The County Lines

WASHINGTON

Adams County

Ritzville

“The Basket,” a film written and produced by Spokane’s North By Northwest Productions, is coming to the Ritz Theater here Friday through Sunday. Most of the movie was shot just 30 miles away at Lamont, Wash. It centers around basketball in a small wheat-growing town during World War I.

Ferry County

Republic

Ferry County Co-op is sponsoring another “Tasteful Evenings Project” on Saturday at 7 p.m. It will feature the Haran Dancers, a 70-member Irish step-dancing troupe from Stevens County. All proceeds will go to Community Youth Ministries.

Grant County

Moses Lake

The second harvest may be the turning point for Pacific Northwest Sugar Co. The sugar-beet processing plant is humming along, producing more and better sugar than last year. The 1998 harvest went well, but problems with machinery kept hundreds of pounds of sugar beets rotting on the loading dock.

Lincoln County

Davenport

Hoping to give his customers a leg up on osteoporosis, pharmacist Tom Paul will offer screening tests for bone mineral density on Friday and Saturday at his Lincoln County pharmacy. Tests will be given at a reduced cost of $35, and results will be provided immediately. Bone mass density usually peaks in the mid-30s. Osteoporosis can progress without pain until a bone fracture occurs.

Pend Oreille County

Newport

District Judge Phillip Van de Veer is giving first-time driver’s license losers a break. The judge says many county residents cannot pay the entire fine to reinstate their suspended licenses. “They need their license to get to work to earn the money to pay the fine,” he says. So the county has begun a payment system, with an initial payment of $75 to $150.

Spokane County

Spokane

The public is invited to a spaghetti dinner and music fund-raiser for the Hillyard Heritage Fire and Rail Museum on Oct. 22 from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Northeast Community Center, 4001 N. Cook. Cost is $5 for adults and $4 for senior citizens and children.

Stevens County

Chewelah

The Colville Valley Partners Habitat for Humanity group is hoping to finish its home in Chewelah before winter. State Reps. Cathy McMorris and Bob Sump and state Sen. Bob Morton all volunteered for a day to swing a hammer. Volunteer labor still is needed at the home at Ridge and Robert streets; regular workdays are Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Whitman County

Colfax

Inmate crews are picking up litter under a joint program of the county Public Works Department, the Sheriff’s Department and the state Department of Corrections. Crews of five to nine inmates have gone out 27 times and have cleaned up more than 675 miles of roadside. They have picked up 705 bags of litter and 327 bags of aluminum cans in addition to tires, signs, barbed wire, hypodermic needles, marijuana and other discarded items. In all, 14,760 pounds of litter were brought to the landfill this season.

IDAHO

Benewah County

St. Maries

A St. Maries committee is gathering information and studying the possibility of drug testing for St. Maries students involved in extracurricular activities. The committee will make a recommendation to the board of trustees on whether to adopt a drugtesting policy. In addition to testing students, the question of testing coaches was raised during the committee’s first meeting last month.

Bonner County

Sandpoint

John Fitzgerald, a 1999 Sandpoint High School graduate, recently participated in a research program in Boston University’s College of Engineering. Fitzgerald, who assisted in analyzing data about lungs damaged by ventilators, plans to major in biomedical engineering.

Boundary County

Bonners Ferry

The U.S. Army is offering three new cash bonuses for people who enlist prior to Dec. 27. Bonuses are $3,000 for new soldiers who enlist for airborne training, $8,000 for new soldiers who have earned college credit and $4,000 for qualified applicants who enlist for three or more years and report for active duty by Dec. 27.

Kootenai County

Coeur d’Alene

A meeting on the proposed community center will be held at 6 p.m. today at Woodland Middle School. The meeting is being sponsored by the Center Project Foundation. The $6.3 million project is on the Nov. 2 ballot.

Latah County

Moscow

The Moscow Community Theatre’s production of the comedy “Love, Sex and the IRS” runs through Saturday. Performances begin at 6 p.m. in the old Sears space in Moscow’s Eastside Marketplace. A matinee featuring a dessert buffet also will be held Saturday at 1 p.m. The eight-member cast has been rehearsing since Aug. 20. Dinner tickets are $18 for adults and $15 for students and senior citizens. Matinee tickets are $13 and $10. For more information, call the community theater at (208) 882-4731.

Shoshone County

Kellogg

Blood screening in the Silver Valley will be the focus of a meeting sponsored by the Panhandle Health District today at 7 p.m. at Kellogg Middle School. Blood screening, conducted in July and August, was expanded from the Bunker Hill Superfund area to the entire Coeur d’Alene River basin this year.

MONTANA

Lincoln County

Libby

The Kootenai National Forest’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2000, which began Oct. 1, contains less timber money than last year. The tentative $20,393,000 budget is about 11 percent lower that the budget for 1998-99. The preliminary calculation for the timber program, which accounts for about 15 percent of the reduction, is $7.2 million, down from $8.5 million for fiscal year 1999.