Valley educator earns Ecology prize
A Spokane Valley educator has been given the top award bestowed by the Washington state Department of Ecology.
The agency announced Friday that the Environmental Excellence Award has been given to Tom Moore of the West Valley School District.
Moore has been heading up the district’s four-year-old Outdoor Learning Center. The center includes four acres of trout ponds, a nature trail and a hawk and owl sanctuary. Students from West Valley and other school districts pack the center each day for a hands-on educational experience.
Moore will become the principal of the district’s City School in the fall.
Mead’s Swanson gets interim leader post
The Mead School District appointed assistant superintendent Al Swanson as the interim superintendent following last week’s announcement that the current district leader, Steve Enoch, is leaving for a job in California.
Enoch took the superintendent position of the San Juan Unified School District in Sacramento.
Swanson joined the Mead School District in 1984 as the business manager. A news release from the district this week said the Mead board will begin a search for a permanent superintendent in the fall.
Treasurer calls for shutdown of monorail project
Seattle The rising cost of the Seattle Monorail Project – now estimated at as much as $11.4 billion – has made it unaffordable and the project should be shut down, state Treasurer Mike Murphy says.
“The average guy can’t afford a Ferrari because he can’t afford it,” Murphy said Wednesday. “There should be somebody at the monorail (board) saying we can’t afford this thing.”
The $2.1 billion project is for construction of a 14-mile system linking Ballard, the Seattle Center, downtown and West Seattle. City voters have approved monorail ballot propositions in four elections.
The $11.4 billion tab, noted in documents released this week by project directors, includes financing costs over a period of 40 years or more.
The norm for financing public projects is double the initial construction cost, after including interest to be paid on bonds, Murphy said. The monorail tab works out to 5 1/2 times the construction cost.
That’s not acceptable, Murphy said.
Ski area developer Virginia Kehr dies
Chelan, Wash. Virginia M. Kehr, who with her husband built the Stevens Pass ski area, is dead at age 90.
Kehr, who grew up in Cle Elum and Seattle before working as an early business manager and co-owner of the ski operation along U.S. 2, died June 17 at her home, relatives said.
She learned to ski after she and her husband Bruce were married in 1942, five years after he and Don Adams installed the first rope tows at Stevens Pass. In the mid-1940s the Kehrs installed a T-bar lift to the shoulder of Barrier Mountain south of the lodge, and in 1953 the T-bar was replaced with a Riblet chairlift.
The Kehrs bought out Adams and became sole owners in 1960, installed seven chairlifts and improved gross returns to $1 million a year before selling the operation to Harbor Properties in 1977. The ski area now has 10 ski lifts reaching 37 runs on 1,125 acres.
Bruce Kehr, an Olympic ski team alternate in 1936, was named to the Northwest Ski Hall of Fame in 2000.
Fair leader, politician William Stoner dies
Puyallup, Wash. William S. Stoner, a political powerhouse in Pierce County and former board president of the Western Washington Fair, one of the largest in the nation, is dead at 76.
Stoner, who served terms as mayor and as chairman of the County Council, ran a small janitorial business, taught school and wrote for newspapers, died at his home Wednesday after about a decade of battling prostate cancer, relatives, friends and associates said.
“Puyallup and Pierce County just lost a major influence in our communities,” said Doug Sutherland, state commissioner of public lands, who was county executive when Stoner was on the County Council.
Stoner grew up in Puyallup, coached the rifle team at Puyallup High School in the 1950s and wrote for the Tacoma News Tribune, now The News Tribune, about municipal politics while he was serving on the Puyallup City Council in the 1960s. He served on the council for 23 years and was mayor in 1974-75 and 1982-83.
He returned to college at Pacific Lutheran University to earn a teaching degree and was named to the fair board in 1968. In recent years he sought to increase the number of events to keep the fairgrounds in use year round and supported construction of a $14 million exhibition center that is scheduled to open this fall.
Stoner was a member of the County Council for more than 10 years, including four years as chairman. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the state Legislature as a Republican in 1968 and as a Democrat in 1978.
Honest clerk returns winning lottery ticket
Stayton, Ore. Leslee Hobson isn’t just lucky when it comes to lottery tickets. She is lucky she buys her coffee from John Martin each morning.
Hobson brought three Powerball tickets into the Circle K convenience store in Stayton on May 29.
Martin, a clerk at the store, went through the tickets and returned her winnings of $3. One of the tickets, however, couldn’t be processed.
“Something came up on the screen on the Lottery machine I’d never seen before,” Martin said. “It said, ‘This is not a ticket.’ “
Hobson left with her coffee and Martin tossed the tickets, but the message stayed on the lottery machine. When Martin looked closer, he saw that the prize had to be picked up at the Lottery office. He retrieved the ticket and checked the numbers. Hobson had won $100,000.
Not knowing where to find her, but knowing she came into the Circle K each morning, he pocketed the ticket and waited for the next day when Hobson came in.
Hobson was skeptical at first: “I told him, ‘This is Memorial Day, not April Fool’s Day. I don’t believe you.’ “
To Martin, keeping the ticket would have been the same as stealing.
“It wouldn’t have been worth the $100,000 to me,” he said. “I would have had to live with it. That would have made the money not worth anything.”
Hobson gave Martin a $200 tip after he returned her lottery ticket.