Jonathan Brunt

Spokane County on Tuesday ended its road partnership with Spokane Valley, effective Oct. 15. County Commissioner Mark Richard said that it no longer made economic sense for the county to continue with its contract with Spokane Valley to provide the city street services.

Utility taxes are going up. But they won’t be passed on through sewer and water bills – at least not yet. The Spokane City Council on Monday unanimously agreed to Spokane Mayor Mary Verner’s proposal to begin charging the city’s 20 percent utility tax to certain utility fees that haven’t previously been taxed.

Once a tool more to the Grinch’s liking, the city of Spokane is betting its supplies of mothballed parking meters will spread joy this holiday season. The street department will sell its remaining mechanical parking meters for $35 each starting Monday.

State auditors believe Spokane County may have made an illegal promise to the losing bidder of a proposed sewage treatment plant. In 2006, the county agreed to pay up to $200,000 to companies that bid on but lose a county contract for building and operating the plant, which would serve Spokane Valley and surrounding areas.

A few months after state officials criticized Spokane County for missing deadlines to complete new construction rules along waterways, planners working to finalize shoreline regulations within city limits have won the state’s praise. “The process has been one of the best we’ve seen,” said Doug Pineo, shorelines specialist for the Department of Ecology. “What the city has proposed so far meets the standards” of state law.

Panhandling in Spokane will be greatly restricted as a result of two new laws approved by the City Council on Monday night. One set of regulations will prohibit begging within 15 feet of building entrances, ATMs, pay phones, fuel pumps, bus stops, taxi zones, self-service car washes and any parked car when someone is entering or exiting it.

The Spokane City Council said no thanks Monday to county leaders considering a plan to buy the downtown YMCA in Riverfront Park with existing public money. If county commissioners don’t fund the purchase, the city will have to buy the YMCA and sell it to a private party or ask voters to approve a new tax.

As state and county leaders brace for significant cuts and painful layoffs, Spokane Mayor Mary Verner plans to raise city spending by 7 percent next year. Verner has proposed a $156 million budget next year on police, firefighting, parks and other city services. That’s up from a proposed budget of $146 million in 2008.

“Need money for license to beg.” That could be the new sign motorists see if the Spokane City Council approves rules requiring beggars to buy special-events licenses before collecting money at major intersections.

Spokane residents have 10 more days to give the City Council a piece of their mind – at least in an online survey. Council members are asking residents to fill out a “citizen priority survey” to rank 21 categories by importance to their neighborhood and to the city as a whole. A link to the survey is on the city’s Web site, at spokanecity.org.

Spokane residents have 10 more days to give the City Council a piece of their mind – at least in an online survey. Council members are asking residents to fill out a “citizen priority survey” to rank 21 categories by importance to their neighborhood and to the city as a whole. A link to the survey is on the city’s homepage, spokanecity.org.

After years of talk, Spokane leaders have created taxes on new development in hopes of solving a growing shortfall in street funding. But because of restrictions in the “impact fee” ordinance, which was approved by City Council early Tuesday, it’s unclear when the city will start collecting the money.

It could soon be illegal to ask for money throughout much of downtown Spokane – at least on a sidewalk. The Spokane City Council is considering a series of ordinances that would create significant barriers to panhandling.

Spokane city officials on Thursday turned over a packet of River Park Square documents they had previously labeled confidential. The records, which detail disputes among attorneys working for the city about the direction of the mall controversy and legal fees, were released in response to records requests filed by The Spokesman-Review in April.

The attorney who originally handled the city’s litigation over River Park Square wanted to accuse a former Spokane mayor and two City Council members of being part of a conspiracy to inflate the price of the mall’s garage. But those officials were never named in any lawsuit the city filed, and Seattle attorney O. Yale Lewis never could produce any proof to back up what he called “unavoidable conclusions” of that conspiracy in his correspondence with his replacement, Laurel Siddoway, and Mayor John Powers, who took office in 2001.

The engineering firm that was ordered last month to pay more than $5 million to the family and estate of a city employee killed in sewage accident, was awarded a $30 million city contract on Monday. The Spokane City Council voted unanimously to award CH2M HILL the eight-year contract to engineer, plan and manage the construction of two new sewage digesters and other work at the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

Despite the nation’s worsening economic crisis, Spokane Mayor Mary Verner has an optimistic view of the city’s financial future. Verner, in her proposed $619 million budget for next year, predicts tax revenue will grow at least 2 percent, enabling her to hire more police officers and spend more on social services when other government leaders in the Northwest are bracing for cuts. If her revenue prediction is wrong, Verner hopes to balance the budget by delaying the additional hires.

OLYMPIA — Two years after ousting an incumbent to claim a seat in the state House of Representatives, Rep. Don Barlow finds himself on the opposite end of the equation. After an expensive, close race, Barlow, D-Spokane, has lost to Republican challenger Kevin Parker. A second race in the same western-Spokane district, meanwhile, remains too close to call and could be headed for a mandatory recount.

With only a few exceptions, incumbents were winning handily in early counting Tuesday for Legislative races in North Idaho and Eastern Washington. In the closest race in North Idaho, state Sen. John Goedde was holding onto a 900-vote margin over Democratic challenger Ken Howard for the seat representing the 4th Legislative District that covers most of Coeur d’Alene.