Posted: 5/8/2006 7:37:21 PM EDT
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I have a job offer there and would like to get as much intel on the area before tomorrow 1000 PST. gun laws? weather? schools? crime? and anything else you want to add. Thanks, Cory |
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What Company ? Gun Laws : No MG, SBR. Yes AAO , silencers but not on a gun, CCW. Evil Semi's ok for now, Eastside is still very gun friendly and prob has the highest percentage of " Asssault type weapons " ownership in the country. Weather : Summer = Hot & Dry, Spring = wet, Fall= wet & cold, Winter = cold wet/snow. Schools: Not bad, typ NEA dominated large school districts. Some really good private schools. Crime: Fairly low, typical stuff with Meth and white trash type crime; Bank robbery,BE, car theft etc. |
I have lived in Spokane since 1993 when the Air Force sent me to Fairchild AFB. I am now retired and I am still here  Gun Laws: Maybe a little tighter than some states, but residents can apply for a CCW. I got mine in about two weeks. There are quit a few liberals in the state government (mostly on the west side which is uber liberal) that seem to be making some waves about tightening guns laws, IE gun shows etc. You can NOT shot in the city unless it is in an indoor range. There is a very nice one called sharp shooting that isn't to bad for membership. Something like $20 a month if I recall. Better yet, make friends with other "gin guys" and you will soon be shooting with them somewhere in the county on some private land. Or you could just get your own patch opf land in the county and go hog wild. Weather: not as bad as yo might think. Contrary to belief, the winters can be rather mild with spurts of cald blasts and snow. The spring is very nice, rains off and on. Summers can be hella hot but it is very dry (you may apprecuate that comming from a humid environment), and the Fall is rather nice... starting to get really cool around the middle of October. Schools: Not sure what they are like since I don't have my own kids, but from what I know, they aren't to bad. A few good private schools here as well. Crime: Not bad at all IMO. The city has its bad parts and normal crime like other cities. Most crime seems to be property crime. There is the occasional violent crime. You can check out the Spokane PD web site www.spokanepolice.org and the Spokane County Sheriffs webiste www.spokanesheriff.org for more information. Anything else I want to add: Well, if you like to hunt and like the outdoors you will like it here. Hope this helps. Fell free to IM me or Email me if you have any questions. E |
If I actually paid that insteada getting a refund , its only like 2% or something ridiculously low. Hell , you'd save that in gas tax alone by living here instead of WA , not too mention property taxes and paying for the going to the dump  SBS and SBR are fun and are relatively cheap. F*CK WA 
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I've lived on this side of the state for more than twenty years. If you want full-auto, SBR or to actualyl legally shoot a supressed weapon, buying a house in north Idaho is the way to go. You can legally own a supressor in Washington, you cannot legally attach it to a gun or fire it as the law is written. With left coast socialists controlling all of state government it will only get worse. North Idaho is growing FAST, real estate prices are going up about 100% a year thanks to a plague of commiefornia immigrants. They sell their shitbox in LA for 400K and buy someones 125K house for 300K or they build McMansions all over the place and then demand commifornia style laws. North of Couer D'alene they bought a lot of property near a large state park and are sueing to close the ranges, since the far off noise from public shooting interferes with Yoga and homosexual parties. The area is great, if you ski you have a lot of choices within an hours drive. You can bike, kayak and fish till you turn blue. There are two outdoor ranges in the area, one with 1000 yards to shoot and two indoor ranges. The dues range from 100 dollars a year to 240 or so. There are a few nice gun stores, two major malls and downtown, three giant movie complexes. The city and country have solid recreational programs and the city has FREE swimming pools for kids in the summer. Schools are solid with Mead school district and Liberty Lake school district considered the best and in the more expensive parts of the county. Weather covers all four seasons, with typically less than 20" of rain and 48" of snow a year, this side of the state is dry, it is cold from December to March usually with the first frost around Halloween and the last frosty night in May, not every night is that cold in between. It has not snowed a lot the last few years but you can get dumped on occasionally. Typically there are two miserable cold weeks in the winter with below zero temps. Summer humidity is about 20% and sunny. Most women in the area have asses about one axe handle wide,,  . A carry permit is available downtown at the courthouse and it not a problem to obtain. Without a permit there is a waiting period for handguns. The best retail place for new guns is still the White Elephant on Divison street. My only complaint after all this time in the area is the city police department is dismal on good days. There is almost no law enforcement in the city limits. Unless you live on the south hill, which is the better off part of town. Petty crime, car prowling, vandals, shop lifting and drug dealing get reported but the city makes zero effort to address any of it. While not serious it is a pain in the ass. Last summer my car was struck by a rock some 13y/o asshole threw at a guy on a motorcycle. After waiting 35 minutes for the cops, they arrived and said it was my word against the kids and they probably could not do anything, then drove back to Denny's for the rest of their patrol. That is a typical response in time and effort. If you have a crime in your neighborhood, never tell them it involves a gun or a male suspect, they do not have the balls for stuff like that, simply report a half naked woman peeking in car windows or trying to get in your house. That is a four minute response and they will be hoping to date her. They will be disapointed when they see it is an actual crime and probably mad enough to arrest the guy,,,lol. It grows on you, I moved here from the south and it is now home. |
