This proposal is in no way acceptable. The SEPA process is the only way for the public to get notice (sometimes) and comment on projects prior permitting. It's already difficult enough for concerns to be heard unless you have $$$ to throw at the process. It's pretty hard for a community to come up with the $$$ necessary, particularly in the allowed timeframe. Your "do what you want" comprehensive plan is already turning community neighborhoods into areas with a high density of strangers who care nothing for each other. Replacing affordable (relatively) homes with big box housing occupied by people who have no personal (or $) invested in the community. This, along with the revisions of the last few years are not limited to affordable housing so it's not about that crisis. It's bait and switch politics at its worst. You are destroying urban forests and historic homes. At the same time, spending tax dollars to plant more street trees. You are not investing in infrastructure upgrades necessary to adequately support increased density.
Required developer contributions to that infrastructure are laughable compared to costs. This does not make Spokane a better place to live. This approach to development is short-sighted and destroys the very things that make Spokane great and appealing. Sooner than later, there will be no one to fill those big boxes that were built because you have destroyed what made people come here and we will have an abandoned, run-down urban core no one will want to live in. I could give you specifics and examples but I seem too only discover these proposals just before the deadline (while you and the developers have been working on it for years) so this is the best I can do.
Lori Rodriguez
[Personal contact details omitted from the reading text.]
Lori Rodriguez
Feb 18, 2026
Local Resident
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This proposal is in no way acceptable. The SEPA process is the only way for the public to get notice (sometimes) and comment on projects prior permitting. It's already difficult enough for concerns to be heard unless you have $$$ to throw at the process. It's pretty hard for a community to come up with the $$$ necessary, particularly in the allowed timeframe. Your "do what you want" comprehensive plan is already turning community neighborhoods into areas with a high density of strangers who care nothing for each other. Replacing affordable (relatively) homes with big box housing occupied by people who have no personal (or $) invested in the community. This, along with the revisions of the last few years are not limited to affordable housing so it's not about that crisis. It's bait and switch politics at its worst. You are destroying urban forests and historic homes. At the same time, spending tax dollars to plant more street trees. You are not investing in infrastructure upgrades necessary to adequately support increased density.
Required developer contributions to that infrastructure are laughable compared to costs. This does not make Spokane a better place to live. This approach to development is short-sighted and destroys the very things that make Spokane great and appealing. Sooner than later, there will be no one to fill those big boxes that were built because you have destroyed what made people come here and we will have an abandoned, run-down urban core no one will want to live in. I could give you specifics and examples but I seem too only discover these proposals just before the deadline (while you and the developers have been working on it for years) so this is the best I can do.
Lori Rodriguez
[Personal contact details omitted from the reading text.]