Spokane Valley Mayor Tom Towey gave SCOPE a certificate of appreciation and a key to the city at last night's city council meeting as part of his monthly community recognition award program. The director of SCOPE, Rick Scott, was there to receive the award on behalf of the organization's 600 volunteers and crack a couple of jokes. The room was packed with SCOPE volunteers and Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich came out for the occasion.

You can see my story on the council meeting in Thursday's Valley Voice, which will include the SCOPE award as well as the council's discussion on this year's road construction projects.  

George “Dick” Ott kept a watchful eye over the University SCOPE neighborhood. SR file photo.

Monday morning is a great time to catch up on any Valley Voice stories you may have missed over the weekend. Reporter Lisa Leinberger went down to Freeman last week, where the Freeman Elementary School gym is set to open tomorrow. The gym is one of the last projects being paid for by a construction bond.

The residents of Fairfield turned out last week for the dedication of Levi's Room, a new place for youth in the basement of the Fairfield Community Center. The game room is named in memory of Levi Larrison, who died in a car crash in 2010.

Volunteers at University SCOPE and other SCOPE stations in Spokane Valley are mourning the loss of Dick Ott, who had donated thousands of hours as a volunteer and was president of University SCOPE when he died recently. He died from complications of a fall while he was directing traffic at an accident scene.

If you're like me and have bags of old bills and other things that need to be shredded sitting in your closet, now is your chance to get things cleared out. Volunteers from three Spokane Valley area SCOPE stations will be manning shredding trucks for residents from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. Each person can bring three file boxes full of documents.

Edgecliff SCOPE will have a truck at the Edgecliff Community Center, 6903 E. Fourth. Newman Lake SCOPE will be set up at the Tri-Community Grange located a block north of Trent on Starr Road. Central Valley SCOPE volunteers will be at the WSECU at Pines and Mission next to Applebee's. Second Harvest will be collecting non-perishable food items at the WSECU location only.

The Edgecliff SCOPE office will present a community pancake feed Sunday from 8 a.m. to noon at VFW Post 1435, 212 S. David St.

The breakfast will include pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage and coffee. Adults can get breakfast for $5. Children 10 and younger will be admitted for $2.50.

For more information, call the Edgecliff SCOPE office at (509) 477-6345.