Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 180
DAYTON – Monty N. Dunn, the 50-year-old Dayton resident arrested on multiple drug charges at his home across the street from the Dayton High School in February, was sentenced to 57 months in prison, with credit for time served, by a Columbia County Superior Court judge last week. Dunn, who has been incarcerated in the Columbia County Jail since his arrest, was offered a plea agreement by county prosecutors in April. He signed the document last week, and his guilty plea was read into the r...
DAYTON – The weather over Memorial Day weekend was perfect for all the festive, outdoor activities around town, not too hot but dry with a fresh breeze. Dozens of floats, horses and vehicles paraded down Main Street in honor of Dayton Days. Participants included organizations from Walla Walla, Milton-Freewater and other neighboring communities as well as local groups: Dayton Elementary School children on their bikes; the Touchet Valley Arts Council promoting this fall's musical, The Wizard of O...
DAYTON – Directors of the Columbia County Health System are moving forward with upgrades to Dayton General Hospital. The board unanimously agreed on Thursday that hospital district executives should secure an architect to draw up plans for the project using the Stroudwater Report submitted to the board by an independent consultant firm in April. Financial reports prepared for the board indicated, as expected, that the hospital's imaging, lab and physical therapy departments contributed s...
DAYTON – Port of Columbia Manager Jennie Dickinson is quite proud of the document she shared with The Times last week – the Blue Mountain Station Development Agreement. She and planning consultant Bill Stalzer collaborated at length to produce this "road map" for the Port's continued commercial development on Artisan Way. "This document explains in detail how everything we have planned at Blue Mountain Station fits within the county's current comprehensive development plan and zoning res...
DAYTON – Last week the Washington State Department of Natural Resources presented to several county residents at a public hearing its plan to sell 640 acres of land it owns in Columbia County to the Bonneville Power Administration in exchange for land deemed of equal value that BPA owns in King County. All three county residents in attendance were unhappy with DNR. Merle Jackson, a county commissioner and land owner in the rural northern part of the county where this land exchange is planned, s...
DAYTON – Columbia County Commissioners agreed last week to sign an interlocal agreement with the Houston-Galveston Area Council, a government services organization based in Texas, through which the county may purchase product and services from other government agencies. Lisa Caldwell, emergency management director for the county, presented the agreement to commissioners last week. She hopes that joining the council will assist the county in purchasing a new 911 phone system for the Columbia Coun...
DAYTON – Local youth leaders are asking community members and other supporters to help save the Dayton Summer Youth Program (Summer Rec.). All supporters must do is go online to: https://www.state-assist.com/cause/1502697/sos-save-our-summer. Those who vote for SOS (Save Our Summer) will help Blue Mountain Counseling and the Coalition for Youth and Families win a $25,000 grant from State Farm Insurance. Projects that receive the most community support (the top 40 projects) through voting will b...
STARBUCK – Columbia Pulp, the 449-acre wheat straw refuse recovery and paper pulp manufacturing facility to be located on Highway 261 near Starbuck, has now been issued its six required building permits and is "ready to go," Columbia County Planning Director Kim Lyonnais reported on Tuesday. "Just last week they received their shoreline exemption to temporarily pump water out of the Snake River for dust control as they grade the site," Lyonnais said. "I think they're shooting for early June t...
DAYTON – A final count of votes on Tuesday confirmed the failure of Dayton School District’s $800,000 capital-improvement levy. It was a close vote, but just 48.9 percent of residents voted to approve the measure. A 50-percent approval was required. A majority of voters inside city limits approved the levy, according to the election results posted online, but voter turnout was lower in the city than in previous years where support for the district had been strong, according to Dayton Sch...
DAYTON – Directors of the Columbia County Health System are wrestling with a tough decision: What will the community need from its hospital in the next five to 10 years? "With legislative changes to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements and the rapid technology changes going on, this is hard to figure out," CCHS Chief Operations Officer Shane McGuire said. "There is so much going on in healthcare right now, I feel bad for the board coming in once a month and trying to keep up with everything g...
Dayton seniors Matthew Warren and Sarah Phillips are recipients of this year's P.E.O. Citizenship Award for possessing good qualities of character (honesty, courtesy, amiability, morality and punctuality), achieving high scholarship, and participating in a number of community and school activities. They are pictured here with Susie Payne, a member of the P.E.O. Citizenship Award Committee. P.E.O., which stands for Philanthropic Educational Organization, is an international group whose mission...
DAYTON – Columbia County Commissioners are moving forward with repairs to the Columbia County Senior Center on E. Washington in Dayton. "This is a good, functional and well-used building," said Commissioner Merle Jackson. Jackson met Tuesday morning at the center with Zella Powers and Barbara Gibson, members of the Senior Center Board, as well as County Engineer Andrew Woods and Courthouse Maintenance Supervisor Dave Finney, to decide on maintenance projects. New flooring and a leaky roof w...
Superintendent wonders how to engage community in school-upkeep conversation DAYTON – The Columbia County Auditor's Office counted 61 additional ballots last Friday, but the new results don't show much change for the Dayton School District's $800,000 capital improvement levy. The proposal now trails by 23 votes out of 1,160 cast, a slightly larger difference than was reported after the initial count last Tuesday when results trailed by 21 votes. This election requires a simple majority, or 50 pe...
