Nicholas Deshais

Spring has sprung, and if you’re looking for a bike, then you’re in luck. Beginning today, the fourth annual  Spokane Bike Swap and Expo will take over the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center with more than 1,000 new and used bikes for sale, from kids’ bikes to road bikes to tandem cycles to everything in between.

When state auditors and city officials found that Gary Lindeblad, the golf pro at Indian Canyon Golf Course since the mid-1980s, owed the city nearly $90,000 because of poor bookkeeping, he didn’t balk. Instead, Lindeblad delivered three handwritten pages to the city arguing he was owed more than $190,000 because “severe maintenance issues” at the 80-year-old golf course had cut into his revenue over the years, a line of reasoning that met little resistance at City Hall.

The issue of how much Spokane’s top elected official should be paid was revived Monday by Mayor David Condon, who challenged the City Council to “look to solutions rather than just the problem.” Condon called on the City Council to put a measure on the “next available ballot” asking voters to approve a plan to have the city’s Salary Review Commission set the mayor’s pay. The commission currently determines compensation for City Council members and Municipal Court judges.

Pavement first came to Spokane in 1893, thanks to cyclists. The path was about 5 feet wide and ran next to Broadway Avenue. Unlike the road it paralleled, the bike path was graded, graveled, covered with cinder rock and flattened with a 6-ton roller until it was hard as stone.

In the summer of 2013, as Walt Worthy’s plans for a new downtown Spokane hotel were being finalized, Mayor David Condon met with Worthy and promised more than $3.3 million in city funds for the project. In his hand, Condon held a memo written by Jan Quintrall, who led the city’s Business and Developer Services Division, and Scott Chesney, the city’s then-planning director, that laid out “partnership parameters” between Worthy and the city, including up to $2 million in funds to alleviate any pollution in the ground beneath the proposed hotel. The other money went to sidewalk and streetscape improvements and to fee waivers.

Before you get angry that a section of Northwest Boulevard will be closed for an entire year, count to 10. Actually, count to 43, because that’s how many city of Spokane projects are planned for this year’s construction season, which began Monday just south of the intersection of Northwest Boulevard and West Garland Avenue.

The first of many multimillion-dollar projects to remake Riverfront Park launches this week as the city begins building a team that will determine the overarching look and design of the park. The design team will likely consist of landscape architects, urban designers and engineers. The city is asking for interested firms and individuals to submit their qualifications. The official request for qualifications will be released on Wednesday.

First women, then millennials. A Philadelphia-based retailer has twice in the last month announced downtown Spokane stores aimed at two coveted shopping demographics.

A couple of times each weekday, yellow lights flash along Spokane’s Northwest Boulevard near Finch Elementary, warning drivers to check their speed and watch for children. They usually go unnoticed.

An emergency rule issued last month by the Washington state Agriculture Department to protect the state’s $2 billion apple industry has threatened to derail Spokane’s curbside yard waste recycling program – just as the city is preparing to begin picking up green bins this week. The rule, which strengthens the department’s regulatory power over composting facilities, surprised city officials and the private operators of the city and county’s shared composting facility in Lincoln County. They warned that the rule could cost the city more than $1 million in upgrades or shut down entirely the green waste operation, which collects food scraps and yard debris.