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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Tom Lutey

This individual is no longer an employee with The Spokesman-Review.

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News >  Voices

Deer Park Airport growth soaring

For years it seemed like Deer Park Airport's biggest draw was gravity. It was simply impossible for cross-country pilots to make it over the Rockies en route to the coast without landing to refuel and use the bathroom. There, pilots found a rough-planked toolshed of a building with an ever-evaporating pot of Folgers perched on a card table and a use-if -you-dare commode tucked behind a suspect partition. This place was charitably referred to as "The Lounge."
News >  Idaho

CdA airport hits the jet age

It wasn't that long ago that a private jet landing at the Coeur d'Alene Airport/Pappy Boyington Field sparked a real rubberneck moment, the kind that transformed the saltiest of airport hands into Lookie Lous. The sky reflected in Lake Coeur d'Alene suggests that's no longer the case. Inland Northwest community airports are rapidly changing largely because of noncommercial flights, which have ushered some into the private jet age and others into real estate market of leisure hangars. The trend has yet to hit cruising speed, say experts.
News >  Voices

Graffiti mars Ponderosa

It may be a subdivision of middle- to upper-class homes with tightly manicured lawns, but lately Spokane Valley's Ponderosa neighborhood has been looking like a tattooed tramp. Graffiti mars the subdivision's entryway at Schaffer and Dishman-Mica roads. The damage starts on an east-facing chain link fence bordering some railroad tracks and winds more than 100 feet to the community's gateway. There, suburbanites streaming into the neighborhood are greeted by white poofy letters exclaiming "Bomb The World," though the only person really being blasted is builder Dennis Crapo.

News >  Voices

Memory of fire creates storm

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.
News >  Voices

Council races heat up

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.
News >  Voices

Pair arrested outside sheet metal shop

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.
News >  Voices

Coyote Rock developers can move ahead

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.
News >  Voices

Edgecliff community center open

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.
News >  Voices

Liberty Lake mayor has opponent

Is any city's future brighter than Liberty Lake's? Its property values are on a meteoric rise. Its weekly police reports won't fill a single page. Its oldest houses are less than 30 years old and its business district is swelling with good paying, light manufacturing jobs.
News >  Spokane

Peak known to imperil climbers

Dragontail Peak, which took the lives of a Spokane father and son last week, is known for giving climbers more mountain than they anticipated. Climbers attempting to summit the 8,800-foot peak in a single weekend regularly find themselves still on the mountainside come Monday. Named for the "rock needles" on the crest southwest of its summit, the peak is located near Colchuck Lake in the popular Alpine Lakes Wilderness, about 10 miles southwest of Leavenworth.
News >  Voices

‘Harvest Memories’

She never hitched the 27-mule team to the family combine, never trailed behind with needle and twine sewing shut grain sacks as quickly as they filled. And so Leila Stevens Hickman gauged the harvest differently than the men in her family. She gauged it not in bushels per acre, or by the way the bearded tassels of grain bent on the shaft.
News >  Voices

Valleyfest rolls back into town

What do you get when you cross chain saws with hip-hop dancers, a stocked trout pond and a semitrailer packed with salami samples? Valleyfest, of course, answers Peggy Doering, orchestrator of Spokane Valley's largest community festival.
News >  Voices

Vehicle thefts spike

Just when car thieves seemed to be passing Spokane Valley by, a rash of stolen vehicles in August tied a four-year record, crime statistics show. Last month, criminals stole 71 vehicles in Spokane Valley, which not only tied a four-year August record, but also ranked the month as the fifth worst for car thefts since 2004. The worst months for car theft tend to be November and December, when parking lots congested with holiday shoppers make vehicle theft easier.
News >  Voices

Valleyfest expands to three days

Valleyfest, the largest all-community celebration in Spokane Valley, will last three days this year, its longest run ever. Event organizers released the entertainment schedule for the free festival, which occurs Sept 21 through Sept.23 at Mirabeau Point Park.
News >  Spokane

