April 30, 2015 meeting:  There were 23 members at the meeting.  Our speaker was Vince Barthels, a biologist with JUB engineers.  The company works with smaller municipalities to plan public works projects and clients are located from Eastern Washington to Colorado.  He said the current drought situation has helped with equipment and soil movement but causes problems for fish monitoring.  He also mentioned the Washington Shoreline master plan which does not allow new railroad lines to be constructed within 200' of the high water mark of waterways. 

April 23, 2015 meeting:  We planned the Special Olympics lunch packing event on May 2.  There were 25 members present and we had our annual child protection training.

April 16, 2015 meeting:


The meeting was called to order at 7am and 23 members were present.  Rande is our new interclub organizer. 


Our speaker was Jay McNall of the Spokane County Sheriff's Dept.  The department currently has about 200 commissioned officers.  Their training includes 6 months of academy work, 3-4 months of working with a training officer and one year of probation.  He is a commander of SWAT teams and the team members have to meet special forces physical qualifications.  SWAT teams are only used when there is violent, armed crime in progress or when there is a possible hostage situation.  The county is #4 in the nation for stolen cars.  Most theft is due to drug addicts;  pawn shops have voluntarily agreed to report all items that are pawned (so it is critical to keep a record of serial numbers in case of theft).  Meth is still the drug of choice but number of meth labs have dropped off due to harsh sentencing.