News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 1043 - 1067 of 1807
The local Rotary Club will put on a spaghetti dinner April 28, to raise funds to help replace disintegrating stage curtains at Lake Roosevelt Schools. The club, which took a lead role in organizing community support and talks around the new school, built in 2014, continues working toward school improvements with fund-raisers and member donations. The curtains on the stage of the old Lake Roosevelt gym, the one LR’s seniors walk across at graduation, has reportedly been in bad shape for decades and may be the kind of capital project that’s dif...
A draft plan for parks and recreation in the town of Coulee Dam that will lay out goals and objectives for the next 20 years was presented to the town council last week. The second edit of the draft Parks and Recreation Plan will go through yet another edit before being finally adopted. That should be presented at the council’s next meeting April 11. “I don’t see it as a wish list,” Larry Curtis told the council in presenting the plan, “I see it as a doable list.” The document is a part of the the town’s “comprehensive plan” and is often a ne...
Coming off a strong winter season, Coulee Medical Center showed upbeat financial numbers, including a nearly $200,000 gain in February and a big drop in the amount the hospital owes to Grant County. Chief Financial Officer Kelly Hughes told Hospital District 6 commissioners Monday night of a gain of $312,830 for the first two months of 2018. She said March had ended with CMC’s registered warrant balance at the county at $1,993,945. At one point that balance was more than $4 million. Hughes noted a government reimbursement had come in at $...
Lake Roosevelt Jr/Sr High School was named a "school of distinction" for its continuous improvement over five years in English/Language Arts and Math. In presenting an award to the school board Monday night, Linda McKay, assistant superintendent of the North Central Educational Service District, said it was given to only 98 of some 2,300 schools in the state, and LR's progress ranked in the top 3.8 percent. "I did the math," she said, noting that a plaque presented merely noted the top 5...
After five years leading the Grand Coulee Dam School District Board of Directors and a total of nearly a dozen years on the board, Joette Barry resigned Monday night because she is moving out of the district. “We’re the longest renters in the United States at the same address,” she joked after the meeting to explain the move. The house they’ve been renting in Electric City for years will be sold by its owner, who lives in Arizona. Joette and her husband, Jim, own a house in Coulee City and will be moving there within six weeks, but it won’t be...
It's something you rarely see: a large group of high school and junior high school students standing together, not saying a word. That happened March 14 in the parking lot at Lake Roosevelt Junior/Senior High School amidst light rain, puddles and heavy reflection for 17 people who died in a Florida school shooting Feb. 14. The students had left the school, joining in a national walkout organized by students and either tolerated, encouraged or forbidden by their local schools, nearly 3,000 of...
There may be good reasons for Electric City to consider un-acquiring territory it gained when it annexed a considerable amount of land several years ago, but the city council should think about it more than a little before doing so. Some people probably think it would be best for one of the likeliest growth spots in the area to be devoid of local leadership or direction. If members of the council are hoping that turkeys would roam free beyond the causeway, they may be right. The area didn’t develop after the Great Recession killed all p...
Coulee Dam will get some sidewalks fixed when a big project moves forward this year, the result of a vote to move ahead despite higher-than-expected bids on the street project to revamp an area on the east side of town, including Cedar Street. The council accepted a bid from Moreno and Nelson Construction for $820,000 for the work, about 5 percent of which the city must pay with its own funds, about $4,900. The rest comes from the state Transportatin Investment Board. The highest bid came in at more than $1 million. Engineers had estimated...
Coulee Dam wants to know if its residents would like high-speed internet access through a fiber-optic broadband network it's considering building, some of it just for its own use and savings. After researching the origin of some 96 strands of fiber that crosses the Columbia River in a city power conduit underneath the bridge, the city purchased for $34,995 the fiber that winds through west Coulee Dam, crosses the bridge and actually supplies broadband internet access to some enterprises on the...
The way they passed it says it all. With almost no public input or notice, the Washington State Legislature last week passed a bill to exempt itself from a law the citizens of the state decided decades ago should apply to all public agencies: the Public Records Act. The legislators who represent you voted for it too, if you live anywhere around the Grand Coulee Dam area. The bill they passed came in response to a lawsuit the Legislature was losing. Last month a Thurston County Superior Court judge ruled that the state’s lawmakers are, in fact,... Full story
Terms have been reached for the sale of Center School. An agreement to sell the old school building and property in Grand Coulee was reached at a special school board meeting Tuesday. The sale price was $155,000 — $5,000 more than the amount asked for by the school board at previous offerings. The site is to be purchased by a group headed by builder Nic Alexander, who owns Coulee Construction, and the sale was managed by former school superintendent Dennis Carlson. Carlson handled the sales effort during the two advertised offerings the d...
A Nespelem woman died Feb. 15 in an early-morning crash on SR-155, a mile south of Nespelem. Bridget Boyd, 38, was driving a 2005 Buick Rendezvous southbound at 6:43 a.m. when it crossed into the northbound lane and onto the shoulder. She overcorrected to the right, and the vehicle left the road. It hit an embankment, rolled, and came to rest on its wheels at milepost 43. Boyd was ejected during the crash, a Washington State Patrol investigator reported. She was not wearing a seatbelt. The cause of the crash is still under investigation, the...
A young family man has been suddenly struck by a serious disease, without insurance, leading to an effort by friends and family to raise funds to help pay the bills. George Davis III, 29, lives in Wilbur, works for a farmer in Coulee City and was raised in the Grand Coulee area. Friday before last, he came home tired and weak, and he was bruising. His wife, Amber, took him to Coulee Medical Center, from which he was quickly transferred by ambulance to Holy Family Hospital in Spokane. Davis was...
