Public Periscope

High Noon revisited?

When do job applicants actively work to lower the job’s salary? When they’re running for office.

Spokane strong mayor candidate Jim West sent out a statement last week decrying the $108,000 annual salary for the new position. He called on current Mayor John Talbott, one of his opponents for the job, to lead the council in lowering the salary.

The ballot initiative creating the office said the salary would be $80,000 or the equivalent of the highest paid city employee, West said. Most voters didn’t realize a city employee would be paid that much, West said. Only one is: Fire Chief Bobby Williams.

While politically astute, West’s suggestion has one problem. City Attorney Jim Sloane said the ballot initiative acts as a mandatory order to the council, which can’t lower the mayor’s salary set in the initiative.

If the council can’t lower the salary and West is elected, he said he wouldn’t accept more than $80,000. “I’d give it back to the city, or give it to charity,” said West, who now earns $32,064 as a state senator.

Then he decided to take the pledge a step further and asked Talbott and candidate John Powers to sign a contract that would return $38,000 to the city or charity. West sent a letter to his opponents to meet him at City Hall today at noon to sign a contract.

No word on whether he’ll have any takers.

More than a wrist slap

Spokane County was fined $8,400 recently after a state inspector spotted a county road crew committing a host of safety violations, officials said.

The crew, making repairs to Government Way east of Spokane this spring, wasn’t employing proper traffic-control techniques, said Bill Ripple, a Labor and Industries spokesman in Olympia. Warning signs didn’t meet federal standards, and flaggers weren’t using proper equipment, among other things.

“These were serious violations,” he said. “Serious violations are ones where there is potential for serious injury or death.”

The county paid the fine, which was issued in May, but has since appealed.

Rising to the top

Spokane County Treasurer Linda Wolverton has been elected president of the Washington State Association of County Treasurers.

The association is made up of the state’s 39 county treasurers and “provides a forum for the study and discussion of subjects vital to the efficient operation of their offices,” according to a news release.

Wolverton has been Spokane County’s treasurer since 1993.

Why spend money on polls?

Here’s something that must strike fear into the hearts of the Al Gore campaigners, and raise the spirits of George W. Bush supporters. One group has concluded the election is over, and the winner is George W. Bush can thank his lucky stars that he’ll win, says astrologer Claudia Dinkins. He wins in the battle of horoscopes as well as in a showdown of Tarot cards.

Dinkins says Bush wins because he has a rising Leo, a Cancer sun and because Jupiter and Saturn are in Taurus. Gore is toast because Pluto, Saturn and Mars are out of whack in his birth chart and his Aries sun is upsetting Uranus. Or something like that.

We know this is for real, because it appears on on the Web site eSpirituality.com, which calls itself a home for “entertainment as well as enlightenment.”