The Airway Heights City Council unanimously approved staff pursuit of public works infrastructure grant funding while also approving receipt of just over $1.77 million law enforcement program grants at meetings in mid-July and early August.
Public works projects grant applications approved
At its Aug. 4 meeting, the council approved a request by the Public Works Department to pursue over $4 million in infrastructure funding from the state’s Public Works Board during their annual funding cycle. The board has made over $100 million available for construction funding and $7.5 million in preconstruction grants funding in 2026.
Public Works Director Katherine Miller said both categories are very competitive. To help the city against other competing municipalities, Miller said they whittled the projects down to six and divided them into two categories: Roundabouts and Phase 1 of improvements to the U.S. / State Route 2 corridor.
“Those are the ones we have the most funding for right now, and the most imminent to go forward we felt that was the most competitive application,” Miller said.
Under the roundabouts category, Public Works listed two projects: the first being replacing the existing waterline crossing at Craig Road and State Route 2 as part of the Craig Road roundabout project. The other project is construction of a new crossing at Garfield Road and SR2 as part of the Garfield roundabout project.
Three projects were identified for the Highway 2 corridor. The first is replacing the existing waterline crossing at Lawson Street and SR2 while a second is extending the sewer along SR2 from W. 16th Avenue to Loffler.
A third installs a reclaimed waterline along SR2 from Lundstrom to Lawson. A stand-alone project to replace existing steel waterline on 15th Avenue from Lundstrom to Lawson is also included in the requests.
Both applications are for a little over $2 million each.
“We’ll see how we do for the competitive nature of those projects,” Miller said.
City to conduct water rate analysis
Also, at the Aug. 4 meeting, council approved a $61,600 contract with the city’s financial consultant, FCS which is based in Redmond, Wash., to conduct an analysis of utility rates as well as general facility charges.
The scope of work includes five bullet points the city wishes FCS to address. The first is revisiting “the classification of customers under the City’s water rate structure to determine whether the existing classes are adequate or if there are changes that would enable the City to recover costs more equitably” while the second will “Develop a discounted rate for interruptible irrigation service that could apply to the City’s parks irrigation accounts and potentially other users.”
“Expand the number of tiers in the residential volume charge structure and introducing a tiered water rate structure for non-residential users” is the third task while the fourth is evaluating the “financial and rate impacts of expanding the City’s discount options for low-income residents.”
The fifth task is revisiting “the water utility financial plan to incorporate the impacts of several material changes that have occurred since last year’s study, including an updated supply strategy (not using Well 9 to provide 200 – 300 million gallons of water per year), the anticipated phasing out of roughly $900,000 per year in mitigation payments from Fairchild Air Force Base, and the need to support other maintenance and facility priorities.”
Public Works Director Katherine Miller told council she added a “last bullet point” to consider alternatives for advising the city’s commercial pretreatment rates to reduce impacts on local businesses to promote economic development, a topic discussed at the council’s July 28 study session.
“That’s an item we felt we could work with FCS in terms of assessing the discussion we had last week,” Miller said.
Funding for the analysis is slated to come from the city’s settlement with Dupont regarding PFAS manufacturers and contamination of the city’s water supply.
Law enforcement jail alternatives, mental health field grants
At its July 21 meeting, the City Council unanimously approved receipt of a pair of grants for the Airway Heights Police Department totaling more than $1.77 million.
The largest was a $1,256,441.04, two-year Mental Health Field Response grant from the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs (WASPC) that will allow the department to continue funding two full-time mental health professionals and two full-time police officers in Airway Heights and Cheney as part of the West Plains Response Team. The team responds to calls on the West Plains involving behavioral health concerns “such as someone experiencing a mental health crisis, suicidal ideation or needing drug or alcohol treatment.”
The grant will be paid in two annual installments, $637,473.46 the first year and $618,447.47 in the second. Airway Heights grant administrator Alise Mnati will be the project manager for the program, serving as primary contact and charged with a number of tasks including data collection and submitting grant reports – with 28% of her salary covered by the grant.
The grant will also provide the city a 15% indirect cost rate to cover all program-related expenses.
Finally, the council approved a $517,945.65 Arrest and Jail Alternatives grant, also from WASPC. The two-year grant pays $264,521.09 in year one and 253,424.56 in year two.
The grant provides the department funding to continue to employ a full-time case manager to oversee the West Plains Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program, currently filled by Ashley Martinez. Martinez is a licensed clinical social worker with a “caseload of 30 clients referred by the West Plains Crisis Response Team, prosecutors, officers, and other community partners.”
Mnati will also serve in the same role for this program as she does for the Mental Health Field Response program, with 45% of her salary and benefits covered by the grant. The grant also provides the city a 15% in-direct cost rate to cover other program-related expenses related to
client services and resources provided at the Hope Center, a collaboration between the West Plains Response Team and the Women’s Healing and Empowerment Network that opened this past spring.
Also at the July 21 meeting, council approved a $15,000 funding request enabling the Public Works Department to contract with consultant Century West on possible concepts for an updated Public Works building. The contract is paid for with $10,000 from sewer and water revenues and $5,000 from the Street Current Expense fund.