When Grand Coulee leaders put Proposition 1 on the ballot, they thought a bump in sales tax would be the best way for the city to collect a little extra money needed for street repair. Voters agreed, evidently, as votes tallied up last night yielded an 111-39 win for the idea. The 74-percent approval will raise the sales tax in the city from 7.9 percent to 8.1 percent, with the extra money funding a transportation benefits district. The money raised, which city officials expect to come to about $50,000 a year, will be levied against both...
A Nespelem woman died today (Feb. 15, 2018) in an early morning crash on SR-155, a mile south of Nespelem. Bridget Boyd, 38, was driving a 2005 Buick Rendezvous southbound at 6:43 a.m. when it crossed into the northbound lane and onto the shoulder. She overcorrected to the right, and the vehicle left the road. It hit an embankment, rolled, and came to rest on its wheels at milepost 43. Boyd was ejected during the crash, a Washington State Patrol investigator reported. She was not wearing a seatbelt. The cause of the crash is still under...
Two people were found dead in a home in Coulee City Monday evening, with carbon monoxide poisoning suspected as the cause of death. The Grant County Sheriff’s Office said investigators Tuesday were looking into the tragic deaths of two people in a trailer park in the 500 block of West Walnut Street after their landlord discovered their bodies about 7 p.m. Monday. Grant County Coroner Craig Morrison stated Wednesday that 68-year-old Roxy Mae Ergler and 72-year-old Kenneth W. Gomez were the two victims. Their families have been notified. The c...
Immediately after joining the board, a new commissioner with decades of experience in the skateboard industry said he’d like to arrange a competition for the local skatepark for this summer. The Coulee Area Park and Recreation District board had just appointed Ben Hughes and Kevin Portch to fill vacant positions on the board at the Feb. 5 meeting. CAPRD, which extends through a wide swath of the four-county area, manages North Dam Park, which is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Hughes proposed adding features to the skatepark and planni...
A vote on a boost to the Grand Coulee sales tax that passed on Tuesday will add a bit to the bottom line of most non-food retail sales made in Grand Coulee. The city council showed good sense in allowing the public to vote on it as a solution to the problem of crumbling city streets in need of repair. Ideally, a sales tax wouldn’t be the first solution you’d think of for fixing streets. It’s not directly tied to the problem and so shifts some of the burden to another part of the economy (consumers buying things, not cars and trucks weari...
Elmer City has requested Coulee Dam’s help in paying for adjustments needed to keep the two towns’ sewage treatment systems working together, an idea that met with resistance at Coulee Dam’s town council Wednesday night. Coulee Dam, which treats Elmer City’s sewage, is building a new wastewater treatment plant, due to come online later this year. Elmer City’s leadership has chosen to pursue building its own plant, but that would be years from opening, provided they are successful getting the financing to build it. In the meantime, Coulee Da...
A four-car crash blocked the intersection of two highways at Soap Lake Tuesday, injuring three people, including a Grand Coulee man. The Washington State Patrol said the collision occurred at 10:13 a.m. when a Twisp driver headed south in a 2014 Jeep Wrangler ran a stop sign where SR-17 meets SR-28. The Jeep, driven by Amy Days, 39, struck the passenger side of a 2010 Honda Element driven by 79-year-old Colleen Martin, of Wilson Creek, who was driving west through the intersection. The Jeep...
Utility rate discounts set in December for Coulee Dam were repealed by the town council last week when members passed a set of ordinances identical to the ones the previous council had replaced in December. The new ordinances passed Wednesday reset the discount amounts charged for water, sewer, electricity and trash collection to their previous rates, but may be amended again after the new council agrees on new rates. Councilmember Keith St. Jeor had objected to the ordinances passed in December and contends that discounts set for low-income...
Online subscribers have access to this week's special Remember When ... section via their included digital copy of the newspaper by signing in and clicking on the Jan. 31, 2018 PDF at the upper right corner of the content section. You can also find past electronic versions of the printed Stars there. This week's Remember When ... section can be found by scrolling through the pages of The Star; the special section simply starts after the last Star page. This was one of the most difficult special...
When Coulee Medical Center's infection control nurse went home for the weekend a couple weeks ago, the state of Washington was in the green, but had turned dark red by Monday morning. Those are the colors that represent the best and the worst cases on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's map of the spread of flu across the country. Sandy Edwards is the infection control czar at the local hospital, which was recognized by the state Dept. of Health this year for its control procedures,...
A Coulee City man died Thursday morning when the pickup he was driving slid off the highway into Lake Lenore upside down. Harold J. Chadwick, 78, and Connie Chadwick, 74, were headed south on SR-17 when the 1996 Ford F150 rotated clockwise and went of the left embankment about 12 miles north of Soap Lake at milepost 86, according to a Washington State Patrol investigation. The pickup rolled several times, coming to rest on its top half submerged in Lake Lenore. Connie Chadwick was injured and taken to Samaritan Hospital in Moses...
Three new town council members and a new mayor took the oath of office at the first council meeting of the new year last Wednesday. Larry Price, who was elected in November with a nearly 74-percent margin, presided over his first council meeting quite readily taking tips on protocol, having sat through few such meetings before. He was sworn in by Clerk/Treasurer Stefani Bowden, as were the council members. Sworn in and taking their seats on the council were council members Bob Poch, in council... Full story