Today's headlines:
- Spokane City Council approved a timely bill with these high temperatures..bringing hopeful relief to tenants without adequate cooling.
- Wildfire season has brought thousands of firefighters into the Pacific Northwest, see how far some have come to help.
- High temperatures have land management officials putting a ban on fire activity ahead of the hot and dry weekend.
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Tenants in Spokane are closer to getting some relief from the heat. The city council approved a bill that requires apartments and other rentals to have adequate cooling.
That could mean landlords providing air conditioning or allowing tenants to bring their own and be reimbursed up to $500. The ordinance allows tenants the right to end their leases if their living arrangements have at least one room where they can go to cool down.
It also authorizes city officials to grant extra time to landlords that are having difficulty complying with the law. Finally, the ordinance states that all construction, beginning next year, must include cooling equipment.
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Thousands of firefighters are toiling away at dozens of fires in the Northwest.
Crews, including firefighters, technical specialists and administrators, have arrived from other states and countries to lead the effort.
At the Castle fire in southwest Oregon, Devin Young is an information officer for a team that came in from California. He says this is his team’s 4th time working in Oregon in the last two years.
“So we are familiar with how things work here and have integrated very nicely over the last few years and are very excited to help. We're also very proud to be joined with our partners from Australia and New Zealand, as we all are in this together,” Young said.
About a thousand firefighters are working the Kaiser Canyon fire that has burned nearly 130,000 acres near Nespelem.
More than 650 are at the Modrite fire near Inchelium, 400 are making progress at the Upper Smith fire in Boundary County and 240 are at the Bradeen Hill fire near Gifford.
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Many land management agencies — federal, state and local — have already banned burning, including camp fires, because of the high fire danger.
The latest to join the trend is the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge. Officials there say they will prohibit campfires and the burning of wood, charcoal briquettes and any fuel in the facility’s fire pits, fire pans and barbecue grills. A few things are allowed. Those include gas and propane stoves, grills and lanterns that have switches or valves capable of immediately putting out the flame.
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Spokane County authorities will continue their search today for a paddle boarder who may have fallen into Bear Lake and drowned last Friday.
They’re closing Bear Lake County Park to the public to allow the county’s emergency operations team to bring in electronic equipment. Part of the problem is there’s a lot of silt and vegetation in the water that reduce visibility.
Officials hope the equipment will help them reach areas where they can’t see well. Officials say volunteers will be there with K9s to help with the search.
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A proposed wind project on Washington’s Palouse has raised various concerns. But now, it’s drawing support from some Nez Perce tribal members. Courtney Flatt from Northwest Public Broadcasting has the story.
The Harvest Hills Wind project would add 45 wind turbines to private agricultural land in Whitman County. But people raised enough concern about landscape views and wildlife …. that the county adopted strict rules for commercial wind projects.
Now, developers are going through a state process that overrides county rules. And Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment has stepped in to show its support. Julian Matthews heads up the environmental non-profit, run by Nez Perce tribal members. The project would be built on the Nez Perce’s ancestral lands.
“We have to have alternative energy sources, whether it's wind or solar,” said Matthews.
Matthews says his group doesn’t automatically support all wind projects, but he says responsibly sited projects are needed to help slow climate change – and to reduce dependence on hydropower.
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Authorities in King County have filed charges against the teenager accused of being one of the Seattle Center shooters.
The 15-year-old male is charged with first degree assault with an enhanced firearm and unlawful possession of a firearm in the second degree. Police say he was armed with an illegal "ghost gun."
Investigators say preliminary lab results show that weapon was not involved in any of the three deaths. He was arrested Sunday after a gunfight at Seattle Center during the Bite of Seattle food festival. Three people were killed and at least four were injured.
Police believe one of those killed, a 19-year-old man, was involved with the shooting, perhaps as part of a gang dispute.
Authorities are searching for at least one other suspect.
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Spokane voters, in the August primary election, will decide whether to extend part of the sales tax that pays for public transportation. People have paid the two-tenths-of-a-cent since 2017. This would extend it for another 20 years.
Its passage is not a slam dunk. There are some people arguing Spokane Transit can operate its system without this money
Today, we turn to two people to make the case for the tax: Spokane City Councilwoman Kitty Klitzke and Medical Lake Councilman Lance Speirs. They are the vice chair and chair of the chair, respectively.
Lance Speirs: Living out in Medical Lake in the West Plains, we have a lot of bedroom communities, right? Medical Lake is a bedroom community. A lot of commuters, a lot of students, a lot of retired, and STA provides a great opportunity for either people that can't afford a car, don't want to pay for the insurance, the gas, just they want to help the environment and not contribute to congestion of the roads and those kind of things. It gives us the ability to use an alternative.
STA has recognized that the West Plains is growing and some parts of the West Plains like Medical Lake are kind of this desert, right? We don't have a lot of services. We're getting more services, right? We're growing. But we need to have those interconnections between school, work, leisure, the airport, so travel, you know, we need to have all of those opportunities.
STA is a cheap alternative. It's convenient and it's on time. You can you can look either on your paper map or you can look on your phone. You can schedule your trip and you know exactly where it's going to go and you know it's going to be there. So you don't have to worry about whether it's raining or snowing or if it's super hot and you don't have air conditioning in your car and maybe you don't want to walk that far. Take the bus. It's super important, especially for our students.
And with the paratransit services, differently abled people can get that door-to-door service for their medical appointments, for grocery shopping, for just going to Walmart. It's a great resource for us out at the West Plains.
Kitty Klitzke: Most of my adult life in Spokane, I was a non-driver and making that choice made me able to choose the kinds of jobs and trajectories that were the best for the long term of my career, rather than just merely surviving and trying to pay for a car. Being able to live that less expensive lifestyle really opened doors for me later in life. So I've always been super grateful that we had good enough transit service that I could not drive as long as I lived in the right neighborhood.
But over the years, STA has expanded and that possibility is in more neighborhoods than ever and I think it is also more important than ever as our community grows and we continue to face economic inequality.
One of my top goals as a city council member has been to raise the area median income and in order to do that, we really have to give people ways to have access to opportunity that aren't expensive. So we have a great community colleges system. We need people to be able to afford to work a job and then also be able to go to community college and improve their outlook and one of the ways to do that is not owning and operating a car, especially with today's gas prices and insurance prices.
DN: Why should people who drive and never use the bus pay for the use of the bus?
KK: I think congestion management is a big part of it. Every growing city, when they're looking at economic opportunity, congestion management becomes a thing. Do you ruin the aesthetics and the livability of your city to provide more infrastructure for cars? Or do you look for alternatives to driving?
I think Spokane has sometimes chosen a both-and strategy, but most people don't want to sacrifice aesthetics and livability for more cars just so more people can move to Spokane.
So what else do you do? You provide public transit, you provide safe infrastructure for biking and walking. But I think that just because someone doesn't necessarily ride transit doesn't mean they don't care about the larger concerns of their community. A lot of people still care about a social safety net, they care about having access to opportunity for everyone in the community, and they want a place to park. When they get somewhere, the less people taking up parking spaces and taking public transit, the more you have a place to park and the less expensive that place to park might be.
So those are some of the other considerations. I think a lot of folks that don't ride transit also care about the environment and air quality and when folks are not driving alone every day to everything, that really does improve our air quality and protect from climate change. All of those things matter to people, whether they're the person on the bus or the person in the car.
Friday, we’ll hear a dissenting view from Gavin Cooley from the Spokane Business Association.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting was contributed by Courtney Flatt and Doug Nadvornick.
Jordy Jones hosts and produces the show.
Web support is provided by Anna Gyure Havlek.
