News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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The city of Grand Coulee may soon destroy an old museum on Spokane Way that once displayed the remnants of its owner's most radical invention - a car powered with a different kind of propulsion. The colorful old Constantinos Vlachos building has been declared a "dangerous" building by city building inspector Gary Lampella, and the matter is slowly working its way through the council. There are a lot of memories from the 1930s, '40s and '50s in regard to the old building. It housed a collection...
A Grand Coulee man ended up in Grant County jail after a police search for missing Christmas cookies and other items led them to him Saturday. Arrested and jailed was Jeffrey Muellner, 56. The cookies, various decoration and more had been put in the kitchen area of St. Henry's Catholic Church, where the Coulee Community Choir was set to hold its annual concert on Sunday. Choir practice ended about 9 p.m. the previous evening and everything was OK at that time, but when volunteers came to the chu...
Electric City is considering changing its Comprehensive Plan to allow “vacation rentals.” Terry and Debra Ann Jensen, who own a residence at 9 Lakeview Avenue, requested the change. The city council indicated the city would move forward on the request to amend the Comprehensive Plan, plus a rezone, to accomplish the change. City Clerk Russell Powers stated that the city might be able to accomplish the change by as early as February next year. The city would have to hold two public hearings on the change before it could be adopted. Powers sta...
School board member Richard Black responded at the last school board meeting, Dec. 11, to discipline issues within the school district. Black had held several positions within the Grand Coulee Dam School District prior to taking a seat on the board, including acting assistant principal and athletic director, and feels he knows the dynamic of the schools from being an active participant for a number of years. He addressed about 30 people in the audience, visitors, and staff members. “You are being heard,” Black assured the audience. He said it i...
Electric City and the chamber of commerce are still at odds over $2,700 worth of invoices that remain unpaid. The city and the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce had signed an agreement early this year wherein the city would provide money from its hotel/motel fund to support certain functions the chamber agreed upon. At its last meeting, Ben Hughes, from the chamber’s board of directors, sought a reason from the city council as to why $700 worth of invoices for advertisements and a $2,000 invoice for the “fun zone” support, relating to C...
Elmer City’s proposed trail system will go out for bid Jan. 10, public works director “Jimmer” Tillman advised the town council last Thursday night. The 2,100-foot trail, financed by a grant from the state Transportation Improvement Board, will connect Elmer City residents to the Downriver Trail system at two locations. Tillman stated that bids will be opened Jan. 24, with the work done sometime in the spring. The TIB grant of $250,000 will pay for engineer work and the actual construction of an 8-foot-wide paved trail from Third Street to tw...
Grant County Health District issued an alert for an influenza outbreak in the county Friday. Health officer Dr. Alexander Brzezny said in the release that everyone six months old and older should immediately get a flu shot. “Be aware of increasing influenza and influenza-like illnesses in Grant County and Washington state,” Brzezny stated. The county has been receiving many influenza A and B cases in the past few weeks. There have been five influenza-related deaths in the state already this season, the report stated. Coulee Medical Center rep...
Superintendent Paul Turner responded to staff concerns on discipline issues at Monday night’s Grand Coulee Dam School District board meeting. Turner told the board, and about 25 staff members who were present, that he has had “time to reflect on the outpouring of discipline issues raised by a large number of Public Service Employees (PSE) that appeared in November.” Turner stated that what he heard from parents at that meeting was: - There needs to be better communication by district officials; - there are questions of how officials apply...
A party who was interested in purchasing the Center School property, but walked away from signing a sales agreement at the last school board meeting, said Monday that he is still interested. “It all has to do with the price,” Elijah Kleimenov stated. The Grand Coulee Dam School District had drawn up a sales agreement for $150,000, the amount that the school has in the property, but the deal fell through at an earlier meeting. At the time Kleimenov said that he “wasn’t ready to make the deal.” Monday he said that the school district needed to...
Carol Nordine was installed as a member of the Electric City council at its monthly meeting Tuesday night. She takes the place of Jeremy Miller, who resigned his position recently, and who stated he plans to build a home outside the city limits. He had replaced Brad Parrish, who resigned when his wife, Diana, took a position as deputy clerk in the city. Nordine, who is the mother of John Nordine II, the mayor of the city, had served on the council on one other occasion when she was selected to fill out an unexpired term. Nordine had run for...
Residents along McNett Avenue could have a Mammoth in their backyard, and residents along Grand Avenue could have a Mastodon in theirs. Those are among the names suggested for two proposed parks in Electric City. Residents in the city will get a chance to name their parks in a citywide vote sometime in 2018. The city’s parks advisory committee, made up of Cindy Greely, Clark Perman, Lonna Bussert, Ben Palma and Brad Parrish, have come up with three name choices for each park. For the McNett Avenue park, they narrowed the names to Fossil River,...
Several doors need to be replaced in the old portion of Lake Roosevelt High School, Superintendent Paul Turner told the Grand Coulee Dam School District board Monday night. The board finally agreed to replace three double doors and one single door, at a cost of about $12,000. That still leaves seven more doors on the old high school wing that need to be replaced, Turner said. “Those doors have served our school since the late 1940s,” Turner said. The district had sought a bid to replace all the doors that needed to be replaced, but it came in...
