Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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The Colfax School Board met Monday night and approved a new athletic director, set plans for the coming school year and heard an update on school construction. The construction crew has 48 regular workday hours remaining until the Sept. 9 opening day for school. The new athletic director named to replace Nathan Holbrook is Gina Hopkins, a Steptoe school science teacher, who will now teach P.E. in Colfax and oversee CHS sports scheduling. The board also approved the resignation of Dean Hall, bus...
Colton returns to the football field this fall with new faces – a coach, aassistant and a quarterback after its slated starter, senior Jon Bean, moved to Nampa, Idaho with his family two weeks ago. The team lost 13-year coach Clark Vining from last year, and for players; Luke Vining, Parker Druffel and Reece Chadwick, all to graduation. The Wildcats’ new coach is Jim Moehrle, Colton’s athletic director, who stepped in after the school received no applications for the open job. Moehrle, thoug...
Whitman County Public Works Director Mark Storey briefed county commissioners Monday on a decision he and Prosecutor Denis Tracy made on whether a marijuana operation outside Pullman is allowed to grow the crop – amidst a six-month moratorium placed in March on further marijuana business in the county. At the end of May, Selway Holdings, LLC, sent a request to the county to re-examine if Selway has a “vested interest” in growing marijuana, due to their county permit from last November for a spe...
Whitman County commissioners expressed approval Monday for a new criminal justice services agreement with the City of Pullman. Commissioner Art Swannack met with Pullman Mayor Glenn Johnson and City Administrator Adam Lincoln to work out the terms of a $450,000 payment from Pullman to the county for one year. The district court will remain in Pullman’s city hall for 2020. After the first year, the two sides will have to work out another agreement for the coming years. The contract is now b...
Whitman County commissioners Monday set a hearing on the intent to adopt state house bill 1406, passed May 9, to take part of the tax collected in the county to be used for affordable housing. The held back state sales and use tax could amount to $100,000 - $115,000 per year. The hearing is Sept. 3 at 11:15 a.m. The program would take a credit against the state sales tax of 6.5 percent – which would amount to the county holding back .0146 percent – to create this fund. “Just a hold back of ta...
New high school coaches are set for Oakesdale for the coming school year, following the departure of Brandy Brown, girls volleyball coach, and Dan Brown, girls basketball coach, earlier this summer. McKinzie Turner returns for the volleyball team, the coach of the 2014 Oakesdale state 1B champions. “We’re pretty excited to have her back,” said Jake Dingman, Oakesdale superintendent. Originally from Pomeroy, Turner spent the past three years teaching and coaching at West Valley High School in Sp...
The Oakesdale and Colton school districts have both been awarded $25,000 grants from a Monsanto-Bayer ag education program, announced earlier in August. Oakesdale applied for the grant specifically to add another greenhouse, for use by Jessica Moore's FFA/ag classes. The 30x40-foot structure, to go up on the old tennis courts, will be at least triple the size of the existing greenhouse. Colton will use the $25,000 for three purchases – a classroom set of laptops more capable than the s...
The Whitman County board of adjustment approved a conditional use permit Aug. 8 to allow St. John Hardware and Implement to open a location on the former Hawkins property just west of the Washington-Idaho border. No one spoke against the project at the public hearing. The approval is the latest step in St. John Hardware’s plan to relocate from their site in north Moscow, which will become the location for a new building to house EMSI, a Moscow-based software company. St. John Hardware plans t...
The 31st annual Lentil Festival returns to Pullman Friday and Saturday with events to span the weekend. It begins Friday at 9 a.m., with the Tase T. Lentil Mini Golf Tournament at Airway Hills Golf Center. Friday’s main events start at 5 p.m. at Reaney Park and Spring Street with free lentil chili from the signature jumbo gray bowl and poured from beverage pitchers. Live music starts at 5 p.m. with Eric Shedd playing on the Cooking Demo stage. Main Stage music starts at 5:30 with Aaron Cerutti f...
Nearing the end of the six-month moratorium on new or expansion of marijuana businesses in Whitman County, commissioners set a hearing on whether to extend it for Sept. 3 at 10:30 a.m. Board chairman Art Swannack noted that commissioners await a proposed ordinance now being created by the county planning commission. “We’ll give them all the time they need to craft an ordinance that’s well thought-out and has been subject to public testimony,” said Commissioner Michael Largent. The ordinan...
Whitman County commissioners Monday approved $1 million from the .09 economic development fund to go to the fiber-to-the-home and rural fiber extensions to transmitter sites project for the Port of Whitman. Another $600,000 was approved for the Moscow-Pullman Airport runway realignment. The $1 million will go to design and construction of a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network in five rural towns in Whitman County. The project will also bolster an existing transmitter network with mid-mile fiber...
The Palouse city council voted July 23 to postpone a compliance date from Aug. 7 to Oct. 9 for Palouse Welding & Machine, a longtime local business which drew some complaints to city hall for things laying out on its lot near Main Street/Highway 272 at the east edge of town. The complaints regarded outdoor equipment storage in violation of Palouse Municipal code. City Administrator Kyle Dixon sent a notice to Alex Anderson, proprietor, June 6, noting the violation, with a stated compliance date...
