With change in law, Fill the Boot gets go-ahead

A City Council boot scoot will allow Spokane Valley firefighters to dance with traffic again next month for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

The city attorney’s office had determined that firefighters couldn’t legally enter traffic for their annual Fill the Boot charity drive, but the council hastily changed the law Tuesday.

Also, the council voted 4-2 to grant a zone change that will allow an assisted-living retirement home – or offices – in a single-family residential area at the southeast corner of Marguerite and Alki roads.

Testimony from residents was strongly against the proposal.

Council members Bill Gothmann and Rose Dempsey, who disclosed that she lives in the area, dissented. Councilman Gary Schimmels was absent.

Dempsey and Gothmann said they support retirement apartments, but thought the proposed location was wrong.

Gothmann thought multifamily residential zoning would have been more appropriate than the “garden office” zoning that was approved.

Dempsey felt developer Dennis Raugust should be constrained by neighborhood objections, but Councilman Steve Taylor said that would take away “the God-given rights of people to develop their own property.”

Although there was no guarantee Raugust would build the retirement apartments he proposed, “we are very reasonably assured of what is going in there,” Taylor said.

Other council members agreed with city planner Mike Basinger that conventional apartments would be worse for the neighborhood than an office building, anyway.

Mayor Rich Munson said he was inclined to oppose the zone change, but he feared that could lead to “something nobody wants.”

Council members Diana Wilhite and Dick Denenny agreed that denying the zone change could result in conventional apartments.

That’s because the zoning code allows city staff members, on their own, to extend more intense residential zones into lower-density residential areas. Part of Raugust’s three-acre site already was zoned for apartments, opening the door for more.

An office zone, on the other hand, can’t be extended into a residential zone without City Council approval.

Munson was the lone dissenter when the council amended the city’s special events ordinance to allow firefighters and others with special training to enter traffic to solicit donations.

“I think we’re doing this too fast,” Munson said, fearing a bad precedent.

Assistant City Attorney Cary Driskell said the new ordinance may have “some serious conflicts” with tentative recommendations of the city’s recently formed committee on panhandling.

“One may preclude the other,” Driskell said.

The panhandling committee recommends prohibiting drivers from giving money while driving. It also calls for bans on panhandling from median or traffic islands, along “major arterials at intersections that have traffic lights and at four-way stops.”

“Aggressive panhandling” should be redefined to include “stepping into streets or onto a median,” the committee says.

City Attorney Mike Connelly warned there hadn’t been time to consult the city’s insurance provider about Tuesday’s action.

“There’s absolutely no question that it condones putting people in harm’s way,” Connelly said.

But Jana Worthington, regional Muscular Dystrophy Association director, said no one had been injured in her 13 years of working with 54 fire departments.

Newman Lake resident Jeremy Dunlap said “anything that’s going to stop this process just scares me to death” – a sentiment echoed by Cheney resident Travis Naught.

Dunlap’s son and Naught both suffer from muscular dystrophy and receive support from firefighters’ annual, nationwide Fill the Boot campaign.

The new ordinance limits such drives to emergency workers and others who have passed the Spokane County Incident Traffic Control Program or its equivalent.

Solicitors also must provide $2 million worth of insurance, follow plans approved by city officials and have only one event per year.

Permit applications must be submitted at least five days before an event, and the new ordinance won’t take effect until five days after it is published – tentatively on Friday.

That leaves just enough time for Spokane Valley firefighters to get ready for this year’s boot drive on Aug. 2.

The new ordinance applies to a wide range of events on city streets, sidewalks or other public property – including parades, dances and races.

Funeral processions, government-sponsored events and “lawful picketing on sidewalks” are exempt.