Mike Prager

Up to 150 homeowners in the Spokane metropolitan area will be able to get substantial cash rebates for replacing their older-style wood stoves with new cleaner-burning devices. Rebates of up to $600 are being made available by the Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency through nine participating retailers at 13 locations in the county.

The Spokane Homeless Coalition is seeking several dozen volunteers to help in a state-mandated count of the homeless population during the week of Jan. 20. Amy Jones, count coordinator, said she is looking for people who are 18 or older and who would be willing to spend shifts of one to four hours counting homeless persons.

The developer of a parking lot on the site of several demolished historic buildings has failed to meet city codes for construction, drainage and safety, but has reached an agreement with city officials to fix the problems. Spokane city officials said last Friday that property owner Wendell Reugh was being issued a temporary certificate of occupancy, but he must complete the project according to city code, or risk having the city tap into a Reugh line of credit to get the work done properly.

If you thought you shoveled a lot in December, you're right. December brought the most days with measured snowfall in a single month since January 1969, the year many old-timers claim was the worst winter ever in the Inland Northwest.

Apparently, stealing ice skates from Riverfront Park has become something of a game for Spokane miscreants. The Ice Palace purchased about 100 pairs of new skates at the start of the current season, and there has been a steady march of them out the door and out of the park.

Winemaker Kristina Mielke-van Loben Sels at Arbor Crest Wine Cellars in Spokane has won two more top scores for her 2004 vintages of cabernet sauvignon and merlot. In its latest edition, Wine Spectator magazine gave a 90-point rating to the cabernet and an 89-point rating to the merlot on the magazine's 100-point rating system.

Fire stations in the city of Spokane are participating in a regionwide effort to provide safe houses for people in emergencies. The Safe Place program was formed through the Volunteers of America organization so that children would have locations to go to get help quickly.

Dozens of South Side residents packed into a small briefing center in the lower level of City Hall last week to argue against developers who are trying to bring big-box retail to their Southgate Neighborhood. The fight pits former friends who have spent the past decade trying to rein in development in the Moran Prairie area south of Ferris High School.

Winemaker Kristina Mielki-van Loben Sels at Arbor Crest Wine Cellars in Spokane has won two more top scores for her 2004 vintages of cabernet sauvignon and merlot. In its latest edition, Wine Spectator magazine gave a 90-point rating to the cabernet and an 89-point rating to the merlot on the magazine's 100-point rating system.

Even though the risk of lead poisoning in children has long been known in Spokane, there is very little information on how many children have elevated lead levels in their blood and how high those levels might be. The Lands Council in Spokane wants to start documenting the problem through a small two-year grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Three North Side parks are being recommended initially for new spray water play areas, but parks officials said Tuesday that more locations on the North Side are being sought depending on citizen input in coming months. Friendship, Glass and Audubon parks are identified as potential spray area locations because each previously had wading pools, closed for safety and maintenance problems in recent years. Shadle Park has a newer spray area built two years ago.

Two North Side neighborhood councils have been reorganizing and trying to increase their membership after attendance had fallen in recent years. The Balboa/North Indian Trail Neighborhood Council had slipped to a handful of people until incoming council chairwoman Claudette Ganger started trying to increase participation.

Fifty years ago November, members of the Inland Northwest's oldest amateur astronomy organization set up telescopes to track the early orbits of Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite launched into space by the then-Soviet Union. They were part of a nationwide civilian effort to keep an eye on Sputnik during the height of the Cold War and the start of what would become the Space Race to land a man on the moon, which the U.S. won 12 years later.