Conversation topics include sign codes, traffic flow

Bad smells, traffic and signs were the talk of the evening Wednesday at the City Council’s quarterly Conversation with the Community.

Mayor Diana Wilhite and council colleagues Mike DeVleming and Rich Munson joined the heads of several city departments to answer questions from a small but vocal crowd at the Valleypoint at Pines Church.

Barry Foster, the church’s pastor, said he found the city’s sign code onerous and that the church had been threatened with fines for promoting an event.

“That’s a sign advertising something we’re doing for the community,” Foster said.

After citing sign codes from several other cities, he urged the council to consider an exemption from license fees and regulations associated with signs by nonprofit groups.

After previous complaints from small-business owners, the council changed the composition of its advisory sign committee and will reconsider parts of the law.

“We’re in the process of addressing that,” Wilhite said. She asked him to give public testimony on the ordinance when the council considers it, or at the next sign committee meeting, at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Foster and others in the audience also said they were unhappy with the new three-lane configuration on Broadway Avenue. The measure, meant to reduce accidents by putting in a turn lane and reducing the number of travel lanes each way from two to one, has upset residents, who say it slows down traffic.

One woman said she has had a more difficult time backing out of her driveway west of Pines Road because cars back up where the two eastbound lanes merge.

Councilman Rich Munson noted that the council was split on the restriping decision and said the city will study how the change will affect accident rates and traffic counts.

“We want to make sure this is working, and if it’s not, we can change it,” Munson said.

Information at the meeting on construction at Sullivan Road and Interstate 90 next summer also prompted questions about traffic on Broadway Avenue, which will increase next summer as much of the traffic to Sullivan Road is diverted to the Evergreen Road interchange.

Inconsistent speed limits throughout the city and confusion surrounding the “when children are present” guideline governing school zone speed limits also came up. Both likely will be topics of council deliberations in the coming year, and the school-zone issue is a topic at the Oct. 17 council meeting.

One newly raised concern was the smell in the evenings from the Baker Commodities rendering plant on Hutton Avenue between Trent Avenue and the Spokane River, just east of Spokane Community College. A resident who declined to be named said he passes by the plant on his commute, and on some evenings he can smell it as far away as Argonne Road.

The council said it would approach the city of Spokane about it, but that Spokane Valley is limited in what it can do about smells coming from other cities.