Doug Floyd

The revival of West First Avenue in downtown Spokane suffered a setback when the Children's Museum of Spokane abandoned plans to move there. It didn't suffer a defeat, however. Landing the museum and Spokane Marketplace as wholesome, vibrant, family-friendly tenants in the once crime-plagued district was considered a key part of reversing the decay on which drug dealers and prostitutes had feasted for too long. The Marketplace remains. As its first summer rolls into fall, it has plans for an expanded holiday season later this year and, ultimately, for year-round, seven-day-a-week activity. Like the Marketplace, the Children's Museum and its predicted 35,000 visitors a year, would have generated the kind of law-abiding foot traffic that gives civic vitality to a neighborhood while discouraging criminal activity.

Every editorial writer has heard, and most have repeated, this definition of their craft: Editorial writer: someone who charges downhill after the battle and slays the wounded. Joke or not, the line carries a certain sting of truth. So U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno had better protect her head from a swarm of pundits headed her way. Reno, you see, OK'd the Justice Department's decision not to prosecute four FBI officials over the North Idaho shootout in which, five years ago today, a federal marksman killed Vicki Weaver on Ruby Ridge.

A 1995 survey, paid for by the Coors Brewing Co., found that 90 percent of the chief executives for Fortune 1,000 companies consider illiteracy a workplace problem - but only about 20 percent have programs to deal with it. In the case of many communities, Spokane among them, the problem is often the reverse. Programs are in place, but relatively few people seem to understand them or the extent of the need for them. Thus, the Literacy Advocacy Team, a program announced last week in Spokane, has a major task to perform. Created by the Washington state Office of Adult Literacy, team members will lobby, will campaign for volunteers and will raise community awareness about illiteracy.

After one term on the Spokane School Board, Nancy Fike will step down at the end of the year. But she has issued her colleagues this challenge: Make it worth people's time to attend school board meetings. Fike is distressed that regular board meetings, even special public forums held in neighborhood schools, are poorly attended by those in whose interest the school board functions. Is it the people's own fault if they abdicate their responsibility? Partly. But what are they missing? The Spokane School Board traditionally works decisions out before its regular meetings, then formalizes them while the public looks on. Absent is any substantive discussion of the diverse views that have been shared, the alternatives that have been considered, the trade-offs that have been made to achieve consensus.

Has the impossible happened? Have the Clinton White House and the Republican Congress truly come up with a budget compromise that both sides believe will produce a balanced budget and allow tax cuts? That's the word out of Washington, D.C. What makes it all possible, analysts say, is a vigorous economy that is generating surprisingly high tax collections.

Relatives of murder victims Gertrude and Richard Mattausch left court disappointed last Tuesday. They had expected to hear one of the defendants in the case plead guilty, part of a deal with the prosecuting attorney. Once before the judge, though, Cheyenne T. Brown changed his mind.

Remember this about Lewis and Clark High School's program to test student athletes for drugs: It was suggested by student athletes. Some seniors on last year's football team took the idea to their coaches out of concern that drug abuse was hurting the team. The coaches pitched the plan to administrators and administrators sold the Spokane School Board. Last year, on a voluntary basis, LC football players submitted to a random drug testing program. Next year, all LC teams will participate.

Spokane County's 20-year-old juvenile detention facility was designed to house 44 offenders. By fudging on accepted standards, officials can accommodate 65. With the creative use of holding cells and day room space, the population has recently been as high as 67. At the beginning of June, newly sentenced juveniles were being given "report dates" in July.

Nearby residents not only gave the Spokane MarketPlace a warm reception when it moved into its new home at First and Jefferson, some even pitched in to help spruce up the building. A year ago that wouldn't have happened. Residents in and around the 1100 block of West First were too terrified of street crime to venture outside their locked doors. In July 1996, "the block," as the area was known, accounted for 165 times its share of the Spokane Police Department's attention.

Public opinion surveys leave no doubt: Most Americans want Timothy McVeigh killed. McVeigh should suffer the same fate that his victims suffered when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. So the prevalent reasoning goes.

First, they were flooded by Mother Nature. Now, they're being snowed by their federal government. Residents in 33 states eligible for national flood relief sit helplessly on their sandbags while Congress and President Clinton exploit them - and their circumstances - for political advantage. The Republican Congress bears most of the guilt, but Clinton owns a share of culpability, too.

