Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 78
Colfax High School Jazz band placed fifth Saturday in competition at the Mt. Hood Festival in Gresham, Ore. The band competed in division four which included schools with up to 700 enrollment. About 40 students made the trip and stayed to hear trumpet virtuoso Byron Stripling perform with the Mt. Hood Big Band on Saturday night. The jazz band concert will be next Monday, May 17, at 7 p.m. in the high school auditorium....
Pullman Education Foundation’s miniature golf tournament from 8 a.m.-3 p.m., Saturday, May 22, at Airway Hills Mini Golf on Airport Road will benefit Pullman fifth grade camp. Deadline for registration will be at 5 p.m. May 20. Call Airway Hills for a tee time. Golfers will compete in foursomes with tee times five minutes apart. Green fees per round to play the 18-hole layout are $8 for ages 12-adult, and $5 for ages 5-11. Those ages 3-4 are free.Airway Hills owner Trent Goetze, a PGA golf professional, will donate a portion of green fees to t...
Palouse Empire Fairground will host four sessions of competition this weekend at the Palouse Empire Fairground. The event will be under the auspices of Washington State Wrangler Junior High and High School Rodeo. Wrangler Junior High events will be Friday at 5 p.m. and Saturday at 9 a.m. Washington High School Rodeo sessions will be Saturday at 1 and Sunday at 10 a.m. A Sunday service will be at 8 a.m. and a Cowboy Prom has been scheduled for Saturday night. All standard rodeo events are scheduled....
Five Colfax golfers booked trips to the District 7 finals next week after carding sub-district scores below the 103 cut on the par-72 Deer Park links Monday afternoon. The Bulldogs team score of 454 placed second to Northwest Christian. Top 30 scores from the sub-district tourney advanced to next weeks district match. Combined scores from the two weeks will be used to move the top 18 golfers on to the state championship the following week at the Tri-Cities Country Club. Caleb Bravard topped the ‘dogs with an 80, six strokes back of the 74 s... Full story
St. John/Endicott’s Errin Schuster carded a 92 to book the top overall girls scored at the District 9 sub-district tournament Tuesday on the par-72 Columbia Point Golf Course in Richland. Earl Gaines of Tekoa/Oakesdale/Rosalia shot 89 on the same Columbia Point course to top county boys in Monday’s sub-district tourney. Errin Schuster and Michal Schuster were the lone local girls to advance to next Monday’s district finale at Columbia Point. Michal finished fourth with a 104. Joining Earl Gaines in the boys tourney next Tuesday will be Casey... Full story
Four SE qualifiers will be in Colfax Saturday for the first round of the state baseball playoffs. Touchet, the top team, will play Colton at 10 a.m. and St. John/Endicott and TCP will play in the 2-3 game at 1 p.m. Winners of those two rounds will play in a seeding game. The two qualifiers out of the SE Colfax round will advance to a four-team regional round May 22 at Eisenhower in the Yakima Valley. COLTON Monday defeated Orofino 9-6 in a non-leaguer with Bricyn Abdul giving up seven hits and striking out five. The game launched on a 3-3 tie...
Colfax softball team defeated the Lind/Ritzville Broncos twice Tuesday in the last rounds at McDonald Park. The pair of wins finished out the league run at 6-2 for a second-place finish in the league. Davenport, which split with the Bulldogs, topped the league with a 7-1 run. Both Colfax and Davenport will sit out the first round of the playoffs Tuesday and then join in the fray May 22 at Franklin Field in Spokane. Tuesday in their last home double, the Bulldogs shut out Lind/Ritzville 5-0 in the first game. Amy Hickman struck out 10, walked...
Colton, St. John/ Endicott, and LaCrosse/ Washtucna softball teams were on the brink of a season finish with a one-game playoff round in the works at mid week. The three Whitman teams go into the first round behind Touchet which takes the top slot. LaCrosse/Washtucna Wednesday was slated to roll to Touchet and attempt to get past the number-one Indians. St. John/Endicott will go to Colton today, Thursday, for another elim round. Winners of the two SE games will go to Medical Lake on May 22 to play district seven teams in a mixer which will...
Waitsburg/Prescott Cardinals won both sides of a SE league meet last Wednesday, May 5, at Clarkston High. The WP girls edged Asotin by six points, and the boys powered to a 41 point win, also over Asotin. Annie Leendertsen of Garfield/Palouse/ Colton was the big individual winner for Whitman entries with firsts in the 100, 200 and 400. Courtenay Perry of TOR won the 1600 and the SJE-LW team of Della Fleming, Jessica Hardy, Annie Fleming and Kelsey Simon clocked off a 55.74 to win the 4X 100. The Eagles also won the 4 X 200 with Della Fleming,... Full story
TOR Spartans Tuesday defeated Garfield/Palouse 22-3 to remain in the hunt for one of the three regional berths which have been assigned to the SE for the baseball playoffs. The win sends the Spartans to Borleske Field in Walla Walla Saturday where four SE contenders will play for the three slots. TOR will play Waitsburg/Prescott, a team they defeated twice Saturday at Rosalia. The Cards advanced Tuesday with a 12-1 win over Liberty Christian in a playoff between the fourth and fifth-place league finishers. Winner of the 10 a.m. game at... Full story
Kayla Johnson, Hannah Harazin, and EB Hatley booked strong performances for the Bulldogs in the hurdles. Jewel Gamboa of Wilbur/Creston, left, edged Johnson by three tenths for the win. Brianne Goodlake of WC, right, placed third behind Johnson. Gamboa and Goodlake will qualify in the 1C division of the state elims. Bi-County tracksters Tuesday assembled at Colfax to begin the elimination process on the way to the state meet. The first five finishers in races up to the 400 and the first seven in distance and field events qualified to move on...
