News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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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...
Electric City residents will notice a lot of street repair happening this year in several spots around town. Electric City Council authorized Mayor John Nordeen II to proceed with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) grant street repairs at its meeting Tuesday night. The FEMA program was a response to an exceptionally hard winter in 2016-17, when many small cities were hit with unusual street repair needs. The city had received two grants totaling just under $200,000 earlier, and by council action Gray & Osborne was selected to provide...
Morin to chair mayors Mayor Gail Morin of Elmer City will take over the chair position on the Regional Board of Mayors. Each year, the chair position changes in a rotation system between the four mayors. Morin was unable to attend Monday’s meeting, and Elmer City Councilmember Jess Tillman was designated to take her place, and ran the meeting. Fall date set for hazardous waste Grant County Solid Waste coordinator Joan Sieverkropp advised the Regional Board of Mayors that the household hazardous waste collection date for this fall will be F...
Grand Coulee's native son, Shane Proctor, who has made a name for himself riding bulls, is leaving the Professional Bull Riders to pursue another long-held goal. Turning 33 in March, Proctor figures it's about time he tries for an all-around cowboy championship title with the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Proctor rode Trick Shot in PBR's Madison Square Garden event Feb. 2 for 81 points, and chose that day in New York City to announce his retirement from PBR to focus all his energy on...
A number of school employees, and personnel from other agencies, plan on spending a week-long training session at the FEMA Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, Maryland, beginning the first week in March, Superintendent Paul Turner advised the Grand Coulee Dam School District board Monday night. The plan, Turner said Tuesday, “is to get the same training for all the emergency responders that we depend on in this area so everyone is on the same page.” Going from the school district in addition to Turner are Lisa Lakin, elementary princi...
Police are looking for a Grand Coulee man who eluded them after they tried to arrest him Sunday on a warrant out of Grant County. Local police are asking the county prosecutor’s office to add a charge of “escape in the 3rd degree” to the outstanding warrant issued on Tom Waters, of 221 Bowen Street, Grand Coulee. Officer Matt Ponusky thought he saw Waters walking north on SR-155 near Snyder Road and called in fellow officer Adam Florenzen. Ponusky stopped in front of Waters near the intersection of SR-155 and Spokane Way and yelled at him t...
Sometime this spring, Elmer City residents, along with town visitors, can take a hike from their doorsteps along a new interior trail system that leads to the Downriver Trail along the Columbia River. The bid that will allow this to happen was awarded last Thursday night by the Elmer City Council. Council members awarded a $159,726 contract to DW Excavating, Inc., of Davenport, Washington, for a 2,300-foot trail that borders the Lower River Road. Two crosswalks and signage are included in the Transportation Improvement Board grant. It’s all p...
Fireworks over Grand Coulee Dam will be on Wednesday, July 4, this year, Peggy Nevsimal of the Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce said Tuesday. The chamber board and Nevsimal returned from a retreat at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, over the weekend and made several decisions that affect activities here during the year. Last year, because July 4 fell on a Tuesday, the chamber set the annual fireworks show for Saturday, July 1. “It didn’t go over well, and we all decided to hold it on the traditional day,” Nevsimal stated. Fifteen people attended...
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...
Grand Coulee Police 2/6 - Police were told that a man left threatening messages on cardboard boxes and on a woman’s sanitary napkin after being unhappy with a car he purchased from residents. The residents were advised to get a court restraining order against the man. 2/7 - A person on Sunny Drive in Electric City told police that he thought someone had vandalized his newspaper box. - An Electric City man was issued citations for having a faulty headlamp and for not having insurance after a patrol officer stopped him, when he noticed the h...
Center School will go on the block again. This will be the third time that Grand Coulee Dam School District has advertised the old elementary school for sale. The school board has held firm on $150,000 as the lowest price it will accept for the building and surrounding property, about eight acres, and has authorized another advertising of the property. At the last “for sale” go-round, one interested person, Elijah Kleimenov of Moses Lake, had tentatively agreed to purchase the property. At the time he agreed to the price, Kleimenov said he tho...
The Washington State Department of Transportation said that routine engine maintenance will close the Keller Ferry vessel, the Sanpoil, from 10 p.m. on Saturday, Feb 10 until about 6 a.m. the following morning, Sunday, Feb. 11. "Crews periodically swap one of the two engines on the Sanpoil with a third engine that is in reserve," the WSDOT explained. "The engine from the boat goes to a machine shop to be overhauled and brought up to factory specifications. That engine becomes the spare and ready for the next exchange." The engine coming out...
Dave Simms (foreground) and Pat Belt, both of the Waterville area, and Dick Jennings (middle), of Coulee Dam, all chose Crescent Bay as the place to go in order to get out of the house and break their cabin fever Tuesday. Jennings, who had a construction company in the Seattle area, chose Coulee Dam as his retirement spot, moving here about 10 years ago. Jennings said the biggest fish he's caught at Crescent Bay was a 6-pound rainbow trout. All the men were using power-bait marshmallows as bait...
