A state-paid family counselor was convicted of extorting sex from a woman he was supposed to be helping in a domestic crisis. A Stevens County Superior Court jury Wednesday night convicted Preston Lynn Carbary of three counts of second-degree rape by a health care provider. The Loon Lake resident faces a standard range of 12 to 16 years in prison when Judge Rebecca Baker sentences him, tentatively set for June 1.
The Spokane Regional Solid Waste System will collect yard waste at no cost Saturday from residents of five southeast Spokane County communities where burning is no longer allowed. Recycling coordinator Suzanne Tresko said the event is limited to residents of Fairfield, Latah, Rockford, Waverly and Spangle.
Ben Burr Road on Moran Prairie will remain a road, Spokane County commissioners decided Tuesday. Commissioners unanimously, if reluctantly, rejected a request to close and sell a portion of the road between 57th and 61st avenues. The closure would have allowed Black Development to build a shopping center, including a Yoke's supermarket, on top of the road.
Spokane County commissioners can have a new civil service commissioner who thinks a sheriff's detective was properly fired for flashing a young woman. Or they can have one who thinks he was properly reinstated. That contrast emerged Monday when commissioners interviewed two finalists for the opening created when they declined to reappoint one of two civil service commissioners who voted to overturn Detective Joseph Mastel's dismissal.
Former Spokane County Commissioner Phil Harris took a personal interest in a decision to allow a day care center in an airport crash zone, according to an investigation that concluded the decision was improper. Two Building and Planning Department employees got Harris' view on the issue when he popped in on them unexpectedly in December while they were discussing a Spokesman-Review story about their department head's controversial day care approval.
Spokane County commissioners have expressed interest in a plan to take some of the sting out of rising health care costs by requiring public works contractors to pay medical benefits. The proposal by the Spokane Alliance social advocacy organization would affect only nonunion contractors who don't provide health insurance for all their employees.
Spokane County "whistle-blower" Bruce Hunt was right about several allegations against his Building and Planning Department superiors, county commissioners said Wednesday. They said Hunt, a county planner, correctly pointed out in a legally protected complaint to commissioners in December that Building and Planning Director Jim Manson improperly granted a zone change by ordering a comprehensive plan map be redrawn.
Only one person testified last week at a Spokane Transit Authority hearing on several proposed route improvements, but transit officials are confident they're on the right track. Spokeswoman Molly Myers said comments have been "overwhelmingly supportive" in a survey at the park-and-ride lot on Hastings Road near north Division Street. She estimated that 50 to 60 people expressed their opinions in the survey and on the STA's Web site.
It's easy to believe the toddlers in the Early Head Start nursery at Spokane's West Central Community Center really are going places when teacher Julie Bostwick-Cosby leads them in a chorus: "Zoom, zoom, zoom! We're going to the moon." These five cheerful tots and the baby cuddling nearby with child care aide Lana Nosova look as likely to zoom as anyone else at that age. Their day care is as well-appointed, as well-staffed as any suburban parent could expect.
Spokane County commissioners have scheduled a decision May 1 on a controversial request to sell part of a road on Moran Prairie to developers so they can build a strip mall. County Engineer Robert Brueggeman and people who live in the area are opposed to Black Development's proposal to put a Yoke's supermarket and other businesses on top of Ben Burr Road between 57th and 61st avenues.
Five of Spokane County's small cities and towns will spruce up their parks this year with county money. Deer Park will complete its Mix Park expansion project with $20,000 awarded last week by county commissioners. The grant was the largest of five under a competitive program for communities with fewer than 12,000 residents.
Spokane County commissioners want to renew a state grant that has helped their juvenile justice staff deal with nonviolent delinquents without locking up so many of them. Commissioners authorized Juvenile Court administrators to seek a third year of funding under a three-year state program that has provided $91,314 in each of the past two years. They don't know yet whether that much will be available, however.
Suspended Spokane police Detective Jay Patrick Mehring said little Monday when he pleaded innocent to a felony harassment charge. Mehring, 39, answered some yes-and-no questions but otherwise said nothing at his arraignment before Spokane County Superior Court Judge Michael Price. Mehring will remain free on $100,000 bail pending his trial, which Price set for July 9.
