Nicholas Deshais

There was a moment in last week’s sole debate between state Rep. Matt Shea and his challenger, Josh Arritola, that summed up the race between the two Republicans. Arritola dispensed with a question regarding his disbelief in the human impact of climate change and pivoted to a recitation of fees connected to an off-road vehicle law Shea sponsored.

Concerns over proposed pay increases for Spokane Mayor David Condon and a majority of his 13 cabinet members are threatening to derail budget discussions at City Hall, as the mayor and City Council members forcefully argued their cases in dueling news conferences on Friday. Standing in front of a C.O.P.S. shop in the West Central neighborhood Friday morning and flanked by four council members, Spokane City Council President Ben Stuckart said a proposed $7,000 pay increase for Condon was “utterly ridiculous” and vowed to craft “a new budget that reflects the community’s values.”

Spokane Mayor David Condon already makes more money than Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. Next year, if his proposed pay raise gets approved by the City Council, he’ll make more than his former boss, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. The $7,000 raise will bring his annual pay to nearly $180,000, and the increase is part of the mayor’s proposed 2015 city budget released this week. He’s not the only one set to receive a bump in pay. The 14 people in Condon’s Cabinet, including the mayor, are getting on average a 2 percent increase in pay.

Twenty minutes before a Republican debate in Spokane Valley, the Greenacres venue filled to capacity and late-comers were being turned away. The room, packed with 150 people, became stifling with heat. It didn’t take much longer for things to heat up between the candidates.

If there’s one thing Jim West would want to be remembered for, it’s probably pavement. In his race to become Spokane’s mayor in 2003, West promised to remake the city’s pockmarked streets into ribbons of smooth asphalt.

Willy Water has left the building. For 45 years, the 15-foot tall Willy held up a concrete glass of water, cheering the surrounding area just east of Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Spokane's identity is so deeply entwined with the world's fair it hosted 40 years ago, and the massive transformation in its wake downtown, that it's difficult for some to remember Spokane as it once was: the steel heart of a powerful mining and lumber region.

More than 350 miles of brittle, accident-prone natural gas lines run under the Inland Northwest. Shorter sections of the pipe made from the same material join the steel mainline of gas to almost 7,500 homes, a constellation of connections across the region where there can be 55 per mile in Spokane. On Wednesday, workers contracted with Avista broke through one of these gas lines in Spokane’s North Indian Trail neighborhood. Three homes were evacuated and no one was hurt, but the incident brought attention to the work started last year by the utility company to replace its entire network of lines made from Aldyl A, a polyethylene pipe made by DuPont before 1984. The brittle, easily cracked pipe is responsible for two local gas explosions in the past decade.