Voices

For 08-16-2008

Food, entertainment and community spirit are on tap next weekend at the Blanchard Daze Centennial Celebration. The event runs Friday and next Saturday in Blanchard with a variety show, parade, fair, arts and crafts show and more.

The Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce will host its 12th annual golf tournament at MeadowWood Golf Course in Liberty Lake Tuesday. Tee-off time is at 1 p.m. Golfers will have a chance to win a new Ford Mustang, if they make a hole-in-one, and raffle prizes include a scenic flight for five, a golf package for Circling Raven and a gas card.

A new infusion of cash is giving the Coeur d’Alene Visitor Bureau a greater reach into Canada to sell Coeur d’Alene as a tourist destination not just during the summer, but also in the fall, winter and spring. The bureau was recently awarded $407,000 from the Idaho Travel Council, $60,000 more than the grant Coeur d’Alene received in 2007.

How’s your vegetable garden doing this year? If you’re like a lot of gardeners, after that first vegetable gets ripe, there comes a flood of produce, often more than you could possibly use. After all, if two plants looked like a good idea in the spring, six looked even better. The neighbors and co-workers can only take so much. There is one neighbor, though, who will take any and all of your extra garden produce: your local food bank and the Plant a Row for the Hungry project. According to Rod Wieber, director of donor and community relations for Second Harvest, the need is growing rapidly as low-income families struggle to balance rising fuel and food costs with other expenses. Buying expensive but healthy produce and fruit usually ends up low on the list. Wieber noted that the rising cost of fuel to truck food to Second Harvest means they can’t bring in as much food to meet the need.

Monday Fire District 13 (Newman Lake) – 7 p.m. at Station 1, 10236 N. West Newman Lake Drive.

Mark Henderson spoke for 45 property owners and business people affected by the Sprague-Appleway Revitalization Plan: “How do we stop it.” The answer he and others got from two land-use professionals Wednesday night at Chester Elementary School wasn’t encouraging.

Idaho Highway 41 will be closed at Hayden Avenue Wednesday and Thursday for railroad repairs. The closure will begin at 6 a.m. Wednesday and last until 6 p.m. Thursday.

Several local highway projects were recently made the beneficiaries of the indefinite postponement of a new intersection at Lancaster Road and U.S. Highway 95. Among them is a long-delayed project to build a crossing or interchange at Greensferry Road and Interstate 90 in Post Falls.

In case you missed it, the Idaho R’s fired the first major salvo in the U.S. Senate campaign a week ago by issuing a news release linking John Edwards’ infidelity to Demo Larry LaRocco’s distant past. As an, ahem, public service, the R’s wanted to alert newcomers to the old affair that helped the late Helen Chenoweth unseat LaRocco in 1994. “Idaho has changed a lot in 14 years, with a lot of new voters arriving in that time,” GOP Chairman Norm Semanko said in the release. “I wonder how well those new arrivals truly know Larry LaRocco and his past?” Immediately, state Demo chief Keith Roark fired back to remind the R’s about their own Sen. Larry Craig, with his wide stance and wandering feet, and other straying R’s. Then, LaRocco issued his own release to denounce the “tawdry shots” from both parties. So which side finished with the most mud on its face? Dennis Mansfield, a social conservative who ran unsuccessfully for Chenoweth’s seat, said his fellow R’s should be ashamed of themselves. In his blog, Mansfield admonished: “Larry LaRocco should be judged on his record and on his political beliefs this time around. He’s not John Edwards-lite, nor is his situation. In years since, he has shown himself a faithful man who loves his wife, his family and his state. He’s presented himself twice now for the citizens to consider as an elected official. Judge him on that. To quote Alice Cooper: ‘School’s out forever ...’ Let’s grow up.” Bingo. Oopsy

School District 271 planning committee seeking members This is an open invitation to those who are interested in our School District 271 Long Range Planning Committee.

Oxford House Inc. began in Silver Spring, Md., in 1975 when attorney Paul Molloy and 12 other men bought a halfway house that was about to be sold out from under them. They couldn’t afford a supervisor and found the responsibility of running the house was good for them.

As a lifelong Valley resident (Central Valley High School, class of ’62) whose family settled here in the 1930s, I feel compelled to speak to the egregious exercise of political power titled “revitalization” which is about to be perpetrated upon the property owners in the Sprague/Appleway Corridor. It is a “stealth,” hurried campaign, buried within the legitimate debate over a city center and the Valley arterial, characterized by goals emulating much wealthier suburbs like Seattle’s Redmond and Mill Creek, regardless of cost and economic loss.