Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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DAYTON-The Dayton Chamber's Community Choice Award for 2019 Citizen of the Year was presented to Liz Carson, for the decades she has spent researching and documenting Columbia County history. Ginny Butler presented the award to Carson at last week's Chamber Awards Banquet saying, "I'm really excited to be able to give this award to this person, who has dedicated decades of her life to researching and documenting Columbia County History." Butler said Carson's research spans over a one hundred...
DAYTON—Zac Weatherford will serve a four-year term as Dayton’s mayor beginning on January 1, 2020, according to unofficial results from last week’s general election. Weatherford received 66.49% of the vote with 490 votes cast to Delphine Bailey’s 179 votes, and write-in candidate Cindy John’s 68 votes. Dain Nysoe had a solid lead over Cara James for Dayton City Council Position # 4 with 60.67% of the vote, but Position #6 is too close to call, according to staff in the county auditor’s...
WALLA WALLA-The Blue Mountain Regional Trails Plan has garnered the 2019 Smart Communities, Smart Partnership award from Washington State Governor Jay Inslee. Over thirty stakeholders were on hand to celebrate at the Walla Walla County fairgrounds Pavilion. Roughly ninety people crowded the Pavilion to hear Commerce Director Dr. Lisa Brown, and Dave Andersen, Managing Director for the Commerce Growth Management Services Unit, talk about the significance of the award and recognize all the...
DAYTON-Dayton resident Carol Anderson was also a county extension agent, in the Dayton Office. Anderson said she wasn't the only female county agent, here. Rosealee Boyd, and Faye Rainwater served before she did and Cathy Lyman, served after she did. There were other women who served as county home extension agents, for shorter periods of time, she said. "They were generally fairly young women, out of college. A couple of them were married and their husbands had jobs that coordinated down...
DAYTON-On Monday, Columbia County Commissioners Mike Talbott, Ryan Rundell and Chuck Amerein had the opportunity to visit with Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, topics under discussion included the Southern border wall, healthy forests, breeching dams, and other topics of interest. McMorris Rodgers said during the first two years of the Trump Administration, $5.6 billion was appropriated and signed into law for construction of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. "So that is now unde...
DAYTON—The Friends of the Community Center’s President Vicki Zoller said their group should hear by mid-November whether, or not they will be awarded a $20,000 grant from the Wildhorse Foundation. If so there will be money enough to pay for the first phase of the pool feasibility study, she said. She said the organization has been working with architects from Schemata Workshop in Seattle, and they have agreed the $60,000 feasibility study can be done in phases. Zoller said in the first pha...
DAYTON-The Touchet Valley Arts Council's 2019 fall musical Mary Poppins promises to be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Director Elizabeth Arebalos-Jagelsi said, "It's epic and different than any other we've done on this stage." Mary Poppins is based on the stories of P. L. Travers. It tells the story of the Banks family who are rescued from their emotionally stunted father when a musical, magical nanny, named Mary Poppins, drops into their lives at Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, London. This...
DAYTON-Dayton General Hospital partnered with the Dayton High School, the Columbia County Dispatch Center, the Columbia County Sheriff's Office, Columbia County Public Health, Columbia County Fire District 3, and the Waitsburg Clinic for a multi-agency response drill, involving students "injured" by a simulated chemical explosion in Kristina Kneble's Agriculture Science class, last Friday. No students were injured during the drill. The "chemical explosion" happened when a faulty welding tank...
For Dayton Resident Joanne Poolman, participating in the Touchet Valley Trail design charrette this past weekend is part of "being a good human." As a resident of this area for 50-some years, she became involved with the trail design process because "I was trying to bring the local element into it. I've been here longer than most, and I don't want our history to be forgotten." Poolman joined other community members, architects from the Washington Chapter of the American Society of Landscape...
DAYTON—The Columbia County Health System is planning on a large Medicare take-back payment of around $1.15 million, which is not particularly unusual since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) operate on a cost-based reimbursement model. That is to say they front load money for patient care every year, based on the previous year’s data, and they can either collect the amount they overpay or make additional payments, if they underpay. It could be a “wash” if CCHS manages to coll...
DAYTON-Molly Weatherill-Tate has been a busy person since she started work as Dayton's new Chamber of Commerce Manager on October 7. "I'm trying to learn QuickBooks, and all kinds of things," she said. "I've jumped into the Awards Banquet and Christmas Kickoff with all the little parts that go along with that. I've hit all downtown in the last week, or so, handing out Halloween trick or treat banners." "My next step is to reach out to all the Chamber members," she said. "I'm getting myself up...
DAYTON-Last week, Mayor Zac Weatherford toured the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation's Touchet River Flood Plain and Flow Restoration project, on the north fork of the Touchet River. Representatives from; CTUIR, Washington Water Trust, the state Department of Ecology, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Anderson/Perry & Associates, were also on the tour. They also toured the city's wastewater treatment plant, listened to a presentation on instream flow...
DAYTON-In The First 45 Years: A History of Cooperative Extension in Washington State, published by Washington State University press, in April, 1961, author Russell M. Turner discusses the importance of early efforts by state college and experiment station researchers to get their research into the hands of farmers. Turner wrote that Dr. W. J. Spillman at the State College of Washington, in Pullman, said in his 1897 station report that the demand for information exceeded the ability to meet it....
