Stark on one-man crusade to restore police, firefighters

By John Vlahovich
Spokane Public Radio

City councilman Brad Stark is waging a – so far – lonely campaign to restore the 80 people cut in the past two years from Spokane’s fire and police rolls. His latest effort went nowhere Monday night. But Stark is still optimistic that one day the rest of Spokane’s city council will come round to his way of thinking.

Monday night, Stark tried to get the city council to pull $48,000 from fire department administration and hire a line firefighter. Stark contends Spokane needs emergency responders, more than it does department administrators.

“Two nights ago we had a fire at Gonzaga and that took 75 percent of the city’s resources to combat that. And at the same time we had a house fire going in West Central. We were tapped out,” he says. “We had fire trucks coming in from the Valley, up in Mead and south of town, coming in to staff our stations and to respond to emergency calls that were coming in.

“In a city of our size, that’s unacceptable. We’ve got to be able to have the personnel and the apparatus on hand to handle police and fire issues here in the city of Spokane,” Stark says.

Council members turned thumbs down to Stark’s plan, saying they didn’t have enough information at this point.

Stark also wanted nearly $224,000 realized by closing two city hall departments last year spent on firefighters. Unfortunately for him, the council had voted a week earlier to give that money to local human services agencies.

The big unanswered question for council members is how to keep new hires from being laid off just a year or two after coming on board.

In the words of Al French, “If we can’t sustain these positions over a long term, then we don’t do the city, the taxpayers, or our employees any service by fluctuating from year to year on budgets that are constantly challenged.”

Despite Monday night’s rebuff, Stark vows to press forward in his quest to reverse emergency personnel losses, both on his own and, “…with the other council members and with the strategic planning committee to find opportunities to restore public safety.

“I’ll be quite frank. I'll take every opportunity that there is in order to get more firefighters and more police onto the streets of Spokane,” says Stark.

The city council’s strategic planning committee, of which Stark is a member, is charged with finding a permanent solution to Spokane’s budget woes.