DAYTON – This little community was abuzz with activity Saturday, both at the annual street sale on South 3rd Street as well as all along Main Street and beyond, where Dayton sixth graders hollered and coaxed passersby to support their cause and buy a glass of lemonade. One grinning young man pedaled about in the Weinhard Hotel's surrey with a tray of full lemonade cups in the front basket, his digital device playing music and a sign on the back reading, "Musical Lemonade Taxi." In front of C...
DAYTON – Columbia County road projects old and new were presented in April to county commissioners. To assist with one major new project, the county road department has hired two engineering interns for the summer to inventory and prioritize roads with clear-zone issues. The Federal Highway Administration defines a clear zone as the total roadside border area, starting at the edge of the traveled way, available for safe use by errant vehicles. This area may consist of a shoulder, a r...
DAYTON – Columbia County signed an interlocal agreement with the city of Walla Walla in April to share in the purchase and installation of a new computer-aided dispatch and records management system for the county dispatch center and sheriff’s office. The new system replaces an 18-year-old program that has reached “end of life,” according to Columbia County Emergency Manager Lisa Caldwell. For roughly $236,000 and a few thousand dollars per year in fees, Columbia County will gain access to a top...
DAYTON – The Columbia County Health System Board of Directors agreed last week at their monthly meeting that they need to move forward with a decision on how to spend the $5.5 million hospital levy approved by voters last fall. “One way or another, we need to make a decision tonight or by the next meeting on how we’re going to move forward,” said Ted Patterson, board president. “We promised the community we were going to do something with this money and we need to do it.” In February the board h...
DAYTON – Dayton man Andrew J. Churchill, 43, pleaded guilty to multiple domestic violence assault charges last Friday in Columbia County Superior Court and was sentenced to seven months in county jail. Churchill was arrested in January after witnesses at Blue Mountain Station stated he’d pulled a gun on an adult male family member in the back parking lot where he and his wife operated a business selling items at the Port of Columbia facility just west of Dayton. According to the arresting doc...
DAYTON – Azure Mountain made a subtle entrance to downtown Dayton retail this spring, opening a handcrafted, artisan soap shop next door to Manila Bay Café on East Main Street. No grand opening or "loud" signs or displays in the window have alerted visitors and locals to the new shop, which is just how Art and Brenda Hall want it. "We want people to see our sign and be curious enough to come inside and see what we have to offer," Brenda said. And the couple both work full time, so the shop is on...
DAYTON – Jeannie Lyonnais has joined the team in the Dayton Elementary School office this month as full-time secretary. Her smiling face is new to the front desk but not to the district. She has worked at the school for the last 28 years on and off. Jeannie and her husband, Kim Lyonnais, moved to Dayton in 1986. They were both born and raised in Spokane. Kim is now the Columbia County Planning Director, a department he has managed in the past but took a short break from to work in planning in W...
DAYTON – Anna Steinhoff is determined to find beauty even in everyday life. She makes rings and necklaces out of bullet casings and Swarovski crystals and crafts bracelets out of leather and metal. This Dayton mother and wife, though not, she insists, a "girly girl," has carved a niche in the local jewelry business – and her pieces are on sale now at Azure Mountain on East Main Street. "It's awesome to see something I made on a complete stranger," she said. Like Art and Brenda Hall, who hav...
DAYTON – Columbia County Sheriff's Office deputies arrested two of Washington's most-wanted criminals here last Wednesday night during a traffic stop in the 800 block of East Main Street. The couple, 29-year-old Jose Isidro Cisneros of Pasco and 22-year-old Breanne Nicole Rutherford of Walla Walla, were part of a Washington's Most Wanted report posted April 11 online. U.S. Marshals in the Tri-Cities, Pasco police and Department of Corrections officers out of Walla Walla were hunting for this w...
STARBUCK – The Washington Economic Development Finance Authority has approved issuance of $110 million in non-recourse revenue bonds to Columbia Pulp, LLC. The bonds will cover construction costs for the planned 449-acre wheat straw refuse recovery and paper pulp manufacturing facility to be located on Highway 261 near Starbuck, according to Columbia Pulp President John Begley. “It still has to go through a fairly detailed process, which will probably take about eight weeks,” Begley told The T...
DAYTON – After months of deliberation, Columbia County Commissioners decided on April 15 to switch power providers for the county courthouse and the county public works building from Pacific Power & Light to Columbia Rural Electric Association. Representatives from both utility providers were present at the board meeting, but relatively little discussion took place. Commissioners Mike Talbott and Dwight Robanske voted in favor of the switch; Commissioner Merle Jackson was opposed. “My tho...
DAYTON – Columbia County has its eye on Seneca property neighboring the county public works office on North Guernsey Avenue, including the much-used activity center and well-known "Labor Camp" on Green Giant Camp Road. This information was revealed during last week's county commissioner meeting when Ginny Butler, with the Dayton Historical Depot Society, requested that her organization have access to the site to document and record the long history present there before the county made any c...
