News

By DAVID TELLER Staff Reporter Cheney Municipal Court administrator Terry Cooper received somewhat of a promotion. In January, Judge Greg Tripp appointed Cooper and she officially took over the court administrator commissioner for the retired Commissioner, Pat Warnick. She has had commissioner duties since 2004, with the amount of cases she hears in the Cheney Municipal Court gradually increasing. Cooper got her start in the court system in the late 1990s in Medical Lake. She had been working at the Washington State...

CHENEY March 20 ID theft was reported on the zero hundred block of North Sixth Street. Nathan R. Tronrud, 30, was taken into custody at Cheney Municipal Court on a court commitment stemming from a driving under the influence (DUI) arrest. A report of an unruly student was made at Salnave Elementary School. Second-degree theft was reported at Willow Springs. A digital camera was taken from a table in the bar. Vince C. Calabres, 22, was arrested on the 1500 block of First Street for third-degree driving while license is...

By CARA LORELLO Staff Reporter Medical Lake City Council approved authorization of an alternate public defender contract that will appoint attorneys to represent indigent defendants in cases of conflict. The motion, approved on March 18, falls under a recently added provision of Medical Lake Municipal Court for public defender services for indigent defendants. In February, the city was awarded a $5,000 grant from the Washington State Office of Public Defense (WSOPD) to help fund services for indigent defendants, part of a...

By DAVID TELLER Staff Reporter What started as a yard sale buy in 1975 has grown to a collection too big for his house. Carl Schwenn, an electrician for the Cheney School District ,has such a large art collection he shares it by hanging it on the walls of the school district buildings. The collection has also got him a feature on the television show, Northwest Profiles. The beginning of the collection was purely accidental. He said he stopped at the yard sale of a woman living in a boxcar. Next to it, she had a tarpaper...

By DAVID TELLER Staff Reporter Smoldering rubble, structure supports and a floor are about all that's left of a Cheney trailer home. The resident, a young man in his early 20s was awakened by a popping and crackling sound from within his home late Tuesday afternoon. He opened the door to the bedroom and was met by a heavy smoke. He jumped out his bedroom window to safety. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Cheney Fire Chief Mike Winters said there were no other occupants or pets. The blaze happened in a unit...

By CRAIG HOWARD Contributing Writer – Spokane Valley News Herald Each day, Debi Gallagher makes strides in the fight against cancer. As the community relations director for the local branch of the American Cancer Society, Gallagher helps get the word out about educational resources and events like the Relay for Life, an annual fund-raiser held at half-a-dozen sites throughout the Greater Spokane area, including Cheney and Spokane Valley. Cancer survivors gather at each relay to draw support from one another and talk about t...

CHENEY March 14 A 1995 green Ford Taurus was taken without owner's permission from the 2400 block of University Lane. A subject suspected of being mentally ill on the 400 block of First Street was involuntarily committed. March 13 Second-degree malicious mischief was reported on the zero hundred block of Second Street when damage to a bicycle seat was discovered. Child abuse and neglect was reported on the 1400 block of Second Street. Investigation is pending. Child abuse and neglect was reported on the 700 block of West...

The McCarthy Center will be filled with screaming fans on Saturday March 22, but no basketballs will be in sight. Instead cheering will be for 1,500 youth wrestlers ranging in age from 5 to 14, competing in the annual Jason Crawford Memorial Wrestling Tournament. Doors open at 9:30 a.m. and admission is $1. The tournament, hosted by the Mat Maulers Wrestling Club out of Medical Lake, will consist of 18 matches running simultaneously throughout the entirety of the tournament. All wrestlers are from the Washington Little Guys W...

Calling the decision an extraordinary victory for voters, Secretary of State Sam Reed and Attorney General Rob McKenna applauded the March 18 decison of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding Washington's wide open, top-two primary. The 7-2 decision handed down follows years of court battles over the primary and the rights of voters to choose any candidate on the ballot. In a top-two primary, voters do not have to declare any party affiliation, and can vote for any candidate, regardless of the candidate's political party...

By CARA LORELLO Staff Reporter March 14 was a day of firsts and lasts for nine Pine Lodge Correction Center residents, whom staff and about 20 family members recognized for completing 12 of 18 months of the Department of Corrections Eastern Region Infinity Therapeutic Community program. The program is part of DOC's many health care services administered by state licensed providers and chemical dependency specialists, which are made available to offenders who are admitted to Pine Lodge diagnosed with chemical dependencies, or...

By DAVID TELLER Staff Reporter What started out with lackluster results has grown and continued to show positive results. The Eastern Washington University/Cheney branch of the Sheriff's Community Oriented Policing Effort (S.C.O.P.E.) has been in Cheney since 1995. Unit president Terry Munro said the program has increased four-fold since 2000. Between flagging traffic at local events, fingerprinting children and taking digital pictures for Operation Family Identification (OFID) as part of the Amber Alert system and doing thei...

By DAVID TELLER Staff Reporter Cheney Police Cpl. Chris English has a colorful background and his co-workers know it. As part of the community policing program, the veteran officer brings a lot of experience to Cheney residents. He has seen a lot in his 11 years in law enforcement. English's area of responsibility is from North Sixth to Elm to Washington streets, and from Betz Road to Washington Street. His sector is a combination of city residents and college students. “A big portion of Eastern (Washington University) is i...

