Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Sorted by date Results 594 - 618 of 997
WAITSBURG - With the April 2 election right around the corner, Waitsburg residents Bart Baxter and Tiffany Laposi are throwing their hats in the ring for city council. Baxter, who has lived in town for 7 years and owns Betty's Diner, has already completed one year on city council and made an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2011. Laposi, who has lived in Waitsburg for 31 years and is a real property appraiser for Walla Walla County. She is a candidate in Waitsburg for the first time. Laposi has served on boards related to her profession and has...
WAITSBURG - City of Waitsburg staff members have spotted some playground equipment on sale and they're hoping the city council approves the purchase to make Preston Park more fun for kids this summer. "Most of the equipment (at the park) is fairly old," said City Administrator Randy Hinchliffe. "We always put it on our list for things we would like to do." Hinchliffe and Clerk Kelly Steinhoff saw a piece of playground equipment with tunnel tubes to crawl through a slide and a gazebo on sale and...
DAYTON - There's a new ranger at Lewis and Clark Trail State Park and she's got a big job ahead of her. Melinda Owens, 38, began her new position at the state park on March 5 and she's chain sawing trees, burning and clearing trails to get ready for the park to open April 1. Owens had been stationed on the Columbia Plateau Trail State Park and the Palouse Falls for the past 7.5 years. Unfortunately because of drastic cuts to the state parks budget, her position was eliminated. She was able to...
WAITSBURG -- Waitsburg voters, who elect their mayor and council members every year under the town's territorial charter, are expected to have some options on and off the ballot this April. Mayor Walt Gobel and four of the current five council members are running again after a caucus meeting at Larry and Deanne Johnson's house last week for the Truth & Trust slate that was first elected to office two years ago. Ballots for the election will go our Friday or Monday for the April 2 election. As...
WAITSBURG -- To bud as a musician, it helps to have good mentors. Ann Lehman and Daniel FitzSimmons had them. For Lehman, it was Rye Grass String Band guitarist Jon St. Hilaire. For FitzSimmons, it was Nashville musician Skylar Wilson and Old Crow Medicine Show member Cory Younts. But mentors merely plant the seed. The rest comes from within, fed by life stories and audiences that appreciate what they hear, as they do when Lehman and FitzSimmons take the stage as the duo DNA (short for Daniel &...
SPOKANE -- The Dayton Bulldogs themselves may not have registered how far they got into the Hardwood Classic Final 8 last weekend, but for their coach and hometown fans it certainly did register. After their 57-41 Saturday morning loss against the Wahkiakum Mules, the players were subdued and disappointed they didn't place higher. But their coaches and members of their community showed up in big numbers applauded them for being the best high school basketball team in a generation. They placed si...
WAITSBURG - An eyeopening forum on underage drinking and drug abuse in the Waitsburg community is scheduled for 5:30 p.m., March 12, at Waitsburg Elementary School. Peggy Gutierrez, a prevention specialist at Blue Mountain Counseling, and Dr. Carol Clarke, the Waitsburg School District superintendent, will give a one-hour presentation highlighting statistics from a Healthy Youth Survey taken by Waitsburg High School students in 2010. The survey was 100 percent confidential and really shows our kids' perceptions of drugs and alcohol, Clarke...
WAITSBURG - The creation of a digital super highway through the Touchet Valley made some big strides this winter and the conduit for its fiber optics cable may be completed as soon as early spring. Crews have been trenching and boring their way from Walla Walla to Waitsburg through Dixie since the beginning of the year. This week, they are mobilizing to start in Dayton and head in the opposite direction to connect the route to Waitsburg, then on to Clarkston. If all goes well, the 1,600- mile...
DAYTON - If it shoots like a duck and dribbles like a duckhellip;it's a Fighting Duck. The Dayton Bulldogs will face a team from Toutle Lake at the Hardwood Classic in their first Final 8 game in Spokane on Thursday. This phase of the playoffs is double elimination. Even if they lose, the Dogs will face at least one more team at the arena on Friday. The Dayton players are still pinching themselves after putting away Riverside Christian in a convincing, 59-41, victory at Wa Hi Friday night, but...
WAITSBURG - Dayton and Waitsburg Elementary students hula hoop-ed and jumped rope for their hearts last week and raised thousands of dollars for the American Heart Association. Dayton fourth and fifth graders completed their Hoops for Heart program last Wednesday. About 100 first through third graders jumped rope last Thursday. On Friday, about 125 Waitsburg students, kindergarten through fifth grades, jumped rope and hula hooped in the Waitsburg High School gym. Both schools have participated...
WALLA WALLA - The Dayton Bulldogs are in the Final 8 in their 2B division after resoundingly beating Riverside Christian 59-41 at Wa Hi Friday night. quot;We worked hard since fifth grade and this was our goal,quot; Bulldog Joey Schlachter said. quot;It was a hard physical game.quot; At first, the Bulldogs seemed to have trouble outpacing the Crusaders from Yakima, but gained the upperhand through a 6-point run just before half time, boosting Dayton's confidence and spirits. Those never let up in the second half, which saw Riverside resorting...
