To provide good jobs in Spokane and develop a skilled local workforce, we worked with the City Council to pass the Quality Jobs Ordinance. This built on our previous victory with the Spokane Public Facilities District (PFD) that made the expansion of the Convention Center and Arena a truly local project. 

In 2014 the Spokane Alliance developed policies to create a pipeline of good jobs in the region and keep the benefits of public works projects local. We turned out 28 Alliance leaders to testify in support of the Quality Jobs Ordinances and on the night of the vote, we turned out over 170 leaders – the largest turnout to any city-council meeting in 2014. Council voted and passed the city-wide ordinance.

The Quality Jobs Ordinance sets standards for all public works projects over $350,000:

• requires that 15% of the workers employed are apprentices, and
• incentivizes the local sourcing of materials.

This ordinance was inspired by our work with the Public Facilities District in 2012 on the Convention Center and Spokane Arena projects. The Spokane Alliance made a deal with the Public Facilities District (PFD) to heighten the expectations for the contractor to be hired for this expansion job. The PFD kept the deal. On April 19th, 2013 after the Spokane Alliance interviewed each of the three contractor finalists we identified which contractor we thought would be best for Spokane’s families and economy.  The PFD worked with us and together we won quality jobs for Spokane residents: Contractors hired locally, utilized a 15% rate of apprenticeship, and gave preference to contractors that bought materials locally.  In the end, we kept $38 out of $42 million spent on the project in Spokane.