April 30, 2015 meeting:  There were 23 members at the meeting.  Our speaker was Vince Barthels, a biologist with JUB engineers.  The company works with smaller municipalities to plan public works projects and clients are located from Eastern Washington to Colorado.  He said the current drought situation has helped with equipment and soil movement but causes problems for fish monitoring.  He also mentioned the Washington Shoreline master plan which does not allow new railroad lines to be constructed within 200' of the high water mark of waterways. 

April 23, 2015 meeting:  We planned the Special Olympics lunch packing event on May 2.  There were 25 members present and we had our annual child protection training.

April 16, 2015 meeting:


The meeting was called to order at 7am and 23 members were present.  Rande is our new interclub organizer. 


Our speaker was Jay McNall of the Spokane County Sheriff's Dept.  The department currently has about 200 commissioned officers.  Their training includes 6 months of academy work, 3-4 months of working with a training officer and one year of probation.  He is a commander of SWAT teams and the team members have to meet special forces physical qualifications.  SWAT teams are only used when there is violent, armed crime in progress or when there is a possible hostage situation.  The county is #4 in the nation for stolen cars.  Most theft is due to drug addicts;  pawn shops have voluntarily agreed to report all items that are pawned (so it is critical to keep a record of serial numbers in case of theft).  Meth is still the drug of choice but number of meth labs have dropped off due to harsh sentencing. 

April 9, 2015 meeting notes


The meeting was attended by 22 members and our speaker, Chris Donley from Washington State Fish and Wildlife. 


We agreed to do plantings at the Care Center as our Kiwanis One Day activity.




Chris Donley told us about Fish Washington, a program to encourage sport fishing in Washington.  The fishwashington website provides information on how to get licenses; fishing regulations and other information to help people learn about fishing in Washington State.   


He explained that the Fish and Wildlife budget was cut by $58 million in 2008 when the recession began and their funding has remained low; they are using various marketing ideas to increase revenue from sport fishing licenses. 

April 2, 2015 meeting notes


The meeting was attended by 22 members, 1 guest and our speaker, Carol Nettles of the Ladies and Gentlemen (volunteers) of the Washington State Veteran's Cemetery.


Departing member Steve was presented with a plaque.



Our next meeting will be at the Sessions Village Club House (2219 N 6th St.).  A full breakfast with juice and/or coffee will be available for $10; coffee or juice for $1 each.

March 26, 2105 meeting notes


The meeting was attended by 23 members, 1 guest and our speaker.  Information about possibly meeting at Sessions Village was presented and discussed; other possible meeting locations were also mentioned.


Our speaker was Cheney Police Chief Hensley.  He's been Chief for 3 years and the department was in good shape when he came.  When he came, the city was divided into 7 sectors with one officer assigned to each due to limited staffing.  This meant that sometimes the assigned officer was not on duty when a citizen reported a problem; also this focused more on officer recognized problems rather than citizen reported problems.  Now there are  no sectors; when a problem arises it is assigned to an officer and their partner also is aware so either can follow through.  There has also been a change in response philosophy:  no call is too small and officers are encouraged to slow down and fix the problem the first time.  During the Chief's tenure the number of formal complaints per year has dropped from between 5 to 8 down to 1.  The department is also the first Eastern Washington department to achieve accreditation, it passed recertification and has had 100% compliance for three consecutive years.


While staffing is still a challenge, it is now policy to have 2 officers on every shift with an increase to 3 officers on shift on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights when EWU is in session. 
He said the most reported problems are:  (1) domestic violence - this includes roommate situations, (2) car burglaries and (3) alcohol and drug abuse.  He also said that 96% of sexual assaults reported in the last 10 years were linked to alcohol/drug abuse.

March 19, 2015 meeting notes


We met again at the Cheney Library and the meeting was attended by  21 members plus our speaker.

Steve won the 50/50 draw.  Bob presented his plans for the Kiwanis Egg Hunt on April 4.

Our speaker was Eric Williamson, air traffic controller.  He has been a traffic controller since 1984, working for 27 years at Oakland, then at Grant County and coming to Spokane International(SIA) as a supervisor in 2012.  The new Spokane tower is 271 feet tall and is the highest traffic control tower in Washington.  The SIA runways are 11,001 and 9,000 feet long and the tower height allows them to see the full length of the runways (fog permitting).  On a clear day they can see Steptoe Butte.  They provide radar control for an area from Ritzville to Deer Park, east of Coeur d'Alene and South to Rosalia and also provide approach control for Missoula.  He walked us through the various levels of traffic control, based on altitude and distance from the airport and said a typical commercial flight can involve 15-30 controllers.  Controllers receive 5 years of training and must retire at age 56.