NEWS UNBROKEN
Stevens County Morning News
And a real good Monday morning. It's going to be hot. It's already getting hot. We're going to talk about that weather forecast coming up here in just a little bit, but it is a heat advisory. They have shortened it up a little bit. The National Weather Service now says the heat advisory here in Colville will run through 10 p.m. on Wednesday instead of the entire week, but dangerously hot conditions during the day will be up there near triple digits. Colville, Kettle Falls, Shoeila, Northport. Hot temperatures can cause heat illness. You want to make sure to drink plenty of fluids? If you can, stay in an air conditioned room, stay out of the sun. Also really a good idea, check on your neighbors, check on relatives, take a few extra precautions. If you're going to be outside where light weight, loose fitting clothing, try and limit your strenuous activities, also do keep in mind the occupational safety and health rules into effect because the first set started at 80 degrees. We're going to be up at that triple digit today. So three rest breaks, shaded or air conditioned environments got to have a lot of water on hand. If someone is overcome by heat, move them to a cool shaded location, heat stroke is an emergency. Immediately call 911 if there's any indication of heat stroke. Discover incredible savings during our biggest sale of the season from sleek, modern designs to a timeless classic. Find the perfect piece to elevate your space, hurry into Saunders furniture and save up to a staggering 70% off on select furniture. Don't miss this opportunity to bring style and comfort home. Visit Saunders furniture today and let us help you create the home of your dreams. Sail in soon. All right, well, you likely got a notice from the Stevens County Assessor in the mail if you own property here in Stevens County. A lot of people wondering what the Assessor's Office has been smoking. Well, we wanted to find out right first hand from the Assessor's Office how this all works. So we talked with the Assessor's Office, got details about this reassessments and some pretty hefty hikes in property values. My name is Rick Johnson, I'm the Stevens County Assessor. My name is Kate Flanagan and I'm the chief appraiser. Stevens County is broken up into six areas that we're required by statute to assess, do a physical inspection once every six years, so that's why we do it that way. The area we're going to know is cycle four, and so every six years we'll come back to it. It's a township 36 all the way down in range 37, 38, all the way down to the reservation boundary and to the river. So everything from township 36, 38 down to southwest of us and all the way to the reservation boundary and across to the river, everything to the river. The factors that determine tax increases, those factors are based on the budgets, it applies to all the budgets that are tied to a taxing district such as the school district in that taxing district, the fire district in that taxing district, the library district. We control, there's all kinds of things but taxes are based on the budgets for that district and of course you have state taxes which are primarily for schools, you know, in the state of Washington 56% of the property taxes collected go to public schools and I don't think a lot of people realize that and so when a school bond or a school levy is placed on the ballot if the voters vote for it, taxes are going to go up. Even a fire district levy on the ballot, it's going to go up if it's approved. What happens then is the treasurer looks at all the budgets and comes up with a factor based on all of the assessed value in the county and that factor is applied to the assessments value of the property. One thing, do we have the legal right to access property to assess it and I just wanted to give you the RCW that addresses that, RCW 84.40.025 and it's a law in the state of Washington that requires all taxable property in each county to be subject to visitation, investigation, examination, discovery and listing at any reasonable time by the county assessor of the county or by the any employees there designated for this purpose by the assessor. So the purpose of this law is to assess and value all taxable property in each county and that is a state code RCW revised code of Washington 84.40.025. There are a few people that may not want us there and if they don't want us there, we'll leave. Yeah. And then we have to do it per aerials if we can't figure it out so we can't look at the buildings, we can't see if there's depreciation that we should be taking off or anything like that, that's the intent is to get a good value on the property with what's going on with the buildings. But if we can't see them, then we have to assume which we don't want to do. Most of the people are really nice. Yes, there is an appeal process regarding property assessment to the county board of equalization. This is a publication by the Department of Revenue. In settling disagreements on property value they state, you can contact your county assessor's office to review your valuation whenever you have a question about your property value. Property owners can often settle disagreements at this level without continuing the appeal process. And the people that come in, I would say the majority