News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Elementary students will be at school while junior/senior high students keep on distance learning at home, a decision rendered in a three-hour school board meeting Monday. The Grand Coulee Dam School District Board of Directors voted 4-1 to have third- through sixth-grade students return to physical school two days each week in alternating groups, but that 7th- through 12th-grade students must still wait to return, possibly until the second semester starts Feb. 1, 2021. Kindergarten through...
The Nespelem School District will hold a public Zoom meeting with parents of students next week to see how they think and feel about students returning to physical school. That meeting will be held on Nov. 4 at 5:30 p.m. at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81107207311?pwd=Y0FoZlhrd3FtMTVnWkVPY1JOVFVWQT09 Principal and Superintendent Effie Dean told The Star on Thursday that kindergarten- through second-grade students would be the first to return, and that the next group of students would come three wee... Full story
The Grand Coulee City Council voted last week against allowing a local man to keep several small billboards on his property on Main Street. Sam Hsieh owns "Coulee Plaza," a lot with grass and picnic tables overlooking the end of Main Street where he has hosted events ranging from Cars & Coffee to Koulee Kids Fest activities and more, and where he hopes to host live music, wine tastings, and more in the future. Helping pay for the maintenance of the lot is advertising money that comes from signs...
Ranchers devastated by fires in Douglas, Okanogan, and Lincoln counties have received some relief in the form of free hay to feed their horses and cows. Okandogs, a non-profit organization that usually works to help get dogs into rescue facilities and find homes, undertook the effort to get hay delivered to farmers who need it. Tiffany Wiebe Wisdom, who volunteers for Okandogs, spoke to The Star on the phone on Monday about the effort. Wisdom's own farm in rural Douglas county outside of... Full story
Local doctor Sam Hsieh continues to encourage thinking outside the box using what he calls divine creativity, and he wants to know about people who embody the "eternal struggle between conformity and creativity." Back in May, Hsieh, a surgeon at Coulee Medical Center, shared with The Star the story of a special symbol he designed back in college. Hsieh shared how the symbol, representing divine creativity, evolved into a project in which he printed the symbol on hats, giving them to CMC staff...
Speed limits through Electric City may change, following a recent review by a state highway official working with the mayor. The Electric City Council last week discussed potential speed limit changes along SR-155 on the edges of the city, as well as through the city where it's called Coulee Boulevard. Mayor Diane Kohout explained at the Oct. 13 council meeting that she has been working with Scott Cervine from the Washington State Department of Transportation's North Central Region Traffic...
The outcome of the Ice Age Park levy vote in Electric City may determine if the park is built at all. The Ice Age Park levy on the ballot for Electric City voters will, if passed, tell the city council to go forward with building the park, and will pay for the maintenance of the park for a year, after which park maintenance would simply be included in the city's budget in future years. The one-year levy asks for 14.2 cents per $100,000 in property value, or $14.22 for a $100,000 property, $28.25...
The effort to consolidate local towns together into one has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. A consolidation committee had been planning to get the issue put on the ballot for this year to combine Grand Coulee and Electric City, and potentially try to combine with Coulee Dam and Elmer City further down the line. Ben Hughes, who heads the committee, said that he has received “little to no responses” from SCJ Alliance, a planning consultancy that had helped get a discussion started by facilitating an evening community meeting. The eff...
The long-anticipated Bureau of Reclamation fire station is expected to be completed in 2021. Construction began on the fire station on SR-155 across from Pole Park back in April of 2017, with a $13.6 million contract originally awarded to Innovative Construction and Design in 2016. The termination of that contract was confirmed by the bureau in March of 2019, and construction resumed in April of 2019 by Northcon Construction, which took over the contract. The bureau would not comment on why they changed construction companies. “There are many f...
Lake Roosevelt Schools will begin the process of re-opening in-person education next week, some eight months after the COVID-19 pandemic closed all schools in Washington state. Beginning Monday, students in the Grand Coulee Dam School District will begin going to physical school again, starting in phases organized by grade levels. The school board Monday night approved for students from kindergarten through second grade to begin school. Superintendent Paul Turner explained new guidelines from local health districts about a phased approach to... Full story
High school student athletes may get to shake off some rust and get back into the rhythm of their sports soon. On Monday, the Grand Coulee Dam School District board approved a plan presented by Athletic Director Tim Rasmussen, who will ask Okanogan County Public Health to approve it. The plan, which won’t include games against other schools, describes a practice schedule beginning with spring sports practices from Oct. 19 through Nov. 7, then fall sports practices from Nov. 9 through Nov. 28, and finally winter sports practices from Nov. 30 t...
Some good news for distance learners came this week related to devices and internet service for students. Superintendent Paul Turner told The Star Monday that an additional 275 Chromebooks should be in this week, enough for every student in the Grand Coulee Dam School District to have a device to use. Turner also said that the school qualified for funding from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to pay for internet for up to 100 families through June of 2021. That is about how many families need internet in the district, Turner...
A levy seeking to bring in roughly $600,000 over two years to the Grand Coulee Dam School District will be on the ballot for the Nov. 3 election. Superintendent Paul Turner said the new levy is important to the district because of an “uncertainty of funding” coming from the state this coming spring. The state is required to fund basic education, but the definition of basic education doesn’t include transportation, Turner explained, saying that is one area that could get hit. Turner said that the COVID-19 pandemic created budget problems for t...
