News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Since last November, there has been a lot of talk about how passing immigration reform this year will be “smart politics” given the role Latino voters played in the recent election. As a small business owner, I’ll leave the political forecasting to the pundits, but I can say this: failing to pass immigration reform, whatever the politics, would be downright knuckle-headed economics. I’ve been recording history for over 40 years as a photographer, capturing events in people’s lives – like weddings, proms, and graduations. So I know a big moment...
The city of Grand Coulee is busy unraveling four years and $70,000 worth of municipal court billings. The money is in the bank, city clerk Carol Boyce stated, but the temporary clerk hired to do the work, Debra Pifer, now has to determine what goes where. The city, county and state all own a piece of the court money. The municipal court handles tickets written by Grand Coulee police officers, and the money is supposed to be paid to the three entities -- city, county and state -- according to a formula that is based on the type and amount of...
The school board reversed itself Monday night on decisions it made a month ago on calendar dates for the next school year. The board had decided to hold school on Columbus Day and eliminate the mid-winter break next February. This month, absent board member Ted Piccolo, who promoted the changes in January, the three members present changed everything back to the way the calendar had been presented a month ago. Veteran teacher Sandy Hood, from the Grand Coulee Dam Middle School, told board members that both students and staff needed the...
The chamber of commerce is sponsoring the “Are You Tough Enough” First Annual Banks Lake Triple Fish Challenge, April 6-7, out of Coulee Playland. The two-day event features a fishing derby for smallmouth bass, walleye, and rainbow trout and has two age categories, 0-14 years of age and adults. So dust off your rod and reel, read up on the contest, and get your 2013 fishing license so you are all set for the big event. Grand prize is an Achilles 4-person inflatable boat and Yamaha outboard motor. There are other prizes, including money, so the...
The theft of a school district food service truck is costing the district over $8,500, according to a Grand Coulee Police Department report issued last Thursday. The truck was stolen during the weekend of Feb. 9-11, and found the following Tuesday abandoned along the I-5 corridor near Seattle. Two district employees were dispatched to Seattle to retrieve the truck, and after getting a new battery for the truck, were able to get it home. The trip, and the tow bill for pulling the truck to an impound yard, cost the district $1,379.50, according...
As best I can determine, we (the town of Coulee Dam) paid our engineer (Gray & Osborne) about $80,000 to prepare a Wastewater Facilities Plan. What did we get? We got a document replete with inaccurate planning assumptions, non-compliant with the town’s Comprehensive Plan, void of the expected and typical scoping process, and virtually missing the analysis of “alternatives.” We also got the frustration and anger of our citizens and project partner (the town of Elmer City) — all because we forgot (or neglected) to include them as we planned...
The school board approved a three-year labor contract with its Public Service Employees at its meeting Monday night. The contract runs from the 2012-13 school year through 2014-15 school year. In the immediate year, the district has agreed to increase wages for its building secretaries by 40 cents per hour for additional work they have been asked to do. In the 2013-14 school year, PSE employees, (clerical, janitors, bus drivers and aides) will receive a 2.5 percent wage increase. And in the final year of the contract, wages will remain the...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District board approved two trips for students and chaperones at Monday’s board meeting. Victor Camarena, project coordinator for Step Pipeline to the Future at Lake Roosevelt High School, is in charge of both trips. On March 21-23, Camarena will take four students to the National American Indian Science and Engineering Fair in Albuquerque, NM. Going on that trip are Abe Batten, Brady Black, Lukas Hermetz and Corbin Wilder. Batten and Black will be presenters at the fair and will mentor Hermetz and Wilder, who w...
Charles Gurney, a Civil War veteran, opened his first seedhouse in 1866 (Victory Horticultural Library, www.saveseeds@victoryseeds.com). Forty years later, Charles, his seven sons, and a nephew incorporated as Gurney Seed and Nursery Company. I started reading the “Gurney Catalog” from cover to cover in 1969. Not counting a failed attempt to start carnations from seed, that was the year I started gardening. Early on, I didn’t buy seeds from catalogs, but the Gurney Catalog had other uses. It was kind of inspiring. “Make Your Own Brooms!...
Brandon Byers, an English teacher at Lake Roosevelt High School, was named interim principal at the Grand Coulee Dam Middle School by the school board Monday night. Byers is finishing up his principal credentials at Whitworth University this year and is one of three candidates to apply for the position. Byers replaces Lisa Lakin, who has moved over to Center Elementary School as principal. Lakin and Superintendent Dennis Carlson have been co-principals at Center School so far this year since Sue Hinton left the district. Carlson said that...
The bid deadline for the new K-12 school project has been delayed until March 12, Superintendent Dennis Carlson said Monday. Carlson said that the delay is due to a request by several general contractors who said the district wasn’t allowing enough time between the date they had an on-site review and the bid deadline, which would have been Monday at 3 p.m. Contractors were concerned that they wouldn’t have enough time to fully look at the options associated with the bid and get bids back from sub-contractors in time. Postponing the bid deadline...
The bid deadline for the new K-12 school project has been delayed until March 12, Superintendent Dennis Carlson said Monday. Carlson said that the delay is due to a request by several general contractors who said the district wasn’t allowing enough time between the date they had an on-site review and the bid deadline, which would have been Monday at 3 p.m. Contractors were concerned that they wouldn’t have enough time to fully look at the options associated with the bid and get bids back from sub-contractors in time. Postponing the bid deadline...
