John Craig

Leave your hulky mobile home on a Spokane Valley street and it may be towed right out of town under legislation presented to the City Council on Tuesday. You can expect better treatment if your stylish SUV breaks down.

Three ambulance companies have expressed interest in bidding for a contract with most of the fire departments in Spokane County, but one has dropped out. Spokane Valley Fire Department Chief Mike Thompson said Paramedics Plus of Tyler, Texas, said in a letter Monday that company officials didn’t think they would have enough time to prepare a bid.

A Spokane Valley Fire Department entrance examination is in limbo because of questions about when job seekers should have arrived for the test. A letter asked test-takers to arrive at the Decades Banquet Facility at the University Shopping Center a half-hour before their 9 a.m. or 1 p.m. test time, and some were turned away when they arrived after 8:30 a.m. or 12:30 p.m.

Spokane Valley Mayor Rich Munson said he was unaware of constitutional prohibitions when he warned speakers to refrain from “personal attacks” during a public hearing last week, but he doesn’t think he did anything wrong. Two critics of the proposed Sprague-Appleway Revitalization Plan, Susan Scott and Mary Pollard, say they found Munson’s conduct during a hearing on the plan intimidating.

A city-commissioned survey shows most Spokane Valley residents don’t think they’re getting good value for their tax dollar and don’t think city officials listen well. The $18,000 study, statistically accurate within 5 percent, found that only 40 percent of Spokane Valley residents feel they get good or excellent service from the city, and only 43 percent feel city officials do a good or excellent job of listening to them.

Spokane Valley City Manager Dave Mercier on Tuesday answered public allegations of profligate spending with a presentation dubbed “City Finance 101.” The primer seemed aimed more at backers of a disincorporation drive than at the City Council members Mercier addressed.

Seat belts may save lives, but a 7-year-old Spokane Valley girl learned the hard way that fingers are best left unbuckled. Firefighters had to rescue the girl last week from a seat belt buckle with the grip of a pit bull terrier.

Motorists will encounter big changes Monday along Pines Road north of Interstate 90. Expect delays, Spokane Valley city officials warn.

Once again, Spokane Valley residents have told the City Council they don’t like the proposed Sprague-Appleway Revitalization Plan. They especially don’t like the part that would restore two-way traffic on part of the Sprague-Appleway couplet.

Construction will begin next month on a summer-long series of projects to repave parts of Sprague Avenue and improve sidewalks and storm water drains. Information on the projects will be presented at an open house from 4 to 7 p.m. May 6 at City Hall, 11707 E. Sprague Ave.

A father got his two children out of their burning home before calling Spokane Valley firefighters to the worst of eight recently reported structure fires. Deputy Fire Marshal Bill Clifford said the father woke up about 1:30 a.m. on April 16 to discover fire in his bedroom in a home at 814 S. Best Road. After getting the children to safety, the man returned for the family dog and his cell phone.

Spokane Valley will pay $150,000 for an environmental study city officials hope will encourage redevelopment of a mile-long, 145-acre section of the Sprague-Appleway corridor. Almost all of the land – bounded by Walnut and Bowdish roads, and by Main and Fourth avenues – is privately owned, but city officials hope the entire community will benefit.

Spokane Valley firefighters say a woman drinking red wine straight from the bottle called them to the Broadway Apartments last Saturday and yelled at them to clean up the mess from a toilet that overflowed. They had been told to expect an overflowing bathtub when they were called to the apartments at 11910 E. Broadway Ave., about 12:40 a.m., but a dispatcher said the woman was hard to understand.

A new set of standards for Spokane Valley streets aims to provide more clarity for contractors and better quality for citizens. If endorsed by the Planning Commission and adopted by the City Council, the standards would replace a code that was borrowed from Spokane County when the city was incorporated. City officials say the current code is vague in places and designed more for rural projects than suburban in-fill development.

A divided Spokane Valley City Council agreed Tuesday to relax tough airport zoning restrictions they adopted in 2006 to protect Felts Field. The regulations, based on state guidelines, were the most restrictive in Spokane County and essentially prohibited fill-in construction in residential areas close to the airport. Some property owners complained that they had paid for sewer and water stubs for houses they could no longer build.

A consortium of fire districts and departments in Spokane County started soliciting bids March 27 for a regional ambulance contract. Spokane Valley Fire Department Chief Mike Thompson said officials conducted a conference Monday to answer questions from potential bidders, and bidding will close May 27. He said three companies have expressed interest in bidding, including American Medical Response, which provides most ambulance service in Spokane County.

The Spokane Valley Fire Department will get a new civil service commissioner Monday and will find out how much a new fire truck may cost. Fire commissioners will conduct a special meeting Monday at 4 p.m. to swear in Mike Creighton as a member of the department’s three-member Civil Service Commission and to open a bid for a new truck that inadvertently was overlooked at this week’s regular meeting.