Dan Hansen

The weak-bladdered masses won't have to hold it much longer. Spokane County commissioners decided Tuesday to buy four state-of-the-art concrete outhouses for two parks and two popular Centennial Trail parking areas. The prefabricated outhouses are billed as nearly vandalproof by their maker, CXT Inc. of the Spokane Valley.

(From For the Record, October 2, 1997:) Fiesta-Ware: Only orange-colored Fiesta-Ware dinnerware sold in the 1930s was made with glazes containing uranium. A story in Tuesday's newspaper about radioactive products failed to note that modern Fiesta-Ware is not radioactive, regardless of color.

1. With anxious merchants and sometimes angry motorists watching, employees of Inland Asphalt repave a section of North Monroe. 2. Susie Jarvis hunts for used CDs at Little Nell's Records on Monroe. "Maybe things are turning around," said co-owner Eloise Moeller when a Monday morning rush brought in five customers. Photo by Sandra Bancroft-Billings/The Spokesman-Review

This piece of pottery is coated on one side with highly radioactive radium ore. Photo by Dan McComb/The Spokesman-Review

Privatization is one way to cut the cost of putting people behind bars, corrections officials and sheriff's deputies told Spokane County commissioners Thursday. Alarmed at skyrocketing costs at Geiger Corrections Center, commissioners earlier this summer appointed a committee to find ways to save money there and at the county jail. Without changes, officials warn, Geiger's budget will grow by about $2 million in the next year, as it struggles to house a growing inmate population.

Two hundred acres offered free for a North Side golf course is too expensive to accept, Spokane County commissioners decided Tuesday. The county would have to spend $250,000 to $1.5 million building roads and laying water pipes to the scenic parcel of isolated land offered by a Seattle couple, parks planner Steve Horobiowski told commissioners.

Don't bother asking Spokane County road workers what they'd do with the county's share of a proposed gas tax increase. They've been ordered not to answer. In a meeting Tuesday, county commissioners told staff not to offer opinions about which roads would be repaired or how many miles of pavement the county could lay if voters approve a 2.3-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase in November.

Warning that "criminal cases would go unheard, criminals would go free," Spokane County Superior Court judges on Tuesday asked for more money to finish the year. Judge Michael Donohue, who made the request, got a lukewarm reception from two county commissioners and a cold shoulder from the third. Donohue asked for $80,000 for jury costs and $6,713 for a state-mandated pay raise for the 11 judges.

The purchasing department wants to study software in Seattle. The animal control shelter wants a Costco membership. And the people who give civil service tests say they need a fax machine. One by one, the heads of county departments are marching into the commissioners' office to lay down their requests for 1998.

A Seattle couple wants to give Spokane County 200 acres to build an 18-hole golf course in northern Spokane County. Lack of water may kill the deal. The land is part of about 500 acres that was passed down through five generations to Beverly Throndson and her husband, Roy. No one lives on the former wheat farm, said Beverly Throndson, who was raised in Spokane - though not on the farm - and worked in the 1950s for the city Parks Department.

Cooney

McDonald's may be next Jim Dotson contemplates the future of his cafeteria in the Spokane County Courthouse. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

A plan to use taxpayers' money to build a YMCA swimming pool is dead. Spokane County commissioners decided Tuesday to offer $700,000 to build a third pool at an indoor aquatic center the YMCA plans to build in the Valley. YMCA officials rejected that offer Wednesday. The failed deal means the county will spend about $1.1 million replacing its crumbling outdoor pool at Valley Mission Park. Under the partnership, that pool would have been closed but not replaced.

Cancel the moving vans. Spokane County commissioners are scaling back - and may ax - plans to move some courthouse offices into a former warehouse. The project, which commissioners unanimously approved earlier this month, would cost about $1.7 million and allow the county to ease security on the main floor of the courthouse, the destination of most visitors.

"Oh, I'm so mad. I'm going to be stuck in the boondocks," says Virginia Lake, whose home no longer would be on a bus route under proposed STA changes. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

Relief is coming for victims of repeated floods along Dishman-Mica Road. Spokane County commissioners last week approved a $269,000 contract to remove sediment, brush and other debris from about a mile of Chester Creek. The small stream starts near the town of Mica and seeps into the ground east of the Dishman-Hills Natural Area. TLJ Construction of Nine Mile Falls will dredge the creek between Thorpe and Schafer roads.

The owner of a golf course driving rapid development in Deer Park wants a tax break under a state law meant to preserve undeveloped land. Spokane County commissioners will decide tonight whether to include 148 acres of the Deer Park Golf & Country Club in the open spaces program, which normally applies to farms and forests. The move would save course owner W.R. Warren more than $2,000 a year, and probably would lead to classifying other golf courses as open spaces in Spokane County.

After arguing for years that there is no need to cap the former Greenacres Landfill, Spokane County is poised to do just that. The Spokane Valley project will cost $5 million, with much of the money coming from state taxpayers. That doesn't include the county's cost of monitoring the landfill for up to 20 years. The landfill, south of Interstate 90 near the Liberty Lake exit, closed 25 years ago.

Most people wouldn't greet a 100 percent increase in sewer bills with relief. Leonard Bouge did. Bouge, the owner of Birch Tree Mobile Home Park in the Valley, was informed by an April letter from county officials that the park's sewer bills would increase 262 percent starting the following month.

A study by the YMCA shows it would be cheaper to send a school full of kids to Maui than to build a wave pool at Mirabeau Point. County commissioners had asked YMCA officials to visit indoor wave pools in Oregon and British Columbia to see whether one could be added to a proposed aquatic center at Mirabeau Point. Based on information from three pools, the attraction would add at least $2.8 million to the cost of the YMCA's proposed center, Executive Director Richard Wallis said Thursday. None of the three wave pools is self-supporting, he added.

CORRECTION: 9-11-97; V6 A story in Saturday's Valley Voice about Bear, an akita-mastif mix that has been declared "dangerous" by county officials was accompanied by a photo of another dog, not related to the story. Bear is an akita/mastif mix. File photo

Spokane County commissioners have delayed until October a decision on whether to close an off-road vehicle park at Liberty Lake. Responding to complaints about vandalism, erosion, litter and trespassing, commissioners in April banned four-wheel-drive vehicles from the park in the hills east of the lake. Motorcyclists continue using the park. But that will end if they don't begin policing themselves and write a management plan that solves the problems, commissioners said.

A government agency that helps private landowners with conservation projects may see its rent increase 179-fold. Its landlord is Spokane County. County commissioners say they're just trying to get a fair return for taxpayers by ending a sweet deal for the Spokane County Conservation District, an independent district that's funded by state money.

Concerned about public transportation in Spokane? Then hop on a bus and come to any of a number of meetings this month to get answers about route changes proposed by Spokane Transit Authority. STA hopes the proposed changes, recommended by a Portland consultant who was paid $125,000, will make service more convenient and increase bus ridership. They would be the first major change in routes in 16 years, STA officials say. Many of the changes would put more buses on the busiest routes - those to colleges and shopping centers, for instance.