August 25, 2011 in City

Clark: Make Spokane Better ideas include the falls, police card

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Maestro, may I have an eggroll, please.

I’m in a festive mood today. That’s because it’s time to hand out prizes for the best pipe dreams submitted to my Make Spokane Better contest.

Flash back 11 days. I offered my thoughts on Dimvision Spokane, that smug cadre of social architects who won’t stop meddling until we’re all chugging the Kool-Aid.

Then I asked readers to take a deep pull on their hookahs and send me their community improvement hallucinations.

Well, they certainly did.

I received a flurry of emails like Mark’s, “This morning’s column was full of great visions,” and Mariah’s, “I find this article socially toxic, borderline irresponsible.”

You know, the usual.

It took some time, but I managed to separate the delightfully daffy from the dangerously deranged.

Along with receiving some groovy merchandise, winners will also have the intense pride of seeing their ideas added to the Dimvision edicts, which include downtown unicycle lanes and free family planning for woodland creatures.

According to law, should Dimvision pass in November, the proposals would be added to the City Charter for “three weeks or until Spokane declares bankruptcy, whichever comes first.”

Now about the groovy gifts.

Today’s winners will receive a CD featuring my civic anthem, “Spokane,” a genuine reporter’s notebook and one of my limited-edition buttons: “Politicians, same jerks we hated in high school.”

I give you the Spokane betterment ideas, which have been edited for clarity and comedy.

• Ed Byrnes would change the city’s name to “Spo-Can’t,” but only if the City Council repeals the police ombudsman ordinance.

• Two worthy suggestions from P.J. McGranahan.

1. Stealing red light cameras from intersections is not a crime.

2. All city residents will receive a “No Police Beat-Down” card. (This card can be used to save your life in the event you ever encounter an angry cop in a mini-mart.)

• After wondering whether Dimvision members frequent medical marijuana clinics, J.S. Swanstrom offered three winning ideas.

1. Create a new skateboard category for Bloomsday.

2. Mandatory “over the falls in January” swimming lessons for sex offenders.

3. Add shampoo dispensers to the Riverfront Park fountain for “transient showers.”

• Margaret Blodgett would improve the quality of our education.

Any fifth-grade teacher whose students don’t know basic math shall stand in the center of the STA Plaza and “recite the times table,” she wrote.

Far be it from me to pry. But I have a hunch there’s an ugly school experience behind the Blodgett submission.

• John May didn’t actually enter my contest, but he’ll get a prize anyway.

Here’s why. May wrote to tell me that he was “reading and enjoying” my Dimvision column while anticipating all the nasty letters to the editor that would be calling for my hide.

Then he got to the part where I proposed rounding up Dimvision members and relocating them in Chewelah.

May lives in Chewelah.

“Please do not send the Dimvision members to Chewelah,” he begged. “We have all the Dimwits we can stand for the foreseeable future.”

My bad, John. You’ve made me see the error of my ways.

But where should we send those pesky Dimvisionistas?

• The problem is solved thanks to a poem submitted by 91-year-old Jim Isabell. I can’t reprint all of it due to newspaper constraints about length and rhyming. But the following will give you the idea.

“I’ll write Spokane’s thoughts of Dimvision:

“No ‘Bill of Rights’ our decision.

“It met not the test, it was foolish at best;

“Spokane didn’t need that revision.

“How to stop their foolish profusion?

“Quell their words; their kooky illusion?

“Just send them away to Athol to stay,

“That town is used to confusion.”

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by e-mail at dougc@spokesman.com.

Five comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  Wizard_Of_Oz on August 25 at 5:34 a.m.

  Print the Spokesman on taxed by the sheet recycleable Toilet paper. Clear your mind and bowels at the same time and your saving the environment.

  Have Joe Shogun dressed as Hanibal Lector for council meetings. Pass the salt and pepper please? Geothermal generator on skull to power city hall.

  Bicycle built for two parking meter spots at City Hall for Rush and Snyder.

  Auto print Phyllis Lamperts name on every ballot position. Sooner or later she might get a hit if not returned to the mothership and she gives up her squirrel detector.

  Convert bicycle lanes to toll lanes and then Cross Country skiing lanes from Nov to March.

  Write in Brad Stark or Dave Elton for Mayor and end the mind bending decision between Ms Tweedle dee and Mr. Tweedle dumn.

  Quit charging motorcycle parking spots the same as cars. We got only 2 wheels and four feet for our money.

  Beer tax and Political sign tax and throwing George McGrath out of council meeting rebates. A nickel a word tax on Jon Snyders pontification without intellecuation comments during council meetings. Tax on anytime Bob Apple votes no.

  Coin operated metal detector at City Hall.

  Treadmill generators at 24 hour fitness for any Avista executive.

  and I’m only on a roll.

• 

  Albert on August 25 at 9:24 a.m.

  Here’s the best yet…don’t renew the union contract with the SPD. Make them go away and let’s start over without a union wherein we can fire upon ANY willful abuse by the thugs.

• 

  MrNatural on August 25 at 10:39 a.m.

  One must address Doug’s decision
  And ponder his own dimwit vision
  A gas guzzling insurgent
  That uses phosphate detergent
  To nature Doug’s a collision

  :-)

• 

  MrBloggy on August 26 at 12:40 p.m.

  This paper needs some comic relief
  pay a writer who has left the eighties
  not a moron full of local bull****
  but someone funny like Andy Borowitz
  no more dullard puns about the police chief

• 

  Ed Byrnes on September 01 at 9:46 p.m.

  I was hoping to see Spo-can’t in print since the August 22nd City Council meeting :)

  Ed