Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Sorted by date Results 4637 - 4661 of 5670
DAYTON – Columbia County Commissioners are considering the formation of two new special taxing districts, including a Flood Control Zone District and a Parks and Recreation Service Area. Both districts, if formed, could generate thousands of dollars annually for special – in many cases critical – projects that would otherwise be challenging to fund. County Public Works Director Andrew Woods presented a draft report to the board during its Monday workshop this week; no action was taken at the m...
WAITSBURG – Waitsburg Touchet Valley Acoustic Music Program (TVAMP) Director Kate Hockersmith joined the ranks of more than 50 deserving individuals – the first being Ernest Kison in 1962 – to receive Waitsburg's Community Service Award. The award was previously known as the Citizen of the Year Award. Hockersmith, who thought she was simply directing her bluegrass band, Switchgrass, in providing the evening's entertainment, was taken by complete surprise when her name was called as the 2014...
WAITSBURG – Shoppers at Waitsburg Grocery are practically guaranteed a first-name welcome if owner Dan Cole, who has operated the community hub for nearly 30 years, is anywhere nearby. It's that kind of personal attention and genuine interest that helped earn Waitsburg Grocery the first-ever, Waitsburg Commercial Club's Business of the Year Award. Cole and his wife Trina were presented with the award at the April 7 Commercial Club award ceremony, where Master of Ceremonies Tom Baker read r...
WAITSBURG – The Waitsburg Lions Club is taking a step of faith in offering a $1,000 Waitsburg Lions Club Scholarship, to be awarded to a WHS graduate, for the first time in 2015. The club hopes to be able to offer similar awards in future years. Scholarship fund chairman Todd Wood said the Lions has considered funding scholarships many times over the life of the club and has strongly considered it for the last several years. “The club has not always had the financial wherewithal to fund sch...
Pacific Power Regional Community Manager Bill Clemens (l) presented a $1,500 check to Waitsburg Mayor Walt Gobel . . ....
DAYTON – For several years, Greg Bingaman, a La Grande, Ore. farmer and owner of Pioneer West Agricultural Solutions, has hunted for a place to set up shop in Dayton. His company already sells a large number of self-propelled sprayers to farmers in the Touchet Valley, and a local shop would serve not only those customers but new ones as well. "So I thought it was time," he said in an interview with The Times on Tuesday. "And we found the old fire department building for sale, so we bought it a...
DAYTON – Columbia County Commissioners along with County Risk Manager Andrew Woods and Prosecutor Rea Culwell have been working for months on a policy for screening volunteers who assist with county functions and events, such as the annual county fair. Currently such volunteers – who might help out in any department from public works (fairgrounds or golf course, for example) to public health and emergency management – are not screened through a background investigation. All county emplo...
STARBUCK – Lyons Ferry State Park, on the Franklin County side of the Snake River off Highway 261, will open this season with a grand re-opening celebration on June 5, according to a Washington State Parks representative. The state announced earlier this year that management of the park has been returned to the state park system after budget cuts demanded the state pull out of Lyons Ferry in 2002. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns the park; the Corps operated the day-use area seasonally, w...
Children of all ages are invited to celebrate Earth Day next Wednesday, April 22, from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Best Western Plus of Dayton. . ....
DAYTON – Columbia County Commissioners have agreed to join a group of local and Walla Walla County stakeholders in opposing a decision made last month by the Walla Walla Watershed Management Partnership that could adversely impact junior water rights holders across the Touchet Valley. The commissioners decided at their regular workshop on Monday to pledge up to $5,000 of county funds at this time in support of this opposition group, with the understanding that money donated to the cause from a...
DAYTON – The Columbia County Auditor’s Office will mail out ballots by week’s end asking voters to decide on the Dayton School District’s 2015 capital levy. The election officially takes place on Tuesday, April 28, and the measure requires a 50 percent yes vote to pass. This is the only measure on the ballot. The district is requesting $800,000 in property tax payer’s money – spread out over 2016 and 2017 – to make improvements to the district’s facilities. This amounts to approximately 6...
WAITSBURG – Local historians are probably aware that the village of Delta (later founded as Waitsburg) grew up around a flour mill, built by Sylvester Wait, which began operations in 1865. But did you know that Wait's Mill set a truly impressive world record in 1908? Or that, on the way here, Sylvester Wait lost the saddlebags containing his life savings – the money he was going to use to start operations at Wait's Mill? To learn more about that world record and to find out what happened to tho...
Children of all ages congregated at the Port of Columbia's Blue Mountain Station . . ....
