Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Well, welcome, everybody, to another edition of Unbolted Live with MJ Bull. I'm your host, and with us today, I have Christopher Savage, who is running for Spokane City Council, District three and Position two. Christopher, thanks for being with us today.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: You bet. This is an exciting time, opportunity for voters to get to know you better, know about why you're running, and just understand what's at your heart in running for this position. So this is very important opportunity. So I'm glad you're here. So let's start out. Christopher, tell our voters about yourself, your background, and why you're running for this position. What motivated you to run for this position on the City Council?
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Well, my name is Christopher Savage, and I've lived here for about 31 years. Now. I wasn't born here, but I was raised here most of my life.
Most of my memories are from Spokane, and that's why I kind of love it here.
I went to Indian Trail elementary, went to Salk Middle School, and I went to North Central High School, where I learned a lot and I got to see a lot of the city, and I got to, you know, run through the community, and it was a really great time. And then I went to Western Washington University to pursue a degree in politics, philosophy and economics with a minor in the German language. And then after that point in time, I came back home and. And I started doing some work with just kind of like, you know, blue collar work, kind of just doing deliveries and that kind of thing and trying to figure out where I was going in Life. And in 2017, there was a big event that kind of shifted a whole part of my life. My father passed away, and he was a big part of why I wanted to get civically involved. He.
I remember talking with him about presidential debates ever since I was, you know, 8 years old. And when he passed away. He passed away when he was 57. And it kind of made me start thinking why, why I was waiting so long, because the original plan was to wait till about 40 or 50 to get a little bit more skills and expertise under my belt. But with him passing away so early, it kind of implanted the idea in my mind about, why are you waiting? You don't know what's tomorrow going to bring, because tomorrow you could, you know, pass away. So I started to think about what I wanted to do, and I wanted to run for city council.
I saw the city not going in the right direction even back then in 2017.
That's why I started to get involved in the community. For instance, my first kind of a foray into Spokane city politics was being one of the commissioners on the salary Review Commission. And on that one I want. I was able to get up to vice chair. And what we did on that commission is we approved of all the salaries for the city council, the city council president and the mayor respectively. Now I'm not on that commission anymore because during COVID I made the motion and the idea to not give everyone raises and. And that didn't go over too well with the mayor and the city council. I thought it was the right thing to do because during that time there's a lot of people that were feeling the financial strain. And I didn't think that our city council members, city council president and mayor should be getting a raise when everyone else was getting.
Having a really hard time with her finances. So not on that commission anymore because of that, unfortunately. But it got me more educated on the civic process and the politics of the area. And then it got me more into where I went to the Spokane County Water Conservancy Board, where that was a really interesting board to be a part of because that helps with all the water right transfers in Spokane County. And I didn't realize, but water rights in Spokane county are like gold. If you don't have them, then you can't really do much. I mean, they're so important for farming and all the things that we need to out there in our bread basket up in the Palouse. But you don't have a water right. You can't collect water. You can't even move water. And the Department of Ecology is an interesting department because of the things they do. And I'll just. I'll leave it at that. But I also got involved with Project Beauty Share that. I worked there for about three and a half years. I was right during the time of Camp Hope. So there's a lot of stories that happen because of that.
As being the facility and warehouse manager there. I had the pleasure of coming in sometimes in the morning where I still remember where one of the biggest things that I had to move was a queen size mattress that someone had shoved in the middle of the buildings. And it had a bunch of human waste on it. And I had to move that by myself. And then another time where we started putting signs in our doors. We were talking about, please don't, you know, as people are doing now, you know, don't lay on the stoop, don't sit on the stoop. Once we put that sign up there the next day There was a fuse that was lit on it and someone tried to burn the door down. So there's just a lot of that stuff that I had to deal with that was surrounding Camp Hope. And it really opened my eyes to the nonprofit world here in Spokane because it is big and they have a lot of resources. That's why it comes back to one of my policies. I'll talk a little bit later. Well, how I want to address it with giving contracts, service providers, better chances of trying to provide for our city rather than the ones that are using it now. And so right now is I work over at DeVries at business, and I am a courier there. And I just have a couple routes during the week, but that's what I do for my job right now. And one of the reasons why I'm running for City council is this is my home, and I want to defend my home from being destroyed even further because of Zack's home. We need to make sure that we get a person up there that is a city council member, a city, a citizen council member, because that's what we need. We need a person that is up there with thinking about the will of the people and not their own personal agenda. Right now, that is not happening.
