Peter Barnes

A City Council candidate in Spokane Valley has been penalized repeatedly for failing to pay state and federal taxes, court and property records show. The state has issued tax warrants against David Crosby for money owed in six tax years since 1999.

After more than a year of work and a half-million dollars in studies, a new report indicates retail demand for a city center in the Valley's historic heart may be as hollow as the decaying buildings that would be torn down to build it. "The proposed subject site would be seen as a third or fourth choice by many leading retailers seeking to open just one unit in the region," wrote consultant Bob Gibbs, of Gibbs Planning Group.

Over the next several days, crews will cover the playground at Progress Elementary with 6 to 8 inches of new dirt to seal in soil contaminated by pesticides from Spokane Valley's agricultural past. After soil testing at new home sites in the central part of the state began turning up high levels of lead and arsenic on former orchards several years ago, the Legislature set aside money to test properties frequented by children that may be polluted by a pesticide popular in the first half of the last century.

The multitasking Texan who pens development regulations, supervises the Planning Department, reviews floodplain permits then spends her evenings advising the City Council and the Planning Commission is departing Spokane Valley for a private sector job. "This was an adventure, and I figure you only have so many adventures in life," said Marina Sukup, 59, who moved here in 2003 to serve as the city's first community development director. As the framework of city government was placed on top of an unincorporated suburb of 80,000, Sukup oversaw the formation of its first comprehensive plan, the regulationsto enforce it and the leg work for some of the most high-profile legislation the elected leaders have handled so far.

A Liberty Lake accountant plowed his Honda Odyssey minivan through lawns and into garages and a parked car before being arrested naked at gunpoint in his neighbor's yard Friday, police said. Jon J. Dawn, 29, left his house at 24216 E. Cataldo Court about 3:30 a.m., rammed his van into two garage doors and a Mercedes in his cul-de-sac, then cut through two yards and a fairly deep storm swale before crashing into a fence a couple blocks away, witnesses and police said.