News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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It's a time of year full of wake-up calls, and the Raiders got one Saturday as they squeaked by a team they'd had by 10 points in the first half of their "Opening Round" game in the state basketball tournament Saturday in Wenatchee. Lake Roosevelt (23-1) beat the Tri-Cities Prep Jaguars (18-4) by three points, 67-64. "That was a little bit closer than I'd like," Raider Coach Ed Wolfe said after the game. "They can shoot well, all the way across the board, all of them." The Raiders held a...
It may be next fall, or perhaps in February 2025, but local voters will be asked to decide on forming a new taxing district to support local ambulance service. Fire Chief Ryan Fish told the city council Tuesday night that a lot of work needs to be done between now and then, but demand for services is only growing, and at a rate that can’t be supported long-term doing business the way it has been done for decades. In 2015, Grand Coulee’s ambulance service went on 391 calls. In 2023, the number was 628, including only 240 within the city, accordi...
Things have changed over the last four decades in law enforcement. John Tufts has witnessed the changes. The police chief in Grand Coulee is retiring in March, and agreed to chat about what he's learned along the way. There's less respect for people in general now, a change that started about the time cell phones became popular 25 years or so ago. Tufts isn't talking about respect for police, just for people in general, and it's linked to a lack of communication, linked to age, which has an...
The Lady Raiders came to the end of their basketball postseason Saturday when the Davenport Lady Gorillas overtook them in the third quarter of their District 6/7 Crossover game at West Valley High School in Spokane Valley. Davenport won the loser-out contest, 64-44. The Raider girls (12-12) had come out strong early in the game, leading by nine at one point in the first period, but Davenport (15-9) reduced their deficit to four by halftime, 24-20. The Gorillas tied it at 24 early in the third,...
People noticed police activity Tuesday as multiple patrol cars converged on cars parked outside Hometown Pizza in mid-afternoon. Two people were arrested there. An officer who said he was with the Interagency Narcotics Enforcement Team said they were not through. They headed to Fourth Street in Electric City where a house was surrounded by police cars. Three people inside the house were in custody briefly but were released. An expected press release about the event was not available before...
It became clear as crystal last night. Within the time allotted for one city council meeting in Electric City, at least three issues were discussed that require regional attention of two, three, or four local cities, all of which would benefit from cooperation among or between them. That’s why interest in at least one meeting among all their leaders, with the public invited, is an encouraging sign. The new kid on the block, Grand Coulee Mayor Mike Eylar, proposed last week at the Regional Board of Mayors meeting, that all the councils come t...
Grand Coulee’s new mayor, Mike Eylar, has proposed a joint meeting with the city councils of four local cities. Eylar brought the idea up at the Regional Board of Mayors meeting Wednesday. He said he and many local elected officials attended a training at Grand Coulee City Hall recently when he was surprised to see many officials from other cities there too. “It was exciting to have a good portion of the various city councils in attendance,” he said. He first broached the idea to Mayor Bob Poch, of Coulee Dam, who said he liked the idea. “Mayb...
A study on a senior housing project is moving forward with a $350,000 grant through the state Department of Commerce, put into the state budget by the Legislature at the request of 7th District Rep. Joel Kretz (R-Wauconda). It gained bipartisan support and was included in the 2023-2025 biennial budget and signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee. Center Senior Living President Cheryl Hoffman said the “funds provide planning dollars for a study to assess operating costs of an assisted living and memory care facility in Grand Coulee.” The project got...
Two propositions on local ballots passed by nearly the same results Tuesday. Electric City's Proposition 1, to de-annex four large parcels of land the city annexed several years ago, passed by about 81%, 169-40. Nespelem School District 14's Proposition 1, seeking a replacement levy, also passed by a little over 81%, 62-14. Electric City sought to partially undo the annexation it achieved in 2009, shrinking its boundaries to exclude four parcels owned by state or federal governments. They are...
The Lake Roosevelt Raiders won the District 6 tournament championship for the second year in a row Friday in Omak, after a win at home on Tuesday. "We're fast," said a pleased Coach Ed Wolfe amid the jubilation on the Omak court, where the 2024 District 6 2B Boys Basketball Tournament was held for a week. The Raiders had just trounced the Tonasket Tigers 81-47 to take the title after having beaten Okanogan on Tuesday 91-69. The win will send the Raiders (20-1) to the Districts 6/7 Crossover...
Elmer City residents met recently to hear about planning efforts for the town's parks and about early results of an ongoing survey on park preferences in the town. City planner Kurt Danison of Highland Associates said the room full of people Jan. 24 was a better turnout than he usually sees for planning meetings in much larger towns, and that interest is what's needed. He said the town so far had 52 people who had responded to a survey on their park preferences, 29 in one day. Nearly 71 percent...
Sometimes a game is not just a game. That was especially true Monday night, when even as the Lake Roosevelt Lady Raiders were wrapping up a win in basketball, on the stage people were preparing hundreds of candles for afterward. Is everything made softer by candlelight, even grief? Perhaps. A community of many who cared about young Ambrose Moore experienced that when more than half the gym was ringed by those holding those candles for him after a weekend mourning the 17-year-old who ended his life Friday. The community shared its grief, and,...
