Residents, recovery worker urge Spokane County commissioners to back ‘transition to treatment’ MOU

Wendy Fishburne, a Fancher-area resident, thanked the board for protecting a newly acquired county park and urged commissioners to support a transition-to-treatment memorandum of understanding, saying the MOU "sends a regional message" that the county is moving toward treatment-focused responses for people living with addiction.

"I've heard that funding for the housing, we're gonna move from 88% to 35%," Fishburne said, urging the commission to protect the funding stream and the jobs of local service providers.

Randall O'Brien, a Spokane resident who said he worked in mental health for 40 years and is 39 years in recovery, told commissioners that housing alone would not have produced his recovery. "Giving me a house would not have gotten me here," O'Brien said, adding that treatment — and in some cases court-ordered treatment — had been the turning point for many people he has worked with.

O'Brien, who described experience in crisis intervention and as a teacher of psychiatric nurse practitioners, urged the board to seize the available funding for the transition-to-treatment model and to assemble the wraparound services (childcare, housing resources and recovery supports) he said are needed for people to succeed.

Susie Hokanson, who identified herself as a member of the League of Women Voters, spoke separately about a land-acknowledgement process and an upcoming Sage School groundbreaking, but did not address the MOU directly.

The speakers’ remarks came during the Open Public Forum; no formal action on the MOU was taken during the meeting. The board later moved on to a proclamation and routine agenda approvals and scheduled an executive session on pending litigation.