Amy Cannata

Kootenai County planners are closing in on completing the plan that will guide growth and development in the county for years to come. The county's draft comprehensive plan update is expected to be finished by the middle of this month and planners hope to have the final document approved by this summer.

Kidd Island Bay homeowners may soon have quicker fire response times if the local fire district is able to join forces with the neighborhood sewer district to construct a new building to house both a fire station and sewer station. The new station would be located on Hull Loop, about two miles from its intersection with Kidd Island Road on the west side of Lake Coeur d'Alene.

Gerry House's ancestors homesteaded on Hayden Lake, back when houses around North Idaho lakes were few and far between. During a short slideshow of images from the time, House showed natural resource professionals and environmental activists miles of shoreline with only trees. The point was to show how much things have changed.

Post Falls will grow north and east and the city must prepare to annex land near Prairie Avenue and Highway 41, but must do so cautiously, Post Falls city councilors said Tuesday night. They gave developers of two large sites in that area the go-ahead to continue the annexation process. City councilors stopped short of guaranteeing Phillips Edison and Hayden LLC that their requests will ultimately be granted, but instructed staff to work with the developers and report back to the council in June.

Post Falls will increase its budget by at least 3 percent next year and may utilize previously unused taxing authority to grow its budget by as much as 6 percent. In an agenda-packed meeting Tuesday, city councilors informally discussed the 2009 budget, rebuffing a suggestion to switch to a zero-based budget process and agreeing to use their maximum taxing authority to increase the budget by 3 percent. Unclear was whether the city will collect an additional $261,000 in forgone taxes – unused taxing authority from previous years. They also approved the purchase of additional park land and authorized staff to pursue a new railroad crossing at the Montrose development.

Fernan Village deer are participating in a first-of-its kind relocation program. The small city on the eastern edge of Coeur d'Alene is the first municipality where Idaho Fish and Game officials have allowed live deer trapping to take place.

Multicolored kites will be flying high next Saturday above Hayden during its second annual kite festival. Enthusiasts young and old can learn how to make their own kites during a morning kit building workshop or simply bring kites to the afternoon festival event.

Landowners looking to be annexed into Post Falls may soon be facing a consultant's measuring stick as well as city officials' opinions. Post Falls could begin sending annexation requests to a Colorado-based company which would review the economic impact of proposed developments and whether annexing them would bring additional tax money into city coffers or if any tax gains would be negated by the costs of providing additional infrastructure.

It's too early to know if 2008 tax and fee revenues will meet Post Falls' projections, but the city will soon be pushing forward with budgeting for next year. And this year the approach to drafting that budget could dramatically change. The Post Falls City Council is scheduled to discuss using "zero-based budgeting" at its meeting on Tuesday.

Use that next sunny day to dig a couple of holes in the yard. Post Falls, Coeur d'Alene and Hayden residents will get the chance to fill those holes with free trees on April 5.

Lakeland School District voters will decide Tuesday whether to approve a two-year, $3.9 million levy. Officials say the extra $1.95 million per year is needed because enrollment growth in the 4,400-student district has slowed, causing state funding to stagnate.

POST FALLS – Robin Hutchins has seen a lot of code violations – yards littered with junk cars, old appliances and piles of lumber, vehicles abandoned all over town and stacks of water-filled tires – but nothing compared to what was left behind at a former trailer park which became a dumping ground after it was left vacant. Trash piled up, vandals destroyed vehicles and buildings, and some used bathrooms inside abandoned trailers even though the plumbing was turned off. Hutchins, a code enforcement officer for the Post Falls Police Department, helped lead the clean-up.

A small group of North Idaho College faculty, staff and students is trying to do its part for the planet by launching a new initiative to get people at NIC to begin drinking from reusable polycarbonate water bottles instead of disposable plastic bottles. The "Take Back the Tap" program will be launched Monday as part of the college's annual "Popcorn Forum." This year's theme is "Earth in Crisis: A Search for Solutions."

POST FALLS – Post Falls may never have the tourist cachet of Coeur d'Alene, but local leaders and businesses are doing their best to attract visitors and their dollars to the River City. The Post Falls Chamber of Commerce is purchasing advertising touting itself as a driving trip destination in an Idaho tourism publication that will be distributed in newspapers throughout the Northwest. The group also will soon be opening a visitors' center near Cabela's. Meanwhile, Post Falls hotels market themselves as a less-expensive and more family-friendly alternative to staying in Coeur d'Alene.

Sorting through Coeur d'Alene's crimes and observing its police officers at work for 31 years provided one local author with so much material she's already contemplating a sequel to her just-released debut novel. Though not based on fact, Faye Higbee's novel "Night Games" was inspired in part by the people she worked with and the cases she saw during her tenure as a records clerk for the Coeur d'Alene Police Department.