News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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A Grand Coulee man told police that he had found a backpack on a picnic table at North Dam Park, Dec. 24, and when he started to go through it found that it contained some drug paraphernalia. The backpack contained many jewelry items, lock picking equipment and crow bars. The man took the backpack to the police department, where an officer checked its contents and found the following: A black leather wallet, two broken glass smoking pipes, an iPod Shuffle, a cell phone with chargers, miscellaneo...
Grand Coulee’s legal counsel has advised the city’s Civil Service Commission that their list of top candidates for police chief must be delivered to the mayor, not the city council. In an email, City Attorney Chuck Zimmerman advised the city that the Civil Service needs to follow the “rule of three” as outlined in state law. Earlier, Civil Service Commission Chair Alan Cain had stated that the top three candidates would be given to the council, bypassing Mayor Chris Christopherson. Zimmerman told the CSC that it must forward the top three c...
If you are at least 18 years of age, the welcome mat is out for you at the Grand Coulee Dam Senior Center. “It’s really a community center,” new President Birdie Hensley said last week. While the center is widely used by seniors, with 184 members, there is lots to do for people of all ages, she said. Like to play pool? The center offers an open pool table. Like to play cards? You can find card games going on most days when the center is open. One thing Hensley is focusing on as the new year begins is to develop the Senior Center volun...
A man who allegedly keyed nine cars in front of the Banks Lake Pub, Dec. 12, is accused of doing it again, this time with a cellphone and in the Electric City Bar & Grill parking lot, according to police. They once again arrested and took to Grant County Jail, Nicholas Swartz, 26, who gave his address as Everett, Wa. He was arrested this time on New Year’s day after allegedly scratching the trunk lid of a car owned by Mary Adkins. Bartender Jessica Sumner told police Swartz scratched the trunk lid with a cell phone, then fled on foot up W...
The Grand Coulee Civil Service Commission will offer up its top three candidates for police chief to the city council, not the mayor, Chairman Alan Cain said last week. Cain said the decision was made after talking with a couple of council members who liked the idea. Cain said oral examinations of the six candidates will take place in early January and the top three will move up for interviews by the council. “We plan to have just oral exams, not written ones,” Cain said. “They have all been through the written exam phase in order to becom...
Electric City was set to make a decision late Tuesday on providing police protection for the city after its current contract with Grand Coulee expires at the end of the year. The Star, which had an early deadline due to the New Year’s holiday, will file an online update at grandcoulee.com with the results of the 8 p.m. special council meeting. Council committees from both Electric City and Grand Coulee met Dec. 23, in an effort to see if they could come to an agreement differing from one they had reached earlier. The two council committees ...
A plan for improvements to Coulee Dam's wastewater treatment plant is "a work in progress" that could cost residents a quarter of the amount financed in an earlier plan, Mayor Greg Wilder told the town council and a good number of residents during a December meeting. Wilder said he is exploring the possibility of several improvements to the plant, but he plans on further public meetings before doing anything. One of the meetings will be scheduled in January, Wilder stated. Wilder is trying to...
Grand Coulee and tribal police are looking for a 28-year-old Nespelem man who avoided capture after a 100-mile-an-hour chase Dec. 12, that ended up on the Colville Indian Reservation. Michael D. Desautel, Jr., was seen by Tribal Police Cpl. Harold Allan Oneal, at Coulee Gas and informed police dispatch of the incident. Oneal knew the red 2012 Ford Escape had been reported stolen from Melvin Zacherle, a Nespelem resident. Dispatch notified Grand Coulee officer Dan Holland, who saw Desautel get into the car at the gas station, across the street...
Grand Coulee’s new police chief will have civil service protection because of action the city council took Dec. 16. The council undid work from its previous meeting when members had been persuaded by Mayor Chris Christopherson and city attorneys to remove civil service protection when the city hires its new chief of police. The back-and-forth council action came after the mayor previously had stated that he would let the Civil Service Commission do its work in advertising for and testing police chief applicants. A few weeks ago the council h...
A Grand Coulee woman who lost her life savings in gold Krugerrands has charged that police here show no interest in pursuing ideas she has offered on who might have taken them. Dorothy Harris reported to police early in June this year that someone had taken 200 gold African Krugerrand coins along with other coins from her home. At the time, the Krugerrands were valued at $1,308 each, with the total loss at $261,600. Harris said she has gone to the police here a couple of times lately to provide ideas on who might have taken them, but the...
An Everett man was arrested Dec. 12, after allegedly damaging a number of cars in front of Banks Lake Pub in Electric City. Nicholas Swartz, 26, found himself in Grant County Jail on a first-degree malicious mischief charge for allegedly “keying” some nine cars in Electric City and fighting with witnesses who reported the incident to police. The report stated that Swartz had circled nine cars and key scratched them on both sides. Police stated that there could be as much as $5,000 damage to the vehicles. Police confronted Swartz, who ref...
The Lake Roosevelt High School gym roof is sealed and games there should resume in January when the Raiders have home games scheduled. Superintendent Dennis Carlson said Monday that workers had sealed the roof and reported only one tiny leak during a recent rain storm. “I expect the roof will be finished, weather permitting, within a few weeks,” Carlson stated. When workers initially started to put a new roof on the gym, they discovered asbestos, which delayed progress on the roof. Rain had caused some game changes when the roof leaked and lat...
The Grand Coulee Dam School District Board of Directors Monday night approved a $1.1million four-year levy for maintenance and operations to go before district voters Feb. 10. In doing so, the board followed the recommendations of a special levy committee that had met twice to flesh out a levy plan for the district. The levy will ask district taxpayers to fund the $1,130,000 over four years, making it the third time the district has voted on a four-year levy plan. The levy, if approved, will help the district keep class sizes small, pay for pre...
