Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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Denise Link This is a shout out to all those Colfax Chihuahuas- there is now a grooming facility near you. Denise Link opened a boutique in Colfax two months ago called Bark Tique. According to her, business has been booming. Judging from the steady stream of customers ranging from full-sized farm hounds to poodles to Shi Tzus, Link said being the only groomer in town has paid off. “I’ve had from 150 pounds to seven pounds. I’ve had every different little kind in here,” she said. She charges $44 for a small dog and $48 for a medium dog. A...
The long-awaited Oakesdale business incubator has met with one hitch; the office is directly under the city fire siren. The siren lets out an ear-splitting alarm once a day, blasted out over this rural town of 350 people. Oakesdale city council at their last meeting discussed what to do about the situation. The old-school siren scream can be heard daily all over town at noon. City clerk Mary DeGon said the city called Avista to see what could be done about the siren. Avista representatives pointed out moving the structure to another location...
State FFA officers Sean Neal (left) and Shane Riebold (right) toured around the state this year talking and educating different FFA chapters. From the salmon of the Pacific Ocean to the vineyards of Yakima, two Palouse teenagers just wrapped up a year’s tour with the state FFA team. Shane Riebold of Colfax, 19, and Sean Neal, 20, of Garfield, spent the past year touring with the six-member state team, educating high school FFA students and encouraging their projects around the state. “You go from the rolling hills of Palouse to the remote pla...
Joan and Don Wride are the grand marshals for Garfield’s May Day festival. Long-time Garfield residents Don and Joan Wride will be grand marshals for the Garfield May Day Saturday. During the May Day parade, they will ride in a convertible down Main Street. The Wrides, who have resided in a quaint house high above Garfield for the past 57 years, have a long history of involvement in the town. In an interview with the Gazette May 7, Joan and Don took turns talking about their life in Garfield. Don worked as a manager for the hardware store in G...
Kirby Dailey speaks to a crowd of other Colfax citizens as they construct ideas for an evaluation of the school administration. A series of surveys to judge the performance of the Colfax school administration will soon be distributed to school district residents. The Colfax School Board agreed at a May 10 public meeting to have Kirby Dailey put together several surveys for the public and school staff to analyze the district’s performance. Led by Dailey, a 30-strong crowd of Colfax citizens gave answers to two key questions at the meeting: w...
Garfield will once again be flooded with festival goers Saturday for May Day. Festival events are planned downtown and at the city park. “We’re banking on sunshine,” said Kelly Conklin, director of this year’s May Day. Returning this year will be the three-on-three basketball tournament which will begin at 9 a.m. The basketball event will be revived after being shelved “years ago,” according to previous festival directors. Conklin hopes the tournament will grow into a larger event in which players of many ages can participate. Players can...
The Colfax School District has no immediate plans for layoffs for next school year, but has not completely ruled out the possibility, according to Superintendent Michael Morgan. The district must cut $195,000 from its budget for the next school year, a cut created by income loss in state funding. That cut totals almost three percent of the district’s $6,549,262 budget for the current school year, according to business manager Reece Jenkin. After an executive session during the school board meeting Monday, Morgan announced they would not be l...
Colfax was abuzz with a cinema craze Monday, as film crews shot several scenes on Main Street. At top, an actor “attacks” a storekeeper in front of a store staged in the old Sandbagger Tavern. More than 60 Japanese film crew members poured into downtown Colfax May 10, blocking traffic at times and running actors dressed in 1940s garb up and down the sidewalks. Local law enforcement helped reroute traffic from SR 195 around the city blocks used for the set, which spanned Main Street between Upton and Second streets. Make-up artists tend to an ac...
Gazette Reporter When Colfax native Mark Gudmunson’s miracle happened, he was driving. His faith had been so-so lately and his lifestyle was lagging. Then, it happened. In 2006, he was in his car on the road to Spokane, and the plot of a novel suddenly came to him. As the days passed, the notion of writing a book weighed more and more heavily on his heart. So, Gudmunson began to write. And write and write and write. “There was no booming voice that came. The story just came over my heart,” Gudmunson said Four months later, he had in his hands...
Alternatives to Violence on the Palouse this week will wrap up a tour of nine town council meetings around the county. Since early April 5, team members have gone to each town to let city leaders know about the services available for local victims. “I just familiarize them with who I am and our agency,” Rebekah MillerMacphee, sexual assault prevention educator said in an interview with the Gazette Monday. She also appeared at the Oakesdale City Council session Monday night. The goal of the tour was to update town officials on the ava...
The future of an aging 1970s tennis court in Oakesdale was discussed at a town council meeting May 3. City council members asked who owned the property and whether the city would even want to take on restoration of the court. Councilmen wondered aloud if the Oakesdale School District owns the lot and what the district might want to do with it. Suggestions such as restoring it to a tennis court or a skating park were tossed on the table. The council decided to contact the school district to hear their thoughts. “It’s got a sinkhole in it. The...
Palouse fire department plans to purchase 20 cutting edge firefighter coats, called turnouts, with most of the cost paid from a $38,200 federal grant from Homeland Securtiy. The coats are expected to arrive in two to three months, according to Palouse Fire Chief Mike Bagott. The coats will be more than 60 percent lighter than the coats now used by the department. They can also withstand temperatures around 1,000 to 1,250 degrees in comparison to the 700 degrees tolerated by the current department gear. They will also more flexible. “Those t...
Kirby Dailey of Colfax will host another public meeting May 10 in what he said is an effort to get the Colfax public and the Colfax school district administration effectively talking. Residents will be given a chance to ask questions directly to the administration or the five district school board members. Dailey said many citizens have told him they feel they aren’t involved in the decision-making process. Colfax Supt. Michael Morgan said if Colfax voters don’t feel the administration is approachable, that is a perception worth correcting. “Ce...
