Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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By Jonathan Bernstein, The Washington Post As Elaine Kamarck recounts in The Washington Post, winning isn’t all that matters in the early contests on the presidential nomination calendar. Candidates seek to beat expectations, and the press and the parties judge the results against what they thought would happen. In fact, beating expectations can matter even more than the raw results because it affects the amount and tone of the coverage candidates get. Those, in turn, can affect voters in the next state on the calendar. A classic example: In 1...
Dear Editor, We are writing in support of the upcoming Dayton School District Levies. Nothing is more important than the children of our community. It is the responsibility of all adults in Dayton to ensure that its children have a safe environment and quality education. I encourage you to become informed on the aspects of this levy election. The replacement M & O Levy is 25% of the school district budget. The state does not fully fund the education of its children. The M & O Levy provides for sports and academic teams; a part time nurse and...
Dear Editor, I am writing this letter in support of the Dayton School M&O levy and Capital Projects Bond, not because I am an employee of the district, but because I support all schools in all communities. As a second grade student, I experienced what it was like to have a school levy fail. The elementary school I attend was closed for a year and all the students were bussed to other schools in the district. My parents had four children in two different schools due to elimination of local funding. While busing students to other schools is not...
Dear Editor, As a former science teacher and a person who often must make difficult decisions, charts and graphs, data and statistics are something I appreciate and frequently utilize. In the case of the 2016 ballot-proposed levies however, it seems to me that all of the relevant data and statistics are already available to anyone who might have interest. Instead, I’d like to talk about one. ONE student who is able to find a future career in welding that excites him through the chaos of his teenage years, and stops walking the road to substance...
Dear Editor, Five citizens coming together to serve as board of directors providing direction to the community’s public school system is the short summary of what being a school board member is all about. Behind that statement is a level of commitment which deserves to be recognized. School board members in our community serve the needs of students, employees, parents, and community members. As a group they take on the many challenges which arise throughout each school year with an eye to the future. Since 2009 I have worked with and for citize...
Dear Editor, I am writing this letter to encourage every voter in Columbia County to vote yes for the two Dayton school levies on the ballot. We need to have the maintenance and operation replacement levy pass to maintain the programs we currently have in school. This replacement levy represents about 25% of the schools total budget and needs to be passed to keep to keep our students moving in the right direction as they get ready to go out into the world. By passing the IT and Capital Levy, the school will be getting some much needed repairs...
Dear Editor, I want to preface this letter by saying that I don’t hate children and I love living in Waitsburg. So I am hoping that this letter will be taken in the spirit of “we need a break from taxes/levies” that it is intended. When I married and moved to Waitsburg in 1988, I fell in love with the small town. Not long after I moved here they tried running a levy to build a new grade school. The first time it failed, so they ran it again and put restoration of Preston Hall and restoration of the grade school on the same ballot. My husba...
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Is it right that such a big chunk of the cost of operating schools rests on the shoulders of local property tax payers through voter-approved levies? During my conversation with Representative Terry Nealey a couple of weeks ago (which I wrote about last week), he said that education funding is once again the number one issue facing Washington’s state legislators in the current session, which began last week. And the specific education funding issue those folks are addressing this year is how to make it more even-handed. That is, kids in rich s...
Barton Swaim, The Washington Post Many political candidates, if we’re to believe what they say about themselves, spend most of their time traveling around listening to people. “I’ve traveled all around the country, Anderson,” former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley told CNN’s Anderson Cooper at one of last year’s Democratic presidential debates, “and there’s two phrases I keep hearing again and again and again. And they’re the phrases ‘new leadership’ and ‘getting things done.’ “ O’Malley’s opponent Hillary Clinton, though, would not be out...
Dear Editor, As a graduate of Dayton High School and newly appointed school board member, I would like to encourage our community to vote “yes” for both the renewal of the Replacement Maintenance and Operation Levy and the Capital Levy for Technology, Safety, Security and Efficiency Improvements. I don’t know of a school district in the State of Washington that can operate without the community approval of levies. Like all other public schools in the State of Washington, Dayton relies on a levy to make up for at least 25% of the budget short...
Dear Editor, Why should anyone pay more taxes to the public school? 1. Freedom. “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” —James Madison or “The more the ignorance, the better the slave.” —Edmund Fairfield, President, Hillsdale College, July 4, 1853 2. Equality of Opportunity. Public education provides the same instruction regardless of a person’s gender, income, race, religion, sexual orientation or nationality—it levels the playing fie...
