Deputy city administrator outlines Spokane's new community-safety network, from 311 outreach to Spokane United 911 clinicians

Deputy City Administrator Maggie Yates briefed the commission on the Brown administration's community-safety strategy, saying the goal is to "have the right responder at the right time with the right resource to improve community safety outcomes." She described a mix of nonemergency outreach, shelter navigation and new emergency communications capacity the city has developed over the past year.

Yates said the city has set up a 311-based routing system that can dispatch outreach teams contracted through Catholic Charities. "These are two-person teams in each of our four precincts," she said, and the city is planning to double downtown coverage to increase near-real-time outreach for people experiencing mental distress, substance use or homelessness. "Outreach can respond to SPD and take the lead in cases where law enforcement might not be necessary," Yates said, adding that outreach teams also can call SPD if a situation escalates.

She described a recently converted day navigation center, operated by Jules Helping Hands in an existing city facility, that provides case management, behavioral health partnerships with Providence Community Clinic, showers, laundry and meals. "The center has a capacity of about 80 people at any one time, but they're seeing about 100 people come every day," she said, and case managers help connect visitors to more stable housing and services.

Yates outlined the city's move away from a single large shelter toward smaller scattered-site shelters of about 20'30 beds with population-specific case management. She said early results show fewer returns to homelessness for people served by the scattered-site model.

On emergency communications, Yates said Spokane is planning a phased separation from the regional emergency communication center and creation of Spokane United 911 (SUN). "The first phase is gonna be taking crime check calls, and then we'll take fire dispatch, and then we'll take the call taking function," she said. She added that the city secured a federal earmark, with support from Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, to place 911 clinicians in SUN to help de-escalate calls on the phone and redirect responses to the appropriate resource.

Yates also said the earmark funds will support the development of civilian response teams that could handle nonemergency situations in real time, preserving sworn officers for critical calls. She cautioned that the civilian-response work is in planning; the funding has been awarded but implementation remains in development. On co-response models, she described an expanded fire behavioral response team and a co-deploy model pairing firefighter-paramedics with clinicians; those units now operate seven days a week with extended hours.

Yates said the city has used opioid settlement dollars for prevention and treatment: jointly funding Maddie's Place for infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome, expanding sobering beds, and growing a fire-department 'cares' follow-up team that delivers Narcan and connects individuals to services within roughly 24 hours after an overdose.

Commissioners pressed Yates on implementation details: which organizations will staff civilian response teams, when federal funds will arrive, the location and size of scattered-site shelters, and whether 311 coverage can be extended beyond business hours. Yates said she would follow up with precise counts of scattered-site locations and noted that an online form routes 311 requests to outreach workers on weekends when phones are not staffed. She also said expanding 311 and overnight navigation would require additional funding and partnerships.

The briefing returned several times to the administration's goal of matching needs to resources and reducing reliance on sworn officers for nonemergency behavioral-health contacts. Yates encouraged commissioners to follow up with questions and said staff would provide additional operational details on the items requested.