of them get a satisfied result when they explain the situation, share with us, and we can make it proper adjustments. All right, so you got your tax, your assessment value. If you agree with it, wonderful. About 70% of my properties, I think they're kind of, I think they're high, but they're reasonable. I've got a handful of them that, man, they're like double what they're worth. I'd sell them in a heartbeat for like 70% of what the assessor says they're worth. If you feel that way, go into the assessor's office, talk to them about it, explain. You may have some unique situation, either the property needs a lot of serious work or maybe they made a mistake in your particular building. You put it off, though, you have a very limited time, you only have a week or so to go before you have to file an appeal if you don't like what the assessor's value is. So get down to the assessor's office. If you want to discuss it with them, I'm going to talk to the assessor's office some more tomorrow about some of the things that can affect the change in your property, value, and assessment. Looking for a little comfort in your life? Call the expert, your carrier dealer. Carrier dealers are the authorities at getting peak performance from your heating and cooling system. So call your carrier dealer first. He has ways of making you very comfortable. Carrier, turn to the experts at ABC Heating and Electric in Colville at 411 W. 2nd. Or call Deb for an appointment at 684-2018 or go to abc-heating.com. One more thing. When you're talking to the assessor, it's not the assessor that's raising your taxes, right? The assessor is really raising your assessed value. That's when the county commissioner types and school boards and fire districts. Those are the guys when they spend the money, they got to collect taxes. That's when your taxes go up, it's like when the county commissioner spend all kinds of money. Your taxes are going to go up. It doesn't matter what the assess value is. Look over your assess value. If you agree with it, tremendous. If you don't agree with it, go talk to the assessor's office. It's worth at least discussing it. Meeting, coming up, Colville City Hall, this meeting is tomorrow night, a few things of interest in this one, of course there's been a big hubbub between the people running the farmer's market and the city. They're going to be discussing that. Maybe the council will take action, probably will. The farmer's market is going to be on hand saying why they shouldn't have to pay some permit fees. Also, and this has gone on for so long, I don't even know if I want to talk about it. A VISTA's got back on the agenda talking about putting in electric vehicle charging stations. The fast charge station and that is in operation now down at Deer Park. They put it right at the side of the Yoke's grocery store, parking lot. Already was a paved parking lot. Well, on the other hand, where they want to put the Colville fast charge for electric vehicles that the governor says we all have to drive shortly, they want to put it there at the city parking lot on Wind Street, well, it's not a paved lot, well, they need to pave it and to pave it, it's going to take, you know, half million dollars or some crazy amount because they've got to deal with the city storm drain system and things. So up for discussion, electric vehicle charging station and improvements to the Wind Street parking lot, round number and I'm out of fingers counting how many times this has come up at council. And as everything in government does anymore, it is declaring an emergency in Colville due to hazard trees at the city park, you know, there's another one of those we've studied it and we've studied it and we've had forest guys come in and these trees are bad, these trees are bad. Now, now the city wants to declare an emergency due to trees in the city park. That's what's on the agenda tomorrow night, Colville City Council. The Kettlefall School District is currently seeking a skilled and reliable bus driver for the 2024-2025 school year. Accelerate your career in this high demand field. As a bus driver, you will be transporting students and staff on regular school routes and extracurricular activities, such as field trips. Be a part of our team and help us continue to provide safe and efficient transportation to our community. Apply online at kfschools.org or call 509-738-6625 for more information. Alright, last week, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided taking up a series of new cases on the scope of the right to bear arms. They left in place in Illinois law that bans assault-style weapons, the decision not to hear the multiple cases challenging the Illinois law means it does remain in effect. We talked with CAM Edwards from the Second Amendment Foundation. What the Supreme Court did not do with the 13 Second Amendment cases that it was sort of hanging on to a conference. So this week, the court released its final decisions from this term, and after they released their final decisions, they always hold what's called their wrap-up conference. So they'll get together behind closed doors and they'll figure out, "Alright, what are we going to do with all these pending cert petitions and things of that nature?" And this time around, they took a half-dozen prohibited persons' cases