School buses passed a surprise state inspection recently, school mechanic Levi Seylor advised the school board Monday night. Normally, Seylor told the board, inspections are made in the summer months. This time the district buses got a surprise inspection and passed it with only some minor problems, Seylor stated in his report to the board. The surprise inspection was of 25 percent of the district’s bus fleet. If a bus fails to pass inspection it is immediately taken out of commission. Seylor went on to report that he has passed his G1 c...
The city of Grand Coulee passed an “emergency” moratorium on the location of mini-storage units at a specially called meeting last Thursday night. The special city council meeting was triggered by a person from out of town who wanted to pursue the establishment of mini-storage units in the building that was occupied by the Variety Store until it closed this fall. The ordinance stated that to allow storage units in the Variety Store building would “hinder the location of other revenue generating commercial businesses and be detrimental to the a...
Lake Roosevelt Junior/Senior High School is one of seven schools in Educational Service District 171 to be named a “School of Distinction.” The 2017 award was posted in November, and high school Principal Mark Herndon outlined the award at the school district’s last board meeting. The other schools from ESD 171 are Brewster High School, Brewster Middle School, Grant Elementary from East Wenatchee, Moses Lake High School, Oroville Middle School, and Valley Academy of Learning in Wenatchee. “We are so proud of our schools and their comprehensive...
There was some good news and “black ink” noted as Grant County Port District 7 commissioners reviewed the past season’s activity at Banks Lake Golf Course. The port district operates the 18-hole golf course and this is the second year in a row that the course has operated “in the black.” Commission President James Keene was quick to point out that the successful operation of the golf course still hinges on the amount of volunteer help provided. Off and on, the three commissioners have had regular duties at the course to avoid paid help and to m...
A proposed sale of Center School fell through Monday night. The school district had prepared a sales contract, and just after Superintendent Paul Turner explained the details of the sales agreement to the Grand Coulee Dam School District board of directors, the prospective buyer backed out. Elijah Kleimenov, owner of Kleim Construction in Moses Lake, Wash., had expressed reservations to The Star earlier in the day. He told the board that he wasn’t ready to commit to the sale. Kleimenov stated that his numbers showed that it would cost him a...
The school board Monday night appeared surprised that many of the school staff and the general public see discipline, or the lack of it, as the number-one issue in the district. The near six-hour meeting, which ended just short of midnight, had barely begun when Chair Joette Barry opened it up for the traditional time when individuals can address the board. And did they ever. For the next two hours, members of the Grand Coulee Dam School District staff and general public told story after story...
About 40 members of the Public Service Employees union attended Monday night’s Grand Coulee Dam School District board meeting to support its officers as they expressed concerns with discipline problems within the district. Many wore specially produced T-shirts signifying support of efforts to get the board’s attention. Addressing the board were union President Aaron Derr and Vice-President Jesse Utz. Derr, in a prepared statement, said union members were coming to the board “as a last hope.” “The union is not happy with the direction that we s...
Electric City has moved into “phase 2” of its new parks program. This phase centers on the McNett Avenue park behind the city’s fire hall. Robert S. Droll, landscape architect who won the bid to do the work, will assist City Clerk Russell Powers in developing a grant application to the Washington State Recreation Conservation Office (RCO) to seek funding for half the cost of the McNett project. The projected cost of developing the McNett park is $731,300. The city will seek half of this cost, then would add its 50-percent match by reaching into...
An Electric City woman was ordered by Grant County Superior Court Monday to repay nearly $139,000, for unauthorized personal payments to herself while a clerk for Grant County Mosquito Control District 2. The repayment is to be made to Enduris Insurance, which had already repaid the Mosquito District for its losses. Karyn M. Byam, 42, entered an Alford plea to theft in the first degree in March 2017, with a restitution hearing scheduled within six months. That hearing was held Monday, and the court ordered full restitution of $138,810,...
Electric City has received word that it was awarded a $735,000 grant for major street repair. The grant requires a 5-percent match of nearly $37,000. City Clerk Russell Powers said the state Transportation Improvement Board grant will enable the city to put in new streets, curbs and sidewalks that will connect the city’s two new proposed park sites. The work “is planned for 2018,” Powers stated, as soon as bid specifications and engineering can be finished. The grant will provide funds for curbs, sidewalks and new streets on Grand Avenu...
Larry Price, in the process of planning his term as mayor of Coulee Dam, emphasizes the need to bring people together. “People in the town have been battling each other, and we need to come together,” Price stated in an interview last week. Not only that, but people see two separate towns: one, the engineers town, and the other, the part that is on the reservation. “After all, it’s just a bridge,” Price said. Instead of the bridge separating the two distinct parts of town, he says, “the bridge also brings us together.” He sees shorter counc...
Classes will be held soon to develop badly needed emergency medical responders to bolster ambulance services. The Grand Coulee Volunteer Fire Department has scheduled an informational meeting for 7 p.m., Monday, Dec. 4, at the fire station on Spokane Way. Fire Chief Rick Paris stated, "We are looking for individuals from the area to become Washington State-certified Emergency Medical Responders by completing 60 hours of special training." Interested parties should attend the Dec. 4 meeting to...
There is a facility in Moses Lake that receives dogs, cats and other animals, as well as non-game birds, when people don’t know what to do with them. Camron Derting, administrator for Grant County Animal Outreach, appeared before the Grand Coulee City Council last month to let people on this end of Grant County know of their services and willingness to help people who have animal problems. If you have an animal (pretty much any animal) that you want to get help for, the Moses Lake facility is there to help, Derting pointed out. “We would lik...