NEWS UNBROKEN
DAILY NEWS 9-6-2024
The hot weather continues, and we've made it to Friday. Good to have you with us, I'm Eric Carpenter, and this is K-C-V-L, K-C-R-K. Well some big changes are coming to the city of Chawila. The past city council meeting in Chawila, Jim Caruso, who's been the city administrator the past three years gave his resignation. Here's his statement to the Chawila City Council. Well, I've written some notes up, and then I threw them away, and I wrote more up and threw those away. This is my last meeting at the city administrator. I love this city, I live in the city. I thoroughly enjoy working here for some deeply personal reasons. I cannot continue to do this. Over three years, I've learned a lot about cities and how they run and how they work. And this council may not agree on everything which councils are supposed to keep. This is a great council. Citizens should be happy to have these people representing them. Some of the projects that have gone through have not been possible without the council, I thank council each and every one of you for allowing me to have this position. I thank the mayor. I was hired by the previous mayor, the mayor came in and extended my hire. And I have loved every minute of it a lot of times. It's a little hectic, but every department that we have here, I'm so proud of the least public work selector from the office, and I just want to say thank you. I'm going to continue to be around. I just want to say thank you, but I'm not going to be coming in the office every day. If I'm here for anything, just get a hold of me. People know how to get a hold of me, and yeah, thank you for the opportunity to do this. The Choeila mayor then addressed the council. He had a proposed severance and compensation package. Here's Mayor McCon from that city council meeting. He reminds me of the Jim Cruz of severance and consultancy agreement. The council will approve, I'd like to mention all the components. It is a major, major change to our city going to lose Jim as the administrator. He has served the city faithfully, woefully, diligently, and worked very hard. He has also been someone who I think has reset the bar, accepting status quo. It comes to delivering for the citizens of our city. Helen Jim's comment stands as a rationale for moving on, but he does so with full support from this mayor and the whole council. There are a lot of encouragement, as well as our request that he stay closely involved with the city. Now to the matter of hand, which we'll touch on the two new business items that are a solution to what is another major transition for the city of Choeila. Jim has over three years as any city administrator would intellectual knowledge that is very valuable to the city and he's under no obligation to remain to train anyone who might step in on this bed. So, council, we have a for you what is called a severance and consultancy agreement. The severance portion, I believe, is working to honor the service of three years that Jim has dedicated to the city of Choeila. The consultancy agreement portion, as well as the city, gets in return. And that ensures that Jim may be dedicated to serving to train on board and consult with an interim city administrator over the next three months. In terms of the financial impact, it's because these two things are unrelated. I'm going to address that now. However, it's answered more in the second intro city administrator selection. The net difference to each in budget. The reality is that the person I'm selecting for interim city administrator has been also running a Parks and Rec grant program. The program has all grants home with an administrative fee that our veteran contract has been receiving for his project management oversight for running those grants and so far, $2.5 million success rate for the city, so a really good tracker. However, if he becomes interim, the council approves and supports my decision to appoint him as interim, he can all oversee those payments. Each of these grants are City of Choeila grants, which means that the principal agent of the grant is the City of Choeila and has a result, the administration of those grants and associated fees, which can go up to 17 percent of the total, we come back to the City of Choeila. The balance remaining for the $2 million CDBG grant is almost exactly what we would be paying out in severance and consultant agreement to outgoing city administrator, Jim Caruso. So, I believe it's an effective plan. I believe it honors someone we all care about and because it's cost neutral to the city, we've got some free consideration and approval of the severance and consultancy grant for Jim Caruso. I'm happy to answer any questions that council might have. This has come up in the last four weeks and been pretty rough. So, we have a motion from council only to approve the notice out of the severance and consultancy agreement for Jim Caruso. We have a second from the council and a hundred here. That severance package approved by the council just over $27,000. We're going to hear more about the breakdown of the agreement next week while we learn more about some of the reasons the council decided not to agree to appoint the mayor's pick for the interim administrator, Larry Federer, choosing to table that decision. They'll be discussing that at the next city council meeting. That'll be September the 18th. Need extra support? A lift chair from Sondra's furniture might be the perfect solution. I deal for those who need help getting up or sitting comfortably. Our lift chairs offer smooth transitions between sitting, standing and sleeping. Enhance comfort and independence with our stylish functional lift chairs. Visit Sondra's furniture today. Comfort and support just a lift away. The Kettle Falls School District issuing a statement about the incident occurred at their early learning center last February. The district had requested a third party investigate the circumstances around Mr. Ford and his interactions with students. Well, they couldn't finish that investigation. It couldn't go until after law enforcement concluded their investigation as part of the third party investigation actually reviewed some 336 hours of video. They have learned there were three additional students identified that Mr. Ford kissed on the cheeks. The families of those students have been notified the Kettle Falls School District apologizing that their initial review of the video footage did not identify those incidents and that it took so long to get the information back. They want everyone to know they have made several changes with the early learning center, including additional supervision, improved structures to track student behaviors, better communication between staff and the families and improved video storage all across the school district. The Kettle Falls schools indicating they certainly want to keep students safe. That's their highest priority and they are making improvements to ensure that all students are safe so they can learn and grow. When your vehicle is involved in an accident, you want collision repair performed by highly trained experts. Since 1984 Carries Auto Body has been your specialist. We handle the complete repair process to get you back on the road as quickly as possible. Carries Auto Body works carefully with your insurance