THURSDAY The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 1,000 points in morning trading after a trader accidentally sold a billion shares, instead of a million. The mistake triggered automated sales which resulted in the exchange of more than 29.4 billion shares of stock held in markets across the U.S. The error was corrected and the Dow average had rebounded by the afternoon. The Pentagon banned four journalists from future sessions of the Guantanamo war crimes court for reporting the name of a disgraced former U.S. Army interrogator. NFL Hall...
MARRIAGE LICENSES Carl Walker, 28, Detroit, Michigan, and Elizabeth Schramm, 28, Greenfield, Indiana, April 13. Thomas Reese, Jr., 29, Tacoma, and Bernadette Garsi, 21, Seattle, April 13. Matthew Williams, 27, Riverside, CA and Lindsey Kelley, 24, Pensacola, Florida, April 21. Jonathan Erickson, 27, Greenville, TX, and Kara Derickson, 27, Hoffman Estates, IL. Travis Port, 26, Pullman, and Karly Porter, 22, Lewiston, April 27. Michael Cochran, 29, Pullman, and Darcy Bremner, 31, Clarkston, April 29. Earl Leland, 56, Chewelah, and Laurie... Full story
Citing low debt levels and high cash reserves, Standard & Poor’s has affirmed Whitman County’s A+ bond rating, The rating ranks in the middle of Standard & Poor’s system. By contrast, the city of Spokane was given a Standard & Poor’s AA rating, fifth highest on the rating services scale. “Well, we’re better than Greece,” said County Commissioner Michael Largent. The rating is Standard & Poor’s opinion on the credit-worthiness of Whitman County’s financial obligations. Ratings are used by investors as a gauge of credit quality. Some off...
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...
Five Whitman County towns have made the list of clean water projects that will be funded by the state Department of Ecology next year. Ecology last Thursday, May 6, announced the list of projects it intends to award a total of $108 million in loans and grants to next year. Making the list were projects in Garfield, Palouse, Rosalia, St. John and Uniontown. They were among the list of “hardship communities” that are slated to receive nearly $50 million to build or improve wastewater treatment facilities. The department is asking for public com...
Whitman County had long suffered from an outdated computerized accounting software. In 2005, commissioners were told their accounting system was out of date by Bev Divine, information manager. “We purchased them in 1991, and I have been holding my breath every day, hoping it holds up,” Divine was quoted as saying in the Oct. 20, 2005, edition of the Gazette. That same year, the purchase of a new software package from Michigan-based New World Systems for $331,600 was supposed to solve the problem. That system was never installed. The county is... Full story
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... Full story
Without specific plans and having heard complaints from neighbors, Port of Whitman County commissioners last Thursday decided to deny the development of a dirtbike track at the Port of Wilma. “It just is not something that is going to work, and it just is not compatible with the Port of Wilma,” said Port Commissioner Dan Boone. Eric Christiansen of Lewiston and his firm, EC Enterprises, had asked the port to set up a 30-acre motocross and BMX track on the north side of Highway 193, across the road from Wilma. Christiansen last month was gra...
Whitman County commissioners will hold a public hearing Monday at 10:15 a.m. on a plan to push back the opening hours for three departments. As of now, the county’s juvenile justice, human resources and commissioner offices open at 8 a.m. The plan is to move the open time for those three offices back one hour to 9 a.m. to align them with the official open times for all other county departments. The hearing will be held in the county commissioners’ main meeting room....
Whitman County’s housing market picked up in both sales and prices to start 2010. The Washington Center for Real Estate Research released its quarterly report of the state housing market this week. Median price of houses sold during the first quarter of 2010 was $206,200, up 17.8 percent from the value of homes sold during the first quarter of 2009. Glenn Crellin, director of the center at Washington State University, attributed the jump in average price of sold homes to a decrease in the cost of high-end homes. “It appears that the soft pri...
With the county’s books being independently reviewed by state auditors for the first time since 2003, several errors have been spotted. One of those errors includes $382,000 the county has in local banks but does not have marked on its balance sheet. "All this information is put in by different departments for the finance department," said Commissioner Pat O’Neill. "Did finance know about this before Bob?" Finance Director Bev Divine said she informed Treasurer Bob Lothspeich of the unaccounted funds during the preparation of the 2007 fin...
Whitman County’s cop-stop reputation hit a new point May 5, when state trooper Doug Powers pulled over this 1,836-square-foot house on Highway 195 north of the Dry Creek turnoff. Powers stopped the truck hauling the mobile home after noticing debris flying off it as it drove down the highway. The home was finally installed on Park Street in Colfax after half of it almost tipped over when the wheels on the trailer sank into soft dirt in a ditch. Powers said it was the first time he had pulled over a house.... Full story
An anonymous e-mail survey to gauge county employees’ perception of county commissioners showed up in e-mail boxes at the courthouse Friday. The anonymous request generated more questions than responses. Most wanted to know the source. Chris Nelson, director of the county’s information technology department Monday morning sent an e-mail advising staffers the source of the survey request was unknown and any employees responding would do so “at their own risk.” She also advised any responses should not be done on county time. Tuesday, Commissione...
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... Full story
