costs over years. Public-works staff warned repair rules vary by neighborhood; Abby, the city staff neighborhood connectivity manager, said missing sidewalks are easier to inventory than large-scale repairs and called for policy decisions about funding and scope.
Residents also asked for more consistent enforcement of vehicle registration and tabs; several speakers said unregistered drivers complicate crash investigations.
On cameras, Council member Luke Zippone said the council has allocated funding and the transportation director is moving a stalled camera rollout forward. “We did have a bottleneck in the previous administration of getting new cameras out, and that is being moved forward,” Zippone said.
What was not decided: No new camera locations or sidewalk-utility legislation was adopted at the town hall. Council members called for follow-up briefings and data presentations from transportation staff and the police on the new traffic unit’s operations and pilot camera sites.
Ending: Council members said they will pursue a mix of engineering, enforcement and funding changes and asked residents to keep reporting problems through 311 so data drives resource allocation.
