The heat eased on Sunday but what will the workweek hold? Check our local weather coverage.
In case you missed it, here are some of the top stories of the weekend
Day after day, the 2004 Chevrolet Avalanche pickup is parked in a prime spot in downtown Vancouver.
And day after day, the Chevy gets a parking ticket.
Last year, the Chevy racked up 233 tickets and $8,270 in fines for expired meters and parking off-street in unauthorized lots. As of July 24, the Chevy had received another 201 tickets and $3,322 in fines. Laid end to end, the 433 tickets would span a football field.
According to the city, only one of the 434 tickets the Chevy’s owner has amassed since the beginning of 2014 has been paid. (The city, the Washington Department of Licensing and the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles declined to name the driver, citing privacy laws.) The rest have been sent to collections.
Despite accruing more than $11,000 in parking fines, the Chevy continues to park downtown, and there’s nothing in city code that provides the authority to tow it. The Chevy is not alone. Last year, about one in six parking tickets went unpaid and was sent to collections, and a loophole allows Oregon drivers to escape paying parking tickets — ever.
Learn more about parking tickets.
Madore third in state in spending for local races
The signs have been posted, mailers sent, and television and radio ads are spanning the airwaves.
The last-minute push to win votes is on, and with Tuesday’s primary election fast approaching, all the candidates are pushing to prove they should go onto November’s general election.
Big donations and spendy campaigns are not reserved only for the other Washington. The local candidates up for election in this year’s primary have spent a total of $323,650.23.
Clark County Councilor David Madore, who on his own has contributed to more than half of that with $188,448.25 in cash and in-kind expenditures, is the third-biggest spender in all local races in the state. The top spot is held by Seattle City Councilor Kshama Sawant, a socialist running for re-election who has spent $222,977.36.
See a list of all of the candidates’ donors and expenditures.
Trees are superheroes.
They save lives, strengthen communities and prevent crime every day. They discourage violence and promote reasonable problem-solving. They clean and freshen the very air we breathe and the water we drink. They even put money in our pockets (or raise our rent and property taxes, if we insist that our glass is half empty).
“Urban trees can help solve community problems,” said Charles Ray, Vancouver’s urban forester.
But the benefits of trees go even deeper than that, Ray said: Trees are good for our bodies, our brains, our psyches.
“The presence of trees is an important health issue,” said Alan Melnick, Clark County’s public health director. “The closer you are to trees and parks, the less chronic disease you’re likely to have, and you’re less likely to have a heart attack or stroke.”
Find out the 10 reason to hug a tree.
Saturday morning in South Africa, Portland Trail Blazers forward Al-Farouq Aminu will be one of 19 NBA players playing in the league’s first ever game on the African continent.
“To play for Team Africa and this being the first NBA game in Africa, it’s amazing,” Aminu said in a conference call from Johannesburg on Thursday morning. “You just hear a lot of people saying ‘welcome home’ and ‘this is the motherland.’ I feel like everybody has a different connection to it—to Africa.”
Aminu, the son of a Nigerian immigrant father, Aboubakar and a mother, Anjirlic, from Queens, New York, is making his “sixth or seventh” trip to the continent and his second trip to South Africa.
Aminu also brought Anjirlic with him on the trip and it’s her first visit to Africa. He was there in 2012 and since, the basketball infrastructure has greatly improved.
Read more about the new Blazer’s trip.
The problems of stagnant worker pay and rising global wealth inequality often seem insurmountable — too big to get your brain wrapped around them, too thorny and plutocratically entrenched to uproot with good policy prescriptions.
Then again, consider what Clark College economics professor John Fite had to say some months ago as part of a community forum on Thomas Piketty’s provocative book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”
The current distribution of income and wealth is human-made, Fite said, “not ordained by God.” Which means people can change the laws that govern markets to make them more equitable.
And while raising the minimum wage to increase incomes at the bottom of the pay ladder represents just one policy prescription, it’s also catching on in places such as Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.
Read more of business reporter Aaron Corvin’s thoughts on wages.
Why: Uncle D’s Wood Fired Pizza opened two years ago in Battle Ground Village under Darrell and Lynnette Homola. Darrell, a mason by trade, specialized in pizza ovens and fireplaces. He used his own custom pizza ovens to cook for family and friends. The popularity of his pizzas lead the Homolas to open Uncle D’s Wood Fired Pizza.
June marked the grand opening of their new, larger restaurant on Parkway Avenue. The menu remains the same, but the move to a new location allows more room for diners and easier access for take-out orders. It is also more centrally located for Battle Ground residents and businesses to take advantage of Uncle D’s three-minute pizza.
Read the rest of the review of Uncle D’s Wood Fire Pizza.