Dear Editor, As the business manager for the Dayton School District, it is my job to insure school district funds are used in a responsible manner. When reviewing expenditures, we have a process that continually keeps these things in mind: Is it practical- does it make sense? Can we afford it? What are the legal ramifications? What will people say/think? Will we be serving students in the best possible way? Local taxpayers trust us to be stewards of their money, and we take that obligation very seriously. The time has come once again to bring...
Dear Editor, Like most of the state’s school districts, over 20% of Dayton’s school budget has to be covered by the local citizenry - the state clearly has not met its constitutional mandate to fund basic education. Until that situation gets resolved I am voting “yes” in support of Dayton’s upcoming replacement levy. The funds are needed to ensure that students have a safe and educationally adequate facility which will prepare them for an incredibly diverse and complex world. The finances will provide for a continuation of education needs and...
Dear Editor, I am writing in support of the upcoming Maintenance and Operations Levy and the Capital Projects Levy. As a 26 year previous employee of the Dayton School District, I have extensive knowledge of the condition of the facilities and I know first-hand what has been done (and not been done) to maintain the facilities over the past 3 decades. The custodial staff works diligently to maintain the facility to the best of their ability within the budget restrictions. Each year, the needs of the ground and facilities are reviewed and are...
Dear Editor, Dena Wood’s article on the meeting January 6 with Mayor Gobel and Brandon Kelly was excellent in laying out the many concerns residents of Waitsburg have about the proposed stock car racetrack at the fairgrounds. For many of the same reasons, I am opposed to any and all stock car races within walking distance and earshot of our town. Here is something to consider in addition to all the liabilities that others have addressed. As it would be highly unlikely that anyone would build a cemetery next to a stock car dirt track, why w...
As most of you did, I’m sure, I bought some Powerball tickets this week. Three, to be exact. I picked the numbers myself. For those of you living in a cave, the jackpot prize for the Powerball lottery drawing to be held Wednesday evening has grown to about $1.4 billion (that’s “billion,” with a “b”). So how could I not? But this is the first time I’ve bought a lottery ticket in at least 20 years. I blame college. I earned a degree many years ago in economics, and in the process I took a lot of statistics classes. Without doubt, the knowledge...
The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a 187,757-acre haven for greater sandhill cranes and other native birds in eastern Oregon, is usually a pretty peaceful place. But its calm was shattered Jan. 2 when Ammon Bundy and a group of armed men broke into and occupied a number of federal buildings on the refuge, vowing to fight should the government try to arrest them. Their insurrectionary goal appears to be, simply put, to destroy the national system of public lands - our forests, parks and refuges - that was developed in the late 19th century...
Dear Editor, The registered voters of Columbia County will be receiving a ballot in the mail soon. The Dayton School District has two issues on the ballot- a replacement Maintenance and Operations Levy and a Capital Projects Levy (which replaces the previous technology levy plus adds additional funds for needed facility and ground repairs). No matter where we were born or where we went to school, the future of our youth in Columbia County is important. I was not born near Dayton, did not attend Dayton schools and I have only lived in Dayton...
After two days huddled in the house under layers of blankets (except for a few trips out to split firewood), I trudged out through the snow Sunday morning to start the car. Nothing. Dead Battery. It was 12 degrees. I tried to jump start it with our other car. Nothing doing. I went into the shop, which also read 12 degrees, and got out the battery charger and a long extension cord. My hands were nearly numb when I decided to put on some gloves. I got a wrench and went out to disconnect the battery cable – I had to take the gloves back off to do...
By Alexandra Petri, The Washington Post I was going to write a wrap-up of the year, but thanks to all the election coverage I had been laboring under the misapprehension that it was 2016 and had been so all year, and the news that there were still eleven months of campaign to go - and 10 MORE primary debates - nearly broke me. Still, now that I have my bearings, I refuse to accept the general valuation that 2015 was an unmitigatedly terrible year. Some good things happened. Adele released the massively successful album “25” after her ini...
By Sarah Poggi, Special to the Washington Post The narrator asked: “Are you going to be a victim or a survivor- protector”? I am an obstetrician, and I was taking my annual online course on “workplace violence.” My favorite part is the instructions on how to “fight” a gunman if one shows up at my office: I am advised to throw a cup of coffee at them. But in our “infection control” course, I learned I couldn’t have any food or drink in the hospital. As a backup, it was suggested that I could hurl a stapler. I use a paperless records system, b...
