Sorted by date Results 1731 - 1755 of 3198
Just three-tenths of one percent, that’s all the Spokane Transit Authority is asking you to say “yes” to in an April 28 special election. At the same time many county voters will be asked to support various school measures along with funding a juvenile detention facility. STA’s Moving Forward plan literature tells us that money raised over the next 10 years — $270-300 million depending on the source — will be split in two ways. About 45 percent of the money will maintain se...
As of April 29, 2015, Medical Lake Physical Therapy will be closing its door after 10 proud and successful years providing service to this community. It is with great sadness that we are writing to announce this closure. The staff and I would like to express our sincerest gratitude for your continued support as we make this difficult transition. We did not come to this decision lightly or halfheartedly. It is unfortunate that, as a small business, we are unable to weather the storm driven by big business and the difficult...
In 2010 Cheney School District voters approved a bond for $79 million. Construction was completed in 2013/2014 on two new middle schools and elementary. The district is back with a request for $44.8 million to cover the first phase of a remodel/new construction for the high school which, when both phases are completed, will total $87.8 million. For the average homeowner this first phase will cost $150 more a year ($3,150 total). “$150 is no more that the cost of an evening out with my daughter,” a teacher argued during an...
As a product of the Cheney School District, I believe we have a commitment to our youth. But not at the expense of fixed income senior citizens through poor planning by the school board. The job of the elected school board is to be efficient and smart with our tax dollars, to plan and think long term. It seems to me that their first job is to get the state to pay for basic education. Buildings seem pretty basic to me. Second it seems that a little planning on projected student growth would have been a good idea 10 or 15...
As a parent in the Cheney School District, I urge our community to approve the Cheney High School construction bond in the April 28 election. While a bond in February had majority approval, we narrowly failed to meet the 60 percent of the vote needed to approve this important measure. In March, the school board asked parents, staff and the community how we should address the overcrowding in our high school, and the response overwhelmingly was in favor of seeking a bond to help our students and school. Turnout in February’s e...
Please remember to vote this month, and please vote “No” for the Cheney High School bond. The pro-bond information we received in the mail, the automated phone calls and the letters to the editor repeatedly emphasize the crowded condition of the high school, but they do not make financial sense. Spending $44 million of our money to correct a few problems, then asking us for even more in 10 years to correct more deficiencies is insulting. Even worse, at least one of the concerns, the “crowded cafeteria,” is a made-up issue....
Courage. What a powerful word! What do you think of when you hear the word courage? Possibly a firefighter rushing into a burning building to save the person trapped inside with no concern for their own safety? Or a bystander jumping into a raging river to save a drowning person? Words like “hero”, “strength” and “bravery” come to mind. As a bit of an introduction, I am an orthodontist and I do not spend my day facing life-threatening events. When I first thought about writing this article, my thoughts were to write about...
Two new laws are going through the state Legislature that will hopefully avert some tragedies from happening in the near future. The House recently passed Senate Bill 5381, which requires law enforcement agencies to notify family members before returning firearms seized from a person involved in criminal cases, such as domestic violence, or from someone being evaluated for mental illness. After an individual requests the return of their firearm, police have to hold the weapon for 72 hours after receiving a request from a...
Thank you to all the families who came out to participate in the 2015 Egg Hunt April 4 at Salnave Park. Cheney Kiwanis also thanks the following groups for their assistance in providing this free family activity: Omega Delta Phi fraternity and Kappa Delta Chi sorority (both at Eastern Washington University) for providing several prize baskets and helping with setup and clean up; Cheney Assisted Living residents for placing candies into approximately 5,000 plastic eggs; Cheney Fire Department for bringing a fire truck to the...
We are writing to support the Cheney School District’s high school bond measure in the April 28 election. As retired educators from Cheney School District and Eastern Washington University, we are so proud of our growing school district, and this bond continues our investment in our students and schools. We were very disappointed with the Free Press editorial on March 26. Anyone who has been in Cheney High School knows the immediate need for relief for our kids, who are trying to learn in portables, who are eating lunch in h...
Trust. It’s something that is paramount in our personal relationships. At work trust is a two-way street between management and employees — and visa-versa. In day-to-day life we all put implicit trust in so many areas it is difficult to quantify them. But sometimes, when you least expect it, that trust is shattered in the most outlandish manner, as was the case March 24 when an obscure German, Andreas Lubitz, became the center of conversations in nations across the globe. It was the 27-year-old Lubitz, the co-pilot of a Ger...
Thank you to the Cheney Free Press for your opinion on the Cheney School District’s bond issue published in last week’s Cheney Free Press. I attended the last school board meeting and was appalled by their lack of response to a taxpayer’s comments living near Snowdon Elementary. She stated she was a single parent, owned her home, a workingwoman and receiving treatment for cancer. When she asked the district to reconsider the bond of $44 million for 20 years, there was no response from the school board or school admin...
Given all the frothing by hawkish U.S. Senators about Iran’s possible development of nuclear weapons, one might think that Iran was violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But it’s not. The treaty, signed by 190 nations and in effect since 1970, is a treaty in which the non-nuclear nations agreed to forgo developing nuclear weapons and the nuclear nations agreed to divest themselves of their nuclear weapons. It also granted nations the right to develop peaceful nuclear power. The current negotiations in whi...