A three-week, county-wide rumblestrip and striping project was to begin Wednesday on Hume Road, part of a list of roads to get new rumblestrips followed by re-painted centerlines and white fog lines along the the edge of lanes. The work is funded by $610,000 in grant money received last year from the Federal Highway Safety Improvement program. Dean Cornelison, assistant county engineer, estimates five to seven working days for rumblestrips, then a day to seal the strips’ 28 miles with a l...
Whitman County commissioners Monday approved a proposal for a road levy tax lift to go on the ballot in November. To be voted on by residents of the county’s unincorporated areas, the added revenue would go primarily for maintenance on rural roads. The measure would raise the rate of tax collection on property from $1.45 to $2.25 per thousand dollars of assessed valuation. The rate would then likely go down as home valuations go up from year to year. The county has spent from reserves in the roa...
The Whitman County board of adjustment will conduct a hearing Aug. 8 on a conditional use request for 10 acres of the former Hawkins land next to the state line for a relocated St. John Hardware and Implement now at Moscow. If the request is approved, they would move from their existing spot on the north end of Moscow just off Highway 95 to allow for a proposed 70,000-square foot headquarters for EMSI, a Moscow-based software company. The former Hawkins land is in a zone called the North...
The delayed Almota Phase Four reconstruction project, once slated for this year, has now been moved to next year. Dean Cornelison, assistant county engineer, told county commissioners Monday that a package of funding documents for the road reconstruction phase was sent July 25 to Washington State Department of Transportation in Olympia – which will release federal funds if approved. Construction plans and specifications were next to be sent to WSDOT’s Eastern Region office in Spokane this wee...
The annual Palouse Music Festival returns Saturday, July 27, to Hayton-Greene Park along the river in Palouse. With seven musical acts, food, a beer garden and craft sellers, the day will run from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and culminate with Blue Highway, a veteran rock and country band based in Palouse. To open the festival, on a flatbed trailer under shade trees, Paul Smith begins with an hour on fiddle. Next is the Cherry Sisters Revival of Moscow, which began with three ukuleles and songs from the...
The Jennings Elementary roof is exposed boards while more pounding and whirring comes from Colfax Junior-Senior High School with lifts and other Wellens Farwell Construction equipment parked around the buildings. Late into the second month of summer, full-on construction at Colfax schools is on a timeline, as described by District Superintendent Jerry Pugh. “Construction is progressing,” Pugh told the school board Monday night. “The library, art room and choir room are ready for prime...
Colfax Business Manager Reece Jenkin took the school board through a proposed 2019-2020 budget Monday night in a work session before the three members on hand approved it in their regular meeting. The budget is for 546 students projected, with total expenditures of $8,258,755 and total revenue of $7,985,000. The $273,000 deficit will be covered by reserves. Jenkin explained later to the Gazette that reserves have built up in recent years, and it was expected that they would be tapped this year a...
The Colfax School District board met Monday night for a mid-summer meeting and approved a budget for the 2019-20 school year, hirings from new teachers to a new volleyball coach and the resignation of Nathan Holbrook as P.E. teacher and athletic director. The board was introduced to a series of the newly-hired, including Michael Dorman, social studies teacher, a Colfax resident who has spent the last 12 years teaching at Washtucna; Joey Reed, a 16-year middle/high school teacher at Oakesdale,...
A matter of on-call pay for the Palouse Police department – which also covers Garfield – is in the hands of the city’s policy and procedures committee to study, after an extensive debate at the July 9 city council meeting. At issue is pay for Chief Jerry Neumann and Officer Joel Anderson, the two officers remaining after Leighton Cox was terminated June 20. After Cox’s dismissal, it fell to Neumann and Anderson to cover the shifts until the return of Reserve Officer Terry Snead in late August....
By Garth Meyer Gazette Reporter It starts in August with a first meeting two weeks after the previous year’s celebration. Then, in the fall, calls start coming in to Oakesdale school Superintendent Jake Dingman’s office asking when Old Mill Days will be the following summer – people wanting to plan around it, the event now in its seventh year of a revival of an old tradition. It all returns this weekend for 2019 with events to span from Friday at five o’ clock through midnight Saturday. A new ad...
The past month's yellow fields on the Palouse reflect in statewide canola numbers released June 30 by USDA's National Agriculture Statistics Service. For both winter and spring canola in 2019, Washington has 75,000 acres planted, with county totals not calculated until the fall. Montana has 120,000 acres growing and Idaho and Oregon were not listed this year. In 2018, Idaho stood at 43,000 acres and Oregon 4,700. The Washington canola number is up 8,000 acres from last year, continuing a trend...
The Colfax Downtown Association and Chamber of Commerce aim to open a business incubator in part of the former Higginson Furniture building the first week of August. The project, named "Colfax Mercantile" and funded by a $30,000 grant from the county's .09 economic development program, will operate as a space for individual businesses to sell items. Owners will work one day per week, selling each other's products at a counter. Each business will share the rent of the Main Street spot and may be...
The Whitman County Cougars pushed further into the American Legion season (ages 13-16) with a series of wins and losses in the past week to put their record at 20-10-1, (12-2 league). On Monday, July 8, they beat the Moscow Junior Blue Devils 6-5. Gavin Shrope led Whitman County with two RBIs. Further hits came from Brendan Doumit, Marcus Hilliard, Nick Robison, Elliott Lee and Colin Dreewes. Joe Bendel pitched three and one-third innings to get the win with no earned runs. Cougars drop...
