LILACS to the City of Spokane Valley for seeking to restore an old horse arena by I-90 into an enhancement to Valley Mission Park, in the form of a skate park, bicycle track, or amphitheater. Any of these would be fine by us, and we feel they are all just modern versions of the original vision for the space. So much better than a barren field of dirt.

LEMONS to the Washington State Building Code Council for adopting onerous new energy code mandates on all new houses built in the state. These extreme regulations will add as much as thirty percent to the cost of a new home starting in February, just as the inventory for home listings is at an all-time low. The existing code has sufficed perfectly, and this change to the codes simply prices new homes too high for most, with some estimates saying the additional cost will be between $15,000 and $25,000. 

LILACS to Governor Inslee for putting a cap on fees charged to restaurants by third-party delivery companies such as Uber Eats, Door Dash, and Grubhub, limiting the delivery fees to fifteen percent per order. Any bit helps in these difficult times. At our 180 Bar & Bistro we have signed with Treehouse delivery, which charges even less. In our view, though, if he wants to help restaurants, he would resume distanced indoor dining. See next item!

LEMONS to restaurants and pubs that use tents and igloos to skirt the law against indoor dining. We fail to see how tents are safer than buildings with good ventilation systems. Technically the tents should have two open sides, but for some reason they are allowing three in certain cases (read “all”) and igloos with zipped doors shouldn’t be permissible under any circumstances unless the entire party lives together. We’ll merely bring it up here, though, rather than snitch on fellow business owners. 

LILACS to Spokane Parks and Recreation for installing a new filtration system for the Mirror Pond at Manito Park. It’s so nice to actually see the bottom! The murky stench was sometimes a bit of a letdown for those seeking the healing of nature. The newly pristine pond is much more pleasant to behold. The same rationale for encouraging business owners to keep their buildings graffiti-free may apply in nature as well: treat it like a dump and others will treat it as such; treat it as a gem and others will protect it.

LEMONS to banks and credit unions that have STILL not opened to the public. Some are open and some are not. Numerica and BECU appear to be open in many of their branches, so why are some banks still encouraging people to walk or utilize the drive-thru window where literally every patron handles the same plastic carrier that zooms through their pneumatic tubes? If grocery store workers are at the front lines, the much smaller crowds at banks should be relatively easy to handle, and there has been plenty of time to install plexiglass barriers. 

LILACS to Sagamore Spokane LLC, which is planning a great multistory housing development on either side of the freeway onramp that runs from Hamilton Street to I-90. What was once Brown Building Materials on land that is now somewhat blighted looking, will be a sleek modern complex five or six stories high, replete with parkland and elevated walkways.  The additional housing in an area that has been kind of a wasteland will be a boon to downtown and ease some of the housing demand. It will be a great added enhancement to that area of town and may stimulate more interest in the lonely Gateway Bridge.

LILACS to the Spokesman-Review’s decision to nix endorsements. At one time we looked to newspapers for their wisdom, but in this day of almost unlimited access to information, we can make up our own minds. And, honestly, an endorsement DOES color perceptions of a paper’s objectivity. We wish cable news shows would take more of a “just the facts, ma’am” approach as well, rather than intermixing  opinion and news.