Nicholas Deshais

When city leaders encouraged Spokane voters to pass last year’s street levy, they promised that existing property tax rates wouldn’t change. Now that promise is in jeopardy.

A crowd of vaccination opponents hoping to dissuade the Spokane City Council from kicking Councilman Mike Fagan off the county health board erupted into shouts of “coward” when a chance to publicly testify was denied them Thursday afternoon. The shout, which first came from Fagan, was aimed at Council President Ben Stuckart during a meeting in a stifling City Hall basement room that has low capacity and poor visibility because of giant pillars that block sightlines. Many attendees had to stand.

About 50 people packed the City Council briefing center on Thursday to hear the council’s discussion regarding a letter to Councilman Mike Fagan asking him to “clarify” his recent questioning the safety of vaccination and linking recent infectious disease outbreaks are linked to illegal immigration.

There’s an old landfill on East Sprague Avenue that used to be set on fire whenever its piles grew too high. After a massive fire ravaged downtown Spokane and destroyed 300 buildings in 1889, the charred debris was pushed into a ravine that cut toward Peaceful Valley. These early wanton disposals of waste have made a headache for the city as it continues work to solve a modern waste conundrum. Both old waste sites are in the way of the construction of massive tanks the city will build to capture sewage so that it can be properly treated instead of released untreated in the river.

Three days after the Spokane Regional Health District asked every adult and child in the region to get vaccinated against measles, health board member and Spokane City Councilman Mike Fagan questioned the use of vaccines and said recent outbreaks of contagious disease are linked to illegal immigration. “LOTS OF CONTROVERSY ON WHETHER OR NOT GOVT SHOULD MAKE VACCINATIONS MANDATORY,” Fagan wrote Saturday on his personal Facebook page, where he has more than 1,000 friends. “I believe that more will rise to the surface as the vaccination debate heats up. Kind of like the global warming thing, one day there is, and another day there isn’t. Only science will tell.”

Three days after the Spokane Regional Health District asked every adult and child in the region to get vaccinated against measles, health board member and Spokane City Councilman Mike Fagan questioned the use of vaccines and said recent outbreaks of contagious disease are linked to illegal immigration.

An ongoing audit of taxes paid by telephone companies operating in Spokane has turned up $700,000 in unexpected funds for the city, including more than $500,000 in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties from CenturyLink. Along with funds from T-Mobile, the money discovered so far comes from just two companies, and city officials say there’s likely more to come, though they couldn’t predict how much in unpaid tax remains. “That’s a number I can’t even tell you. There’s no way of knowing,” said Tim Dunivant, the city’s budget director, noting that every telephone company operating in Spokane will have its tax bill examined. “All the big ones. Even some of the small ones. Verizon we just completed, and everything was fine.”

Spokane has more than 200,000 people living within its borders. In its history, the city has had many more people conducting business, writing stories, creating art, helping the needy and tending to the sick. Now, with the creation of a Spokane Citizen Hall of Fame, there’s a way to recognize these residents of yesterday and today, with an eye toward educating those who will lift Spokane up tomorrow. Nominations are being solicited in six categories: Economic development and business, education, public service and philanthropy, innovation and leadership, arts and letters, and science and medicine.

Envision Spokane, the twice-failed initiative seeking to bolster environmental protection and neighborhood and labor rights, will be before voters again, after a decision Thursday by a state appellate court. The ruling reverses a 2013 decision by a Superior Court judge to remove the controversial measure from that year’s general election ballot. The court ordered the city to put the measure on the next available ballot.

Envision Spokane, a wide-ranging initiative that sought to bolster neighborhood, environmental and labor rights and twice failed at the polls, will be before voters again, after a decision today by a state appellate court.

A planned cell tower atop Spokane’s Grandview-Thorpe neighborhood has raised the ire of nearby residents and gotten the attention of City Council members, but city planners say the appeal process has been closed for months and the deal is done. Neighbors of the proposed 60-foot tower first heard about its construction last August, when a contractor for Verizon Wireless notified them that it planned to build a standalone cellular array in an empty residential lot on West 22nd Avenue.

The Spokane administrator who led Spokane’s engineering, streets, business and other departments, announced Tuesday that she was resigning her position.

Days after the dismissal of Spokane’s city planning director for what was described as a misuse of city funds, Jan Quintrall, head of the city’s Business and Developer Services Division, spent more than $400 at the Spokane Club on lunch for a dozen city employees using a city credit card. It was the third such known expenditure of the year for Quintrall, though the other two were less than half of what Quintrall spent for the “teambuilding” exercise in November.

The Spokane City Council is poised to assert its independence from Mayor David Condon’s administration as it begins a search for its own attorney. Council members say relying on legal advice from city administration threatens their autonomy.

This flu season has claimed six people in Spokane County, including Chad Rattray, who was 37, vaccinated against the flu and generally in good health. While tragic, that statistic alone doesn’t make this an extraordinary flu season, said Mark Springer, an epidemiologist with the Spokane Regional Health District.

The hiring of a temporary worker making $44.75 an hour to oversee unionized, full-time city employees is being investigated by the Spokane Civil Service Commission. Jan Quintrall, head of the city’s Business and Development Services Division, hired Jacqueline Luenow in November as the city’s systems and services manager. Previously, Luenow had worked at Bank of America as a vice president.