A six-year Spokane street plan for the years 2007 through 2012 includes 13 new projects scattered across the city. The plan was approved by the City Council on Monday.
This month may be only halfway over, but June 2006 already is the wettest June in the past 42 years in Spokane. A steady, gentle rain on Wednesday added to the standing water brought by a series of downpours this month, including a traffic-swamping deluge on Tuesday.
Spokane police unveiled on Monday a half-hour public presentation explaining the Police Department's policy on use of nonlethal force, including the controversial Taser stun gun. Deputy Police Chief Al Odenthal told City Council members that officers will be giving the presentation to community groups. The presentation was given to the council at Monday night's meeting.
June is shaping up to be a pretty good month for gazing at the heavens. Mars and Saturn are moving into alignment in the constellation of Cancer, while the tiny planet Mercury hovers in the western twilight just below and a little to the right of them. Mercury often is not seen because it orbits so close to the sun, but all three planets are visible now.
Grab your Speedo and get on down to the Spokane city parks office. There's a shortage of lifeguards for this summer. The city is seeking qualified applicants, and they will provide training for the $8- to $9-an-hour job.
An appeal by residents living along South Bernard Street seeking to save 23 mature street trees was denied on Wednesday, clearing the way for Spokane City Council approval of a contract to rebuild Bernard from 14th to 29th avenues. A special City Council meeting has been scheduled for this afternoon to consider a proposed $1.8 million reconstruction contract with Eller Corp., of Newman Lake. A separate tree removal contract is also being sought by the city.
Suzanne Croft watched with an ache in her heart as workers on Tuesday removed her beloved sugar maple from the front yard of her home near Spokane's Cannon Hill Park. The 90-plus-year-old tree looked healthy, but two of the city's top certified arborists diagnosed it with structural defects that made the maple a risk for sudden failure.
The Spokane City Council on Monday approved land use and zoning changes that will help protect Logan Neighborhood residential areas from being crowded with box-like apartment additions to single-family homes. The council unanimously voted in favor of a plan to reduce the zoning from duplex to single-family use on 166 acres with 830 separate property parcels.
A rainbowlike weather phenomenon seen over Spokane and parts of North Idaho on Saturday was a rare meteorological event that involves sunlight passing through precisely aligned ice crystals in high-elevation clouds. The phenomenon is known as a "circumhorizon arc," one of some 15 types of ice halos that can occur when sunlight passes through ice clouds.
Residents of West Ninth Avenue on Spokane's South Hill are banding together to preserve the architectural history of four residences built in the early 1900s for one of the city's most beloved and generous families. They are seeking to form a local historic district to ensure that their block-long row of Tudor Revival homes between Madison and Jefferson streets will be maintained in the future.
Security tapes at River Park Square show Jo Ellen Savage's 1996 Subaru disappearing behind a minivan as she pulled into a parking stall on the pink level of the garage, a moment before the vehicle broke through a reinforced concrete retaining spandrel and plunged nearly five stories, killing Savage. Two minutes later, another camera, mounted near the exit to the garage and programmed to scan two sides of an exterior ramp, captured an image of the crushed, upside-down vehicle on the ramp with eyewitnesses coming to the driver's assistance.
The Spokane City Council on Monday approved $4.4 million in neighborhood street improvements, including two projects intended to revitalize aging business districts along South Perry Street on the South Side and West Broadway Avenue on the North Side. On Perry Street, neighborhood leaders won a second federal transportation enhancement grant to build phase two of street improvements.
Spokane City Council President Joe Shogan said Wednesday he wants all new top-level city employees brought under the city's ethics policy after a dozen or more top employees were found to be exempt. Shogan said he is drafting an ordinance through the city legal department to require compliance with the ethics code for all new top hires. The city is currently seeking a new police chief.
Spokane city officials and the owners of the former Spokane Shadow Soccer Club have reached an agreement that calls on the city to buy out five remaining years on the Shadow's lease of Albi Stadium at a cost to the city of $330,000, city officials said Friday. The deal comes after the Shadow cancelled its season and subsequently lost its league franchise as a result of concerns over the safety of artificial turf at Albi.
