Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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STARBUCK-If you see a traditional dugout canoe paddling down the Snake River over the next couple days, wave and say hi! Willow Bill is completing his second trek to the ocean, but not before stopping to share his love of willow branch art with students at Starbuck School. Since 1998, Nevada resident William Gouldart, best known as Willow Bill, has taught kids how to build reindeer out of willow branches. In 2016, December 2-9 was declared Willow Reindeer Project Week in the state of Nevada....
STARBUCK-The first thing you notice when you meet Starbuck School District Superintendent Kevin Graffis is what a big man he is. Graffis has played professional football, and as he begins to talk, his love of sports comes across. Just two years into his first teaching job in Bridgeport, Wash., he was tapped by the San Francisco 49ers to play professional football. He said he played two preseasons with the 49ers but didn't make the final cut; and ended up playing in the United States Football...
WAITSBURG-Columbia-Walla Walla County Fire District 2 is excited to announce the new fire chief, Michael Moynihan, from San Francisco, California. Chief Moynihan began his position as the first paid fire chief in the history of CWWFD2 on Monday, September 21. Born and raised in San Francisco, Moynihan has more than 30 years of firefighting experience. He began as a firefighter/EMT with a volunteer fire department, very similar to the one that serves Waitsburg and the surrounding area. He took...
WAITSBURG—Waitsburg School District will be returning to in-person instruction on Monday, October 5. The decision to reopen schools for in-person instruction, which many school and health department officials believed would wait until the end of the first quarter, was an ‘unexpected surprise’ to Superintendent Mark Pickel. Superintendent Pickel announced the reopening on September 17, following a school board meeting. In a public notice, he stated the decision was made in collaboration with the faculty, school board, and the Walla Walla Count...
WAITSBURG—The Waitsburg School Board met September 17, via Zoom meeting. High School Principal Stephanie Wooderchak said that the school year was going smoothly though there have been some issues with the students’ Chromebook laptops. Some computers were equipped with the wrong cords, and some had login issues. Wooderchak noted that the IT provider, NexGen, had installed shortcuts for Zoom and Google Classrooms, which many of the students reported they appreciated. Waitsburg FFA will be att...
WAITSBURG—The Waitsburg City Council met Tuesday, September 15, via conference call. All members of the Council were present. The Council reviewed an application for the first of a series of payments for work done on the new Taggart Road extension. Sharpe & Preszler Construction Company requested a payment of $345,066.74 to cover the cost of total work completed and materials on hand, to date. The Council approved the Taggart Road extension in 2019; however, construction was paused due to the f...
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court and a pioneering advocate for women’s rights, died on Friday at her home in Washington, D.C. She was 87. The cause was complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer, the Supreme Court said. “Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn, but with confidence, that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsbur...
DAYTON-Kim Clark, General Manager of Bluewood Ski Resort, said the forecast is for a "good, strong snowfall all winter long," and he is keeping his fingers crossed. Clark said the goal for the upcoming ski season is normal operations with as few disruptions as possible. "We know there is a huge pent up demand out there, as shown by our spring season pass sales. We're excited about the season ahead and can't wait to welcome guests back up to their hometown ski area." Bluewood Ski resort is part o...
STARBUCK-The town of Starbuck, nestled between Hwy. 12 and Lyons Ferry Marina, northeast of Dayton, has a small school district serving forty students. All of the District's students, except for three who are distance learning, are being taught in real-time, since school began on Aug. 25. Luann Truesdale, the office administrator, spoke of all the work that has gone into preparing the school to meet COVID-19 requirements for returning students. She said "bubblers" were disconnected from...
A massive smoke cloud covered Washington with heavy smoke over the weekend A supermassive cloud of smoke blanketed parts of the Pacific Northwest over the weekend, leaving many areas in the 'hazardous' air quality range. Fires are still raging across Washington, Oregon, and California, creating a plume that meteorologists expect to hang around for a while. The fire season has been fueled by an unusually dry, hot summer, with the last measurable rain dating back to July, which measured less than...
WAITSBURG-How do you make tired volunteer firefighters smile in the middle of one of the worst fire seasons on record? If you ask the local Girl Scouts, it is as easy as donating a few cases of cookies. Columbia-Walla Walla County Fire District 2 happily accepted a generous donation of twelve cases of Girl Scout cookies last week, as a 'gift of caring through the council.' While donating leftover cookies is a normal thing, according to troop leaders Brandi Hollingsworth and Amber Lambert, the...
OLYMPIA—Today, the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) released the latest statewide situation report, which reflects an overall decline in COVID-19 activity as of late August. The report also highlights encouraging signs that keeping our distance, limiting gathering size, and wearing face coverings are working to slow the spread of the disease. Report findings include: The reproductive number (how many new people each COVID-19 patient will infect) was close to one in western Washington and above one in eastern Washington as of A...
OLYMPIA/YAKIMA—The first two cases of West Nile virus (WNV) in Washington this year have been reported by the Yakima County Health District and Benton-Franklin Health District. The Yakima County resident, a man in his 50’s, was hospitalized due to the infection. The Benton County resident, a man in his 60’s, was not hospitalized. WNV can be a serious, even fatal illness. It can affect people, horses, birds, and other animals. WNV is almost always spread to people by the bite of an infected mosquito. Mosquitoes become infected after feedi...
