Pia Hallenberg

Trek and Treat in Hillyard

When the school buses pulled up next to Audubon Park last week, kids bolted from the open doors like colts headed for an open field. Backpacks were flung in piles at the foot of the tall trees and soon after parents, siblings and grandparents began to arrive. It was a typical fall middle school cross country meet and it was one of the last ones before the All-City meet today at Shaw Middle School.

Not everyone has what it takes to become an accomplished do-it-yourselfer. It takes a combination of skill, the ability to plan ahead for obstacles such as live wires and water pipes inside walls, and the right tools to pull off even a simple project. And almost every homeowner has a horror story to tell about the weekend project that turned into a weeklong project.

It's the begining of craft show season

The national economy added more than 100,000 jobs in September. To jobseekers that’s good news, but it’s no guarantee that one of the coveted jobs is within reach. Take the Spokane man who went to apply for a job at a local gas station. He was qualified for the job. He had a résumé. It all seemed possible until the clerk told him he had to fill out an application online. Since the man didn’t own a computer, the clerk may as well have told him not to apply for the job.

On the campus of Ferris High School – roughly where the old field house used to be – a giant construction crane is perched over a 50-acre construction site, where the footprint of a new Ferris High School is becoming visible. Funded by the 2009 school bond that was passed by Spokane voters, Ferris is the fourth high school that’s being rebuilt.

Jefferson Elementary design meeting tonight

About 40 people joined Mayor Mary Verner, Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, neighborhood resource officers, COPS representatives and crime specialists, at a COPS-sponsored community crime prevention forum at Northeast Community Center Tuesday night. Kristy Hamilton, COPS director, opened the forum by thanking the more than 300 Community Oriented Policing volunteers who staff the 12 COPS shops across town.

Pam Danner is tired of not getting her mail. She has lived on North Altamont Street, just west of Arlington Elementary School, since the mid-’90s and for about as long she’s been battling parents who park in front of her mailbox and block delivery. “I am just so frustrated, I don’t know what to do,” said Danner, standing on her front porch last Wednesday, as parents were waiting in cars for their children to be let out of school. “I’ve been out here chasing people away since school started. It’s the same every year.”

Since the Spokane School Board decided to relocate Jefferson Elementary as part of a school bond-funded remodeling project, opponents of that decision have campaigned tirelessly to stop the move. Recently, the Hart Field Preservation Organization filed a lawsuit against Spokane Public Schools saying that moving Jefferson onto part of Hart Field violates that property’s deed, and that the proceeds from the school bond may be used to modernize, replace or renovate the existing Jefferson Elementary, but not to move it to a new location.

Pancakes for Hillyard Senior Center

Benefit for Milk Bottle and Ferguson's