Peter Barnes

Their T-shirts may be a different color, but the volunteers who keep nearly 45,000 Bloomies running smoothly are as big a part of the event as the runners. "I love the masses of people," said Wanda Burns, one of about 35 volunteers getting ready for the first wave of runners to shed their microchips on the Monroe Street Bridge.

In Spokane Valley, David Mercier is probably the most important man the average person couldn't pick out of a crowd. Monday will mark three years since he began serving as the young municipality's city manager. He likes to steer attention to elected leaders, and he's known for his measured and often quiet demeanor. But Mercier's low profile belies his importance as the city's chief executive. City department heads answer to him. He has a large role in crafting the city's long-term finances, and he's advised an inexperienced City Council on long-range planning and other issues that will affect Spokane Valley for decades.

There's nothing quite like the smell of new asphalt on a bright summer day. As the weather warms and summer approaches, crews in Spokane Valley are already hard at work upgrading the streets in several areas and preparing for sewer projects in six Valley neighborhoods.

After opening late last summer, CenterPlace community center in Spokane Valley is off to a promising start with rental receipts exceeding expectations and many of the best weekends this year already booked. Revenues covered 73 percent of the cost to operate the facility in the first quarter of this year. Initially, city officials expected to recover only 48 percent of the cost.

In a lot of families, a man's place in Girl Scouting has more to do with eating cookies than selling them. This year, though, Scouting leaders in the Inland Northwest are trying to encourage more involvement from the men in Girl Scouts' lives.

A two-hour float down one of the most popular stretches of the Spokane River begins where boaters lug kayaks and canoes down a humble strip of gravel beside the Barker Road Bridge. "When you get on the river, everybody is in the same medium," said canoeist Robbi Castleberry, who has floated the Spokane with her husband, Vic, for some 30 years. "They're just all boaters at that point."

Spokane Valley's latest efforts to privatize as much of its business as possible have met with mixed results in recent weeks. The city will save an estimated $50,000 by turning over weed control and landscaping along roadways and storm swales to a private company. But the low bid to repair the city's potholes came in at almost twice what the city estimated Spokane County would charge for the work.