By JOHN McCALLUM Editor After seven months of postponements the Cheney Planning Commission has finally approved and forwarded the capital facilities chapter of the city's comprehensive plan to the City Council for final adoption. The commission began the updating process last August by taking testimony and reviewing proposed projects lists submitted by all city departments with one exception – water facilities. At the same time the commission began its process the City Council invoked a moratorium on building permits and a...

Dan Hilton, left, the owner of Sears at 10 West First St., Cheney, stands with store manager Paul Holloway as they display the collection they made from a food drive they ran in December 2007. The two men estimate they collected about 900 pounds of non-perishable food items and await pick-up from Second Harvest food bank. - Photo by David Teller...

The TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) process for WRIA 43, Upper Crab Creek/Wilson Creek Watershed, has started and will be facilitated by the Department of Ecology. The TMDL will address water quality impairments in Crab Creek and its tributaries. Residents, landowners along streams in WRIA 43, and all other affected parties in the watershed are invited to participate and provide input to the TMDL. Input from the public is needed right away to answer the following two questions: 1.What type of TMDL approach should be used in...

Eastern Washington University and Community Colleges of Spokane have expanded their four-year-old international student joint admission and transfer program, now giving these students guaranteed admission to EWU's master's degree program in business administration once they have satisfactorily completed their associate of arts and baccalaureate degrees at CCS and EWU respectively. Under the current CCS/EWU 2 + 2 agreement, which was implemented in 2004, international students who earn A.A. degrees at Spokane Community...

By CARA LORELLO Staff Reporter The Eastern Washington State Veterans Cemetery governing council met with officials from design firm JGM and Associates on March 5 at Spokane International Airport to review several site plans being proposed for a new state veterans cemetery, located west of Medical Lake that's expected to break ground in May 2009. In a public meeting following the design committee's discussion, council chairman Neal Sealock announced three of the six site plans reviewed were selected and will be forwarded to th...

By DAVID TELLER Staff Reporter Cheney teens and young adults now have a place to go that is risk free. Last January, Jason and Mindy States opened the doors to The Rock, a Christian outreach center at 1404 First St. “We desire to show them that there is a God that loves them very much and wants to see them succeed,” States said. He added it's definitely not a church, it is a place where ministries from a church will happen. States explains the outreach center, saying society is in a post-church era and he and his wife are...

By CARA LORELLO Staff Reporter For a guy who admits he's made every business mistake possible, Cheney Copy Junction owner Roger Hagenbuch's philosophy on building a good rapport with customers is a tough one to argue about. “A happy customer is a returning customer—an unhappy one is not,” the eight-year Cheney resident said from the newly opened Copy Junction in Airway Heights. The store, located at 12015 West 14th Avenue (next door to Curves), is roughly half the size of Cheney's Copy Junction, which Hagenbuch and wife Wanda...

The Spokane County Board of Commissioners (BOCC) is planning a meeting to hear public testimony on what role, if any, the county should play in the future of Spokane Raceway Park (SRP). The meeting will be held Tuesday, March 18 at the Spokane interstate Fair and Expo Center. Don Schumacher, a consultant with DSA Sports will present the results of a feasibility study that was conducted at the request of the BOCC. The feasibility study is also available at www.spokanecounty.org/parks. Spokane Raceway Park is a 198-acre site...

By CARA LORELLO Staff Reporter All property owners around Silver Lake are being encouraged to attend a March 18 public meeting organized by a local steering committee comprised of 15 property owners, who are heading ongoing management efforts to eradicate the lake of Eurasian milfoil. The meeting is open to all lake property owners and other people interested in hearing updates about the eradication effort and what residents must do to acquire the grant funding they need for initial treatments to the lake. Eurasian milfoil...

Once again this year, the city of Cheney is pleased to provide the public with a convenient means of disposing of their yard waste material. The Cheney yard waste site is located next to the Cheney Recycling Center at 100 Anderson Road. The yard waste program has proven to be extremely beneficial in that the yard waste that is disposed of by the public is used as a bulking agent in the production of the city's bio-solid compost. Yard waste is hauled from the yard waste disposal site out to the city's advanced wastewater...

By DAVID TELLER Staff Reporter Cheney police have another man on the job in the downtown area. Officer Dave Bailey is assigned the northern part of downtown as part of the community policing program implemented by Cheney Police Department. The area he is assigned is everything southeast of a boundary running from Third and A streets to the corner of North Second and Elm streets, up Seventh Street to Clay Street. Much of it encompasses the northern part of the downtown. Bailey said he is aware of some addresses in his...

By DAVID TELLER Staff Reporter Though it's not through traditional means, the Cheney Fire Department will get two more firefighters. The expanded fire department comes via a $210,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant. Lt. Ken Johnson applied for the grant. The grant is open yearly to applicants, but once it is awarded, Cheney Fire Chief Mike Winters said, it is a “once in a lifetime” opportunity. He hopes he will hire two level-one fir...

CHENEY March 7 Matthew McNamara, 26, was arrested on the 200 block of K Street for a warrant from Spokane Superior Court for failure to appear stemming from a possession of a controlled substance arrest. March 6 Domestic violence was reported on the 2400 block of University Lane. Dispute was verbal only. A two-car, non-injury collision was reported on the 100 block of Holladay Drive. March 5 Second-degree rape was reported on the 3000 block of Meadow Glenn Lane. A subject was booked for Eastern Washington University police...