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Ive lived here for 30 years. It has changed alot in that time. We have gotten bigger and more metro, hence more liberal. The city is a major retirement place so the economey is relitively flat, but it is finally growning now ( If your job offer is for more than 14.00 per hour you are ahead of the game around here..) Our city government is bought and payed for by the Cowles family(old money), they own just about everything from the local paper to the raidio and TV stations as well as alot of downtown realistate they pretty much set city policy and if you don't like it, and Say something publicly-get ready for a slanted write-up in the paper and biased reporting on TV. Some smaller townships around an hour drive or less are Rockford, Fairfeild, and Tekoa, these are to the south and are big Farm towns. to the north are Newport, Howser lake, Mead and Deerpark. all fairly nice towns. To the west are Airway heights,( the Airbase town) Reardon(agian major farming) and davenport (Farming again) to the east are Spokane Valley, Liberty lake, and Otis orcherds( they used to be farming towns too but have been swallowed up by the citys and then you're into North Idaho with Post falls and Cour'd alan (Huge resort town on the lake). All in all it's not a bad place to live and like everyone has said if you like the outdoors this place will fit like a glove. |
We're at about the same income level as you. The problem for most people is finding a good paying job over there. That $14/hr ain't gonna get you into any kind of decent house, let alone a nice one or one with land. My wife's cousing lived in Cheney, then Rathdrum, and due to a lack of good job opportunities, finally moved to Wisconsin. Her brother lived in the Deer Park area and worked for Boeing in Airway Heights. After Boeing sold the plant and things started going downhill, he moved to Florida, again due to lack of decent job opportunities in Spokane, and now works for an aerospace company near Kennedy Space Center. My mother's family, however, has owned a thriving glass company in Coeur d' Alene for 60 years and seems to be doing pretty well, or at least the ones who own it are. If I wanted, I could transfer over there right now, be working tomorrow, and pulling down $55-90k+/year depending on how much I wanted to work. I'm sure the $200k equity we have in our current home would go a long ways towards buying a pretty nice spread, too. I'd probably be working just across the Idaho border so it's likely we would just live there. We could likely live pretty comfortably. If the wife didn't have such a well paying job and benefits at the Lazy B, we would probably be giving some consideration to moving over there. Although with most of my immediate family here in the SCR, it would be tough to just pick up and move away. To me the only real benefit of moving over there would be the ability to own FA toys if living in Idaho, but since the going prices for them are far above what I consider them to be worth or would be willing to pay, that point is kind of moot any more. I could pretty much care less about SBS and SBR stuff. If I were to move back to Spokane, the only places I would consider living within the city limits would be the South Hill. Otherwise, I'd probably be looking North out towards Nine Mile Falls or the Deer Park/Elk-Chattaroy area, although the commute into town can be a real pain. Better yet, I'd be taking a hard look east towards Liberty Lake or on into Idaho towns such as Post Falls, Coeur d' Alene, Hayden, maybe Rathdrum if you can tolerate the noise of a bazillion trains passing through town every day/night. In my opinion, the biggest problem with Spokane is it's stagnant, dead end economy. The depressed wages used to keep housing prices more in check, but in recent years they have been skyrocketing along with most of the rest of the country. There are still lots of my coworkers transferring over there simply because housing remains more affordable than the Puget Sound area, however. If you live in the greater Everett - Tacoma corridor, have an average income, and didn't get into a house around here many years ago, you're now looking at a pretty unreasonable amount of your paycheck going towards a mortgage, a ridiculous commute, being a renter for life, or some combination thereof. Since we're kind of already set here, there's no real reason to leave. We usually go visit friends and relatives over there at least once or twice a year, and other than peak rush hour traffic, which we really don't have to deal with much anyhow, things really don't seem all that different to us. At least not enough to justify pulling up the stakes and relocating. And many of my relatives envy our living near the coast where they like to vacation. Go figure. |
My best friend lives in Medical Lake and he loves it. I am thinking about moving out there myself. Its about 15 miles from Spokane. Very small and quiet. Not a lot happens out there www.medical-lake.org |