company to repair your vehicle to before accident condition. Carries Auto Body 1101 South Main in Colville, log on to carriesautobody.com or call 509-684-2587. What happens here in Washington State when a school district doesn't meet the needs and concerns of the area they serve. At the latest Seattle Public School Board meeting, they appear ready to close 20 elementary schools. The impacted students will be consolidated into nearby schools. The Seattle School Superintendent reminds parents that they're meeting this past week. There will be a vote on consolidation plans later this winter and then they are expecting school closures about 20 elementary schools out of the 70 elementary schools they operate. They say they have lost about 4000 students since 2020. Students in K through fifth grade, they've seen the steepest enrollment declines. Well, when you lose that many students, the Seattle schools are now facing a $100 million budget deficit. They say it can't be handled without school closures. The school district, they are still blaming COVID. They say COVID was to blame for this enrollment crisis. Well, the reality is Seattle Public Schools, they chose politics over students. The enrollment crisis impacting the Seattle Public Schools comes down to political decisions that the administrators and the staff made. The Seattle Education Association kept Seattle kids out of school even longer than necessary. They used the pandemic as a political weapon to get more funds out of the taxpayers. Never was anything about science. Kids should have been back in classrooms long before other areas. The children, the least impacted by COVID, really only children that had severe health-free existing conditions and everybody knew that almost immediately. The teachers union really exploited the fear, the uncertainty of COVID, self-serving agenda, they paraded safety concerns. Of course, a lot of teachers, they preferred working from home avoiding traffic over in classroom teaching. Likely, we've really damaged kids for a generation, long-term damage, education, mental health. But Seattle got what they wanted. They got a lot of COVID cash. They got a whole lot of control. But now the Seattle School District is seeing declining enrollments. Remote learning, they made it difficult for students to grow academically, make it even worse. The wokeness that Seattle School District had, the wokeness priority over real education, not focusing on math, reading, science, teachers, administrators, becoming obsessed with pushing a political agenda, the anti-racism training, the indoctrination coming at the expense of basics. Well, that's left a lot of parents furious. A lot of Seattle parents have pulled their kids out of the public schools, Seattle schools, replacing standard curriculum with radical lessons, teaching kids to see everything through the lens of race and oppression. Of course, alienating a lot of families who just wanted a good education. Because now they teach that math is racist. Big decline in Asian students in Seattle, 13% decline. What happens when you prioritize politics over learning? You lose students. Right now the Asian families, of course, they put a strong emphasis on education, view it as a key to success and stability. Asian families quietly moving their kids out of public schools. The school board in Seattle, haven't really come up with any answers. They're taking a hands-off approach when it comes to homeless encampments that are right on school campus property, open drug use, prostitution, literally feed away from the school playgrounds. School board has prohibited the city from sweeping away the homeless encampments on school property. With the 20 elementary schools going to be closing, Seattle schools still sidelining core education, still pushing the radical agenda that's alienated families, driving them away. Mass accident of students, hundred million dollar budget deficit, Seattle kids struggling to try and keep up. Well, it's not just Seattle that has lost their way next week. I'm going to be talking about the Chewila school district. You want to be listening. Need more water at your rural property? One of the best ways may be a reservoir system from Fogle Pump and Supply. A reservoir will give you a larger volume of available water when you need it, and it replenishes itself during low demand times. Simple as that. Talk to the folks at Fogle's about a reservoir system for your property. Fogle Pump and Supply, the water professionals. If you end up traveling to Scotland, one location that is well worth the visit, you might want to map out two, three days there, and that is Edinburgh. It is the capital of Scotland. The second largest city in Scotland, Glasgow is the largest. Edinburgh is riddled with buildings from the 1500s and 1600s and 1700s all throughout the city. Yes, it's a town of some 488,000 population, but it is an old, old city that has cherished its heritage. Now, I could have spent another three or four hours in the National Museum in Edinburgh. Eight stories high. Now, for any of you that have been to New Orleans, likely you have toured the World War II Museum. It's very big. It is maybe a quarter the size of the National Museum in Edinburgh. This museum is humongous. Give yourself a good day to go and go through the museum. The other factor, which is kind of nice considering going to a lot of places that have admission charges, it's absolutely free. Beautiful museum dealing a lot with the history of Scotland, and you can spend the day there and still probably not see all of it. Edinburgh, kind of the south central part of Scotland, a city, the capital city, well worth your time if you're traveling to Scotland. The Seattle Mariners, home boy, you know the head, there's four losses in a row, then the huge win. Now, yesterday Cal Raleigh hits a two-run homer in the first inning. The men added a sacrifice fly in the fifth. Julio Rodriguez connected, had a real solid home run. The Mariners over the athletic, six to four yesterday. Their final visit to the Oakland Coliseum. Of course, the Oakland A's not going to be playing in the Coliseum once they finished this year. Luke Riley, he added a two-run shot in the ninth for a key insurance runs. The Mariners now, they are back within four and a half games of the Houston Astros in the American League West standings. So, it's going to be one right down to the wire for the Mariners trailing Houston by four and a half. You catch the rest of the season. It's an exciting year indeed. Marin or baseball on 92.1 KCRK. Today's local weather forecast brought to you by Tri-County Stovin Spa, featuring quadrifier, wood, gas, and pellet fireplaces. Enjoyed the beauty and efficiency of a quadrifier heating stove in your home. Tri-County Stovin Spa in Colville, 2088 North Highway. That heat advisory continues today. We're going to see an afternoon high around 95 degrees, 51 overnight, 97 Saturday, 93 Sunday. Well, by Monday, we're going to be down 88 for a high 81, the high on Tuesday. And then by Wednesday and Thursday, that's going to cool down. High temperatures 75 Wednesday, 73 Thursday. There is a slight chance of a few showers each day overnight lows in the low 40s. It's a Friday. We're getting ready for, well, it's a summer-type weather weekend. Eric Carpenter with you on KCBL, KCRK. [BLANK_AUDIO]