Would Sprawl Be Something Else If Covered In Comprehensive Plan?

Thu., Jan. 21, 1999

Doug Floyd Interactive Editor

Those improved roadways Spokane County engineers have mapped out as roughly a circle around downtown Spokane do not constitute a beltway or a bypass, they say. They are merely “urban connectors.”

In a panel discussion hosted Tuesday by the Citizens League of Greater Spokane, Michael Edwards, executive director of the Downtown Spokane Partnership, wondered about the word “urban” for the outlying locales being connected.

Terminology aside, the issue reflects a clash point between two theories on growth.

The Spokane City Planning Department is now revising the city’s comprehensive plan, a tool to guide where growth and development occur. They think that should precede the transportation plan.

Otherwise, they fear, newfound mobility will only encourage more sprawl - the very thing growth management is intended to curtail.

Yeah, but who went to the Rose Bowl?

If another university had hired football coach Mike Price away from Washington State University, you’d have heard a lot about it, right?

But when WSU’s dean of business and economics packs his bags for the University of Tulsa - which A. Gale Sullenberger is doing, Tulsa President Bob Lawless announced this week - who notices?

Given the relative impact these two positions have on the state of Washington’s prosperity and well-being in a so-called global economy, why do we get so much more worked up over the dean of football than the dean of business?

Photo-red finished?

Because red-light running is a traffic infraction and not a criminal offense, state law prohibits the Department of Licensing from giving local police a copy of the photo on a vehicle owner’s driver’s license.

That appears to be a fatal flaw in the photo-red program Spokane has tried to implement to curb red-light violators. Photo-red snaps pictures when a vehicle blows through intersections against the light. Knowing who owns the car doesn’t prove who was driving, however, so a recognizable photo of the driver’s face is vital.

Without a license photo for verification, Spokane City Attorney Jim Sloane warns, the system is unenforceable unless you want a civil rights lawsuit.

City Councilman Jeff Colliton thinks the problem is serious enough to take that chance. Is it?

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