Spokesman-Review Letters to the editor
Street plan ‘monstrous’
Regarding your editorial (Nov. 3) approving the “hybrid” traffic compromise by the city of Spokane Valley, one might say: “What’s another $12 million, anyway?” It is, however, just part of a monstrous, $42 million unfunded mandate to totally change over six miles of the Sprague/ Appleway corridor almost to Greenacres.
Though Valley population and commercial activity trends eastward, our city seeks to eliminate, through zoning, any retail and land competition to force commercial growth at University City. Thus, magically, a “city” will rise, rebuilt around a grand edifice called City Hall, worthy of housing an exploding bureaucracy.
This plan is also discriminatory and arbitrary, favors a select few, and saddles hundreds of businesses and property owners with compromised titles, depressed real estate and insurance and financing worries through “nonconforming” status. Building restrictions border the absurd.
With a 2009 budget of $111 million ($304,000/day), the city appears oblivious to looming taxpayer burdens. Dissenters are lectured about their powerless status.
The tragedy is that all of us want an attractive city, built by citizen consensus. But deaf ears prevail. The plan has been bought, the planning department has been unleashed and the taxpayers lose.
Elizabeth Damascus Grafos
Spokane Valley
What’s your opinion of the Sprague/Appleway Corridor ‘compromise?’