Nov. 20 / Home sales rise; median price dips here
The Spokane Association of Realtors said the number of single family homes sold here, including condos, rose 15 percent in October to 507, compared with 441 sales in October 2008. Meanwhile, the median sale price dropped 7.1 percent, to $164,900, from $177,500 in October 2008. Through October, 3,831 such homes were sold here year-to-date, compared with 4,374 through October of last year.

Nov. 20 / Horizon Air announces schedule changes
Horizon Air announced it will launch twice-daily direct service from Spokane to Sacramento and San Jose, Calif., starting March 26, 2010. One daily flight from Spokane will operate nonstop to Sacramento, then continue on to San Jose, while the other flight will operate nonstop to San Jose, then continue on to Sacramento. Horizon will use 76-seat, twin-engine turboprop Bombardier Q400s for the flights.Meanwhile, it said it plans to cease its twice-daily flights between Spokane and Boise as of Jan. 5, citing low demand.

Nov. 17 / Employment here dips; analyst predicts improvement
Nonagricultural wage and salary employment in the Spokane metropolitan area fell to 214,100 in October, down 7,200 jobs from the October 2008 level, but still made "a slight nudge up" from recent trends, said Doug Tweedy, Spokane state labor market analyst. Tweedy said employment numbers were expected to improve over the coming year. Preliminary figures from another survey put the unemployment rate here at 7.9 percent in October, up from 5.3 percent in October 2008.

Nov. 17 / Itron wins big Alabama contract
Itron Corp., of Liberty Lake, announced that Birmingham, Ala.-based Alabama Gas Corp. signed a contract for deployment of an Itron mobile automated meter-reading system on 500,000 of its gas meters. The system includes Itron's newest-generation, higher-powered gas module. Over the next three years, Alagasco—as the Alabama company is known—expects its data gathering, reliability, and accuracy to improve with the deployment of the system, Itron said.

Nov. 12 / Council to mull business license fee hike
The Spokane City Council scheduled action on Monday, Nov. 30, on a proposed increase in the base annual business license fee to $110 from $60, a city spokeswoman said. That fee hasn't been increased since 1998, she said. The city is seeking to raise an extra $1 million to help balance its 2010 general fund budget.

Nov. 11 / Local 270 approves updated contract with city
Members of Local 270 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which represents about 1,100 city of Spokane workers, accepted an updated contract with the city of Spokane to preserve 35 jobs threatened by budget cuts. The Spokane City Council is set to vote on the contract proposal on Monday, Nov. 30. Separately, the city and the Spokane Police Guild reached a tentative agreement for a new two-year contract that would save 12 police officer positions.

Corrections & Amplifications
The Rockwood Clinic PS says that other Spokane-area health-care providers also perform an esophageal ablation procedure that it has begun offering. That information was presented incorrectly in an Oct. 29 story in the Journal.