Newsbriefs

Meeting on new school

The Grand Coulee Dam School District will hold a meeting to update patrons on the new K-12 facility project on Thursday, April 26 from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Coulee Dam Community Church.

Phone lines cut

Police found that a phone outage at Grand Coulee city hall and a few local businesses Monday was due to cut wires at a phone box above city hall.

A crew had to be dispatched from Centurylink to splice the underground wires.

Police reports stated that the wires were likely cut late Saturday night or Sunday.

Damage was estimated at about $1,000.

Switching

firms

The testing firm, Strata, from Spokane, that won the bid to test construction materials and inspect work at Electric City’s arsenic treatment plant project, turned the job down last week and prompted the city to call a special council meeting Wednesday night to name another firm to do the work.

Strata had bid $9,704 for the job and was recommended by Gray & Osborn, the city’s engineering firm.

Now selected to do the work is North Central Testing and Inspection, out of Omak. The Omak firm bid $6,446, and was approved by unanimous vote of the three council members present.

Event

was a

big success

George Kohout, president of the Ridge Riders, told chamber of commerce members last Thursday that the group made some $9,000 on its banquet and auction earlier in April.

Kohout said that already 60 people have indicated that they want tickets for next year’s event. The club only sells 139 tickets for the banquet.

The funds help support a number of new features the Ridge Riders plan for this year, including the ranch rodeos.

Thrift shop

donates

to VA center

The thrift shop at the Grand Coulee Dam Senior Center recently donated a fleece U.S. Navy blanket to the Veterans Administration Spokane Medical Center.

The blanket, the VA’s Voluntary Service Chief Thomas P. Marshall wrote in a letter to the shop, is an “invaluable morale booster” for the patients there. “Through personal sacrifices in defense of this great nation, we are reminded every day that our Veterans make freedom a reality,” he wrote. “Therefore, it is with honor that we accept your recent donation.”

Secret shopper

Secret judges will be keeping an eye out for any businesses whose staff are especially good at dressing in western clothes and speaking conversational cowboyisms - pardners - during the week leading up to the Colorama festival, May 7-12.

The chamber board of directors decided start the undercover contest as a means of boosting the spirit of the festival.