Peter Barnes

For decades, neighborhoods in the Valley have offered families a quiet suburban respite, where the backyards are big and basketball hoops a regular sight along calm streets. A handful of open spaces offer more public places to play, but as more mammoth yards are split up into smaller lots for new houses, the city hopes to set aside more parks to ensure future generations have room to run around.

More lounging, innertube floating, and water-slide riding will be in order at Spokane Valley pools next summer if recently proposed renovation plans are approved. Using $1.6 million originally set aside by Spokane County, the city plans to add deck space and new amenities to all three pools.

The Spokane Valley City Council is looking to crack down on panhandlers, or at least discourage people from giving them money. At Tuesday's council meeting, the city's legal team presented a number of options to restrict begging in public.

In a windowless, overbooked meeting room in the basement of a library with wait times for computers that can last hours, librarians asked patrons for their thoughts on a plan to replace the Spokane Valley Library with a building more than twice its size. "When the doors open, there will be a lot more there," said Spokane County Library District Director Mike Wirt at a workshop Thursday.

In a few short weeks, Spokane Valley church leaders' idea to buy the unused Sports USA building has generated a new nonprofit organization, a board of directors, a donated office and a snowballing number of ideas to use the center for youth sports and other activities. "This has just gathered so much momentum, so fast," said City Councilman Mike DeVleming who serves on its new board.

More than 15 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act required local governments to build wheelchair friendly sidewalks, a plan is in the works to bring the Spokane Valley into compliance. At its meeting Tuesday, the City Council heard its options to fixing sidewalks and keeping them cleared of snow.

The Interstate 90 project in downtown Spokane isn't the only place where roads will be torn up this summer. Projects at Pines, Sullivan and East Appleway will challenge drivers in Spokane Valley.

About 4,600 people lived in Liberty Lake in 2003. When the city started operating its library that year, Mayor Steve Peterson ordered 10,000 library cards. Today, he's still thinking big.

Speaking as much to the crowd of angry neighbors behind him as to the official running the hearing, the owner of a new drug and alcohol rehab made the case Thursday that the new treatment center in Spokane Valley doesn't pose a threat to its neighborhood. "We just want to make sure that everyone feels comfortable with us being there," said Craig Phillips.

It was a brisk week at Valley Fire between May 1 and Monday. "It looks like everything kind of jumped up a little bit," said department spokesman Bill Clifford.

Two familiar faces have started down the campaign trail for mayor in Liberty Lake. Both the incumbent, Mayor Steve Peterson, and Councilwoman Wendy Van Orman have held public office in the young city since its beginnings, and both see big things in the years to come.

Spokane County sewer rates are going up. That's no surprise to those who've followed extensive negotiations over pollution in the Spokane River that shaped the county's plans for a $106 million new sewage plant. But how to spread the cost of the new high-tech sewer capacity among homes, businesses and new development will be at the center of rate discussions this summer.

Big lots – the hallmark of many Spokane Valley homes – would remain the norm in existing neighborhoods, and certain denser-than-usual developments would face tighter restrictions under changes to residential zoning rules that planning commissioners wrapped up last week. Six new zoning districts in the latest draft of the city's new uniform development code would redefine what types of housing can be built where in Spokane Valley.

With three of its seven members absent, the Spokane Valley City Council had a short but productive meeting Tuesday night. Steve Taylor, deputy mayor, along with council members Dick Denenny, Bill Gothmann and Rich Munson, unanimously approved changes to the city budget, a contract for street repair services and a change to the city's logo ordinance.

With construction in the Spokane Valley holding at a steady pace and the city's planners immersed in several long-range projects, the City Council voted Tuesday night to add the equivalent of five new positions to departments that handle development. The estimated $200,000 addition to a biannual budget amendment was no small move, given that the city employs a staff of fewer than 100 people.

With a court date drawing near, Spokane County officials announced a new offer to settle a lawsuit brought by Spokane Valley over the ownership of an old railroad bed that could extend Appleway Boulevard east to the city limits. At a press conference Wednesday held on the weed-strewn stretch of land in Spokane Valley, County Commissioners Mark Richard and Todd Mielke said the county would be willing to give the land to Spokane Valley if the city agreed essentially to split the cost of buying additional right of way. The extra land is needed to make the road wide enough to accommodate future transit.