Thinking of relocating to Spokane...Bad move or Good move???? (Seattle: 2011, apartment)

[Deena160]

Originally Posted by ShrnWldr

Thank you so much for the information you provided. I know they are silly questions but realistic ones as we are from the Southern California area. My next question pertains to cable or satellite or nothing? Which is prevalent in the Spokane area?

Along those same lines as ShrnWldr's previous questions...Who provides Spokane's garbage collection and how good is the recycling? For example: Here we have Waste Management here and have a blue bin that we can put all of our recycling into(paper, plastic, glass...) and we have green bins that we put all of our yard waste and also any compostable table scraps, rotten veg, dirty paper into. It's great and really keeps my garbage garbage to a minimum. :~) D

[st33lcas3]

Now Deena's asking a question near and dear to my heart *sniff*

I worked as a trash troll in Spokane for five years before moving here. It's a city run service, one of if not the last one in the state. If you have complaints, you call a city department and it gets resolved quickly.

You get a blue bin for recycling, just about anything that can be recycled can be put in it. There is also a curbside yard waste collection program. I wish they would have had that when I was bucking cans. If I remember right, you have to sign up for the yard waste program. Trash collection is mandatory if you live in the city limits.

Anyhow here's all the info you'll need.

Oh, and remember one thing. If you treat your garbage man right, he'll treat you right in return.

[kaimik]

Just wondering how to treat your garbage man right? Other than not overloading the can, tying up bags, trying to keep things organized, and maybe some cookies at Christmas, what do you recommend? (We, as a family, try to do some type of special "service" for someone each month so our toddler can begin to learn how great it feels to do things for others. Baking cookies for our mailman, garbagemen and delivery guys is on our list!)

[st33lcas3]

Originally Posted by kaimik

Just wondering how to treat your garbage man right? Other than not overloading the can, tying up bags, trying to keep things organized, and maybe some cookies at Christmas, what do you recommend? (We, as a family, try to do some type of special "service" for someone each month so our toddler can begin to learn how great it feels to do things for others. Baking cookies for our mailman, garbagemen and delivery guys is on our list!)

Cookies at Christmas is nice. In the summer I always liked when people left cold sodas or water out. Some would even meet us outside with fresh iced tea. Even a running hose was nice, you could get a drink and wash some of the grime off.

In winter time, we had people bringing out hot chocolate, Top Ramen in the Styrofoam cups, one guy gave us a big box of gloves so we could wear dry ones all day long. Another gave us each a twelve pack of wool socks for Christmas.

Tying the bags, washing out cans if you don't bag your trash, keeping water and snow out of the cans. Oh, if you have broken non recyclable glass in the can, a note warning them is nice. One guy had his leg sliced open once, another had a piece of glass get in his eye. Not fun.

A lot of this isn't such a problem on the routes with the 'one arm bandit' trucks. Those don't have problems with heavy cans.

Basically, treat them like human beings. They aren't trolls that came out in the daytime to pick up your trash. They're making an honest living and deal with things that would make most people vomit.

[kaimik]

Thanks, those are great ideas. We're moving soon and will likely have lots of stuff to throw out. We'll make sure to do something nice for them.

I had a friend in college who was a garbage man. He was one of the smartest, most interesting guys I knew back then. Kind of a philosopher type, who liked the job so he could just retreat into his mind and ponder things. I think I still have a paper he wrote back then!

[trailbuster30]

Originally Posted by st33lcas3

I know you directed your post towards Deena160, but I'd like to clarify something for you. Down here in the Vancouver\Portland area we were in our own 100+ degree heat wave as well. I believe Vancouver reached 103 s the worst of it. Sorry, but podunk Spokane wasn't mentioned other than in a general "the entire region is being hit with this" way.

Must be all that ass-fault on the west side that pushes temps up that high.

[Small and solar]

Jumping in late on the forum: How is the executive level job market in the area? Either Eco or Health care?

[MTcountryboy]

Hope folks wont mind a neighbor from MT dropping in to comment, but had to comment on the job front question & social commentary in general for our region (for what its worth, run an engineering firm that operates throughout the NW & across the county & also have family in Spokane as well as MT).

1st off, Spokane has always been THE 'big' city destination for shopping & citified entertainment for our region (east of the cascades stretching as far as the Bitterroot country).

Spokane has also always had the unvarnished, gritty, real "feel" or "vibe" a few newcomers in here seem to find so beneath them & not good enough or "forward thinking" enough for their "refined" tastes. Maybe its a good thing that they're moving, maybe not. But again, we're talking Spokane... not San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis or Boston. What do people expect?

Spokane has never been a particularly safe, or warm & fuzzy kind of place. There has always been, as far back as I can remember, a higher than average serious violent crime rate in Spokane (despite what one may hear or read elsewhere - its important to have real facts to help make an informed decision) and people there do tend to be stand-offish and even cold until you get to know them; yet, I'd be willing to bet many Spokanites would literally give you the shirt off their back if you were in need even if they didn't know you. That's just the kind of town it is. I've seen it - it's a town where even the poor give more per capita to charity than many rich do in many cities across the nation. Once you get to know folks over there they're great folks by & large, as friendly as any people anywhere.