Coulee Medical Center, along with a couple dozen other public hospitals in Washington state, has been ordered by the state attorney general to provide surgical abortions. The hospital has offered abortion by medicine, but not surgery. That violates the Reproductive Privacy Act, according to Attorney General Bob Ferguson who wrote to CMC in November, stating it was in violation of the law because it fails to offer “substantially equivalent” care to those seeking an abortion, a standard it must meet under the law. Any hospital that can offer to... Full story
The Raider boys' basketball team remained undefeated Tuesday night after taking down Tonasket 89-54 on the Tiger home court, the final in-league game for the Raiders in the regular season. It followed a rousing, deafening game in Coulee Dam against the Liberty Bell Mountain Lions Friday night, where LB gave LR a game and fans on both sides shook the rafters. The Raiders won by only six points, 72-66, their closest contest of the season. LR might play LB again Feb. 6 in the District 6 2B Boys Bas...
In their last scheduled dual meet on their home mat Wednesday, Lake Roosevelt Raider boys outscored the Almira-Coulee-Hartline team 29-19 as several Raiders wrestled up in a weight class higher than their own. "They dug deep tonight to win that match," said head Coach Casey Brewster. "I had guys wrestling up out of weight classes that came through ... Pretty much all our guys ... wrestled up." Those included Zach Elwell, Kaden Christman, Jacoby Jackson, and Ike Circle, who looked very tired...
Electric City has a lot going on, and the mayor wanted people to have a chance to learn, ask questions and share their thoughts on a several key projects, so the city held a town-hall type meeting at the fire hall Tuesday night. Mayor Diane Kohout spoke with a roomful of citizens about an upcoming vote on de-annexing four parcels of property the city annexed several years ago. Those can't be developed, belong to federal or state agencies, and sometimes require services from the city, such as...
Rod Broadnax will remain the superintendent of the Grand Coulee Dam School District for another three years following an offer by the school board Monday to extend his contract. Broadnax accepted the offer, which included a lift in pay from $142,000 a year to $160,000, plus cost-of-living increases. Broadnax confirmed Tuesday that he had accepted the offer proffered by the board the night before. Reached by telephone, he was just returning to his office after picking up “lunch” after 4 p.m. after a day of interviewing candidates for a human res...
When deciding on hot issues in current politics, it’s best to keep a discerning eye on bloated rhetoric, even when it purports to support “common sense.” Everybody is all for commons sense, of course, but often when two sides differ greatly, they’ll each genuinely believe the other side shows none. That’s rarely true. A case in point lies on this page when our man in Congress uses this rhetoric. We support part of Rep. Dan Newhouse’s argument, not the other. Police agencies, including local ones, of all sizes across the state have complained...
The Raider boys remained undefeated and at the top of the state 2B list Tuesday after winning three games this week, including on Saturday against Idaho's 2023 state champs. Lake Roosevelt (16-0 overall) defeated Plummer, Idaho's Lakeside Knights (8-2) by 77-70 after gaining 13 points in the second quarter in Coulee Dam for a 39-29 halftime lead. Raider fans were first treated to the team's 60-52 takedown of Manson (10-6) Friday night in Coulee Dam, a tough game played without Chase Marchand,...
A police officer couldn't wait for the fire department to evacuate a woman inside a home that was burning in Coulee Dam last week. Officer Josh Watkins went back to the home he'd visited a few minutes before for an unrelated matter after the dispatch center in Moses Lake told him a bedroom in the house at 1107 River Drive was now on fire. It was 5:23 p.m. Watkins arrived and saw large flames coming out of the bedroom at the northeast corner of the house. Young people he'd just spoken with were...
Sometimes games are what happen when you had other plans. Like when Raider Head Coach Ed Wolfe wanted to tie up the Liberty Lancers Saturday with an aggressive man-to-man defense but then realized the refs were calling the game fair but "tight," he said. Too many early fouls changed the strategy against the disciplined and well-coached Lancers, Wolfe said. No matter. The boys from Spangle still fell to Lake Roosevelt by 18 points, 67-49. The undefeated Raiders now boast a 6-0 league win-loss...
Oroville fell hard to the Lady Raiders last Friday on the Hornets' home court, 67-19, but played hard enough to benefit Spangle in Coulee Dam Saturday. That's when the Lady Lancers bested Lake Roosevelt's girls 59-37. LR Coach Morgan Smith said considering they had two players out with injuries, leaving only one on the bench, LR (7-7 overall win-loss record) stood up to Liberty's 10-3 Lady Lancers fairly well. At Brewster last night, the Lady Raiders lost to the Lady Bears 70-45. LR is set to...
Electric City swore in its two newest council members Tuesday and one who held onto his seat in the November election. Brian Buche took the oath of office again, having been re-elected over challenger Levi Johnson. The new members now joining Buche at council were Matt Gilbert and Blake Martin, who, like Johnson, are Grand Coulee police officers. The newcomers got a relatively light agenda to start, with 19 items on it ranging from approving prior meetings’ minutes to hearing the particulars of a sewer connection discussion and passing an o...
To celebrate their anniversary, the Eagles Auxiliary and the Eagles Aerie made a donation Saturday to a young student raising money for a trip to Boston this summer. On the 77th anniversary of the Eagles and the 75th anniversary of the auxiliary, Pharaoh Hudson received their check for $300. He and his family are trying to raise enough money to get him to Boston and cover expenses for the trip. Hudson received in the mail a notice that he had been nominated for an "award of excellence for...
Two Lake Roosevelt Elementary School teachers were recognized for their efforts before the school board at its meeting Monday night. Third-grade teacher Jessica Tufts and fourth-grade teacher Alissa Seaver were each highlighted in the "Superintendent's Spotlight" for those who go "above and beyond" for the district. Superintendent Rod Broadnax said he stops by their classrooms every day. "Students are engaged, students are learning," he said. The two were responsible for organizing the recent...