Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 288
Vandals caused the Sunday service at Lake City Assembly of God in Medical Lake to be put on hold, after doing extensive damage throughout the church and its property. The break-in, which took place between Saturday, Jan. 12, and Sunday morning, Jan. 13, caused around $50,000 in damage to the church. Joseph Knop, 23, was arrested on burglary and malicious mischief charges two days after the crime took place. Pastor Nick Hawkins said janitors arrived early Sunday to find that a large potted plant outside the building had been...
Lt. Col. Dwight Peake said he remembers the Columbia disaster vividly. Ten years ago, the West Plains lost one of its own in a tragic incident. Lt. Col. Michael Anderson was one of the seven astronauts who perished in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster Feb. 3, 2003. An assembly last week at Michael Anderson Elementary on Fairchild Air Force Base celebrated Anderson’s contributions to the space program. Students at the school produced a special edition of Eagle News, the student news program, which included a brief b...
Some of the robotics club members and mentor Dennis Schweikhardt watch their robot take a test run around the high school shop. The competitive spirit is heating up for the robotics club at Medical Lake High School. Students in the club are building a robot to compete in the FIRST Robotics competition April 3 at Eastern Washington University. Their task is to build a robot that can perform one of two tasks. This year, students’ robots can either throw a Frisbee through different slots or climb a pyramid made of PVC pipes. T...
The Medical Lake City Council was described as having done nothing to enhance the city or the community at its Tuesday, Feb. 19 meeting. Medical Lake resident and food bank president Bob Kibling spoke at length regarding a lack of support for the annual Founder’s Day celebration in the city. Kibling ended his two-year run of organizing the festival last year. Since then, few people have been interested in volunteering and organizing the event, leaving it to the city’s parks and recreation coordinator, Ashlee King, to tak...
Voters turned down Spokane County Proposition 1 on Tuesday, Nov. 5, defeating it by 51.2 percent, leaving many questions hanging in the balance. Proposition 1 would have raised $18 million in property taxes over nine years to buy mobile home parks in Accident Potential Zone Two, an identified encroachment to Fairchild Air Force Base. Residents living in the area would have been relocated and the parks demolished, allowing the land to be transformed for industrial use. Without those funds, however, there won’t be much a...
On Friday,May 3, three airmen from Fairchild Air Force Base perished in the crash of a KC-135 aircraft near Chon-Aryk, Kyrgyzstan. Capt. Mark T. Voss, 27, of Boerne, Texas; Capt. Victoria A. Pinckney, 27, of Colorado Springs, Colo. and Tech. Sgt. Herman Mackey III, 30, of Bakersfield, Calif. were lost in the incident, the cause of which is still under investigation. The 93rd Air Refueling Squadron is part of the 92nd Air Refueling Wing at Fairchild. The crew were just one of m...
A new chapter is begging for the Seattle Mariners. Last week, Mariners President and Chief Operating Officer Chuck Armstrong announced his retirement at the end of January 2014. Let’s be honest, given the history of the franchise, it’s long overdue. With a 2,145-2,321 (.480) record in his tenure with the Mariners, Armstrong’s teams weren’t able to break even in his 30-plus years of service since 1983, with some time off between 1990-1992. From the fan perspective, and from a shareholder’s perspective, that means we didn’t ge...
The Medical Lake School District board of directors received a lesson in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) from some of the district’s students at its meeting last Tuesday. At the Nov. 26 meeting, the students went through their various presentations given at a recent West Plains Chamber of Commerce breakfast. Ranging from the high school’s robotics demonstration to middle school biomedical lessons and a run through of how a circuit works from the elementary school level. When asked by the board wha...
The future of solid waste disposal in Airway Heights took precedence at the Nov. 25 City Council study session. Cheney Councilman Doug Nixon and Cheney Public Works Director Todd Ableman sat in on a workshop to discuss solid waste disposal alternatives. Airway Heights’ agreement with Spokane County expires in November next year, and needs to formalize a direction to pursue. At face value, the big issue surrounding a solid waste contract was the finances involved. “I think it’ll save you money in the long run. Lots of money...
Voters turned down Spokane County Proposition 1 on Tuesday, Nov. 5, defeating it by 51.2 percent, leaving many questions hanging in the balance. Proposition 1 would have raised $18 million in property taxes over nine years to buy mobile home parks in Accident Potential Zone Two, an identified encroachment to Fairchild Air Force Base. Residents living in the area would have been relocated and the parks demolished, allowing the land to be transformed for industrial use. Without those funds, however, there won’t be much a...
The Medical Lake Planning Commission heard two presentations at its Thursday, Nov. 21 meeting, detailing future transportation and residential development in the city and surrounding region. Kathleen Weinand, an assistant planner with the city of Spokane, said the department has been going to cities throughout the West Plains and presenting a new traffic master plan to construct roadways “We realized the site lacked certain infrastructure, especially with regard to transportation,” she said. Weinand said the West Plains has s...
Air Force officials listened to local comments last Wednesday, Nov. 20 at Spokane's Lincoln Center regarding the potential location for its next generation tanker. The public hearing was held following the release of the draft Environmental Impact Study for the KC-46A rollout, scheduled to take place over the next few years. Fairchild Air Force Base was selected as one of the alternatives to be the main operating base. McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas was selected as the pre...