A Spokane police officer remained in jail Monday night despite a reduction in his bail on charges that he drunkenly shot a man who allegedly stole his pickup. Spokane County Superior Court Judge Michael Price reduced Officer James Jay Olsen's $100,000 bail to $25,000 at a preliminary hearing Monday. Olsen had been in the county jail since Friday, when he was arrested and charged with first-degree assault and two counts of reckless endangerment.
Spokane County sheriff's deputies used their refurbished helicopter and a police dog Saturday in an unsuccessful search for two men who eluded them in one of two stolen pickups that were abandoned near Newman Lake. Sgt. Dave Reagan said it seemed likely there was a connection between the two trucks, which were found in close proximity, and with two other stolen vehicles that were found burned in roughly the same area earlier last week.
Admission is going up at Spokane County's North Side water park, but the increase will be given back at concession stands this summer. County commissioners approved a plan Tuesday that will increase the price of admission for users 6 and older from $4 to $5 while throwing in a coupon good for $1 off on snacks and beverages purchased during the same visit.
A 59-year-old Ferry County house guest faces arraignment next Friday in the shooting death of his host. District Court Judge Lynda Eaton set bail Wednesday at $500,000 for murder suspect Philip Jerome "Jeb" Strong, and Strong remained in the county jail Thursday on suspicion of first-degree murder.
The half-dozen applicants to replace retiring Judge Kenneth Kato on the Washington Court of Appeals are all qualified, according to the Spokane County Bar Association. A poll of bar members and the analysis of an 11-member panel revealed no clear turkeys or standouts among the candidates: Superior Court judges Tari Eitzen and Linda Tompkins, deputy Spokane County prosecutors Kevin Korsmo and Brian O'Brien and private attorneys Louis Rukavina and Debra Stephens.
People look gift horses in the mouth because horses keep eating when they're too old to work. But Spokane County Treasurer Skip Chilberg insists he must accept a couple of broken-down nags with the potential to empty the county granary.
The Spokane Transit Authority is turning its attention to what officials say is an underdeveloped market: people who ride the bus to get to work. In addition to offering wireless Internet service on six new 60-foot articulating commuter buses within a couple of months, STA officials are proposing basic service improvements that would cost more than $1.3 million a year.
Finally, the fun can start. Public officials have cleared the way for construction of a new $5 million water park at 61st Avenue and Freya Street. Spokane County commissioners awarded a contract Tuesday for construction of the 4,000-square-foot complex of splashy water attractions that include a beachlike pool, a water slide and a somewhat inappropriately named "lazy river."
A Spokane appellate judge says a rapist who peered at a woman in a downtown restaurant toilet stall should have his voyeurism conviction overturned because he may not have looked at her long enough before she pulled up her pants and fled. Washington Court of Appeals Court Judge John Schultheis said state law is ambiguous when it says voyeurism requires peeping "more than a brief period of time, in other than a casual or cursory manner." In this case, the victim said the April 2005 incident in the women's restaurant of Cyrus O'Leary's happened "so fast," Schultheis noted.
A Spokane Valley child molester who faces trial in May on a new molestation charge was a substitute teacher in public and parochial schools as well as being a Scoutmaster. Ralph Emerson "Ray" Willcox Jr., 58, was an infrequent substitute teacher in several school districts – including Spokane, Central Valley and East Valley – and in the St. Mary School of the Catholic Diocese of Spokane.
Spokane County commissioners moved this week to support economic development by channeling up to $25 million of state money to commercial and residential development in and near the city of Liberty Lake. Commissioners set boundaries Tuesday for a proposed 1,300-acre River District "revenue development area" that will consist mostly of the 900-acre River Crossing mixed-use development in and near the city of Liberty Lake.
Kids and adults may eventually cavort in a beachlike pool, blast down a 150-foot water slide or glide down the "lazy river" of a $5 million water park planned at 61st and Freya. But the area was full of alligators Tuesday. Spokane County commissioners balked – again – at concessions the Spokane City Council wants in exchange for an agreement to extend water and sewer service to the proposed water park.