that the Biden administration had asked them to take, right, and actually hear in totality. And they said, "Actually, what we're going to do is we're going to kick all these cases back down to the lower courts." And it was called a GVR. So they granted cert, they vacated the lower court decisions, they rebanded the cases back down to the lower courts for further review. In this case, in light of what the Supreme Court said in U.S. versus Rahimi, then there were a half-dozen cases dealing with Illinois's ban on so-called "the cell weapons of large capacity magazines." And the court had actually re-listed these cases in six different conferences. And so there was this expectation that the court was going to do something with them. Oh, they didn't. They denied cert. Justice Clarence Thomas issued a statement saying that basically the Seventh Circuit has aired so far, it has gotten it wrong, and deciding that AR-15s are not protected by the Constitution. And the Second Amendment, Justice Amalito indicated that he would have granted cert and accepted this case. But the Supreme Court is basically going to let this play out at the trial court and at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, rather than answering this question about whether or not you can ban AR-15s without violating people's constitutional rights. There was another case called the Antonyuk versus James. That's a New York case that deals with one of the carry laws that was put in place after the Bruin decision. And this one, the state of New York said, "You have to be able to prove your good moral character in order for you to obtain a concealed carry license." The Supreme Court GVR'd that case as well. They granted cert. They vacated the Second Circuit's decision and said, "Go back and take a look at this and like what we said in U.S. vs. Raheeti." So it's frustrating because basically the Supreme Court has just punted on all of these cases. And it could be easily a year or more before the Illinois cases are at a position to get back to the Supreme Court. We do have a magazine ban case pinned to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. We have a so-called "A Solvents Ban case" that's been into the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. But these appellate courts can hang on to these cases as long as they want. They're not under any deadline. So it could be tomorrow. It could be six months from now. It could be a year from now before we see what the appellate courts are going to do with these critically important cases. So I wish I had better news for the Supreme Court. But it's pretty clear to me anyway that a majority of the court is not really interested in taking too many second amendment cases right now. They want to see how this plays out at the lower court level. They want to see what these lower courts are coming up with. And in the meantime, these folks who live in places like Illinois or Oregon or California, they're still having their rights violated on a daily basis. So it is a frustrating and ultimately I think it's a pointing decision by the Supreme Court not to accept any of these cases. The good cases that we've seen are not directly second amendment cases. So in Garland v. Cargill, for instance, the Supreme Court struck down the ATS ban on bump stocks, but not because of the right to keep in bear arms. It's because they said the ATF overstepped its authority and coming up with a rule that is essentially a new law that should have been written by Congress. And then, you know, we saw the Supreme Court strike down the Chevron Doctrine in Loper Bright. That was also not a second amendment case. But I think it does have good implications for raining in ATF abuses going forward. In that one true second amendment case that the court had, the Rahimi case, the court found that Zachary Rahimi could be prohibited from possessing fires because he had it domestic violence restraining order. The court found that temporarily depriving somebody of their right to keep in bear arms is just fine. So long as they judge has deemed them to be a danger to somebody else. But the way that they reach that decision was by citing two historical laws that did not actually disarm anybody, even temporarily. And so I think the court, if anything, has created more confusion about the text history and tradition test that they've laid out in Heller, McDowell, and Bruin, they seem to know what the test entails. They seem to know how to conduct this test, but they're not giving lower courts a whole lot of guidance on how they should apply this test. They keep saying, well, we know that there are a lot of these unanswered questions, but they refuse to answer the questions, which, again, why this has been, I think, such a frustrating term for the Supreme Court, at least from a second amendment perspective. All right. Now you have it continuing saga of second amendment cases. Oh, we're going to take a couple minutes here coming up. We're going to talk about things that went on the 4th of July. Art and tree farms for nearly seven decades. We've been a part of Northeast Washington caring for our forest and helping to support the people in our communities. Now we've decided to step outside the box by creating art and tree farms timberland consulting, paving the way for us to help