Spokane

Maurice Smith, Spokane’s commissioner of public safety, made a few revealing remarks about the city’s Prohibition enforcement situation.

After 13 years managing the City of Spokane’s first dog park, local nonprofit SpokAnimal told city officials in early November that it could no longer afford to operate High Bridge Dog Park.

Confusion and misinformation had big roles in the downfall of Newman Lake Fire and Rescue’s third levy request to fund the department, according to residents who gathered Wednesday night for a town hall meeting to discuss what to do next.

All wearing festive red, eight members of Spokane’s Good News Company Choir sang at the Christmas Bureau on Thursday, offering entertainment to hundreds waiting in line.

It was Stephanie Gonzales’ first time coming to the Christmas Bureau. She was there to pick out a Christmas gift for her 11-year-old daughter, Baylee: – either a guitar or something crafty.

Jack Geraghty, who served as mayor of Spokane from 1994 to 1997, died Thursday evening in his home with his family by his side. He was 89.

Manito Park’s annual holiday lights event returns Saturday evening on the South Hill, this year with more lights.

On its first day of the season, the Christmas Bureau served 1,517 adults and 2,235 children. People started lining up in the rain hours before the bureau’s 10 a.m. opening Thursday.

Mayor-elect Lisa Brown announced plans Thursday to appoint two people to cabinet positions and retain a third in an interim position when she assumes office in January.

A state court of appeals ruled Thursday that the voter-approved Proposition 1 – which banned camping within 1,000 feet of Spokane’s schools, parks, playgrounds and licensed day care facilities – was a legal initiative, upholding the will of local voters.

Another cabinet member in Mayor Nadine Woodward’s administration has tendered her resignation in the weeks between the November election and the swearing in of a new mayor.

Well, the gardening year has come to an end. I squeaked under the wire of last Thursday’s dusting of snow to get the last of the vegetable garden cleaned up and ready for winter.

Bonne Ahrens collects the one thing most of us want to avoid during the holidays – scales.

Dozens of volunteers gathered at the Christmas Bureau on Wednesday for orientation, readying themselves for the thousand or so people expected to come out for the bureau’s opening day.

The Spokane Valley City Council wavered Tuesday on the best way to move forward with a funding source for its newly created Transportation Benefit District, but in the end voted to advance an ordinance setting a $20 car tab fee to a second and final reading later this month.

On opening day, the Christmas Bureau will look bright and inviting. Now it looks like Santa’s workshop, with hundreds of elves preparing every piece of the bureau so that it all clicks together when it opens Thursday.

With a temporary veto-proof majority, the Liberty Lake City Council approved a controversial ordinance to give the council authority over policies in the city’s library.

Liberty Lake residents took a page out of Hallmark movie script to drown out an offensive interruption at Tuesday’s city council meeting.