Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Sorted by date Results 685 - 709 of 997
STARBUCK - More than 40 residents of Starbuck packed the small, dimly lit Community Church last Thursday to voice their concerns and disapproval of the postal service's study of whether to close the Starbuck Post Office. "This is a study, it's not a done deal," said Carol Rebstock, a United States Postal Service operations manager from the Spokane area. Rebstock and Doreen Karoly, from the Seattle office of USPS, hosted the meeting to let the residents of Starbuck know their options if the postal service does decide to shut down their post...
DAYTON - Despite efforts by the Columbia County prosecutor to get all three pot-growing suspects half a decade in jail each, only one of the Mexican nationals arrested this summer faces such a term in federal prison. The other two are expected to serve only half a year in county jail before facing deportation by federal immigration authorities. Santiago Orozco Contreras was the first of three Mexican nationals taken into custody after a raid on federal land in mid-July and charged with manufacturing marijuana and being in possession of a...
WAITSBURG - The Henze hunting party got its first deer of the season Monday morning. The five men from Waitsburg and Aberdeen flushed out the 4-point white tail buck by spreading out around the brush on privately owned wheat lands north of town after walking the fields for more than a mile from the nearest road. It was a cool dewy morning, the sun barely up to illuminate the gently sloping landscape around them. It didn't take them long to spot the buck, to make sure it was large enough to...
DAYTON -- If the number of questions Dayton Chamber of Commerce Director Claudia Nysoe has been getting lately are any indication, there's quite a bit of excitement and anticipation in the valley about a new addition to Dayton's restaurant community. "I've had two or three people a week asking me when's that new place going to open," Nysoe said. "Everyone here in Dayton is really excited about having a new place to eat." The place in question is the Asian Grill and the answer to the much-asked...
DAYTON - The Dayton City Council Monday decided to table a proposed ordinance amendment that would have made homeowners responsible for repairs to sewer lines that connect their houses to the main. After holding a public hearing on the ordinance and receiving comments from two concerned Dayton residents, the council voted to explore a new idea that would add a small fee to residents' utility bill to create a reserve for such repairs in the future. "It's a possibility I hadn't considered," Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem Merle Jackson said about...
WAITSBURG -- It has been 25 years since Markeeta Little Wolf has belted out songs with her powerful voice to an audience. Little Wolf performed on TV, in club acts and even on the theater stage in musicals from age 12 to 28, when she gave it all up to sell real estate and have a different kind of life. Little Wolf, now 53, realized about one year ago that she still has one more show in her, she said. And she's been working since on songs, lighting and costumes to give her friends in Waitsburg a...
DAYTON - Work was underway this week on beginning the revitalization of Commercial Street in Dayton by coming up with a new master plan that will improve the way the area looks, flows and hopefully draws more tourists and businesses to the area . A group of four specialists was selected to help Dayton's Development Task Force come up with a comprehensive plan for Dayton's Commercial Street corridor from the Touchet River to the Seneca plant. Dougherty Landscape Architects from Eugene, Ore., was...
DAYTON - The new leader of the Southeast Washington Economic Development Association, Marshall Doak, was introduced to business owners and comm unity membe r s at the Economic Development Steering Committee meeting in Dayton on Friday. Doak will also lead the Palouse Regional Transportation Planning Organization. The board interviewed five final candidates for the top job and Board Member Jennie Dickinson said Doak was chosen unanimously because he had experience in a small business development...
WAITSBURG - The Waitsburg City Council last Wednesday night voted 4-1 in favor of enacting a new ordinance that will give the city the ability to shut off city utilities to citizens who don't pay bills or violate the nuisance codes. This new way to handle violators should help the city enforce its rules better, said Randy Hinchliffe, the city's clerk-treasurer. In the past, the city would give citizens a ticket if they didn't follow the rules, but the Sheriff's Office and the city had trouble following through. "We didn't get anywhere with...
WAITSBURG -- Wai t sburg High School junior Billy Brown is exactly where he's supposed to be, playing football with the Cardinals each Friday night, selling his hog at the Fair Livestock Auction and in Oma Harting's kitchen looking for cookies. At this time last year, Brown had been transferred from Waitsburg to a foster family in Walla Walla and was playing football for Walla Walla High School. He was well-liked by his new peers in Walla Walla, but after the football season ended, Brown...
DAYTON - The Dayton community will show the best it has to offer and honor on Oct. 1 with its annual fall festival, Dayton on Tour. "It's a celebration of our local talent and our local history," said Ginny Butler, one of the organizers of the event. The festival is a joint project by the Dayton Historical Depot Society and the Dayton Chamber of Commerce. The festival began in 1976 and included only historic home tours, said Cheryl Ray, also an event organizer. For the past five years, the...