Enough is enough. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has apparently adopted a reckless and callous attitude toward community assets not made of concrete or steel, assets that make living easier in this semi-arid desert, assets that often take much longer to build than a dam. Trees are a treasure in this region, but becoming more rare thanks to decisions to cut them down at every opportunity. To be fair to the USBR, it’s not the only agency that finds trees easier to deal with as potential firewood. Trees are messy, in the way, their roots are o...
A 100-year-old cottonwood tree on Banks Lake whose branches attracted as many as 10 eagles at a time is no more, cut down by the Bureau of Reclamation a couple of weeks ago. While Bureau employees said the tree was rotten, the stump, at least five feet across, shows no sign of rot. Several other nearby trees also cut down had rotted in the center. “We would watch the eagles fly from the tree to scoop up fish in the lake by the hour,” said Lela Haydock, who lives nearby and had enjoyed the sha...
A public disclosure request for information from police documents made a few weeks ago by police officer Sean Cook has been discontinued at his own request, The Star learned this week. A request the Grand Coulee officer made recently had the police administration and officers pouring through some 13,000 reports looking for any evidence of force used by officers and a variety of other things. Cook asked that the search of documents be at least temporarily discontinued. The request came a day after the newspaper reported on the search that had...
Mayor Quincy Snow assured those attending a town council meeting last Wednesday night that the town would follow through on a “value engineering” study of its $4.92 million wastewater treatment plant project. He made the announcement after a long presentation by David Dunn, an engineer from the state Department of Ecology, who came to the meeting to explain the value engineering process. At the end of the presentation, Snow asked if the town should have gone through this process earlier. “It is late in the process for major changes to be made,...
The boards from the Nespelem and Grand Coulee Dam school districts districts met jointly last week, in another of what have become quarterly meetings. Concerns were shared about the two districts’ school calendars for next school year. Efforts have been made in the past to get the two calendars as closely aligned as possible. In this instance, Nespelem Director Jolene Marchand stated, Coulee Dam passed its calendar without Nespelem getting to look at it. At its last meeting, Grand Coulee Dam School District passed a calendar that scheduled s...
A food service truck stolen from the Grand Coulee Dam School District has been recovered. Two district employees traveled to the Seattle area last Wednesday and brought the 1994 Ford truck back to the bus garage for repairs. The truck went missing sometime during the weekend of Feb. 9-11, and was found abandoned on Interstate 5 near Seattle by the Washington State Patrol. District employees found the truck in an impound lot and stated that the steering column had been peeled so the vehicle could be started. When the door was opened, the front...
The town of Coulee Dam began increasing our sewer rate about a year ago. In December, 2011 we were paying a reasonable $37 a month — one month later, our rates were increased by 33 percent! Thinking that there must have been a good reason, we grumbled a bit and accepted it. Then, later that same year, the town sent us a notice that they were going to bump it up another $11… and here we are, now paying $59 a month! Now, that’s an increase of over 60 percent in fewer than 14 months! Having had enough, petitions began circulating and soon virtu...
Sin...redemption--being right or wrong. Are you so righteously ‘right’ that you allow yourself to stoop down, in servitude to evil … instead of being true to yourself … true to your reservation, and, most importantly, true to your own Colville tribal peoples: The Colville Confederated Tribes. Never before in all my 49 years of Colville tribal political participation through simply voting in annual tribal elections have I seen such outright evil, retaliatory bitterness, such mean and ugliness as is currently being delivered by what we now kno...
It will be interesting to see what emerges from a public records request in Grand Coulee causing the police department to review some 13,000 documents. It’s not clear what one of the department’s own officers is looking for, but what is clear is that it’s definitely relevant to the public interest. • Civil service commissions stand as a buffer between civil servants, who can make politically unpopular but correct decisions in the course of doing their jobs, and government administrators and politicians who may be influenced by other pressur...
This week's extra photos are online, including dozens from the regional wrestling tournament in Reardan last week. Here's a slide show. 2-13-13 Star - Images by Scott Hunter...
A leaky roof over the Grand Coulee police department’s document room is adding to the city’s cost of reviewing some eight years of documents at the request of police officer Sean Cook. When asked about the request, Mayor Chris Christopherson said, “I wouldn’t try to make a story out of it because it isn’t relative to the public.” The Star learned that the records request had to do with the use of force by the police and other matters. Christopherson stated that anytime a police officer stops a person, that is considered use of force. That...
The man you can’t say “no” to was awarded two plaques at the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2013 installation and awards banquet last Thursday night at Pepper Jack’s Bar & Grille. George Kohout, of Electric City, was first awarded a plaque for “Business of the Year,” awarded to the Ridge Riders club, of which he is president. Moments later Kohout was called to the front again, this time as the 2012 “Achiever of the Year,” an unprecedented double recognition, this time for his outs...
Coulee Medical Center took a $1.9 million loss on its books for November, 2012, officials announced Wednesday after first briefing employees on the news. Most of the loss has actually accrued over time, but was recognized on the books now after a recent analysis of accounts. The adjustment does not affect cash, they said, and will have no effect on day-to-day operations. “During analysis conducted in the past several months, we identified the need to better address the past impacts of uninsured patients and those insured by Medicare and M...