And I want to make sure that I am that man in the breach, that man in the arena that says, no, this is not going to happen, and we can start restoring our city in the right way and not destroying it by having bad policies. As you can see, like with the new Prop 1 and all the other things that come out of City hall, we can make our city better. Spokane is such a great potential. And that's what hurts me the most, is that we're wasting our potential right now. And that's why I'm running, is because I'm going to fight for my home. I'm not going to run from it.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Right, right. And we appreciate you running, Christopher, and you said that so well and so many people are so concerned. You know, I live out here in the Valley, and we're so concerned about what's happening to Spokane and downtown Spokane and the degradation. You know, the policies are clearly enabling the degradation of our city. And that's why it's so important, this position that you're running for. So, again, thank you on behalf of the citizens for running. We need, you know, a person like yourself that cares about the community and will stand up for those policies. And it sounds like, you know, you've done that in these other positions.
You've taken those hard, unpopular stances. You know, probably didn't get reappointed to be on this salary review board because you did take a hard stance. So that's very important.
So appreciate your experience and then also taking those hard stands. You alluded to this a little bit, but I want to give you another chance to expand on this. What is your vision for Spokane, the city of Spokane and the. And being in the council?
[00:07:03] Speaker B: My vision for Spokane is to make it the best city that we can be right now. We have such a great potential. It is a beautiful city. A river runs through our city. We have such a great gem, which is called the Riverfront Park. That is amazing when you can go down there and don't feel unsafe.
Unfortunately, that's a lot. That's a different story right now. But we have so many amenities to the city. We have so many beautiful things that. That's what I want to showcase and that's what I want others to see, too. I want to make Spokane a place you want to feel comfortable in, that you want to feel safe in. And not a city that is a bunch. That is a city of fear and apprehension because of everything that's going on downtown with. With the fentanyl crisis as well as the homeless crisis.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, it used to be like that, right? We used to not hesitate to go downtown and, And. And enjoy what Spokane is. But unfortunately, so many businesses are moving out, people are afraid to go downtown.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: It's.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: It's a tons of problems. So, Christopher, why do you believe people should vote for you over your other opponents in this race?
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Reason they should vote for me is just simply I'm the best candidate. I know this area. I've lived here for a long time, so I know all the issues that are going down there.
I have been doing city council reports ever since the city council opened up from the pandemic to show and educate others. Not just going down there to do reports, but to help others show what is going on. Because there's a lot that goes on down at City hall and they try to convolute it a bit. So it makes it a bit difficult sometimes when you go down there and trying to figure out what to do. But why I'm the best candidate is I have the skills. I've helped run businesses before. I've been the past. I'm the past president of Meals on Wheels, where we've. I'm very proud of this, where we've increased from going 600 meals a day that we're able to deliver to the community, but up to 800 meals per day. And it's actually increasing because the calls on service are increasing because a lot of people are falling off some of the social services that require and they're more relying on that. But going through food costs, trying to find the logistics, doing the analytics of trying to figure out how to do this in the best way possible has taught me a lot on how to run a good business and how to do it properly as well as work with others in a team.
And I'm going I'm the best candidate because it just, you know, it is just the way it is.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Yep, yep, sounds good. So what are your top priorities for the city of Spokane?
As if you, when you win this race, what are going to be the top issues that you're going to be wanting to work on?
[00:09:36] Speaker B: My top three priorities are public safety, the affordable housing crisis and the homelessness crisis. Those are the top three things that they're all interwoven. So once we start working on all, they're going to start building momentum and we can actually start fixing a lot of problems here in Spokane because it is these are problems that are fixable.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: So why don't you expand a little bit on each of those and what you think needs to be done in each of those areas.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: So for the homelessness crisis, what we need to do with that is we need to pick better contract service providers. Right now Jill's Helping Hands and Catholic Charities gets a lot of city services and helps and that just can't continue. They have shown with their, with lack of metrics and what they keep doing that they are not helping this community out, they're making it a lot worse. And the scattered sites model, for instance has run out of funding. So the navigation center that's down on Canistry isn't even operating right now. And I actually went down to Public forum to speak about that back in March trying to say, hey, what's going on? This is going to be something that we're going to have to address sooner rather than later. And they just, you know, didn't really think it was a priority. But by trying to focus better on service providers that actually show good metrics, like for instance, Adult Teen Challenge, I went up to their facility with where they expanded, what they've been doing up there. Tyson west is a great executive director.