Spokane Mayor Dennis Hession is moving ahead on a promise he made five months ago when he took over as mayor: to reignite the city's annexation efforts. Under Hession, the city is taking steps to annex a tax-rich commercial area along the west side of Division Street from Francis Avenue to just north of Cascade Way. The city plans to annex the area through the state's petition method, thus sidestepping the need for a public vote.
As Inland Northwest temperatures soared into the 90s for the fourth day in a row on Thursday – sending even more snowmelt into the area's raging rivers – forecasters turned their attention to a new threat: the potential for thunderstorms tonight. The National Weather Service Thursday issued a hazardous weather outlook warning of heavy rain as a potential thunderstorm system crosses the region later today through Saturday morning.
Mayor Dennis Hession said Wednesday he will not release a legal opinion he used to conclude that the city's new ethics code does not apply to a former public works and utilities director who recently took a job with one of the city's largest public works contractors. Hession on Wednesday said the opinion, which is still in draft form, is an attorney-client "work product," and as such, is exempt from public disclosure under the state's open records act. He said he was not inclined to release the opinion even after it is submitted in final form.
Daytime temperatures at or near record highs are expected throughout much of this week across the region, and the quick warm-up is causing rivers to rise from melting snow in Eastern Washington and North Idaho. A high of 90 was reached Monday at Spokane International Airport, just shy of the 92-degree daily record set in 1939. The high at the Coeur d'Alene Airport was 88 on Monday.
Spokane's outgoing public works and utilities director Roger Flint is under no obligation to comply with the city's new ethics policy because his employment contract with the city was reached prior to the City Council's adoption of the ethics policy last January, Mayor Dennis Hession said Thursday. The mayor called Flint an honest and ethical public employee who has been the target of unfair and irresponsible "character assassination."
Spokane City Council members have expanded zones for offices along major arterials and have temporarily held off on lowering minimum lot sizes on the edges of the city in last minute decision-making over a long-awaited update to the city's residential zoning code. The council unanimously approved the new code late Monday, the first rewrite in 48 years of development rules governing the city's residential areas.
The Spokane City Council on Monday approved formation of two local improvement districts for street improvements. The first project involves Sharp Avenue from Haven to Greene streets; Sinto Avenue from Regal to Fiske streets; and Fiske Street from 125 feet south of Boone Avenue to Mission Avenue.
Spokane's outgoing director of public works and utilities apparently felt his professional integrity was being threatened by a rush to gain approval of a large new Kendall Yards commercial and residential development on the north bank of the Spokane River. Director Roger Flint last year had been given the job of overseeing the city's regulatory processing of the project, but asked in a pair of memos to Mayor Dennis Hession to be taken off the job rather than be expected to become an "advocate" for the project. Copies of the memos were obtained by The Spokesman-Review.
Spokane's outgoing director of public works and utilities apparently felt his professional integrity was being threatened by a rush to gain approval of a large new Kendall Yards commercial and residential development on the north bank of the Spokane River. Director Roger Flint last year had been given the job of overseeing the city's regulatory processing of the project, but asked in a pair of memos to Mayor Dennis Hession to be taken off the job rather than be expected to become an "advocate" for the project. Copies of the memos were obtained by The Spokesman-Review.
The Spokane City Council on Monday approved formation of two local improvement districts for street improvements. The first project involves Sharp Avenue from Haven to Greene streets; Sinto Avenue from Regal to Fiske streets; and Fiske Street from 125 feet south of Boone Avenue to Mission Avenue.
A New York consultant who has helped restore more than 150 historic theaters in the United States said on Tuesday that the 1931 Fox Theater in Spokane ranks among the great movie palaces of the era and, like the others, is filled with exquisite, irreplaceable period design. "It's pure art deco," said Jeffrey Greene, an expert in the murals, light fixtures and other decorative furnishings found in old theaters.