WALLA WALLA -- The last time the Dayton boys basketball team won the district title, most of the current Bulldog globetrotters were still in diapers. The year was 1995. The 2012 team that beat the WP Cardinals by one point Monday night, 57-56, at Whitman College began to form almost that long ago when sports dads Dean Bickelhaupt, Greg Fullerton and Jeff Turner started dribbling with their sons Colton, Hayden and Garett in kindergarten. The likes of Kroft Sunderland, Joey Schlachter and Wyatt...
WAITSBURG - The Waitsburg City Council last Wednesday did not approve a new utility hike that would have charged customers more for water and sewer. A recent study showed the city's water and sewer rates are not covering the cost to provide the services. A previous proposal was for a $14 increase spread out over two years with each $3.50 increase occurring in April and October of 2012 and 2013. The city council asked for a new, one-year proposal that would charge residents less. Currently, for water the city is currently charging $27.10 a...
WAITSBURG - The Waitsburg School Board last Thursday approved a project for the district's football field that would install three-phase power, new lights and provide enough power for a press box and future projects. Colter Mohney, the facilities, transportation and maintenance supervisor for the district, had come to the board Feb. 8 with the knowledge that the current electrical system on the field and the poles, all of which are almost 40 years old, are not only insuffi cient, but a fire hazard as well. Last Thursday, the board decided...
DAYTON - Dayton High School students don't have to wait for the new skills center to be built at Walla Walla Community College to gain employable skills before they graduate. They can, and many do, enroll in the high school's welding class to satisfy credit requirements and learn a trade they can use as a career or as part-time work to pay for other education. Steve McLean has been teaching welding at Dayton High School for 33 years. His uniform is dirty blue coveralls with "Boss" stitched to...
WAITSBURG - School districts in Walla Walla and Columbia counties celebrated Valentine's Day with wonderful news - their communities approved levies that will keep schools operating and performing at top levels for the next two to four years. Superintendents, school board members and district staff members were happy to see the results roll in Tuesday night around the Touchet Valley. Prescott School District's two- year maintenance and operations levy was approved in Walla Walla County with 128 yes votes, 68.45 percent, and 59 no votes, 31.55...
DAYTON - A Dayton High School freshman who was reportedly expelled last fall for carrying a pocket knife to school after allegedly making a threat to another student has been allowed to return to campus. The school district itself is tight-lipped about the incident and about the student's return at the start of this semester, citing privacy laws. But the freshman's renewed presence on campus has created concerns and discomfort among some students and parents who say he should not have been allowed to return. One family has decided to transfer...
WAITSBURG - The Waitsburg School Board has a big question to answer and it needs to be answered soon - what to do about the lights and power? Colter Mohney, the district's facilities/transportation/ maintenance supervisor, and Board Chairman Ross Hamann, told the school board and the district personnel last week that the power for the lights on the district's football field is lacking to the point that it is a fire hazard. Mohney said last fall, employees from Pacific Power and Light reported...
DAYTON -- A transient man who is suspected of breaking into a Dayton church preschool and may also have broken into several homes in town during the past two months is in custody. Daniel Baxter, a 34-year-old drifter with ties to Montana, California and Pennsylvania, was arrested by Columbia County Sheriff's deputies late last Thursday afternoon after the officers discovered his hiding place in the basement of an empty home owned by Dayton's Community Bible Church on South Second Street....
WAITSBURG - Despite chilly temperatures in the community building at the Waitsburg Fairgrounds, about 300 people gathered last Saturday for the first mixed martial arts fight this town had ever seen. Rob Dodgin, who organized the fight in Waitsburg with his company KOK Fight Club from Walla Walla, said that despite some kinks, he was thrilled with the turnout and the fighters were impressive. "Everyone had a great time and there were no problems," Dodgin said. "It ran pretty smooth." The barn...
WAITSBURG - Zach Bartlow, the 2012 WP Cardinals quarterback who took his team to Tacoma to win the state football title, has signed up to play the same position for the college team of Eastern Oregon University in La Grande on a football scholarship. quot;We're pretty happy with it,quot; Bartlow's dad and Cardinals head coach Jeff Bartlow said in a telephone interview Thursday night. quot;That's what he wanted.quot; The coach said the Waitsburg senior was recruited heavily by another school in the same Frontier Conference, a National Athletic...
DAYTON - A transient man who is suspected of breaking into a Dayton church preschool and may also have broken into several homes in town during the past two months is in custody. Daniel Baxter, a 34-year-old drifter with ties to Montana, California and Pennsylvania, was arrested by Columbia County Sheriff's deputies late Thursday afternoon after the officers discovered his hiding place in the basement of an empty home owned by Dayton's Community Bible Church on South Second. quot;Baxter is the primary suspect in the ongoing investigation of a...
WAITSBURG - In one of the liveliest Touchet Valley rivalry games in recent memory, the WP Cardinals handed the Dayton Bulldogs their first loss of the season at a packed Kison Court Monday night. Despite reaching deep to preserve their undefeated status, the visiting Bulldogs fell, 51-44, to the home team. A fourth-quarter rally brought Dayton within five points of evening the score, but it wasn't enough to catch up with the Cardinals, who were much improved since the two teams met in Dayton earlier in the season. "We worked our butts off,"...