The Cheney High School girls' swimming team placed 13th out of 35 teams at the state swimming competition this past weekend at the Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way, Wash. Four swimmers made it to the competition, with three qualifying for races. The 200 medley relay team, consisting of Kaylie Watters, Alexis Schmidt, Brittany Meyer and Makenzie Norman, placed 13th with a time of 2 minutes, 4.23 seconds. That team also placed in the 200 free relay, coming...
Microsoft is about to see big change in the upcoming year as its CEO Steve Ballmer steps down in the coming months. Ballmer has been the main guy at the company since 2000, during which operating systems from Vista to Windows 8 were unveiled. Think about it, in the past 13 years, a lot has changed. An article in the Wall Street Journal went through Ballmer’s heights and pitfalls as CEO, touching on the company’s growth and expansion while failing to make that big splash in a market that’s diversifying. I dabble in both Windo...
The Medcial Lake City Council passed the first reading of the city’s 2014 budget at its Tuesday, Nov. 19 meeting. Prior to the budget’s first reading, the council held a public hearing to go over some of the finer points for next year. City Administrator Doug Ross said not much has changed from 2013, given the city’s generally flat revenue stream year-to-year. “We’re not adding stuff,” he said. Finance Director Jennifer Hough echoed Ross’ point, noting that there were limitations to the city’s budget. “You’re still limited as...
More transportation planning was the focus at the Monday, Nov. 18 Airway Heights City Council meeting. Spokane Planning Department’s Louis Miller went through the latest transportation study conducted by the department, which projects traffic out to roughly 10 years into the future. “This began in earnest a little less than a year ago, after the annexation took place,” he said. The plan not only focuses on automobile transportation, but freight and bicycle traffic as well. Miller said the size of the West Plains study area...
The city of Airway Heights is in dire need of planning commissioners. After several meetings were canceled this year due to a lack of quorum, it’s beginning to affect some proposed projects in the city. The latest meeting, Wednesday, Nov. 13, was among those canceled. The Planning Commission’s membership held fairly steady at the beginning of the year, but commissioners started leaving toward the start of the summer due to other commitments or time constraints. The commission’s newest member attended only one meeting befor...
Much of Medical Lake’s 2014 preliminary budget remains unchanged from this year. Overall, the city has a $9,291,652 total budget for 2014, up from the projected $9,090,791 budget for 2013. The Current Expense fund is set to increase from $2,930,148 to $3,230,629 in 2014. Property and excise taxes are the largest sources of revenue for the general fund. The City Council held a public hearing on the preliminary 2014 budget at its Tuesday, Nov. 19 meeting. One noticeable decrease in the 2014 budget is the streets fund, which d...
Colville eliminated Cheney from the District 7 2A volleyball tournament with a 3-0 shutout, putting to rest a strong year for the Blackhawks team. Cheney faced Deer Park and Pullman in two separate games Nov. 6 in the first round of district matches, narrowly defeating Deer Park 3-0 but then being shut out by Pullman. Senior Ashley Seiler had 19 kills in the first match, but fell to 10 in the second, limited by the Pullman defense. Senior Kinsey Pease had a strong performance against Deer Park, turning in 32 assists, but...
Nathan Harries found out about NCAA rules the hard way this summer as he was about to start his freshman year at Colgate University in New York. Instead of getting ready for the upcoming basketball season, he found himself with one year of his NCAA eligibility removed. The decision was reversed a week ago after numerous media outlets began sharing the story. This summer, Harries participated in the Dunwoody Baptist Church’s basketball league after returning from serving his mission with the LDS Church. According to NCAA r...
MacKenna Jones' Fallen Soldier memorial statue at the Washington State Veterans Cemetery in Medical Lake was unveiled in a big way this month. "I grew up around veterans and my dad is one, too. He served in the Navy for 27 years. We also recently lost a friend of ours from church who was a Pearl Harbor survivor," she said in a June 2013 Cheney Free Press interview. The memorial statue was unveiled Saturday, Nov. 2 at the veterans cemetery, featuring numerous community groups...
The U.S. Air Force has scheduled numerous public hearings across the country for the public to comment on a draft Environmental Impact Statement regarding the rollout of its new KC-46A fleet. One of those is coming to Spokane, due to Fairchild Air Force Base being chosen as an alternative location for the main operating base. Earlier this year, McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas narrowly beat the West Plains base in the running to station the first set of new aircraft....
Airway Heights is in the middle of another budgeting season, working to create a balanced budget for 2014. The budget still has a $126,000 gap in the current expense fund, which the city is working to close. Also still hanging in the balance are contract negotiations for public safety guild employees. As a result, cost of living adjustments and medical coverage adjustments aren’t factored in at the moment. This marked the second public hearing regarding the budget, following the first Oct. 21 to discuss revenue sources. A p...
Last Tuesday, Oct. 29, representatives from Horizon 2040 held an open house at the Cheney Library for the public to comment on the future of transportation in the Spokane region. The event was to gauge public opinions on the regional transportation plan, which sets in motion goals to have a well-maintained, integrated, accessible and multi-modal transportation system by 2040. Among the transportation issues affecting West Plains residents is improving SR 904 from Cheney to Fou...
A second public hearing at the Monday, Nov. 4 Airway Heights City Council meeting regarding the 2014 budget covered a summary of projected expenses next year. Continuing the beginning stages of the city’s budgeting season, City Treasurer Richard Cook went through a summary of the expenses listed in the current draft form of the 2014 budget. Largely, next year’s budget retains the same levels as this years, changing very little. Among the transfers of money include $125,000 from the current expense fund to the street fun...
