Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 47
See 2010 sports scrapbook on pages A5 and A6 in the Weekly Paper tab...
What was the connection between the Starting Gate Restaurant in Auburn, the cold confines of Martin Stadium in Pullman and Ferris High School football fans on the morning of Dec. 5? Well, actually there was no connection, but let’s just go over this for a wrap on the high school football campaign of 2010. The Starting Gate on Auburn Way is a 24-hour restaurant which is more like a diner. It offers a full breakfast menu, reasonable prices and usually unsolicited views on Boeing/sports/politics from the clientele. Many of the early birds s...
MARRIAGE LICENSES Mark McKay, 51, LaCrosse and Amy McAdam, 42, LaCrosse, Dec. 22 Austin Roskamp, 21, Spokane Valley and Melissa Johns, 22, Spokane, Dec. 23 Alden Carter, 66, McCall and Jill Calhoun, 51, McCall, Dec. 23 Jayme Showalter, 50, Pullman and Diane Hanson, 41, Pullman, Dec. 23 Jack Schonbrun, 38, Berkely and Rachel Brem, 37, Berkely, Dec. 27 Halk Beyenal, 45, Pullman and Nurdan Yurt, 42, Pullman, Dec. 28 BUILDING PERMITS DRA Real Estate Rentals, gas furnace, $1,500, 705 S. Main, Dec. 23 Spokane Seed, overhead bin footings, $13,680,...
FEBRUARY TO MARCH COLFAX SCHOOL LEVY FAILS The Colfax public failed the school levy in February, setting off a series of tense meetings on the state of the Colfax school district. The district put a second levy up to vote on April 27 which was narrowly passed by the public. Levy funds for small-town schools pay for programs such as athletics, teacher salaries and special programs. Without a levy, the finances of a school district are gutted. In the aftermath of the levy passing April 27, disgruntled school staff took a survey assessing the...
THURSDAY Ohio State University football players are under investigation for exchanging tattoos for autographs. Police discovered team memorabilia at a local tattoo parlor. No players have been expelled and the university athletic administration has yet to acknowledge the investigation. FRIDAY Heavy snow stranded thousands of Christmas travelers in Europe, with Belgium’s main airport closed for most of the day. Cold weather during the holiday disrupted travel and business across the continent and the severe weather was expected to put a d...
Colfax school district is gearing up for another round of surveys to be taken by multiple parties. School staff, the Colfax residents, parents of students and students will all receive surveys specific to their group. Groups will receive the surveys in January, and the results will be analyzed and made public in February, according to Superintendent Michael Morgan. The survey given to the school staff will be very similar to the one taken last spring by the district’s employees. The major difference is staff members will have a chance to m...
Washington State is adding 29 hopper cars to its Grain Train system. The cars will be used on the Central Washington rail line, one-third of the state-owned Palouse River & Coulee City Railroad. The other two lines run through Whitman County. The Grain Train is a long-standing state program that provides cars for wheat shipments to markets in Seattle and Portland. Mike Rosswell of the state rail and marine office said the hopper cars were purchased used and refurbished by the state. Cost of the cars was $362,500. The 29 cars for the CW line...
Jeff Devoe, project manager for Hawkins Companies’ proposed mall at the state line east of Pullman, paid a visit to Whitman County officials earlier this month, assuring the company is still very much interested in developing its site. “Basically it was a make-contact visit,” said Auditor Eunice Coker. “He had been working with Sharron Cunningham (former assistant finance director) on the bonds, and so he came by to figure out who he would be talking to now.” DeVoe met with Coker, Treasurer Robert Lothspeich, Public Works Director Mark Stor...
With the next legislative session set to open next week, 9th District Legislators Joe Schmick, R-Colfax, and Susan Fagan, R-Pullman, stopped by Whitman Hospital and Medical Center Dec. 22 to discuss the hospital’s needs from state government. Schmick, who will take a seat as the ranking Republican on the House Health Care Commitee when the legislature convenes, said drastic cuts are going to be made in state programs as legislators grapple with an ever-growing deficit. “There’s going to be less services coming from Olympia,” he said. “Period...