There are a dozen Japanese filmmakers in Tania Buck’s front yard, barking out instructions over crackling walkie talkies. Japanese movie crew members dart around preparing a 1940s truck, which sits with the massive early 1900s Buck barn in the background. Then, in one swift motion, the entire yard stills. Someone yells the Japanese equivalent of “action.” The star actor climbs from the truck, slams the door, and strides away, a team of cameramen filming his every move. This was the scene at the Buck’s farmhouse a few miles south of Onecho...
A toddler-friendly jungle gym was finished at the city park in Palouse last week. For four and a half years, a team of Palouse mothers, in step with other Palouse fund-raisers, worked to earn the $36,000 it took to bring the new addition to the park. “We’re so elated,” said Shelly Goertzen, one of the mothers involved with the project. The set of equipment measures 34 X 34 feet and comes with a “fall zone” of wood chips specifically designed to lessen the impact of falls. The installation includes three slides, two tunnels, a climbing wall, and...
Blew’s construction workers lay down wet cement outside the remodeled Colfax library. Remodeling of the Colfax branch of the Whitman County Library is two months away from completion, knee-deep in wet cement, drying paint, clouds of dust and slowly-emerging renovations. The project has been set back by about three weeks because the crew digging space for the elevator shaft ran into excessive ground water and more rocks than anticipated. A new elevator, a skylight, handicap accessible restrooms, new windows, new doors, carpet and a remodeled c...
Eastern Washington school superintendents are lobbying the governor to veto by May 6 a portion of the state budget that slates $250,000 for a commission that would draw up a plan for combining small schools. State legislators inserted the wording for a commission in the final hours of the last legislative session. The new commission will be required to report its plan to the state by late 2012. The governor has so far received a dozen letters from education officials asking she veto the commission. Superintendents of smaller districts say...
Nicole Taflinger signs a book in the Bank Left gallery in Palouse. Stories of the haunting Holocaust resurfaced last week in Palouse at the book signing of French expatriate Nicole Taflinger, a retired Pullman resident who grew up in occupied France during World War II. More than 150 people poured into the Bank Left art gallery in Palouse to have Taflinger sign her book, Season of Suffering- Coming of Age in Occupied France. The manuscript was accepted by WSU Press last year and released March 26. To date, approximately 400 copies have been...
WDFW Regional Director Steve Pozzanghera, standing, responds to critics at a meeting between game officials and landowners at the Plaza firehouse Tuesday night. Gazette Reporter More than 100 landowners let loose on officials from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife Tuesday night on their plan to create a 3,000-acre wildlife corridor reserve to link Bonnie, Chapman and Rock lakes. The meeting at the District 3 Fire Station on the Cheney-Plaza road was held just days after officials cancelled the plan. Wildlife regional director Steve Pozz...
The Colton school grounds will transform into fairgrounds Friday for this year’s Colton/Uniontown Fair. Students of all ages have been preening and training a host of animals to show at the fair, which opens at 8 a.m. and closes around 5 p.m. Most of this year’s event are animal shows, with a concession stand offering home-made food. Fair manager Debbie Niehenke said all the large livestock will be shown from 10 a.m. to noon. and horses will be shown beginning at 1 p.m. New to the fair this year will be the Agriculture Olympics in which stu...
Descendants of those buried in Lone Pine Cemetery prop up a toppled head stone with use of a tractor Headstones of long-forgotten Palouse pioneers continue to be uncovered by a group of descendants who have been gathering regularly to work on the Lone Pine Cemetery. The cemetery, located on a hill a few miles outside Tekoa, holds the graves of pioneers starting in the late 1800s and ending in the 1950s. Almost half a century of neglect and harsh weather has hidden many headstones beneath densely overgrown bushes, rotted the fence outside the...
It isn’t every day I can escape the office to chase down rumors of a renegade beaver outside Albion. Or get paid to wander through one of the remaining patches of natural Palouse prairie. The beaver has felled many trees. But last Thursday, April 15, news of this derelict beaver lured this reporter out of the office for an afternoon of poking around the nature preserve Rose Creek. Rose Creek is a little-known 12-acre nature preserve with a trail, located about four miles outside Albion. It is owned by the Palouse Clearwater Environmental I...
After a two and a half hour debate, DeAtley Construction was awarded a 10-year permit to operate an asphalt plant outside Colton at the Entel Rock Quarry. The county board of adjustment granted the permit at a public hearing April 15. Two families living close to the quarry protested at the hearing. They contended heavy, loud trucks moving in and out of the quarry for the asphalt plant would be a major nuisance. Representatives from DeAtley, the rock quarry, and local residents each presented their case to the board at the hearing. Last month,...
Amid a landslide of heated protest letters and phonecalls, the state fish and wildlife department announced April 21 they are canceling their Bonnie Lake water corridor proposal. Regional game department director Kevin Robinette called the Gazette April 21 to say the department had canceled. The department now cannot apply for the $3.6 million grant until 2012, he said. The corridor proposal had called for 3,000 acres along Bonnie, Chapman and Rock lakes to be turned into a state-owned natural wildlife area open to the public. Most of that...
As of April 19, 1,034 of 2,400 mailed ballots on the Colfax School levy election have been received back on the Colfax school levy proposal. The levy is up for a vote after the district’s first levy proposal failed in the Feb. 9 special election. The votes will be counted the night of April 27, deadline day for return of the ballots. Voters are asked to vote on a $950,000 levy for 2011 and a $970,000 levy for 2012. The figures are sharply decreased from the district’s first levy proposal of $1.3 million. This new levy came in the wake of a ser...