DAYTON - After five years on the Dayton City Council, Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem Merle Jackson announced he plans to retire before the end of the year. " I wa n t people to k n ow I ' m working toward full retirement," said Jackson, 66, who joined the council in 2006 after being appointed to a vacant seat following his professional retirement as a nuclear engineer. "It's time to get off the stage." Jackson said he wants to retire this fall, but will serve through Dec. 31 if necessary to ensure...
DAYTON - Federal authorities have asked a grand jury to indict the first of three suspected marijuana growers arrested earlier this summer in the Umatilla National Forest, according to the Columbia County Prosecutor's Office. If successful, the grand jury request would take the case against Mexican national Santiago Orozco Contreras out of the state court system and place it on a federal docket, possibly leading to a much longer sentence for the suspect arrested during a raid on federal land in...
Bill Thompson was a good friend. I share that distinction with scores of folks in this community and extending the population to the Palouse. "BillyT" was his vanity plate, but his formal moniker was "Buffalo Bill," because it was largely through his efforts that the annual Lions Buffalo Feed was instituted. He was really tickled when the front page of The Times had the replica of a buffalo nickel with the motto "E Pluribus Thompson." I share some Waitsburg history with him as we both came into...
WAITSBURG - It was a day of Victorian fashion, museum tours, buffalo, corn on the cob and Butlers at Waitsburg's Fall Festival on Sunday. The attendance was anything but sparse. The community filled benches and wooden chairs on the front lawn of the Bruce Memorial Museum for a church service. Pastor Mike Ferrians, dressed as though he were from the old west in a long black coat and hat, led the congregants in singing traditional hymns and spoke about an old-fashioned farm tool he had found....
DAYTON - In Waitsburg and many other cities in Washington State, homeowners are responsible for any trouble in the sewer line between their home and the sewer main. When the line gets blocked and needs to be dug up, residents are required to hire a contractor or pay the city to do the work. Not so in Dayton, at least not until the city passes a proposed new ordinance that takes away the current "gray" area in the law still holding the city for repairs in the city right of way. The Dayton City Council on Monday passed the first three readings...
WAITSBURG - Waitsburg resident Jane Butler, age 90, has deep family roots in the Touchet Valley through her husband Bob. Butler has lived in town about 50 years, non-consecutively, and is being honored for her family history with the Pioneer of the Year award from the Waitsburg Historical Society. "I feel honored," Butler said of the award. She learned she was to be the honoree at the upcoming Pioneer Fall Festival on Sept. 18 through a letter from Bettie Chase, a member of the historical...
WALLA WALLA - The man charged with killing a Seattle cyclist on Middle Waitsburg Road in May appeared in Walla Walla County Superior Court Monday for the first time. Melvin Bohleen, 73, of Dayton, dressed in blue jean overalls and a brown t-shirt, signed paperwork and listened to Judge Donald Schacht describe possible sentencing and release. Bohleen is charged with vehicular homicide for striking a cyclist with his vehicle on May 21. The cyclist, Sarah Eustis, 61, of Seattle, died as a result of...
DAYTON - In the early hours of the morning last Thursday, Tia Gore was making her five-year-old daughter a birthday cake. Together with her eightyear old son, Gore and her daughter were planning to mark the occasion of her birth later that day. It was an easy day for the family to remember because it came shortly after they moved into their rental home at 1013 South Third just before the girl was born. As she was working on the cake, Gore suddenly heard a loud pop in the kitchen and the wall...
WAITSBURG - It took a while for Pastor Mike Ferrians of the Waitsburg First Christian Church to figure out who had just made a very large bequest to the congregation. Few at the church had heard of Charlene Buroker. But after some asking around, it became clear who she was - the widow of the late Fred Buroker, who grew up in Waitsburg before World War II. The gift of $40,810 from Charlene Buroker of Colville was announced during regular church service on Sunday. She also made a large bequest to...
WAI T SBURG - I was behind the counter at the Coppei Coffee shop last week when he walked in. He donned a well-worn canvas hat, a big backpack and two sticks that looked like ski poles. With all that gear on, the diminutive elderly man stepped right up to the cash register and made his inquiry. He had heard someone at or near the coffee shop or the Times had rooms to rent and, having just walked from Dayton that morning, he was ready for some rest. It so happened I just set up the first two...
WAITSBURG - The new face behind the counter at the Weller Public Library is likely one you have seen before. Rosie Warehime, the new library manager, has lived in Waitsburg for 44 years. Her husband Walt found his first teaching job in Waitsburg. "We planned to stay 2 years and we never left," she said. Warehime hadn't ever worked at a library before, but she had been employed at the Cenex station and at local grain growers, making her a recognizable face in the community and the perfect person...
WAITSBURG - It may be another week or so before the Waitsburg-Prescott sports community will see him on the sidelines, but the two school districts have made their choice for their new joint athletics director. JP Thew, a former assistant coach for the Cardinals and the Tigers, who has just wrapped a second tour of Iraq with his National Guard unit from Oregon, will become the new sports programs coordinator for WP. Thew is expected to start his new job when he returns to southeast Washington by mid-September, school officials said. He arrived...
