Intersection closing

Spokane Valley drivers didn’t get the message when the city put up a sign at Argonne and Indiana prohibiting left turns from the northbound lanes during most daylight hours. After hundreds of people violated the new rule, the City Council voted this week to permanently close the intersection.

“I find it amazing that people just can’t make the adjustment,” said Mayor Rich Munson, who said he saw four drivers break the new rule in 15 minutes on a recent day.

“I’m really disappointed that we have to go to this end,” said council woman Rose Dempsey. “Unfortunately, this is a route we’re going to have to take.”

The city can’t build a permanent concrete curb right now because of the weather, so the turn lane will be closed off by large orange barrels filled with sand, said public works director Neil Kersten. They are safer than concrete barriers, which would take up too much room. “We can certainly plow it full of snow right now,” he joked.

The project is expected to cost the city $47,000. The left-turn signal at Knox will be lengthened so cars will have more time to make a turn and double back to businesses like Marie Callender’s Restaurant. “Legally, they can make a U-turn,” Kersten said.

In another expected move, the council voted to launch a study of all contracts the city has with Spokane County to find out what it would take to either do the work themselves or hire another contractor to do it. This move comes after the Spokane County Commissioners told the mayor via a voice mail message that they would be canceling the contract to provide snow plowing services effective Oct. 15, 2009.

There was no previous discussion on the issue between the city and the county. Munson said the abrupt move and short notice shows a lack of respect and arrogance by the commissioners. “The kind of time it takes to put together a plan and buy equipment if necessary is really a two-year process, not a few months,” he said. The brief time the city has to cobble together a replacement plan puts the city at a disadvantage.

Council members are now concerned that the county could cancel other contracts with no warning. Spokane County provides services in 17 areas, including traffic signals and courts. The largest contract is with the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office to provide policing services for $14 million a year.

For months the council had discussed doing an assessment of the city’s law enforcement contract that would include a study of the feasibility of the city starting its own police department. That aspect of the study received repeated objections from several council members and the council eventually voted to do a pared-down assessment without that component. This week the council voted unanimously to put that component back in, with an added cost of $52,500.

Councilman Bill Gothmann called for expanding the study even further to include partnering with the city of Spokane, a different county or a private contractor. “I’d like to kind of step outside the box,” he said. “If we’re going to do it, we ought to examine all the possible alternatives.”

Demspey wasn’t sure why the study needed to look at the positive and negative aspects of starting a new police department. “I feel like that might be going a bit far,” she said. “If the county cancels the contract, it doesn’t matter if there are negatives.”

Munson said that he has kept Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich apprised of what the council is doing and why. The Sheriff said that if the contract is canceled, it would severely hamper his ability to provide a SWAT team and anti-crime task forces, Munson said. Neither the sheriff nor the council want the contract to end, Munson said, but the city is worried about what the commissioners might do. “We are not doing this study to launch our own police force.”

Council members had nothing but praise for the Sheriff’s Office work. “The service we’re getting from the Sheriff is superior,” said Gothmann. “There’s a third party in this.”

Dempsey, who was one of the council members who opposed previous studies of the law enforcement contract, pointed out the irony that the council was now being forced to do what it had previously rejected in several votes. “This is the same aspect we voted down weeks ago,” she said.

“Times change,” said Munson.

Munson said a joint meeting between the city and the county commissioners is needed. “There is a definite lack of trust between this board and the county commissioners.”

The council also spent time discussing changes to the Sprague/Appleway Revitalization Plan, with some small changes going through and others being rejected. The council did agree to move the eastern boundary of the Sullivan Neighborhood area. The old boundary was located just east of the intersection of Sprague and Sullivan on the south side of Sprague, bisecting the mini-mall at that corner. “If you leave the line where it is, it splits that building in half,” said council woman Diana Wilhite.

The boundary was moved just slightly east so it now lands between Plantland and a bank located just east of the intersection.