you, whether it is questions on your timberland, needing equipment work done, or a vast array of other services, we are here to help visit us at artandtreefarmstimberlandconsulting.com or call 509-684-2507, contact us today for a free initial consultation. Sometimes people are just plain stupid. A man from Bothell, he died Friday morning, fireworks accident in a Redmond parking lot. 45 years old, old enough, he out of known better. It was light enough fireworks with his family when he tried to launch a mortar style fire work from the top of his head. Well one of the mortar style fireworks hit the man back of his head and killed him. The preliminary investigation determined the victim died from an accidental explosion from the fireworks, no other injuries or damage reported at the scene. Officers arrived, the man was unconscious, not breathing, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Now a lot of places, and the drone show over at Kettle Falls Town and Country days, a lot of places are going to a lot of these drones, either with or in replacement of fireworks. Well, the 4th of July celebration at Sea-Tac included dozens of malfunctioning drones and a whole bunch of the drones fell into the lake, they sunk, people could be out in boats and see the drones sink to the bottom of the lake with their lights still flashing. The drone show, it was a new event this year, ran into a technical glitch, it rendered dozens of the drones in operable, the light show vendor still reviewing what caused the glitch, the vendor thinks it was outside of the drone operator's control. 55 of the 200 drones were lost, crashed into the lake and sank. The Great Lakes Drone Company owner says the drone light show performance experienced a sudden loss of GPS signal on several drones causing them to go into a failsafe landing mode. The pilot took measures to stop the show and return the drones to their take-off location. During that process, several more drones continued to lose GPS signals, causing them not to know where home was. They're still investigating what happened. The drone show came first, started at 10 right before what was to be a fireworks show. So the pitch was, "200 drones will light up the night sky, captivating aerial display, forming an illuminated, synchronized show." Well, they had 200 drones, but 55 of them crashed into the lake. The fireworks display it was put on and went off without a hitch. No issues with that portion of the event. Vog and Brothers Lumber, a leader in the forest products industry, is now offering a free forest health check-up. If you have 10 or more acres of timberland, Vog and Brothers Lumber can help you determine if your family's forest is healthy and fire resilient. Schedule your free forest evaluation today by calling Vog and Brothers Lumber at 684-5071. Vog and Brothers Lumber, adding value to the forest for people, products, and the environment. And we've got two more series still coming up before the all-star break mid-season for Major League Baseball. Mariners need to get out of this big slump therein. They took it to 10 innings yesterday, but the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Mariners 5-4 yesterday. The series goes to the Blue Jays. The Mariners now dropping six consecutive series. In a right-handed pitcher, Logan Gilbert was named to the American League All-Star team yesterday, first time in his career, Gilbert, a 2.91 ERA, 108 strikeouts, 117 and 2/3 innings. While it is Logan Gilbert going to be getting the start when the Mariners open a short two-game series down in San Diego on Tuesday. No mariner game today, we'll have mariner baseball coming up tomorrow night from San Diego. That'll be on 92.1 KCRK. A look at today's local weather forecast brought to you by Parker's Glass. Same great service, as always. Get it fixed fast. All-Parker's Glass, 509 684 603-4, stop in CM 791 North Highway. It's going to be a hazy day, a high temperature today, 98, 59 overnight, 101, the high Tuesday, 102 on Wednesday. Then we'll cool down at least a little bit. 94 Thursday, 93 Friday, 93 Saturday, 95 more sunshine Sunday. You know, the interesting, we have this really hot weather and people are going to be running all their air conditioning and everything and we have high pressure in the area. That means no wind at all. Like looking on ahead, we see just calm skies all the way through Sunday. We're not going to be generating any power with those wind turbines during this hot, dry spell. Just something to keep in mind. Dump all this subsidy money into the wind turbines and luckily the Columbia River and the other rivers continue, the water continues to turn those turbines. Parker's Glass here in Colville, they can fix that ding or crack in your windshield before it causes real damage. Give me a call 509 684 603-4, stop by CM 791 North Highway here in Colville. No wind, the barometer at 30.12 and 68 degrees, like we've been at 68 for about the last hour. It's not, didn't cool down a whole lot, but not going up real fast. 736, it's a Monday, looking forward to a hot week, it's a little too hot, but that's okay. Be safe, drink lots of water, make sure your pets have lots of water, pets, livestock, all that, make sure everybody has lots of fresh water available during this hot time. I'm Eric Carpenter, this is KCBL, KCRK.