Requesting: $800,000 in a two-year levy for tax year 2016 & 2017 Cost to taxpayers: 2016: 66 cents/$1,000 assessed property value = $400,000 2017: 65 cents/$1,000 assessed property value = $400,000 Example: A $200,000 home would cost the owner $132 each of the two years. Note: These are estimates. The new wind turbines will come on the tax roll during this time period and drive the cost per thousand lower – the county assessor has no estimate of how much. Timeline: Projects could begin summer o...
Waitsburg Easter Bunny (aka Rick Ferguson). . ....
WAITSBURG – Gabriel F. Hofer, 36, of Waitsburg was sentenced to 240 hours of community service by Walla Walla Superior Court Judge John Lohrmann on March 30 for one count of harassment, a Class C felony. Hofer was originally charged with1st degree assault for allegedly beating Richard W. Perez, who he believed supplied drugs to his sister, Mariah Hofer, who died of an overdose in January of 2014. Hofer pleaded guilty to an amended charge of harassment on March 17, for threatening to kill Perez and placing him in reasonable fear that the t...
One-year-old Ryleigh Fabian of Dayton . . ....
First Appearance: Leonard L. Lytle, 24; entered not guilty plea on charges of 2nd degree theft of an access device (debit card), four counts of 2nd degree identity theft, and two counts of forgery; all seven of these charges are Class C felonies. He was also charged with four counts of 3rd degree theft and one count of use of drug paraphernalia, both gross misdemeanors. These crimes allegedly occurred in February and early March. Bond was reduced to $15,000 cash or surety. Joshua J. Berdar, 23; charged with obtaining a legend (prescription)...
DAYTON – Fruitland, Idaho, teacher Paul Shaber will join the Dayton School District team as middle school/high school principal in July. "This is a great opportunity for me and for my family," Shaber said in an interview with The Times last week. "I'm looking at it as a chance to go make something of myself." Shaber's wife, Angelina, currently teaches special education in Fruitland but plans to return to school and care for the couple's four children, ages 7, 5, 3 and 1. Shaber has taught m...
DAYTON – An attempted traffic stop at the intersection of West Main Street and Wagon Road in Dayton at 2 a.m. last Wednesday, April 1, led to a high-speed car chase westbound on Highway 12 through Waitsburg and Dixie, in Walla Walla County, before the driver and two passengers were apprehended. Columbia County Deputy Jason DeVoir planned to pull the driver over on the western outskirts of Dayton to speak to him about his yellow headlights, which are illegal per state law. Instead the driver, 1...
Third graders from Touchet Elementary visited the Fish & Wildlife acclimation pond and dam . . ....
WALLA WALLA – Several Waitsburg and Prescott locals have shared World War II memorabilia that is part of the new Walla Walla Goes to War display at the Kirkman House Museum here. Walla Walla Goes to War runs from March 18 through Sept. 8 and looks at World War II from a local perspective. Bob Hulce, Jack McCaw, Joan Helm and Pam Conover, all of Waitsburg, and Jerry Hall, of Prescott, have loaned items to the display, which includes everything from a Japanese battlefield flag to wartime r...
WAITSBURG – The countdown is on! With less than six weeks until the big event, Waitsburg Celebration Days is shaping up to be a fun-filled weekend. Waitsburg’s 150th anniversary celebration, on May 15-17, is sure to have something for everyone. Local legislators, including Senator Mike Hewitt, Representative Terry Nealey and Representative Maureen Walsh, along with Lt. Governor Brad Owen, will join in the festivities. The weekend gets an early start with a Classic Car Cruise down Main Str...
WAITSBURG – According to Wikipedia, mortgage burning parties – once a popular rite of passage – are now considered a "gauche" form of bragging, since such payoffs are so rare these days. That said, the Waitsburg Ambulance Service is happy to "brag" that, with the help of the Waitsburg Lions Club, they now own their building on Preston Avenue free and clear. The Waitsburg Ambulance Service (WAS) – a nonprofit 501c3 dependent largely on volunteer effort – was organized in 1970 and just celebrate...
DAYTON – The search for two overdue hikers from Portland ended happily last week after search groups spent two days in the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness, near Panjab Trailhead south of Dayton, attempting to locate the men. Chris Warden, 20, and Harrison Salton, 23, both students of Portland's Reed College, found their own way out of the woods late Wednesday morning, March 25; they left Portland on Saturday and had been expected home on Monday, March 23. Warden and Salton, though experienced h...
