A "Serious Campaign"

A "Serious Campaign"

This week, Spokane Indians President Andy Billig announced his candidacy for state representative. As a Democrat, Billig is aiming for the 3rd District currently occupied by Alex Wood, another Democrat who hasn’t formally made any formal re-election plans.

By announcing a full year in advance, Billig says he’s mounting a “serious campaign” focused primarily on education issues.

“We can do better, particularly in terms of the [high school] drop-out rate. That is not sustainable for us as a community,” he says. “This is both a moral and economic obligation.”

He says he’ll fight to get placed on the House Education Committee.

Besides that Billig, a first time candidate, says he wants to “protect natural resources, particularly with the river and the aquifer being the drinking source for 750,000 people.”

Lastly, Billig says he’s focused on job creation in the district because “depending on who you ask, it’s either the poorest or second poorest” district in the state.

He was unsure how much money he’ll raise in the campaign, saying it depended on his primary and Republican opponents.

To kick off his campaign, Billig will have a party at Toad Hall, 1427 W Dean, from 5 pm to 6:30 pm on Nov. 12. The party is open to the public. (ND)

Money Squeeze
Spokane Mayor Mary Verner on Monday turned the city’s 2010 budget over to the City Council even though a couple of key components are being held on by baling wire and crossed fingers.

The administration has been working since April to close half of the projected $7 million general fund deficit with give-backs in pay or benefits from city workers.

But the two big-daddy unions — Local 270 with 1,100 members in 36 city departments, and the Spokane Police Guild with roughly 300 of the city’s higher paid workers — are not quite in the books, leaving the administration short by about $1.5 million.

Local 270 reached a tentative agreement more than a week ago that is expected to put $700,000 toward the general fund gap, but the membership won’t vote until Nov. 10.

The Police Guild, after a hiatus in negotiating, has been back at the bargaining table this week but has yet to reach an agreement.

Even with these two pieces unresolved, the City Council will hold public hearings on the budget at each of its regular meetings in November. The budget must be adopted by the end of the year.

The mayor has proposed increases to utility bills, tapping reserve funds and possibly eliminating 22 police jobs (20 of them presently vacant) to balance the budget. Visit spokanecity.org/services under “News.” (KT)

P in the River?
Just in time for Halloween, the seemingly haunted, decades-old effort to reduce the amount of phosphorus (P) in the Spokane River has reached another deadline as it continues to lurch, zombie-like, through the regulatory graveyard.

The deadline for final comments on the latest cleanup plan was Oct. 30. It just keeps getting scarier, says Michael Chappell, director of Gonzaga University’s Environmental Law Clinic.

Limits on P have steadily rolled back since a 2004 version of the plan, from 8 parts per billion to a currently proposed 36-42 ppb (along with wiggle room for “nutrient trading” and “nonpoint pollution sources”). At the same time, the compliance schedule has doubled from 10 years to 20.

Chappell says he can agree “on a conceptual basis,” with wails from Idaho sewage dischargers who complain the new plan is not fair to them, even though not much seems to have changed.

“They are a small fraction, and much of the problem is downstream,” Chappell says. But, he adds, a kayaker downstream at Long Lake came away with rashes and boils associated with toxic algae, and another resident – forced to gather his own samples for testing in a state lab – found toxic algae at a level 3,000 times above the safety standard.

“It’s mind-boggling,” Chappell says, that state and federal regulators are allowing more P in the river. (Phosphorus is a nutrient that encourages plant and algae growth, which in turn reduce the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water as they decompose.)

“And I think they are going to adopt it,” Chappell says. The grind to produce a plan has dragged on for 20 years, and Chappell understands that people can develop a kind of battle fatigue. “But the plan is getting progressively worse, not better,” he says. (KT)

Foot Race
Last year, North Central High School was the best cross country team in the nation. That statement isn’t alumni-gushing or armchair sports analysis. It’s cold, electronically timed fact. Last year, at Nike Cross Nationals, North Central earned first place. In the United States of America. And NC runner Leon Dean wrote a book about it.

But this year, NC has an equally swift Spokane rival. While NC ranks ninth in the nation, Ferris High School ranks eighth.

“We have more depth than they do perhaps,” North Central cross country coach Jon Knight says.

This season, the two teams have tussled back and forth. Most recently, at the Greater Spokane League championships, the two teams tied — but Ferris’s sixth man broke the tie-breaker.

The two teams won’t face off in Saturday’s state meet: they’re in different divisions. But for Ferris, winning state won’t come easy. Everett’s Jackson High School ranks third in the nation.

If Jackson beats Ferris, it will be the first time in 21 years that a GSL team has lost state. Ferris and NC, meanwhile, will face off at the Nike Regionals. What’s the key to winning?

“Right now, avoid the flu,” Knight says. (DW)

Election Day News
From the police scanner in Kootenai County Tuesday morning (as seen on Huckleberries Online): 10:40 – A man in a yellow vest is waving his arms and talking nonsense in front of the Texaco mini-mart on Government Way. He is not a candidate. (KT)