Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Sorted by date Results 836 - 860 of 997
Dayton School District's one-year, $250,000 maintenance and operations levy passed Tuesday night. Fifty-five percent of voters approved the levy by 8 p.m. Tuesday. Voter turnout was 54 percent. Collection of the levy, which will cost property taxpayers 45 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, will take place April and October 2012....
When longtime Waitsburg resident Bert Aylward and his wife Linda were getting ready for his family reunion at Fort Walla Walla last summer, they rummaged through a trunk full of old photographs. The couple had stored the keepsakes after his parents passed away but had not gone through all the old pictures yet. Every one of the 88 Witt descendants coming from across the country to Walla Walla was supposed to present or recite an item of family history. As Aylward went through the photos, it...
DAYTON - Some major parts of Dayton's wastewater treatment system have been around since 1938, but Public Works Director Jim Costello believes they'd still work fine "if the state hadn't changed the rules on us," he said. More than 40 concerned citizens attended a special meeting last Monday night to hear from the horse's mouth why Dayton is faced with costly changes to its wastewater treatment plant by 2018. "The short answer is, the city's wastewater treatment plant is discharging too many nutrients and other pollutants into the (Touchet)...
WAITSBURG - The Walla Walla County Sheriff's Office is requesting local residents' assistance in locating Adam Hermanns, whom they call "a potential witness" to last Tuesday night's fire at his parents' residence on West 2nd Street in Waitsburg. "We are attempting to locate Adam as a potential witness related to the fire," Undersheriff Eddie Freyer said in an interview Wednesday. Freyer, who came to the scene of the fire after midnight last Tuesday and again on Wednesday morning, said his office...
WAITSBURG - A historic barn on Bolles Road in Waitsburg burnt down mid day Saturday in the town's second major fire in less than a week. The barn owned by Patty Mantz and, at about 160 years old, believed to be one of the oldest in the state, caught fire shortly before noon. Two goats were rescued from the structure by Brian Seagraves, who operates a cabinet shop in the property. The fate of two other goats, both pregnant, belonging to Diane Dill and her son Alex was unknown at the time of this report. The cause of the fire is unknown as well,...
WAITSBURG - The Walla Walla County Sheriff's Office is requesting local residents' assistance in locating Adams Hermanns, whom they call "a potential witness" to Tuesday night's fire at his parents' residence on W. 2nd Street in Waitsburg. "We are attempting to locate Adam as a potential witness related to the fire," Undersheriff Eddie Freyer said in an interview Wednesday. Freyer, who came to the scene of the fire after midnight Tuesday and again on Wednesday morning, said his office is taking the incident very seriously, investigating it as...
DAYTON - Hi s friends call him " Honker." He's nearly 2 years old. And he was born a Canada goose. But he thinks he's a cow. And as Dayton contractor Jim Erskine knows, Honker makes friends with humans easily and likes to pal around. Earlier this month, Erskine was driving back to Dayton from a job in connection with his local business, JDL Construction, on South Touchet Road. About one mile before the thoroughfare meets up with North Touchet Road, Erskine caught movement in his peripheral...
DAYTON - Starbuck Mayor Darcy Linklater has been charged with driving under the influence and will appear in Columbia County District Court to enter his plea on Wednesday, Feb. 2. Columbia County Sheriff's records indicate Linklater was stopped at 11:20 p.m. Sunday night on McKay-Alto Road headed to Waitsburg after a possible DUI tip was called in to dispatch. Linklater refused to take the breath test for blood alcohol content, according to county prosecutor Rea Culwell. He was arrested, issued a criminal citation charging him with the DUI, and...
WAITSBURG - It all started just before Christmas. The first topic of Andie Holmberg's conversation with B. A. Keve was the food baskets program run by the Waitsburg Ministerial Association. Holmberg's employer, AmericanWest Bank, was about to participate as a donor in the program for disadvantaged local families for the first time. But small town chats meander, and so did this one. Soon, the women's discussion turned to the subject of the Waitsburg Food Bank. Holmberg learned from Keve that the...
