Some birthdays you just don't celebrate with candles. Sixteen years ago this coming Tuesday, in the middle of the afternoon, residents of Spokane Valley's Ponderosa neighborhood heard the roar of a late-season forest fire torching the trees for which their neighborhood is named. Before long, 14 houses were burning and Ponderosa neighbors were driving down the only two roads out of the neighborhood.

Just a few weeks ago, Spokane Valley seemed like it was going to sleep through the 2007 election. Campaign signs were scarce. Candidates stumping door to door were even more so. The only two incumbents running for the re-election to Spokane Valley City Council were headed back to office by virtue of being unchallenged. The city's only contested race, one to replace a council member uninterested in running again, featured one candidate with no intention of waiting up on the night of the primary to see if he'd won and another unwilling to shelve her personal life to meet with voters.

An early morning Sept. 28 bust outside a sheet metal shop in Liberty Lake yielded two alleged metal theft suspects with apparent drug ties. The suspects, 41-year-old Diane M. Putnam and 44-year-old Felix R. Colon, both of Spokane, were arrested behind Acrifab Display Products, which works with sheet metal. Police say they found the two pulling metal from a bin behind the store and loading it into a blue, 1984 Chevy truck.

Developers of a high-end housing project along the Spokane River near Arbor Crest were granted a significant step forward last week when Spokane Valley rezoned 37 acres on the river's south bank to allow up to 22 housing units per acre. The gravel-rich land just off of Cement Road had been zoned for mining, but the change approved Tuesday by Spokane Valley Interim Hearing Examiner Michael Dempsey would open the land to a mix of 285 homes and condominiums planned by Neighborhood Inc. of Coeur d'Alene. The project is being called Coyote Rock.

Edgecliff officials are wasting no time transforming recently vacated Pratt School into a community center. The building, shuttered last spring as a cost-cutting move, opened part time this month as a hub for children's programs, including a computer study center. Spokane Valley food bank will begin using the building soon to distribute food. And more programs could be on the way.