During a first appearance in court Monday, Justin Hardgrove, 29, Pullman, was ordered to appear back in court for a hearing Jan. 7. Hardgrove was booked into jail last Thursday after he was arrested on a warrant for failing to appear at a Dec. 17 court hearing. The Dec. 17 hearing had been set to review termination of treatment for methamphetamine addiction. Hardgrove was ordered to undergo the treatment under a drug offender sentencing option after an April, 2009, conviction for possession of methamphetamine in Pullman in May of 2008. He has...
Whitman County Deputies responded to a report of shots fired in Steptoe at 9 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 23. Upon arrival they discovered a deceased male who was identified as David Mitchell, 72, long-time resident of Steptoe, according to a report by Sheriff Brett J. Myers. Mr. Mitchell had apparently died of a self-inflicted wound to the head. The County Coroner also responded to the scene and is expected to issue a formal ruling this week....
Eleven independent food drives around Colfax sent in a giant wave of supplies to the Colfax food pantry during the holiday season. F.I.S.H. food pantry director Hannah Walker expects the stock to last until July. “I can’t believe one community can support all those drives,” Walker told the Gazette. Typical drives included the annual Boy Scout food drive, the Rosauer’s Hunger Bag drive and the cans from Jennings Elementary Can Race. Four churches also conducted food drives. St. Patrick’s Church Altar Society used a stocking stuffer format wh...
More than six years and $600,000 after it was purchased, Whitman County’s New World accounting software will be put to use in 2011. “I’m really impressed with what we’ve been learning in these work sessions with New World,” said Treasurer Robert Lothspeich. For the first time ever, the county will be able to track its financial transactions as they happen, according to Chris Nelson, director of the county’s information technology department. “Everybody’s realizing that it really is coming. And I think people are really enthused about it,” said...
Whitman County schools will take a $1,417,405 hit over the next eight months, compliments of the state’s Dec. 11 special session. The figure may mean layoffs for some districts. “It’s going to be really hard on us,” said Rick Winters, superintendent for St. John/Endicott. The $1,417,405 is part of state-wide cuts legislators made to two school programs, K-4 enhancement and the EduJobs grant. Education Service District 101, the overarching educational district serving the eastern Washington region, did the math on those cuts and sent out the...
Fast-drifting snow created hazardous driving conditions across the Palouse Wednesday, dumping six to eight inches. National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Fugazzi said the weather is expected to take a dive toward extreme cold today, Thursday. “There’s no snow [expected] the rest of the week but there is a very cold Canadian arctic air mass moving into the area,” Fugazzi said. Night-time temperatures in the teens or single digits are expected every night until next week with day-time temperatures expected to only rise to the upper teens...
All county department heads Monday departed the county commissioners’ final budget meeting with a 2.61 percent cut to their budgets for next year. Commissioners bridged half of the $660,000 deficit Monday for the 2011 budget by ordering a cut of $330,000 to be shouldered by the county departments. No department is anticipating layoffs at this time. “I don’t want to say I’m happy, but I’m satisfied with the way things turned out,” said Prosecutor Denis Tracy, whose department faces a cut of $18,000. The 2011 general fund budget had a $660,000...
SUPERIOR COURT OF WASHINGTON COUNTY OF WHITMAN DEPENDENCY OF MATTHEW FORGEY D.O.B. 06-09-2004 CAUSE NO: 10-7-00030-1 NOTICE & SUMMONS/ORDER (DEPENDENCY) STATE OF WASHINGTON TO: Name: ANDREW HUTTO I. NOTICE OF HEARING 1.1 You are notified that a petition, a copy of which is attached, was filed with this Court alleging that: (X) the above-named child is dependent. A dependency petition begins a judicial process which, If the Court finds the child dependent, could result in substantial restriction or permanent loss of your parental rights. 1.2 A h...