| I suppose it will depend a lot on how attached to TN you are. However, a move from TN to WA is going to be a big change in almost every way. Despite E WA being conservative (only sort of compared to most of TN) the state is run like the looney liberal cesspool of CA. Taxes and cost of living are considerably higher than TN. Winter in E WA is going to be colder and snowier than TN (unless you live on the Cumberland Plateau or foothills/mtns of E TN). The climate in E WA is arid and theres NO humidity which is going to be a BIG change for your body. E WA does have a real summer though. Things dont grow well in E WA unless you water them...in TN you have the opposite problem. If you have family in TN visiting them will require much more planning, $$$ and travel time...theres no short way to go nearly across the country. While WA doesnt have an income tax its only a matter of (short) time until they do. The liberals are seeing to that by over spedning at every turn. I would say the same for much more restrictive gun laws too. In short there are lots of places nice to visit and very few that are good to live in. In my experience WA is a nice place to visit. |
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I happen to live on the south hill. It used to be the "upscale" part of town but now, it is more regular working folks than not, though an awfull lot of them seem to have their noses in the air just because they can say they live on the hill. The truly upscale parts of town are Browns mountain, Glenrose, and out on to the palouse hwy just south-east of town. R-32 working at our "telemarket center" you would top-out at about 15.00 per hour (I think). Doesn't sound so good now, does it? Unfortunately we have very, very few good paying jobs here. No large-scale manufacturing, or shipping, no big software corps. or much of anything except service jobs that pay between 8.00 per hour and 12.00 per hour. Road construction is an alright feild over here, but you only work usually 9 months out of the year. Kaiser aluminum used to be the big emplyer but they went bankrupt and locked out all the mill workers, boeing used to have a small plant out by Airwayheights but they sold it to Triumph and they cut the pay and let go of allot of their workers. The biggist employer in town is Sacred heart med cntr, and the pay varries depending on your job classification. I have one of the better blue collar jobs here (working for Snyders bakery) and I only make about 40 grand a year. I'm not complaining (OK I am) but with the rise in the cost of housing, fuel and basic needs around here, it's not enough for a family to live on very easily (espeicaily a large family). About the best job in town is working for the fire dept. as a firefighter, they have a sweet set-up, in that their pay is comesurate by union contract with what the Tacoma fire dept makes, but with all the bungleing in city gov. in the last 20 yrs they had to cut the budget and let some (I think 28 guys) go last year. |
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I had my first phone interview today and it looks like around $19-20 hr., a little lower than I was expecting. The interview went well and now I wait on a call back around mid next week. The nice thing about telecommunications is there are jobs in every corner of the earth, I'm just not sure if a couple dollars raise is worth moving cross-country. Pros (so far): Better benefits, new surroundings. Cons (so far): Actual pay CUT when I move the wife out with me, taking a lady who has never been out of this county away from her family. |
We lived on Browns Mountain 30 years ago. In the winter there used to be some awesome sledding up towards the top. In the summer it was always fun to hike up to the top and play in the woods around the radio/television towers. I think most of it has been developed now. Also remember sledding at Manitou Park. Real winters are probably what I miss most about Spokane, but over here it's not much of a drive up into the mountains and you can usually find all the snow that you would ever want. |
| Depending on where you will be working, you will want to look real close at the city of Spokane Valley. The Central Valley School Distric is one of the best, with a lot less problems and better overall educational opportunities that the East or West Valley districs. Very little gang activity and less crime than in Spokane propper. Liberty Lake is real nice, a bit on the yuppie side, and expensive to buy into. The Mead area north of Spokane is nice also with a decent school distric. Airway Heights, close to FAFB, is growing rapidly and has lots of new housing available. Stay away from the East Central and West Central neiborhoods. Dont know why everybody thinks the economy here is flat, there are lots of jobs and lots of building and new busineses. It is much more inexpensive to live here than in the SeaTac/King/Pierce county areas on the west side. |
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Spokane will likely cost you more to live than where you are now. There are a few different cost of living calculators you could use and punch in your city and Spokane to see what they say. They are all a little different but each was showing a higher cost of living in Spokane than Knoxville TN, for example. Renting a home shows an even greater gap. www.homefair.com/homefair/calc/salcalc.html www.bankrate.com/brm/movecalc.asp cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.html |
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>>Spokane will likely cost you more to live than where you are now. I would be much more emphatic...it *will* cost you more. I know what it costs to live in E TN and theres a big diff between the two. A COL calculator will give some idea of the $$$ but thats not the entire picture either. |