WAITSBURG - Volleyball coaches Jessie and Katie Buehler said they felt exonerated Tuesday night after the Waitsburg School District took the formal step of "vacating" their suspensions at a special meeting of its board. "The Board has determined that, in the best interest of all parties concerned, the coaches and, particularly, the student athletes and their families, the suspension be vacated," according to a statement prepared by the district. "The Waitsburg School Board believes that this result puts this matter to rest." The board members a...
WAI T SBURG - The conversation didn't last long. Ross Hamann recalls how he was helping a Cycle Oregon official in the food line under one of the giant tents set up near the Cardinals football field when some 2,500 cyclists and support staff passed through town late last summer. The president of the WP booster club was passing out plates and silverware when the Cycle Oregon official pointed to the sports storage shack right outside the tent and asked what it was. It's worth describing the shack...
DAYTON - Reid Helford, the popular and award-winning manager of the Liberty Theater, has announced his resignation and will leave his position by the end of April. In other news involving the theater, former Dayton Chamber Director Lisa Ronnberg also submitted her resignation as a board member of the Touchet Valley Arts Council, the nonprofit that oversees the Liberty and its cultural programs, saying her life simply got too busy. Recognized for growing attendance at the historic theater and...
WAITSBURG - What's a patriot? One of the answers you might expect to get from a member of the American Legion Auxiliary is "service in the U.S. Military." But that was not the first thought that came to mind when Meara Baker wrote her piece for the organization's "Americanism Essay Contest" last spring. When faced with the question, "What Is My Patriotic Role As A U.S. Citizen?," the first obligation that popped into the head of the Waitsburg middle schooler was the duty to vote and participate...
7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 19 Lions Bld....
WAITSBURG - When you walk Taggert Road with Waitsburg City Councilman Scott Nettles, he can point to all the changes that have taken place here over the past seve ral de- cades. After all, he grew up here. There used to be an orchard to the north and asparagus fields to the east and a wrecking yard across the street. There are scattered homes on both sides now. Highway 12 is a good stone's throw away. Not too long ago, there were plans to build 26 homes on a parcel of vacant land. The road is...
DAYTON - Andy Maheras was a teacher at Walla Walla High School last May when a big shipment of heroin came through the Walla Walla Valley. He saw the effect that had on the community, an area already plagued by gangs and the trafficking of drugs like marijuana, ecstasy, pharmaceuticals and meth. " It's everywhere," he said . And it's here - in the Touchet Valley, in Columbia County and in Dayton's schools. "I've seen everything," said Deputy Jeff Jenkins, a narcotics officer with the Columbia...
PENDLETON - The National Weather Service has issued a small stream flood warning this week for those residents living along creeks and streams in the Blue Mountain foothills. A warm, moist weather system will be moving through the region Wednesday night and Thursday with high snow levels and significant rain, according to the Pendleton weather service office. At the time the warning was issued on Tuesday afternoon, no flooding was expected on the larger rivers, but smaller creeks and streams will likely see rapid rises and "bank-full"...
DAYTON - After Claudia Nysoe and her husband, Dain, moved back to Dayton two years ago, she told him the position of Chamber of Commerce director seemed like the most interesting job in town. So when Lisa Ronnberg announced in December that she would leave the chamber to join the Columbia County's Public Works Department, Nysoe applied for it, and late last week, she got it. "This is the perfect job for me," said Nysoe, who learned on Thursday that she was chosen from among 14 applicants to lead...
WALLA WALLA - If there were ever a "bird whisperer" in the Touchet Valley, Huntsville's Joanna Lanning would be it. For 16 years, Lanning has devoted her weekdays to the Pioneer Park Aviary in Walla Walla, where she manages the daily affairs of 200 feathered friends and dotes over them like a mother over her toddlers. Her office at the compound has depictions of birds on every imaginable item: posters, tiles, pillows, place mats, carvings, trays, clocks, T-shirts, paintings and drawings. The...
DAYTON - On Tuesday, a Columbia County woman received three U.S. Postal Service money orders totaling well over $2,500 in the mail. She became suspicious - she hadn't been expecting any money through the mail - and brought them to the Columbia County Sheriff's Office, which consulted with Loren Jensen, the postmaster in Dayton. Jensen knew right away they were fakes. "It's just such an unfortunately thing," Jensen said in a telephone interview. "I've seen them show up from time to time in the area." Jensen, who has managed the Dayton Post...