WAITSBURG-Nancy's Dream Garden Center has moved closer to main Main Street. Owner/operators Janet Lawrence and Doug Biolo said the move has been great for business, with a new surprising customer base picking up. At the new address, 124 Warren Street, the brother-sister duo now have room to grow Nancy's Dream bigger than they ever imagined. The former site had just enough room for a single greenhouse and an outdoor display, but limited parking, especially for semi-trucks, was a problem. The new...
DAYTON-Dayton is becoming a magnet for people who are attracted to the rural lifestyle. Dayton Chamber of Commerce Manager Molly Weatherill-Tate said a couple from Colorado recently moved to Dayton, and a man from western Oregon is thinking about moving to Dayton when he retires. Another family moved to Dayton sooner than they had planned to, because of the COVID-19 situation, and she has sent relocation packages as far away as Missouri, California, and Texas. "People generally seem to be...
DAYTON—City Administrator Trina Cole provided the Dayton City Council with an update about the Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) project at last week’s council meeting. “We are moving forward with constructed wetlands,” Cole said. She said while it seems like progress is slow, the City and its partners; Anderson/Perry & Associates, the Confederate Indian Tribes of the Umatilla, Washington Water Trust, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Dept. of Ecology continue to work on the project...
DAYTON-Things looked a little different at the Columbia County Fair last weekend. There were no spectators, still-life exhibits or fair food, but that didn't stop the livestock classes or sale. Instead of cancelling, the Columbia County Fair chose to livestream market and fitting and showing classes- and even those looked far different than usual with a limited number of masked participants vying for the purple and white Champion ribbons. The sale, which is typically held on Saturday afternoon,...
DAYTON—In the aftermath of the Flood of 2020, and during the COVID-19 shutdown, Columbia County Commissioner Mike Talbott expressed the following sentiment. “All we need now is a trifecta.” Talbott was referring to the addition of wildfire to the year’s challenges. Columbia County witnessed its first fire of the season this month; the Rattlesnake Fire, thirteen miles southeast of Dayton, burned roughly 475 acres in the Umatilla National Forest. Emergency Management Director Ashley Strickl...
The town of Malden taken from a Whitman County Sheriff Department drone on Tuesday, September 8, 2020. The day before much of the town was destroyed by a wildfire that spread due to high winds. The Babb Road Fire started in Spokane County before spreading across the county line and raging through Malden and the neighboring town of Pine City. The fire quickly consumed thousands of acres of Palouse wheat fields, forcing Malden’s roughly 200 residents to evacuate, according to o...
WALLA WALLA—A Pendleton man is facing felony charges after being arrested last week in Waitsburg for sex crimes. Robert Miguel Aguilera, 37, was booked into Walla Walla County Jail on felony charges of sex trafficking, rape, and assault. Court documents show Aguilera allegedly purchased a female under the age of 18, missing from Richland, Wash. The documents state that Aguilera forcibly raped the victim at various locations in Walla Walla, Dayton, College Place, and Milton Freewater, t...
DAYTON—Columbia County Prosecuting Attorney Dale Slack said it took jurors just 45 minutes to return a verdict of Guilty of Assault in the First Degree in the trial for the State vs. William Fletcher. Fletcher had been charged with First Degree Assault for allegedly beating Laura Romig, in her Dayton home, in Jan. 2019. Romig is wheelchair-bound, and the assault left her with substantial injuries requiring treatment in a Spokane hospital. Slack said jurors agreed to a special verdict of D...
WALLA WALLA—Skylar I. Glasby, 32, was extradited from Walla Walla County Jail back to Umatilla County Jail, where he awaits a retrial from an incident in 2016. Glasby was convicted on charges of kidnapping, robbery and assault of a Milton-Freewater man in 2016. He successfully appealed the conviction on grounds that he was denied permission to either get new counsel or act as his own legal counsel during the trial. He was released pending a new trial scheduled for January 2021. Glasby faces felony charges of first-degree kidnapping, f...
Prescott School District kicked off the start of school with a bus parade....
A devastating wind event swept through Washington on September 7, Labor Day. Weather experts said that a strong cold front moved down from Canada, creating wind gusts up to 50 miles per hour in some areas. In Whitman County, the town of Malden was consumed by one of three wildfires. Whitman County Sheriff Brett Meyers estimated that nearly 80 percent of the town was lost to a fast-moving fire that started near Babb Road in Spokane County, leaving many of the 200 residents without homes. Homes...
DAYTON—On Tuesday of last week, Columbia County Commissioner Ryan Rundell reached out to the Times to present the County’s side of the story regarding talks with the City of Dayton for law enforcement, dispatch, emergency management, and district court services, which have stalled. The City has said the County has not been negotiating in good faith and has asked the County to enter into mediation to renegotiate the Interlocal Agreement or to draw up a new contract. Rundell said the County inf...