They have the metrics to show that they are actually helping people out of addiction. They have a 12 month program that has a 70% success rate. If you went to Jules Helping Hands and Catholic Charities, they would not be able to tell you any part of their programs that are saying that kind of results.
And that's what we need to do with the, the homelessness crisis.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Right. And how about the other priorities that you have?
[00:11:12] Speaker B: And so for the housing affordability, what we need to do there is we need to focus on expanding the boundary that is around Spokane, which is the urban growth boundary. We need to make sure that we have 10 areas that we can choose from because we're hemmed in from the Growth Management Act. I'd really like to reform that and get that actually out of the books because that would actually be able to, you know, build anywhere where we need to. And we'd actually be able to do a free market policy, which you satiate demand by providing enough supply so you bring the prices down naturally rather than artificially, because that's what I want to do. But we only. The options we have right now is there's 10 areas around Spokane that are underdeveloped, slightly developed, or fully developed. We want to go for more of the underdeveloped ones, but we are able to access those by answering that away from Spokane county and start building there. And that will help increase our housing supply. It won't do a lot, but it'll at least help try to build more of an inventory. So hopefully the price will be brought down a little because the demand will actually be a little bit satiated.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Nice, nice.
I was just gonna say in your third prior. Go ahead if you want to expound on that.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Oh, also, we need to work on our apprentices programs when it comes to our, our trade workers.
By having more people in the trades, it'll actually bring the cost down for our developers. That will translate into the development and we'll be able to actually help not only from the land perspective, but also from the labor perspective.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Yep, yep. That pipeline is critical. And I know that's a challenge right now for a lot of businesses.
And your third priority, remind me again.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: It'S what public safety.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: So talk about what. How do you plan to help public safety?
[00:12:50] Speaker B: So what we really need to do for public safety, and this may be an unpopular opinion, but we really need a new jail right now. We have only 600 beds that are on red light right now, meaning that they have.
They're all everyone has been taken is in a room and they're actually stacking several of those people in a cell by themselves when they're only supposed to be one per cell. So we need to increase our beds from six hundred to a thousand. And we also need to make sure that this new jail is going to be a rehabilitation center. It's going to have wraparound services that have addiction services, that have mental health services and have a job site training there. Because we need to make sure that we're not just throwing away the key with these people. We need to make sure that we're bringing them back into society. Because I just, I don't want to have an out of sight, out of mind kind of policy. I want to actually help these people get back into having a life and not just being out on the street. It really hurts me when I see all these people out on the street and they're just strung out, especially during this hot weather out there. It is not good for their health. This drug does. I mean, it just destroys your brain and it is not good. But we need to help these people back because some of them have been so far along that they're going to need a lot of help, but unfortunately they're going to be. Need to be taken away from their situation and kind of separated from the bad elements so that they can actually get back up and actually have a life.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
You know, and I think some of your other priorities too, around the homelessness and working with the organizations that are actually showing that they're helping people is also part of that. Because enabling people to continue to do the same thing is not compassion. Right. And so that's going to be a huge effect on that public safety because you're going to help people raise them up out of that instead of enabling them to stay where they're at in this dire straits, if you will. Right, yes.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah. We need to stop the toxic compassion and start doing tough love policies.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And we've seen that. And I get, you know, we all want compassion, but when it's enabling and it's. That's not compassion. When you're enabling people to stay in a hurtful, harming environment, that is not compassion. Right. And we've got to call that out. And, and I think we do have, like you said, we have organizations that know how to do this and have a track record of doing so. But the, the city right now is not working with those, you know, those organizations. So, Christopher, how do you plan once you get this election, you win this election, how do you plan to stay connected with your community and the citizens and make sure you're hearing from them past your election? Once you're elected, what do you kind of foresee in doing to ensure that you remain ears to the citizens.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: That's a great question. One of the things that I will be doing is I will be making sure that I go in even early in the mornings or dedicating a full day, which you'll have at least probably one or two during the week, of answering emails, answering calls, and making sure that everything that has come in is addressed, even if it's just a small little question of, you know, hey, what happened at city council?
That is a huge problem that's happening right now with the incumbent, Zack Zapone. He doesn't refer, he doesn't follow up with any of his emails. He doesn't talk to people. He's on his phone and laptop, almost every city council, not paying attention to anyone. And that's what I'm going to do to reach out and still. And still be connected to the voters and to this, my constituents, is to be making sure that I answer all my communiques and I'm being respectful and I'm actually listening to you and not just trying to, you know, push you along and say, okay, I got other things to do.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Right, right. That's an interesting comment, too, about what you're seeing as the incumbent behavior during city council and being on a. An elected official, you know, before, for me, I know that's really important that you make sure that you're truly listening to people when they're speaking.
