29-05-2025
Spokane Valley City Council pulls public safety funding to cover costs of struggles with Councilman Al Merkel
May 28—The Spokane Valley City Council clawed back funding intended for public safety Tuesday to help cover the costs of the ongoing legal struggles with a member of the governing board.
Controversy has followed Councilman Al Merkel throughout his first year and change in office. Bickering between Merkel and his opponents on the council has become a mainstay of Tuesday meetings, and two independent investigations into his behavior were launched last year following complaints filed by his peers and city employees. One found Merkel repeatedly disrespected city staff, often engaging in "intimidating behavior." The latter found Merkel's use of the social media platform NextDoor was likely in violation of state public records law and city code, and is the root of a lawsuit the city launched against him in February.
The council on Tuesday voted 5-1 to approve amendments to more than a dozen city funds to reflect a $5.4 million increase in revenue due largely to grant awards, as well as a nearly $14 million increase in expenditures. Merkel was the lone dissenting vote; Councilwoman Jessica Yaeger was absent.
Several of the increases in expenditures are from obligated spending of the grant awards on projects, like various energy efficiency and clean building grants or affordable housing and homeless services awards. Others are for ongoing projects, like the $4.6 million budget left for the Spokane Valley Cross Country Course, or are due to an error in calculations, like the nearly $1 million loss of license tab fees the city planned to collect this year based on faulty data from the Department of Licensing.
The line item that drew the most attention, however, was the $350,000 in legal costs associated with Merkel. The council elected to transfer funding away from vehicle replacements and an unfilled civilian analyst position for the Spokane Valley Police Department to fill the hole.
Spokane Valley voters will decide later this year if they're willing to pay more in sales tax to help cover public safety, after the council voted to place a 0.1% sales tax measure on the Aug. 5 ballot.
The transfer approved Tuesday will result in 12 replacement vehicles for the department instead of the planned 14, and it does away with the sole civilian position approved by the council in February 2024 as part of the board's ongoing efforts to expand the department.
The budget amendment passed with little comment from the council Tuesday, but was discussed in detail while still a proposal at an April 29 meeting.
Mayor Pam Haley said reallocating the public safety funding was a result of a tight budgeting process last year in which every city department saw cuts, except for public safety. There simply wasn't another place to find the funding to cover the costs associated with the complaints, investigations and lawsuit Merkel is at the center of, she said.
"When we did our budget, we were very clear that we were cutting all departments, and all departments did a great job — our employees didn't take raises this year because they knew how tight we were," Haley said. "There is no money to take to pay the legal bills, except to take money that was going to be spent on something new. The only thing we have that's new are those things."
Since November, the city of Spokane Valley has been tracking expenditures related to Merkel in a spreadsheet. The total is around $350,000 to date, according to the report.
The report differentiates the expenses into four categories: "actions taken to protect city employees," like the $40,000 renovation of City Hall to separate staffers from Merkel; "nonproductive uses of staff time," which includes the time spent responding to the litany of public records request related to Merkel; "the actions taken to protect the city from legal risk," including the ongoing public records lawsuit launched against him; and an "investigation of Merkel's unfounded complaint against Councilmember (Rod) Higgins and Mayor Haley."
"I think that it shows the city's goals here, when they're defunding public safety to pay for their vendetta against me," Merkel said, before positing the city's pavement preservation fund "could be used for that same political vendetta purpose."
The preservation fund was already slashed to make funding available for the wave of Spokane Valley Police Department positions approved by the council last year, as reported by The Spokesman-Review. Haley said the little over $7 million in the fund needs to be used for its intended purpose, and that it is "not just a little slush fund that you can go in and take whatever money out you want."
Yaeger, who filed the complaint against Merkel about his social media use that has resulted in the public records lawsuit the city launched against him, said in April she was disappointed by Merkel's actions and the loss of public safety funding.
"I really think that we could have put this money to better use for our city," Yaeger said.
"He claims that he's a victim and he's not. He's actually victimizing our citizens, and it's pretty frustrating."
