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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Nicholas Deshais

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News >  Spokane

Spokane utilities director Romero innovative, transformational

Looking out of Rick Romero’s Spokane City Hall window is like looking into a children’s book. People walk through Huntington Park as traffic flows across the Monroe Street Bridge. A crane dredges the riverbed. Gondolas zip by right outside and planes fly in the distance. The city bustles. It’s hard to say what Romero sees when he looks out the window, but clearly it’s different than most. In the two years since Romero took over Spokane’s utilities department, he’s transformed the city’s fortunes. In that time, he’s saved the city tens of millions of dollars, devised a way to buy $26 million in new fire and police vehicles and equipment without going to the voters, and found a solution to the costly, decades-long feud between the city and county over urban growth.
News >  Spokane

Hilltop Mobile Park residents receive eviction extension

Residents facing eviction from a mobile home park on Sunset Boulevard have been given more time to find housing. Last week, the owner of Hilltop Mobile Park, Nick Cline, gave his tenants six days to find new homes after he was told the degraded RVs and trailers they lived in violated city code.
News >  Spokane

Mumm presents plan for more crosswalks

The 20th century was ruled by cars. If Spokane City Councilwoman Candace Mumm gets her way, this century will be for walkers, at least in Spokane. Monday, the council will consider Mumm’s first major piece of legislation since joining the council at the beginning of the year. Her ordinance, she said, aims to revitalize policies in the city’s Comprehensive Plan to make Spokane more walkable.
News >  Spokane

RV residents evicted after annexation imposes stricter code

Howard Gladwill’s fifth-wheel trailer has no wheels. Black scorch marks, hidden behind a Brussels sprout plant, tell of multiple troubles with his water heater. He’s lived in the trailer for a decade. Earlier this week, he was told he had until Monday to find a new home.
News >  Spokane

Spokane’s ‘drone’ ordinance tested

Spokane’s parking enforcement operation got another technological upgrade last month, when a Ford Focus equipped with a digital license plate reader started prowling the streets looking for parking scofflaws. Next Monday, the Spokane City Council will consider belatedly approving the technology, which is required of all surveillance technology purchased by city agencies.
News >  Spokane

Karen Stratton chosen to fill City Council seat

Karen Stratton rang doorbells asking for votes long before her Monday night appointment to the Spokane City Council. It was on behalf of her father almost 50 years ago, and the experience never left her. “I grew up around it. I’m not intimidated by it,” Stratton, 55, said about politics. “I’m no stranger to elections.”
News >  Spokane

Spokane City Council to choose Salvatori’s replacement Monday

The Spokane City Council on Monday will choose a new member to fill the remainder of Steve Salvatori’s term. The new council member, who will represent northwest Spokane, will be chosen from one of five finalists. They were winnowed down from a list of nearly two dozen applicants.
News >  Spokane

Spokane giving smaller home lots a tryout

Affordable homes on smaller, urban lots. That’s how Jim Frank is succeeding in the coveted mixed-use Kendall Yards development on the north edge of the Spokane River gorge. Frank said the price for the smallest 1,000-square-foot townhouses has jumped $30,000 since the first homes were sold in 2011.
News >  Spokane

Spokane’s first new skywalk in decades OK’d

Downtown Spokane will see the construction of its first skywalk in 20 years, and at least one Spokane City Council member hopes it’s the last. The City Council on Monday approved the permit for a skywalk connecting the convention center with the Grand Hotel Spokane, the 15-floor, 716-room hotel currently being raised across the street.
News >  Spokane

Spokane City Council preparing laws to aid domestic violence victims

The Spokane City Council is preparing to pass new laws protecting victims of domestic violence against discrimination, while creating a fund to help prevent such violence and prosecute offenders. The action comes as a direct result of last month’s attack at Deaconess Hospital, where a man shot and killed his wife before turning the gun on himself.
News >  Spokane

Spokane City Council members meet with candidates vying for open seat

Most people who win a seat on the Spokane City Council have to persuade thousands of people over the course of many months to vote for them. The candidates for a vacant Spokane City Council seat only need to persuade four people. That persuasion began in earnest Wednesday as the nervous candidates made their way, one by one, to the head of the table where they answered six questions from their possible council mates. Allotted 20 minutes each, the five candidates answered questions about the downtown transit plaza, urban growth and November’s ballot measures concerning Riverfront Park and street maintenance.
News >  Washington Voices

Work begins on city fleet service center

Residents of Chief Garry Park neighborhood could be forgiven for not noticing construction workers breaking ground on the city of Spokane’s Nelson Service Center. Soon enough, however, the 57,500-square-foot home of the city’s fleet will be hard to ignore.
News >  Spokane

Spokane gets grip on growth with water plan

The city of Spokane has found a way to block development at its borders, even if that growth takes place within the urban growth boundary. The shift in power from county to city stems from an anti-sprawl measure passed earlier this year by the City Council, then vetoed by Mayor David Condon. With the creation of a six-year water plan, something already required by the state Department of Health, the city will explicitly define where it will extend its water service over the next few years. In effect, the city will no longer react to where the county allows growth to occur, but rather will tell the county where it will allow growth.