And on that topic, the whole public speaking part, you know, the city council has kind of gone through these different things of not allowing. I mean, you got censored from public speaking, right, a few months back?
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Yes, I was considered electioneering when I was speaking out against the public, the safety proposal. That was last year. Even though what I was saying was true and what happened where it wasn't meant to actually go to where it was. It just went. Got folded into the general fund. But, yeah, they said it was electioneering.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: So they. So they prohibited you from speaking at the city council?
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, I wasn't. I was able to go down and read a poem at the end, but that was about it. I couldn't speak to anything for or against the proposal, even though all the city council members can, which. That kind of confuses me. But.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: And. And how long did that, you know, prohibition on your right to speak on this issue happen? Go for it.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Oh, it was only for that night.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Okay. Wow, that's just amazing.
So. And now what is their policy? I mean, do they let people speak or is it just at the end of the meeting, like late at night? Now? What what is the, the, you know, the, the protocol now of being able to speak at the city council?
[00:17:58] Speaker B: Well, it changes and it depends on whether they follow their own rules or not. For instance, there is a person that was doing public testimony two weeks ago that did the same thing that I did, but they didn't call him out for it. And I'm trying to figure out what happened with there. And they always suspend the rules. They always do things that are making it very hard for people to come down there and speak. And they. What was a major event is when the young socialists came down after the. I think it was the October 7th resolution in support of Israel after that unfortunate event that happened over there, they changed the very nature of public forum. Where it got changed to. It was reduced testimony. There's not as many people who can speak anymore. It changed everything. Where it is not the same public forum anymore. For instance, I cannot go down to public forum now and do what I used to, where I was trying to start a tradition in November, where I was going to read the Gettysburg Address because it was a great speech about how a house divided cannot stand and how we need to come together as Americans to make sure that we don't destroy our country.
That is a 2 minute and 15, 2 minute, 15 second long speech. Because of the public forum rules, where you can only speak for two minutes now rather than the three that was earlier.
I can't do that anymore. And the interesting part is I've been to school board meetings for the Spokane Public Schools, and they have a freer speech there than we do. At city council, you can actually speak for five minutes. And they also have a policy that you can actually say, hey, I don't want to speak, but I want to give my five minutes to someone else. So you can have 10 minutes to present if you want to. So it's kind of odd that the Spokane Public Schools have a freer speech forum than the Spokane City Council.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And especially where we live in a republic and we're supposed to have a, have a representative form of government to hear of these rules and these laws, you know, that they're making these policies to limit speech. You know, it just feels like they're on the track to completely eliminating public speaking as part of the meeting since very concerning. Are there other things, other trends that you're seeing at these city council meetings that I know you've been going to on a regular basis for quite a long time now? Are there other things that you're seeing that you're concerned about oh, yes.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: One of the bigger parts about it is Betsy Wilkerson, the council president, she does not know how to run a meeting. She is always taught and is being teached on how to do Robert's Rules of Orders and parliamentary procedure from the city attorney. This, which is Chris Wright. And it does not look good when you can't run your own meetings. And the reason why I know she can't do this is because one of her predecessors, which was Brianne Beggs, who is I think now a judge, he ran, as much as I disagree with his policies and all the stuff that he did, he ran a tight ship and a tight meeting. He knew what to do. He knew how to do the Roberts rules of Orders. And the meetings ran very, very smoothly. Now, that's the reason why you hear, if you go down there yourself, you'll see and hear that they suspend the rules almost every meeting so they can do whatever they want because they don't know how to do it.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Wow, it sounds very chaotic. Anything else that you're seeing that's concerning.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: You council members coaching other council members on what to do and reworking votes that should have been already passed and not and reconsidering them? For instance, on June 16, you've probably heard about this At 11:30, Lily Navarretti put out a motion to reconsider the Prop one that was voted down and she was trained. And you can actually see this on the archive video on the Spokane City Council that Zack Zapone was actually gesturing to her and saying, hey, you need to do this. You need to do the motion reconsider. Which begs the question, why didn't he. Why didn't Paul Dylan, why put Lily Navarretti on the spot and have her do that when she clearly looked like she didn't know what she was doing? So there's a lot of colluding up there on the dais that should not be happening. And there's. Because it should be an open process. You shouldn't be not knowing what your council member is saying to another council member or what they're doing. And not only that, but they were in close communication with Mayor Brown because Mayor Brown was saying, what happened? What are we going to do about this? So there's a fusion of the executive branch and the legislative branch here locally that I don't like because it needs to be a separation of powers, because it's a checks and balance kind of thing.
