Safety First, Please

Coeur d’Alene Councilman Mike McDowell is dead right when he says the city shouldn’t be using Jenny Stokes Field until it has proper zoning and parking. The city is setting a bad example (and breaking the law) by ignoring Planning & Zoning Commission warnings to bring the soccer field up to code. Meanwhile, parents are parking haphazardly along both sides of busy Kathleen Avenue, creating a safety nightmare. Perhaps City Administrator Ken Thompson’s devotion to youth soccer has blinded him to the city’s liability. Ironically, the popular fields were named after Jenny Stokes, the former Coeur d’Alene High School goalie fatally injured March 23 at the dangerous intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Northwest Boulevard. It’d be dreadful if another youngster were hurt or killed because the city has balked again at correcting a traffic hazard.

Yo, Mikey the landowners are rebelling

Coeur d’Alene Councilman Mike McDowell, who by day doubles as Kootenai County deputy assessor, and tax activist Ron Rankin both can’t be right. McDowell and the assessor’s office claim the 940 property owners who appealed their 1995 assessments saved only $198,000 combined. But Rankin figures appellants shaved $1.6 million off their taxes. The rhetoric doesn’t end there, though. McDowell complained that the county wasted $330,000 to handle “superfluous appeals.” Said he, “Many people were led by not-so-prudent advice. It should make them mad.” Hmmm. Do you suppose McDowell doesn’t know that property owners already were fed up? For heaven’s sakes, there’s a tax rebellion going on here! The $330,000 spent by the county on overtime and paperwork should remind pencil pushers to be careful next year in estimating property values.

Now you see it; now you don’t

Post Falls school officials certainly aren’t letting the grass grow under their feet. Or anywhere else, for that matter. In 1992, grass was planted for a soccer field at Ponderosa Elementary School, but a quarter of it was torn up six months later for a gymnasium. After the grass was replanted and growing, half of it was bulldozed for a fire lane. Believe it or not, contract specifications made it cheaper to build the fire lane after the fact. But that wasn’t the end of this Keystone Kops routine. Earlier this month, a logging company removed diseased trees from the schoolyard, bulldozing debris to a spot behind the gym and - you guessed it - burying the grass and fire lane. Let’s hope Post Falls school officials perform better in the classroom than they do on the playground.

, DataTimes MEMO: “Hot Potatoes” is a feature of the Tuesday and Thursday Opinion pages.