When you make a 911 call to report a fire in Coulee Dam you expect a town fire engine and crew to respond. Don’t count on it. Last week, Coulee Dam fire chief Robert Jackson resigned after 12 years as chief. When reached he refused to comment on his resignation. The issue came up at the Coulee Dam Town Council meeting last Wednesday night, and shortly after announcing it to the council, Councilmember Ben Alling, who has been a member of the fire department for 38 years, announced his resignation from it. Since then, Mayor Greg Wilder stated, a...
The town of Coulee Dam has made an offer to Electric City to provide police services. The offer was sent last week and outlined for Coulee Dam Town Council members last Wednesday night by Mayor Greg Wilder. The five-year offer would begin in 2015 at $101,253.50, and include annual cost-of-living increases in each subsequent year. Currently, Electric City contracts with Grand Coulee for police protection, but its five-year contract runs out Dec. 31. The final year on that contract was about $80,000. In spite of the fact that Electric City and...
Electric City will spend thousands less on boosting tourism efforts and related job growth after the city council reversed itself in a 3-2 vote last week. The council last Tuesday night backed off its previous decision in November to spend 75 percent of its annual hotel/motel taxes each year, choosing instead to stay with its present ordinance that fixes spending at 50 percent of what comes in during a given year. John Nordine, one of two council members on the tourism committee, told the council that he would still like to see the city do a...
Lucinda Parker, an abstract artist from Oregon, has been commissioned to produce $75,000 worth of artwork for the new school complex. Parker was one of scores of artists recommended to a local committee by the Washington State Art Commission. The $75,000 project is required as part of the public building/art program and is administered by the state art commission. Nate Piturachsatit outlined the local committee’s selection to Grand Coulee Dam School District directors Monday night and indicated that dozens of artists were considered before P...
Elmer City passed its 2015 budget last Thursday night — barely. The $674,662.80 budget passed with a 3-2 vote. A large portion of the budget, $244,971, is pass-through money that will come in 2015 from the state’s Transportation Improvement Board for a street and sidewalk project scheduled for 2016. The budget and council meeting took a dark turn as the lights went out just as the meeting was scheduled to begin. Out came the flashlights, but within 10 minutes the lights came on again. The budget passed after some intense budget workshop mee...
Grand Coulee Mayor Chris Christopherson has filed a public records request for all activity and minutes of meetings of the city’s Civil Service Commission from July through October of this year. It seems all part of the see-saw tug of war that has been going on in city government over the past few months as the city looks for a new chief of police. Alan Cain, chair of the CSC, said, “That’s fine, we have nothing to hide.” But the trust between the mayor and the Civil Service Commission isn’t fine, and Christopherson has been working to exclud...
Grand Coulee’s city council voted Dec. 2 night to undo its prior move, made two weeks earlier, to take the city’s police chief job out of civil service protection. The 4-1 vote was to put the police chief back under the protection of the Grand Coulee Civil Service Commission. The issue came up as the council was setting its agenda for the evening. Council member and former mayor Tammara Byers asked that it be placed on the agenda for reconsideration. “I just never gave it enough thought,” she said, “and I feel that I made the wrong decision.” B...
Pay raises for two Elmer City employees are intact as the town’s budget process moves forward. Now it will be up to the council to pass the document, this Thursday night. In a budget workshop, the second in two weeks, the council was split 2-2 in an advisory ballot, with Mayor Gail Morin breaking the tie in favor of the budget as it then stood. It was all over giving Town Clerk Renee Tillman and public works Director Jimmer Tillman a raise in 2015. This had been challenged by the husband and wife council team of Donna and Jeff DeWinkler. The D...
Grand Coulee Dam School District taxpayers will be asked to vote on a new maintenance and operation levy, Feb. 10. The amount and duration will be decided Dec. 15, by the school board, after it receives a recommendation from an independent levy advisory board. That advisory board met last Thursday and will meet again at 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 10, in the new school conference room. Karen Depew was elected chair of the advisory board. Depew has chaired a number of the recent levy committees. The advisory board will work out the details of...
As it stands today, Electric City will be out of police coverage for its residents on Dec. 31. It’s a money issue. Electric City pays for police protection from Grand Coulee, which wants more. Council committees of the two cities met a couple months ago and agreed to a price for coverage in 2015 at $115,000 — up from $77,000 in 2014. That would give the two cities time to come up with a comprehensive plan that could lead to a two-city police department. A week ago, Grand Coulee sent a contract offer for that amount to Electric City and to dat...
People in Electric City interested in putting up larger shops and garages, or in preventing others from doing so, can attend a couple meetings in January on that subject. Electric City has scheduled two meetings in January to discuss and make decisions on zoning changes on accessory buildings. The first meeting, Jan. 6, will be a public workshop of the planning commission on various changes being considered. The second meeting, Jan. 22, will be a public hearing on amendments to the city’s zoning code. Changes to the zoning code as it relates t...
Big Bend Community College will soon be hanging its shingle out at the former Grand Coulee Dam Middle School annex building. It will be the beginning of a Community Knowledge Center, where students and local residents can take advantage of a range of activities still to be developed. Barbara Collins, who heads the program for BBCC, said the initial activity will be a beginners’ computer class starting in mid-January. Big Bend has a number of Community Knowledge Centers, including those at Wilson Creek, Warden, Royal, Mattawa, Odessa and Q...