And that's kind of worrying me now where they are kind of fusing the executive with the legislative with the City council and the mayor, and it needs to be not that way.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's one thing to debate. It's one thing to make your argument right. I mean, we. Absolutely. That's part of, you know, getting. Making motions and, and defending your position and. And voting for a position. But to collude and try to, you know. Yeah. Force people's hands or have it be seen that there's something working in the background that it was agreed to ahead of time. That's. That is very concerning, for sure.
Christopher, final comments. Is there anything else that you want to make sure that the voters know or about you or your position that I'd like to.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Voters know that I will fight for you, and I have been fighting for you. I. That's why I go down City hall every Monday night and I do the reports. I want to make sure that people see that I'm the man in the arena, that I'm going to say, bring it on. I'm going to have this resilient spirit. Even when I'm getting kicked in the teeth and getting the gut punch from most of what's going to happen up there. I'm going to show people that I'm going to put a smile on my face. I'm going to keep going forward because that is what my district needs right now. They need a fighter, they need offender, and they need a champion that is actually going to fight for the will of the people and not their own personal agenda. That is what I want the voters to know. I'm not in this for myself. I'm not in this for a popularity contest. I'm in this for my community. And you can see that because I've been doing this for a long time and this is my fourth election. So I'm showing people that I'm dedicated, I'm dogged, and I'm going to be there for them because I have been there for them.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And I know personally, I know you've been going down there. I know people know that, you know, you. You show up to the meetings, you're consistent and you've been doing it for a long time, and it's greatly appreciated. And these reports that you're doing for people, because a lot of people don't go down there and they don't want to wait, you know, three hours to be able to talk at the end of the meetings, if they decide to do it at the end of the meetings.
So where can people find these reports or connect with you or find more information about your campaign?
[00:24:11] Speaker B: So you can go to savageforspokane.com that is the website that I'm using for the campaign. If you want to look at the reports that I do, just go on LinkedIn, go on X, go on Facebook, and I have several social media pages on there that all you have to look up is Christopher Savage. And it will pop up on my page and you'll be able to see the reports.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Okay, and Savage for Spokane, is that with the number four or is that with F O R?
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Oh, F o R. Okay.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Savage4spokane.com and. And then go on to any of your social accounts where they can find their reports that you do after every meeting. Is that right, Christopher?
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Yes, I post them on Tuesday, and sometimes if I'm a little bit busy, it'll be on Wednesdays, but I try to do that the day afterwards to make sure that people can digest what's going on and also verify it with other reports from news or other places that as well.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Awesome, awesome. And do you have any other upcoming events where people can go to see you or support you if they want to help support your campaign?
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Yes. So there will be a Forum next Thursday, July 17. It will be at 5:30pm and it will be at the Unitarian Church, and it'll be put on by the Braver Angels foundation, and they will be doing a forum for the District three candidates.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: And. Okay, so just. Just your race or.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Yes, it's for my race.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Okay, so that's gonna be. And what's the form? Like? Is it just a. Is it a debate or is it just kind of. You all get your chance to talk about the issues?
[00:25:40] Speaker B: I'm not too sure. I haven't had much information yet about it, but I think it's just more going to be like a Q and A where they'll have a set list of questions and then they'll ask one of them and then we'll all have our answers and then they'll be able to compare through that.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Gotcha. Awesome. Christopher, thank you so much for spending time with me today and for spending time to get your message out to the voters. Very important race to vote, and people need to remember to vote in the primary for this election. I know it's summertime, but the ballots are dropping here in like 10 days, correct?
[00:26:12] Speaker B: Yes, they'll be very soon.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Is there three people total in your race? Is that right?
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Yes, there'll be three people, and we'll have to narrow it down. Two will be a jungle primary, and so the first two that have the most votes will get into the General.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: So we need people to vote this primary again. Christopher, thank you for being with us. Christopher also is a Spokane GOP endorsed candidate for this race and so make sure to support Christopher and connect with him. If you have other questions. Have a great day and thanks for being with us. Christopher, take care.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: You as well. Thank you. MJ.
