News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 1093 - 1117 of 1840
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Utility rate discounts set in December for Coulee Dam were repealed by the town council last week when members passed a set of ordinances identical to the ones the previous council had replaced in December.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
At the beginning of a new era in Coulee Dam, the city council Wednesday night rolled back one of the last pieces of legislation passed under the previous council in December. Councilmember Keith St. Jeor had voted against a measure at a special meeting Dec. 20 to give a steeper discount to income-eligible people on rates for utilities. At the Jan. 10 meeting, after three new council members took their oaths of office, St. Jeor moved to repeal the earlier rate-setting ordinance, which boosted discounts to 30-35 percent for qualifying low-income...
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 off 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...
Through a statewide association, The Star will provide its readers in the next few weeks with news from our state capital as our elected representatives wrestle with the issues of the session which just began. Experience tells us we won’t always have room for news in the printed product from our Olympia News Bureau; our priorities lie with local issues. Such is the case this week, the first this year that journalism students from the University of Washington, who are coached by experienced journalists under a grant from the Washington N...
With a prediction from the National Weather Service for up to 6 inches of snow today and at least one road closure so far, travel plans may be altered. SR 17 is closed due to a collision about halfway between Soap Lake and Coulee City, the Grant County Sheriff's Office said about 10 a.m. Thursday advising motorists to find an alternative route. The National Weather Service in Spokane issued a weather advisory in effect until 4 p.m. today that predicts precipitation will remain in the form of...
A warehouse in Electric City will soon become the "Grant County Data Centre" for processing a type of currency that only exists digitally and has gained recent worldwide attention as its value increased 2,700 percent since September. Atlas Cloud Enterprises Inc., a Canadian company, has apparently purchased the former Young's Welding building in Electric City for $300,000, and plans to invest another $2.6 million into it. Atlas Cloud, shares of which are traded on the Canadian Securities Exchang...
The city of Coulee Dam has bought a business and its 96 strands of fiber-optic cable that run beneath the Columbia River bridge, the mayor announced at a special city council meeting Wednesday. The purchase, a year-and-a-half in the making according to Mayor Greg Wilder, will allow Coulee Dam to move forward in developing plans that council members have advocated to bring internet speeds in town up to modern standards. The council had voted Dec. 13 to allow Wilder and City Attorney Mick Howe to work out a deal with Basin Broadband LLC, a Moses...
Coulee Dam’s city council voted Wednesday to sewer service rates that will charge low-income customers a little less and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation a lot more. Low income senior citizens and disabled residents who qualify for a discount will find slightly better rates, with discount levels bumped from 25 to 30 percent and from 30 to 35 percent. Mayor Greg Wilder said the increased discount would make very little difference, about a couple hundred dollars, to the town’s budget, but could make a meaningful difference to those who qua...
As we enter the New Year, we suggest the best resolution of all would be to keep a level head, an open ear and a metaphorical red pen at the ready to scratch out the hyperbole in our political rhetoric, examples of which can be found in each of the following columns. They represent the arguments at both ends of the debate over the tax-cut bill that just passed, and each overstates the case made — one by your elected congressman for Washington’s fourth district in the U. S. House of Representatives, the other by the liberal group Americans for...
The mayor of Coulee Dam intends to ask the city council to pass new water and sewer rates tonight (Wednesday) in the last council meeting over which he will preside, with some significant changes. Mayor Greg Wilder explained to the council at their last regular meeting Dec. 13 that he was working on an ordinance for their consideration at tonight’s meeting, called especially for that purpose. Wilder explained that he had been examining usage rates on the east and west sides of town and would recommend rates based on the “Orange Book,” a docum...
In the business world, decisions are generally made by weighing the costs of something desirable for a business against its benefits over time. A piece of equipment may cost a lot of money, but if it pays for itself in a few years and provides an added benefit, such as increased customer satisfaction, it’s likely to be bought. Public schools don’t generally have the luxury of increasing their revenue by such means. They get what a state formula says they’ll get, regardless of any increased value its leaders think the school could bring to st...
Leaders of the little government district that has kept North Dam Park from collapsing into disrepair for several years is feeling uncertain about the future. After approving a budget Monday night in which they show spending at about $33,000 next year, commissioners at the Coulee Area Park and Recreation District, all volunteers, discussed the uncertainty of the district’s continued funding. Originally formed with the intent of building a swimming pool in 2003, the district has never collected a tax to help fund its efforts, having been t...
Two Coulee Dam residents surrendered to authorities Sunday as suspects in a Moses Lake stabbing. Rebecca N. Norton, 28, and 24-year-old Aaron Pfaltzgraff-Miller, both of Coulee Dam surrendered about 4:15 p.m. Sunday, the Grant County Sheriff's Office said. Responders were called about 4 a.m. Saturday to the 11000 block of Road 14 Northeast for an adult male who had been stabbed. Investigators said everyone involved had been at the home for a party. The victim, whom authorities did not name,...
Although they passed a $9.6 million budget unanimously, the mayor had to break two ties to get to that point at a Coulee Dam council meeting Monday night. The sticking points were around changes to rates for utilities that Councilmember Keith St. Jeor said he didn’t recall coming up in budget workshops. It wasn’t about a lot of money — up to $200 in total, the mayor said, for a handful of people eligible to receive lower rates due to low income. But because rates hadn’t been raised or lowered evenly for all, across the board, St. Jeor didn’t fe...
Parents and school employees spoke loud, clear and long at a long school board meeting Monday about a lack of discipline in Grand Coulee Dam School District schools, an issue that involves much more than the schools alone. This community is not alone in wrestling with the consequences of society’s wrong turns. Although school personnel complain that they should not feel unsafe at work, and neither should their students, similar complaints can be found in school districts across the state. If you imagine, as an adult, that the norms you were rai...
Grant County detectives are looking for two Coulee Dam people named as suspects in an early morning stabbing near Moses Lake. Investigators are looking for 28-year-old Rebecca N. Norton and 24-year-old Aaron Pfaltzgraff-Miller, both of Coulee Dam. Responders were called about 4 a.m. today (Saturday, Nov. 25) to the 11000 block of Road 14 Northeast for an adult male who had been stabbed. Investigators said everyone involved had been at the home for a party. The victim, whom authorities did not...
Army Specialist Jonathan Hughes had been back from Iraq since September when he spoke at the local chamber of commerce meeting last week. He spent nine months in the northern part of the country, including in Mosul, the city that was taken from ISIS last summer and was basically leveled in the process as Iraqi forces moved forward. "Our job was just to advise and assist," Hughes said. "Every movement that they made, we were one step behind them." A "combat engineer," Hughes said American forces...
Local emergency responders rushed to the scene of a one-car rollover Monday morning after a federal security officer found a man crawling from his overturned car along the highway to Bridgeport. James Hernandez, 21, of Spokane had been heading east on SR-174 when his 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis swerved to the right before Hernandez overcorrected, then drove off the highway to the left, a Washington State Patrol report concludes. A highway sign was broken and lying on the ground, and the Grand...