Spokane updates water agreement with Airway Heights
The city of Spokane has agreed to provide more water to Airway Heights.
The city council voted last night to allow the two cities to amend a four-decade-old agreement that was originally written to provide water on an emergency basis to the West Plains city. Spokane increased its allocation in 2017 after P-FAS contamination was discovered in private wells near the city.
Airway Heights City Manager Albert Tripp said his city secured 15-million dollars in state money to improve and increase its connections to the Spokane water system.
He said that money has been put to work on several projects, including a new reservoir near the airport.
“This does well for our future growth. It allows us to plan out into the future, which we weren’t able to do so back in 2017 with the water supply in question in terms of how we were going to replace it," Tripp said. "This provides water within the city of Airway Heights for those future opportunities as well.”
The amended agreement does not provide new water for homeowners outside the city whose wells are contaminated, said Tripp.
Kohberger murder trial will not happen in Latah County
District Court Judge John Judge said Brian Kohberger’s lawyers convinced him there’s a good chance that intense news coverage has made it unlikely that their client can get a fair trial in Moscow. They’ve suggested Boise as a more palatable option.
Judge’s order said that even if attorneys could agree on 12 people to hear the case in Moscow, the county wasn’t prepared to host such a long, intense trial, estimated to last three months. He said the Latah County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t have enough officers to provide security and do the rest of their job protecting the community.
Judge also wrote that the court clerk’s office doesn’t have the personnel to carry out the process of sifting through thousands of potential jurors. And he added the Latah County Courthouse is physically inadequate for such an important trial and that county business in other departments would be disrupted.
Judge didn’t determine which Idaho city would be a better venue. He said the state Supreme Court should make that decision and assign a new judge to the case.
Kohberger is charged with murdering four University of Idaho students in November 2022.
State employee federation to briefly walk off the job today
The Washington Federation of State Employees says the number of people working for the state has had a 40 percent turnover in the last eight years.
The federation represents workers in almost a dozen agencies ranging from the Department of Social and Health Services to Everett Community College.
Current staff levels are making it difficult to provide help such as unemployment or food benefits, said federation Vice President Ashley Fueston. She also said it’s a safety issue for people in the state’s care.
“For those who are being served in an institution or in incarceration, they're at risk of injuries or violence because there are not enough staff to keep them safe,” Fueston said.
The state says it is facing challenging fiscal choices and is expecting lower revenue in the next two years.
The Federation is asking for a wage increase and safeguards against things like mandatory overtime.
The deadline for an agreement is October 1.
The walkout isn’t intended to affect the public much. Employees at more 100 state office locations are being encouraged to walk off the job during their lunch hours. They are then expected to return to work.
WSU researcher to study real-time reactions to tonight’s debate
Tonight, Paul Bolls will conduct what he calls one of the most exciting studies of his career. Bolls, a researcher at Washington State University who studies how people react to media content and technology, will track how a group of people react to the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
“Participants in the study are going to be asked to wear a ring on their finger,” Bolls said. “This ring measures emotional responses on a second-by-second basis in response to the broadcast of the debate.”
Bolls said he hopes the findings of tonight’s project will help journalists and citizens understand how they can improve political discourse.
For the study group, Bolls was recruiting 20 Republicans and 20 Democrats between the ages of 30 and 65. Early results of the debate night study will be released Wednesday morning.
Several Inland Northwest athletes medal in Paris
The Paralympic Games in Paris are over and athletes with Inland Northwest ties are bringing home several medals.
Spokane-based sprinter Taylor Swanson’s Paralympics began with a thud when she fell while running in the 200 meter finals. She got up and finished the race, but well out of the medals chase. She came back in the 100 meters and finished second to a Chinese woman who is the dominant sprinter in that division. Swanson supplemented that silver medal with a bronze in a 4 x 100-meter relay race.
Swanson was the only one of the three current athletes from ParaSport Spokane to get to the medals podium. But two others who have been affiliated with the organization in the past are bringing medals home.
Wheelchair racer Susannah Scaroni from Tekoa won four medals. The last was a bronze in the marathon on the meet’s final morning. The six-time Bloomsday wheelchair champion also won a silver in the 5000 meters and bronze, in the 800 and 1500 meters.
Jaleen Roberts, a sprinter from Kent who attended Eastern Washington University, won two medals, a silver in the long jump and bronze in the 100 meters.
Mead wheelchair racer Hannah Dederick just missed a medal with a fourth-place place in the 400-meter race.
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Reporting contributed by Doug Nadvornick and Mayowa Aina.