Filling the nutrition gap

Summer is months away, and that’s good if you’re interested in making sure needy kids have something nutritious to eat.

Some of the resources that have provided meals in designated low-income Spokane neighborhoods during past summers will be curtailed in 2005. Breakthrough, a coalition that concerns itself with those children’s needs, is looking for ways to fill the gap.

A brainstorming session will be held at 9 a.m. next Friday at the Spokane County Community Services office, 312 W. Eighth.

For a variety of reasons, a dozen or more locations where summer meals have been served in recent years will be unavailable next year, according to Linda Stone, Eastern Washington director of the Children’s Alliance.

The Spokane Parks Department is proposing to end the Kids in the Park program next summer, due in part to budget cuts. Park officials also are concerned about safety risks to kids going to and from the parks. The parks programs are not staffed to provide close supervision of children, especially younger ones.

In addition, because of pending school construction work, some of the school facilities that have been used in the program also will be unavailable, Stone said. Parks set to lose the program include Hays, Harman, Nevada, Friendship, Glass, Chief Garry, Cannon, Underhill and Grant, she said.

Officials of the Spokane School District, which has provided the meals, are willing to expand the delivery of meals to alternative sites if they can be arranged, said Stone. Schools to be affected for all or part of the summer include Regal, Bemiss, Grant, Lidgerwood, Arlington, Willard and Sheridan.

Next Friday’s brainstorming session is intended both to identify alternative sites in the affected areas and to reach out to the site operators to get their participation.

North Idaho marina. Citizens in Bonner County will have a chance to comment on a proposed 274-slip marina near Dover, Idaho, at 6 p.m. next Thursday in the Sandpoint Community Center, 204 S. First Ave.

The marina, on the Pend Oreille River, would be part of developer Ralph Sletegar’s 535-unit residential development, Dover Bay.