Mobile mansion recounts holy journey

In big purple lettering, the sign on the corner of 16th and Sullivan proclaimed that Messiah's Mansion, or in MTV speak, God's Crib, was just around the corner with ample parking. Its gravity wasn't exactly pulling the burbs' southbound motoring masses into the left turn lane. They were caught up in a little road rage and seemingly unaware of the white-curtained walls of the quarter-acre compound just southeast of their red traffic light. Two days earlier, the site had been occupied by subdivision sod.
News >  Voices

Edgecliff losing grant funds

Edgecliff residents know you can build a strong community out of garbage, that is, if you have enough money. Today, the far southwest Spokane Valley neighborhood kicks off its annual two-day neighborhood cleanup. If the event is anything like it's been in years past, trucks and trailers heaped with trash will line up at Pratt Elementary School waiting to unload into massive garbage bins.
News >  Voices

Hearing examiner rejects builder’s plans for homes in Ponderosa

Citing an inability to evacuate more Ponderosa neighbors during a wildfire or other disasters, Spokane Valley's hearing examiner has rejected plans for 45 more homes there. "The sole basis for denial was basically an inadequate public access during wildfire or other disasters," said Michael Dempsey, city hearing examiner pro tem.
News >  Voices

River runs low as residents drink their fill

In a deep Spokane River channel, surrounded by rocks that haven't been wet in months, Nick Vinet poked a finger at the water, checking for signs of life. The current pushed back with the futile force of water poured from a cup. It did not seem like the wild stream that Vinet, a Spokane Valley resident, tubed down just months ago. No doubt about it – the Spokane River is bumping against record low flows this summer.
News >  Spokane

Pratt School’s closure can’t stop friendship

Just like Laverne and Shirley, 9-year-olds Ashley Hoover and Marissa Murinko have a sort of girlfriend theme song. They sang it when they jumped rope, stomping out its cadence on the Pratt School asphalt. They clapped it out on their hands whenever they tired of chasing Jason "Crew" Baldwin, the cutest third-grade boy ever.
News >  Voices

Low river reveals link

In a deep Spokane River channel, surrounded by rocks that haven't been wet in months, Nick Vinet poked a finger at the water, checking for signs of life. The current pushed back with the futile force of water poured from a cup. It did not seem like the wild stream that Vinet, a Spokane Valley resident, tubed down just months ago. No doubt about it – the Spokane River is bumping against record low flows this summer.
News >  Voices

Valley Christian chooses leader

Valley Christian School has introduced Derick Tabish as its head administrator, a job he has held temporarily since a staff shake-up stemming from excessive student discipline. Two key attributes attracted the school board to Tabish, said chairman Larry Eggleston on Monday – passion and an ability to partner with families.
News >  Spokane

Hoaxes changing, still finding fertile ground

By now a warm shade of embarrassing red has replaced the pale look so many people wore last week after receiving e-mail warnings about bloody gang violence in Spokane Valley. The report of gang inductees bent on killing innocent motorists was bogus, though it seemed believable to many in part because it was disseminated by friends or friends of friends, many of whom claimed to know someone who knew someone who knew for sure the story was true.
News >  Voices

Fire Insurance rates for businesses to dip

Fire insurance rates for large businesses in Liberty Lake should dip slightly after recent changes in emergency service. The change stems from more firefighters and equipment being dedicated to the Liberty Lake area by the Spokane Valley Fire Department. Department officials petitioned two years ago for a lower insurance rating after drafting plans to locate a new ladder truck in the area.
News >  Voices

Liberty Lake sewer rates going up

Sewer bills in Liberty Lake will be $9 more when they arrive in mailboxes next month. The increase is what the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District commissioners concluded Aug. 15 that they'd need to cover the sewer costs through 2008 with more increases to follow as needed.
News >  Voices

Skate park closer to reality

Plans for a skateboard park in Liberty Lake are rolling along, with funding for the park to be considered by the City Council this fall. "We met with the Liberty Lake Planning Commission a couple weeks ago, and they decided they'd like to see it at Pavillion Park," said Pat Dockery, a volunteer spearheading the skate park effort. "We started doing a little fundraising. We've raised about $1,000 so far. This is going to take private money and corporate sponsors, and I'd like to see the city come onboard."