Grand Coulee Mayor Paul Townsend dismissed Carol Boyce as city clerk late last week. "Carol has made a longstanding contribution to the community and city, and I regret that this became necessary," Townsend said in a statement Tuesday. Boyce came to work at city hall 17 years ago, and for the past seven years has served as city clerk. Townsend didn't go into details on why he is replacing Boyce. State audit "findings" last summer detailed several deficiencies, and the city has had to hire an...
Despite the passage of last year’s bipartisan agreement to fully fund K-12 public education with a property tax hike, the state Legislature is still wrestling over the issue as school leaders across the state say the changes will hurt their districts, including at Grand Coulee Dam. In November, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature needs to ramp up funding for teacher and other school staff salaries to meet its imposed September 2018 deadline, despite the billions that have already been allocated to public education. However, s...
The Department of Fish and Wildlife has been awarded $3 million to buy about 7,250 acres of shrub-steppe habitat six miles west of Grand Coulee for sharp-tailed grouse, the department announced last week. The grant is from the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program. It is the final phase of a three-phase project to buy more than 20,500 acres, with previous purchases making up the department's Big Bend Wildlife Area. The land is an important link between sharp-tailed grouse populations in...
Tribal officer involved in shooting A Colville Tribal Police Department officer was involved in a shooting on the Colville Reservation on Saturday, according to a Feb. 6 press release from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. “The incident is under investigation by the FBI,” the press release states. “No further information is available at this time.” Voter registration problem discovered If you thought you had registered to vote through the state Dept. of Licensing but you didn’t receive a ballot, be advised they’re w...
Elmer City received six bids, and town officials will likely award its “Complete Streets” project to one of the low bidders at its meeting Feb. 8. The $250,000 project is the result of a grant from the state Department of Transportation’s Transportation Improvement Board and will cover both the engineering and construction cost of a 2,300-foot pathway along the Lower River Road. Bids were opened last Wednesday, with DW Excavating, Inc., from Davenport, submitting the lowest bid of $159,726. The engineer’s estimated construction cost was $160,00...
The mild winter weather has people thinking about the upcoming golf season. Not the least of those looking ahead are commissioners of Grant County Port District 7, who are responsible for management of the 18-hole course in Electric City. The course normally opens March 1, but it could be earlier this year since rain and warm weather have cleared snow from the fairways and greens. Commissioners have decided to continue last season’s membership rates and single-day fees for 9-hole and 18-hole play, and for cart rentals. Individual season members...
Progress, albeit slow, on the “dangerous” building issue in Grand Coulee, is moving forward. A meeting between the city Building Inspector Gary Lampella, and attorney Tom Geiger, who represents the Vlachos family, didn’t occur last Wednesday as scheduled, but Geiger wrote to the city and to Birdie Hensley, who oversees the Coulee Pioneer Museum, and his message is promising. Lampella had declared the museum building that Constantinos Vlachos had owned at 136 Spokane Way “dangerous,” and was working with the city council to raze the colorful...
Grand Coulee Police 1/30 - Police arrested a man wanted on warrants after they found him hiding in a bedroom at a residence on Alcan Road NE. Police were trying to stop a vehicle with a faulty light, and the car drove to the residence, where the man ran into the house to avoid arrest, police said. The woman who remained in the car said the man had been driving. - A man on Goodfellow Avenue in Electric City reported to police that someone had broken into his vehicle. - A woman whose vehicle had been repossessed was given the number of the tow...
The state’s new plan for funding education is going to make it difficult to put together the budget for the 2018-19 school year, officials here have indicated, and they’re planning for a second round of big cuts. Superintendent Paul Turner, who trimmed the current year’s budget by over $500,000 last spring and summer, will be faced with the task of doing it again. It is all tied to the McCleary ruling handed down in 2012 when the Washington State Supreme Court told the Legislature that it had to fully fund basic education. The Legis...
Kindergarteners perform a poem titled "Chubby Snowman" during a concert at Lake Roosevelt Elementary last Wednesday. They are holding their hands on their noses to represent the carrot that a hungry bunny stole. From left to right are Haddie Marconi, Eva Connors, Sage Green, Macy Paslay, Charisma Holt, Reese Erickson, Kolby Graves, Kacen Duclos and Shyne Redstar. - Jacob Wagner photo...
Voters in Grand Coulee this week received their mail-in ballots asking whether they approve of creating a Transportation Benefit District (TBD) and bumping up the sales tax rate to pay for it. The city council voted back in October to create a TBD to raise money for streets. If voters pass the issue, residents and anyone else purchasing taxable items within the city limits will pay two-tenths of one percent more in sales tax. The new money would develop funds to repair streets within the city. A transportation benefit district can use one of...
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...