Elections officials think as many as 70 percent of Spokane County's registered voters will cast ballots in next week's statewide election. Imagine, 70 percent. That would be substantially higher than the normal turnout - except you can't call it a turnout. Spokane County decided to conduct this election by mail. There are no polls at which to turn out. Voters are following a campaign restricted to the media, then punching their ballots at home and turning them over to their postal carriers.

It doesn't matter to Spokane's Chase Youth Commission if some low-income kids who get scholarships to play in Hoopfest live outside the city limits. It didn't matter, either, that some youngsters who got free running shoes for Bloomsday were not city residents. The commission is a city entity, established in the Spokane city charter and operated in conjunction with the city Youth Department.

When the plainsmen, trappers and mountaineers stretched the American frontier westward, they brought a spirit of independence that doesn't cotton to much government intrusion. So it's our heritage, we sons and daughters of the pioneers, to mistrust government or anyone else who tampers with our individuality or who cramps our freedom. That may explain why such spit-in-your-eye movements as the recently reported Republic of Idaho, situated in Benewah County, pop up here from time to time. So far, the Republic of Idaho's disaffection with government, particularly the court system, hasn't reached the alarming proportions displayed recently in Texas.

What went so haywire in the lives of two 13-year-olds that it could explain a $100,000-plus vandalism spree, rationalized by one of them as "something to do"? The question has answers, if we're willing to act on them. But if we truly want to understand the mayhem a week ago at Sacajawea Middle School, we also need to ask what has gone right in the lives of youngsters who, sometimes against stiff odds, spurn such misconduct. That question has answers, too.

If the sponsors who underwrite commercial television programming had to worry about defending murder, mayhem and marital infidelity, their investments would change in a hurry. Violence and sex course from the home screen like a river at flood stage, but advertisers seldom flinch - if the audiences are there.

It's been a hard day at the silversmith shop and Paul Revere arrives home with barely enough energy to draw a tankard of ale. He kicks off his boots, sinks into his La-Z-Boy and flips on the Zenith just in time to see a 30-second spot that questions King George's mental stability and accuses Tories, Redcoats and the British Parliament of conspiring to undermine the American Way of Life even before anybody creates it.

"The opportunity to learn in an environment that stimulates rather than limits and to associate with one's peers is not a special favor," says Cynthia Fine, Spokane. Fine, one of several readers who support a magnet school for gifted fifth and sixth graders in Spokane public schools, fears the program will be too small to accommodate all the children who could benefit from it. She also thinks transportation needs should be addressed.

There's a scrap of irony in the $1.1 million civil judgment a former Gonzaga University student won against his alma mater Tuesday. If Ru Paster had obtained the teaching certificate he wanted and if one of his students had come to school showing signs of possible child abuse, Paster would have been required by law to tell authorities.

Spokane School District 81 has decided to create a full-time magnet school for gifted students in the fifth and sixth grades. This first-of-its-kind option in Spokane public schools is likely to rekindle the debate that usually accompanies special educational offerings for the brightest youngsters. Even the current one-day-a-week Tessera program has been accused of being, among other things, elitist. Parents whose children qualify for such programs now will have the option of sending them every day to a classroom filled with similarly intelligent classmates.

If you aren't familiar with Washington state's Basic Health Plan, you're lucky. It's a plan for people whose low-paying jobs lack benefits like health insurance. For those whose premiums the state subsidizes, the Basic Health Plan can be what gets them off, or keeps them off, welfare.

The mayor of Millwood has a problem with the ban Spokane County commissioners are considering on motorized watercraft on free-flowing stretches of the Spokane River. It doesn't go far enough.

You deserve an explanation for the piece of trash that appears on the facing page under the headline, "Letter shows the ugly and hateful face of racism." Please read it, but first brace yourself. It's obscene, in more ways than one. It has no redeeming merit. It violates the standards of decency as well as several Spokesman-Review standards for letters to the editor.

The great Pacific Northwest, home of natural splendor, and endless recreational opportunities. God's country. Trouble is, all those recreational opportunists sometimes smudge up the splendor. Shimmering waterways that beckon irresistibly to boaters and Jet Ski enthusiasts pay the price that comes from overuse. What price?