No one forces any of us to move to a place. We do it for any number of personal reasons and sometimes just because of a dream and that's great - I mean that's the American way. But when you start projecting stilted expectations you cooked up in your mind on the community you "joined(?)", trying to impose change on it with delusions of superiority and trash talk & dismissing all you found that wont bend or conform as some kind of "trash", you cross a line and your dream has become a nightmare. Maybe people choose to live a slower pace, or enjoy this "vibe" because they want to, not because they are ignorant, backwards or not progressive enough for your approval. Would you have the entire country forced in a homogenized oneness of mediocrity (paved-over, crime-ridden metropolises, or worse yet - cookie cutter subdivisions so you can't tell when you left Boston and arrived in Seattle... wait, too late=)? What happened to the diversity "progressive" types preach about so often... apparently that only applies to some segments & not others. If you cant or wont stay home, then at least accept a place as you found it & not try to change it. You'll be a lot happier in the long run (and so will the people born & raised in the area you may decide to dis).

Quick lesson:
You may not be aware of it, but Spokane was long called by many in the region around it "wino junction" (just like Seattle is where "skid row" was coined). There's still a little publicized neighborhood called "Dogtown" and not because of the pets. Never mind the "Peaceful Valley" & "Friendship Park" areas which are anything but. You're talking a blue collar town going back to its founding - it always was & always will be no matter how much its repackaged and marketed otherwise.

With the loss of Kaiser Aluminum jobs a number of years ago and the vacuum that created for good paying jobs over there, Spokane sunk into a sustained recession (being kind). It didn't help that the few "new economy" high paying IT jobs that also sprung up in the area just as quickly fled the country like in so many other regions, leaving few good paying jobs for the people there. Hard times anywhere in turn seem to inevitably bring with them some hard-to-cure problems (blight of rising crime, drug use, apathy, etc). Add to that recent transplants also raised awareness back in their home communities about Spokane's existence and this exposure seemed to scream to some in those areas to the south of the possibilities for Spokane as a fresh market for drugs and illicit drug mfg exploded in Spoknae, and so did drug related crimes and gang activity (partly from out of state players, but also by local grown recruits). Sad state of affairs. Hope their leadership can get a handle on all of the problems while also enticing some new good paying jobs to go along with all the new transplants they invited. It really is crying shame to see what their state & local leadership has done to them over there, but I guess we can't say too much either in that department since we're experiencing the same darn thing=)

As for jobs:
There have been a number of small mfg plants open in recent years and some new jobs created, but honestly most are not that great when it comes to pay, as far as I know. There are a few established firms still standing that used to take care of their people on the pay front, but it may be challenging to get in.

Our own business is testing the waters with the green/eco possibilities, so I can tell you with authority there are very few eco opportunities in the intermountain region over around Spokane. There's only one "respected" eco firm established in Spokane doing real work that I know of and I couldn't honestly recommend anyone go anywhere near them for bidding a project or even employment. Any thing else going on over there at the moment is not reputable and at best, would be a fly by night set up. Maybe you can help change that=)

Finally on the bright side though, there are healthcare opportunities, but again pay can be an issue in Spokane where wages are consistently far lower across the board when compared to similar markets & despite some outstanding universities & colleges in Spokane (hence the long standing brain drain others may have mentioned). I can't speak to actual healthcare wages but with one of the finest heart surgery hospitals and nursing schools in the nation there, there's bound to be some good opportunities to be had for someone willing to do what it takes to make it happen & assuming they have the training and experience (again though, despite some thinking this is a backwards area, there are a lot of outstanding local talent you'll be competing with for significantly lower than "typical" pay.

Executive level careers?
Better have a transfer shipping you in with a guaranteed position, otherwise best of luck finding anything mid-to-senior level.

Good luck where ever you decide to go (or if you decide to stay home)!

[dumpsterdog]

It looks like Karlos was trying to say that Seattle is only 4.5 hours away (Portland about 5.5 hours). And, what is a 'real' city? One that has a professional sports team? A subway system? 2.9 art galleries per capita?[/quote]

Uh, Seattle has one less professional sports team these days. The mogul from Seattle's Best turned into Seattle's worst and sold the team to some oil guys from Oklahoma City. Now that the Sonics are gone, the writing may be on the wall ... adios, Mariners; auf weidersehen, Seahawks. (Is it wrong to rub it in?)

As for Spokane, my wife and I drove through there a few weeks ago--going from Seattle to OKC with mandatory stops in Montana (a HELL of a long drive)--and we spent most of the day in the downtown park (it was great--tons of summer activities going on, people everywhere, flowers in bloom!), and wandered around downtown for an hour or so. There seemed to be a lot of vacant city lots, which I assume means urban renewal has knocked down some slummy buildings and is waiting for a developer. The Spokane area is beautiful and we liked it a lot--to the point that we are thinking of moving there from down here in Tornado Alley. I'm not sure I can take all that snow in the winter, but several posters say it's not as bad as one might imagine being only spitting distance from Canada. Some of these posts about crime are a bit disturbing, and I'm not exactly enthralled by Rednecks (why do they always vote Republican when they're dirt poor--isn't that the rich man's party?), but no place is perfect ... or if it is, kindly let me know where it is. Oh, as for meth labs, OKC is definitely the crack capital city ... it got so bad our legislature recently outlawed over-the-counter sale of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine in cold remedies. It's worked great except for all the drug store holdups.

[chiaroscuro]

I'm Back!

Wow I miss the forum. I've been renovating my houses for rental and getting ready to move to southern california, it's so funny to think that people are actually doing the opposite

I've decided I'll move back to spokane in a decade. I'm really happy with most things here, but this damn winter every year! Some people like to curl up infront of the fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate and enjoy the season, but I say to hell with that. I'd rather be out by the pool on Christmas