DAYTON—Three candidates running for a four year term as Dayton’s mayor spoke at the AAUW Candidates Forum, which was held at the Liberty Theater in Dayton last week, followed by a question and answer session. Delphine Bailey, City of Dayton Mayor Zac Weatherford and write-in candidate Cindi John spoke about their experience, vision, and goals, if elected to be Dayton’s Mayor, on Nov. 5 Delphine Bailey, who has served on the Dayton City Council for the past eight years, and has served as Mayor...
DAYTON—Seth Bryan is running for Dayton City Council Position 6 against incumbent Byron Kaczmarski in the Nov. 5 General Election. “This is my first time running for public office,” Bryan said. “I believe it is important to serve the community I live in, and I am grateful for this opportunity.” Bryan said he likes the fact that Dayton doesn’t have big city amenities, big city attitudes, big city prices or big city taxes. “There is a sense of pride here that can seldom be found in more populous...
DAYTON—If you think state Initiative 976, better known as the $30 Car Tab Initiative, will only affect Sound Transit, on the west side of the state, think again. If I-976 is approved by voters, Columbia County Public Transportation stands to lose forty percent of the state’s portion of its largest source of funding, which is through the Washington State Department of Transportation’s Consolidated Grant program, said Steve Mertens, CCPT Finance Manager. He said if I-976 is approved by voter...
DAYTON-If the Flood Control Zone District is approved by the voters on Nov. 5, County Engineer Charles Eaton will be its administrator. Eaton has released the following statement: "Since 1964, Columbia County has been declared a federal disaster area six times due to flooding. The flood of 1996 caused over $30 million in private and public damages. A flood of this severity today would take a serious toll on general fund budgets, even with the FEMA, Federal Highways Administration, and Army Corps...
DAYTON-Since becoming the WSU Dayton Extension Agent fifteen years ago, Paul Carter said youth enrollment in 4-H has increased from 75 to 102, this year, and remains steady. "It is very important to know that we still view the youth of the county as our primary program area," Carter said. "These kids are the future of the community and we see that every day as many of them stay here, or leave, and then return to make this home." "If I could I would have every kid in the county in 4-H sometime...
STARBUCK-With generous donations from Columbia Pulp and the Blue Mountain Community Foundation, the Starbuck School District is now able to provide 37 K-8 graders with lunches, five days a week, until the end of the school year, according to Martha Lanman Columbia County Public Health Director. A donation of $1,000 from Columbia Pulp and another $5,000 from the Blue Mountain Community Foundation will more than meet the original request, which was for $1500 to provide lunches four days a week....
DAYTON-The Historic Dayton on Tour will take place on Sat. Oct 5. Activities include; the works of local artists displayed at various locations, around town, the Annual Historic Home Tour, the Main Street Open House, wagon rides, Oktoberfest at the Blue Mountain Station, and artists Paul Henderson, Alison Oman, and Sandra Haynes at the Wenaha Gallery. The Boldman House Museum will also be open to the public for tours between the hours of 1-4:00 p.m. Master Gardener Susie Rogers will be in the...
Jake Holopeter, a physical engineer with Anderson Perry & Associates, spoke at a special city council meeting, last Monday, about the terms of the one million dollar Public Works Board Pre-Construction Loan, which was granted to the city to buy property for its land acquisition discharge wastewater treatment plant facility project. Because the City has been looking into a different method of treating effluent, Holopeter said he would recommend turning the loan back to the Public Works Board and...
During the Columbia County Fire District Three open house on Sunday EMT Darvin Parvinen demonstrated Lucas, the new mechanical chest compression machine, which was purchased with EMS levy funds. Lucas attaches directly to the patient and provides uninterrupted, steady compressions while en route to the hospital, Parvinen said. He said before purchasing Lucas it took seven to eight EMTs to provide chest compressions on patients during a forty-five minute run to the hospital. With the help of...
DAYTON-Roughly ninety people attended the Touchet Valley Trail open house, at the fairgrounds Pavilion, in Dayton, on Monday, Sept. 16. Joy Smith President of the Waitsburg Commercial Club spoke to the attendees about the importance of outdoor recreation and trails to the economic vitality, health, and safety, of the local communities. Smith said she ran an overnight rental for seven years, in Waitsburg, and two thirds of the overnight guests came with bicycles. Also ten percent of renters were...
DAYTON—During their regular session on Monday, Sept. 16, the Board of Columbia County Commissioners adopted the county’s 2019 Comprehensive Plan Update, and its three new ordinances regarding; water availability for the new building, critical areas, and zoning. Some of the Hirst decision language was incorporated into Ordinance 2019-04, regarding water availability for the new building, said Dena Martin, Planning Associate. “It generally doesn’t affect us, but it is in there,” she told the...
DAYTON—There was no unfinished or new business at the Dayton City Council meeting last week. The majority of the meeting time was spent addressing a letter written by Dayton residents Chuck and Peggy James about the alleged lack of qualifications of the City’s new Planner, Meagan Bailey, and the allegedly poor conduct of the City’s Administrator, Trina Cole, when Ms. James reached out to her by phone, the first week of September. The James’ letter was published in the Dayton Chronicle on Sept. 12. Councilman Mike Paris said, “I was appalled...