1 years ago December 30, 1910 Residents of the south end of town have raised a subscription and let the contract to O.H. Horton for the construction of a substantial foot bridge across Cooper Lake. It is being built on a line with the sidewalk on the east side of Main street. The present temporary bridge is dangerous for school children and the new steel bridge will probably not be finished for some time. Since the September establishment of a grain agency at Colfax, the Farmer Union of Whitman County has sold 125,000 bushels of wheat...
Pastor Corey Laughary has participated in the Palouse Library’s Turkey Leg Fun Run every year since 2005. The Turkey Leg fun run is an annual event that raises money for the Palouse Branch Library and two high school scholarships. As part of the event, members of the Palouse Federated Church and Palouse residents have sponsored Corey, the church pastor. The sponsors challenge Laughary to go above and beyond simply walking or running. In years past, he has been asked to sidestep the entire distance, skip, and walk backwards. He has also eaten a...
Wendy McGraw has learned that it is hard to have more than one hobby with kids and a house to care for. But Wendy still takes her hobby all the way and in the spring will launch a new business borne from her passion for photography. “That’s my obsession for now,” she said of her Almota Roses Photography. Wendy was born in Missouri where her parents were both school teachers. Her dad always wanted to go to Alaska and when a job opened the whole family moved north. Wendy was in high school at th...
The fifth season of Colfax’s Meet the Artist series will feature Dick Warwick of Oakesdale, known in venues both in the United States and Australia for his cowboy poetry and his marriage of cowboy poetry and Australian Bush poetry, next Thursday, Jan. 6, at Colfax library on Main Street at 7 p.m. Warwick grew up on the family farm near Oakesdale and after earning a degree in English from Stanford University, doing a little graduate work and trying out a few jobs, decided the place for him was farming. He and a friend decided in 1981 to apply f...
A flurry of comments on the draft of the Environment Impact statement for the proposed First Wind turbine farm along Naff Ridge west of Oakesdale were received at the office of County Planner Alan Thomson before the Dec. 20 deadline for comment. Concerns about remnants of the Palouse Prairie, incomplete avian studies, traffic flow, and loss of job opportunities were among those reflected in written comments which were received at the planner’s office. The comment period was for the draft which has been prepared by the CH2M Hill engineering f...
Some of the Colfax City water and sewer bills have been mailed out on computer paper stock because the city ran out of the normal cards which are mailed out in the middle of the month. About half of the 1,150 bills mailed out were on “blue bar” computer paper which was cut down for mailing, according to City Clerk Connie Ellis. Unlike the card stock, the computer paper does not designate the due date for the bills. Ellis said they are due at the normal mid-month deadline, Jan. 15. They bills are for usage from mid-November to mid-December. Som...
The vehicular homicide conviction of Shane Allan Cummings in April of 2009 has been upheld in Division III Appeals Court in Spokane. An appeals court mandate of the Dec. 16 decision was filed in superior court here Monday. Cummings was sentenced to 65 months in prison May 1, 2009, after a jury convicted him a week earlier of the death of Travis McCay, 22, Medical Lake. McCay died as the result of injuries sustained when the Honda Protege driven by Cummings went off the Hole-in-the-Ground Road and down a 21-foot embankment in northwest Whitman...
Seven county officials, all returning incumbents, were sworn in Monday in the Whitman County Superior Courtroom. Treasurer Joe Reynolds, Court Clerk Shirley Bafus, County Commissioner Michael Largent, Coroner Pete Martin, Sheriff Brett Myers, Prosecutor Denis Tracy and Auditor Eunice Coker took the oath of office for a new term. Judge David Frazier administered the oath. Coker was the lone office holder challenged in the 2010 election. Treasurer Bob Lothspeich and District Court Judge Doug Robinson were sworn in earlier this...