The construction of additional campsites at Steamboat Rock has resumed after a nearly four-year delay. The construction of 30 full-hookup RV sites at what will be called Cove Loop at Steamboat Rock State Park is on track to be finished in February of 2021, with the sites likely to be ready for campers in late spring or early summer next year, according to Dennis Felton, area manager for state parks in the Coulee Corridor, including Steamboat Rock, Sun Lakes-Dry Falls, and Potholes. A...
So called flushable wipes may flush down the toilet, but they don’t decompose. At the Regional Board of Mayors meeting on Monday, Electric City Mayor Diane Kohout said that the city’s public works director Jarred Armstrong has noted a problem with flushable wipes causing problems with the septic systems due to them not decomposing. Armstrong wasn’t at the meeting to elaborate. “Toilet paper is designed to disintegrate in our pipes and sewage systems, but wipes are not,” an article on the website of the non-profit company Green America r...
The Regional Board of Mayors on Monday discussed the possibility of dump rates going up significantly. The landfill in Ephrata, to where the garbage from the Delano Regional Transfer Station currently ships, hasn’t raised its rates in 12 years. Those rates could go from $28.31 per ton to $46.76 per ton, or $49.93 after tax, Electric City Mayor Diane Kohout said. That would result in about $72,000 more in annual fees, which, unless other ways to absorb the additional costs are found, may need to be covered by raising rates at Delano to s...
So far, 180 businesses in Grant County have received grants amounting up to $10,000 for economic relief during the COVID-19 pandemic. Grant County’s Economic Development Council doled out the awards in three phases. Phase one awards totaled $438,000; phase two awards totaled $910,000, and phase three awards totaled $339,000 for a total of $1,687,000. The money comes from $2.5 million set aside from the county’s $5 million total they received in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, Economic Security (CARES) Act funds the county received. Local bus...
Despite a large amount of opposition from the public, the swim dock at Spring Canyon will be removed under a new management plan at the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area. The National Park Service released a Finding of No Significant Impact for the Environmental Assessment of the Visitor Use Site Management Plan for the park, which includes Spring Canyon among eight other sites. An Oct. 2 statement from the NPS says that "as funding is available," the NPS will implement proposed actions...
Voting by mail in Washington is safe and secure, Kim Wyman, the secretary of state and the state's top election official has said repeatedly over the last several months. But President Trump's insistence that it's not, as well as changes happening in the U.S. Postal Service lengthening delivery times have concerned the public. That's had Wyman, a Republican seeking her third term in office, also touting the state's system of ballot drop-off boxes. "Our experience in Washington," she wrote in... Full story
School district directors did not rush into a decision Monday to reopen Lake Roosevelt Schools sooner than the start of the second quarter, but students who need to will be able to start using the computer labs this week. The Grand Coulee Dam School District board of directors held a Zoom meeting Sept. 28 that included a discussion on reopening school to a hybrid model of distance learning and classroom learning, in which some students would be in the school on Mondays and Tuesdays and others...
In Okanogan County, voters will choose a candidate in the upcoming election for Commissioner District #2 between incumbent Andy Hover, a Republican from Winthrop, and Katie Haven, a Democrat from Twisp. Hover "I have been an Okanogan County Commissioner for almost four years now," Hover told The Star in an email. "In that time I feel proud about the state of financial affairs that I have helped bring to Okanogan County. I feel proud that I can see county government working more efficiently for t...
The rate of COVID-19 cases has gone down in the state of Washington, and in Grant and Douglas counties, but has gone slightly up in Okanogan and Lincoln counties over the last week. Counties need an incidence rate of 25 cases or fewer per population of 100,000 in the past 14 days to move forward a phase in the Washington Safe Start Recovery plan. And to partially open in-person schooling, that rate must not exceed 75. Here are the latest data for COVID-19 in Grant, Okanogan, Lincoln, and Douglas (GOLD) counties. As of Sept. 29, Okanogan County...
Local science teacher Derrick Johnson launched a helium weather balloon that went up in the sky over 87,000 feet to "near space," a place "where you and I would not survive, no matter how much oxygen we would breathe or how many coats we would put on," Johnson told The Star in an email. A video on YouTube shows the flight as the balloon goes up and up, showing Lake Roosevelt and Banks Lake, as well as other surrounding areas from a greater and greater distance, eventually showing the curvature...
Operating a public school during the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t easy, but optimism remains with the COVID incidence rate in Okanogan County being low right now. As if to underscore the challenges, regional internet service for many went down Tuesday night, right before the Grand Coulee Dam School Board was to meet, via Zoom, to consider whether to partially open in-school teaching. “Everybody’s totally stressed out, it’s been totally nuts,” Superintendent Paul Turner had said Monday over the phone about the new, currently online-only school ye...
COVID-19 cases seem to be going down in the area, with Okanogan County meeting requirements that would allow it to open up more. Counties need an incidence rate of 25 cases or fewer per population of 100,000 in the past 14 days to move forward a phase in the Washington Safe Start Recovery plan. And to partially open in-person schooling, that rate must not exceed 75. Here are the latest data for COVID-19 in Grant, Okanogan, Lincoln, and Douglas (GOLD) counties. As of Sept. 22, Okanogan County had 1,042 total cases, including 13 deaths. There... Full story