There’s no question that there will be an increase in train activity passing through Cheney and the West Plains in the near future. There is a $26 million shuttle loading grain terminal scheduled to be built at the intersection of Craig and Medical-Lake-Four Lakes roads. Grain cooperatives organized under Highline Grain LLC will assemble and load 110-car unit trains. Burlington Northern Santa Fe engines will pick up these trains and haul them back to BNSF lines intersecting at Cheney via the Eastern Washington Gateway b...
StageWest Community Theatre, Inc. just finished their run of Paul Elliott’s “Exit Laughing.” We enjoyed large crowds for most of our performances. We would like at this time thank the members of Emmanuel Lutheran Church for the generous use of their building for our auditions, rehearsals, and performances of this play. We would also like to give a hearty thank you to Mike Hartman for the delicious dinner he catered for our dinner theatre. More thanks also goes to the members of the community that continue to support us throu...
On April 28 the Cheney School District will rerun its $44.88 million bond issue intended to fund a massive remodeling of Cheney High School. Call it “Bond Version 2.0” if you will as if it were compared to the latest release of a software product. The district’s revised effort attempts to address minor glitches that they think resulted in the Feb. 10 ballot measure that fell about 1.5 percent — 100 voters or so we’re told — short of the 60 percent needed for passage. But is this version being rushed to taxpayers too soon ...
Folks in the Pacific Northwest may not like what Matt Ridley has to say, but we should consider his points about energy. Ridley, a British journalist and author of several popular books on science, the environment and the economy, is a businessman and member of the House of Lords. He is often shunned because he owns land where coal is mined. Recently, Ridley wrote in The Wall Street Journal that while oil, gas and coal have problems, their benefits are beyond dispute. He...
Back when some prominent Republicans were reasonable, they endorsed some measures now advocated by the Obama administration. Quickly coming to mind is Obama Care, which essentially copied Massachusetts’ 2006 health care reform under then-Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, who now effectively opposes his own plan. This Massachusetts reform included the individual mandate of Obama Care, now opposed by Republicans, but also included in the Republican response to the Clinton administration’s unsuccessful 1993 health care reform pro...
On Saturday afternoon, March 7, around 4 p.m., I left our house near Sutton Park to collect some materials from the Cheney Library. Before I opened the door to leave, I heard a train rumbling around the curve. It got louder as I approached the library, and after I checked materials out of the library, I could hear the continual clicking of the train down First Street, so I headed southwest, and met cars backed halfway down the street toward the Cheney Federal Credit Union. I continued to Mitchell’s Harvest Foods, and met m...
March 5, the Free Press printed Dave Daugharty’s letter re: Washington Policy Center (WPC) and six related issues. Dave — a long time colleague/friend — and I both wish the best for our country, our state and our people but have differing views on what that means. I wish to address each of his six points. 1. Dave’s claim: A supermajority needed for state tax increases will “ensure tyranny by the minority.” He then asks if such represents democracy. Of course not. The United States has never been a democracy but rather a repre...
As one of the “Uninformed” voters who live on the West Plains and north of Fairchild Air Force Base, I was one of the ones who voted no on the Cheney School District’s last bond issue. This was not because I don’t support schools or children’s learning, but more about living within a budget. According to my property tax statement for this year I paid $2,087.98. Out of that, $814.47 or 39 percent of all taxes raised goes to schools. Over the last few years, Cheney School District has come to the voters to approve a $79 milli...
We all should make informed decisions when we vote. In regard to the need for an auditorium at Cheney High School, I would like to address some points presented in previous letters to the editor. Perhaps on-the-job experience of a 40-year, music-teaching career will help. Multipurpose rooms One one-third of the CHS student population participates in the performing arts. Part of the students’ learning experience (required by the state) is performance etiquette while watching other groups. The multi-purpose facilities in the di...
Whoever coined the phrase, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” probably never dealt with bullies. Maybe they did but never told anyone about it. Bullying is one of those problems that never seem to go away. No matter how far advanced we like to think we are as a society, bullying continues to exist in different types of forms. I like to think bullying began in the caveman era. The bigger caveman pushed around the smaller caveman and messed up the latter’s cave paintings because he was jealous...
On the surface it certainly sounds good. Bumping the minimum wage in Washington state from its current $9.47 per hour —the highest in the nation — to $12 could help some people elevate themselves out of poverty. House Bill 1355 recently passed the Democrat-leaning chamber of the state Legislature and is now in the hands of the Senate, primarily a Republican body. The conjecture is it will either die there, or undergo significant changes before it reemerges. But before it might see daylight, what are some of the other costs be...
I’ve been thinking about Coral Muscarella lately. I’ve also been thinking about Lorissa Green. The latter many area residents will remember as the Cheney High School 16-year-old girl killed in a Jan. 17, 2009 collision at what used to be the at-grade intersection of Cheney-Spokane Road and State Route 195. Thanks to the dedicated, focused efforts of her mother, Debbie Hammel, who worked tirelessly to make legislators aware of the dangers, that deadly intersection is no more — replaced by a safer, $11 million inter...
