Mayor Craig George
City of Dayton

Several New City Projects are in the Works

We in the City are very busy planning for Dayton's future and I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of these plans.

The Dayton Historic Preservation Commission has received a State grant to help establish two new local historic districts to correspond with our current National Historic Residential Districts.

The Urban Growth Area (UGA) Burn Ban went into effect last year. This ban makes it illegal to burn within the Urban Growth Area. The City and County are working together on a grant from the State Department of Ecology to find alternatives to open burning. You will be hearing more about this in the future.

The City received a grant from the State to help develop and establish design standards for the City as well as to establish hook-up rates for new water and sewer services. Currently we have no set policies so this study will greatly enhance our ability to accurately recoup the City's start-up costs. In conjunction with this grant we are also creating new City subdivision regulations.

Water conservation is an important issue here in Southeast Washington. We are continually working on ways to conserve water within the City. We are executing a plan for replacing at least 10% of our water meters each year and are installing a master water meter serving the water customers outside Dayton City limits on the South side of town. The Public Works Department is conducting a leak detection survey in order to reduce the amount of water we are losing back into the ground.

Additional recreation facilities for our young people are very important and this needs to be addressed. We have a small but very enthusiastic group of supporters who have formed a Skateboard Club to ensure a skateboard park is built in Dayton. The City is submitting a grant to help finance this project.

The City and County are joining forces to look for funding and grants to begin a study on the area's Flood Mitigation Plan. The removal of trees and vegetation along the Touchet River dike is part of this plan and a continuing project that we must complete to be in compliance with directives from the Army Corps of Engineers. This project, which allows the Corps to inspect the dike for leaks, holes, etc. is required for flood control.

If you want to know more about our projects, contact City Hall or stop in and visit.

Shelly Franklin
Dayton Schools

Dayton Middle and High School Teachers are STARs

A team of Dayton teachers recently spent a day visiting Richland High School, the Home of the Richland Bombers. Principal, Jude Cornaggia, offered teachers a chance to become involved in the STAR Protocol Program which is sponsored by Powerful Teaching and Learning. Teachers must commit to spending about six days throughout the year working as a team.

Teachers use the STAR Protocol to reflect on their own teaching styles and strategies. They work as a team to discuss ideas that are effective and analyze how their ideas work and don't work. As a team, they meet and complete activities in which they share their beliefs about good teaching and learning, and the kind of environments they believe are conducive to each.

The Dayton team consists of Mary Pryor, high school and middle school, Jeff McCann, middle school, Wendy Richards, high school and middle school, Audrey Franklin, high school and middle school, and Shelly Franklin, high school. Jude Cornaggia has been trained, and acts as the team leader. Not only do Dayton teachers visit other schools, several other participating schools have visited Dayton classrooms. "All the visiting teachers have remarked on the friendliness and warmth shown to them by our students here at Dayton," remarked Jude.

The teachers who visited Richland saw a variety of classrooms, including Sophomore English, Geometry, Spanish and World Geography. They were impressed with the general atmosphere, neatness and politeness of most students, and the commitment of the teachers. Richland High has a student body of approximately 2000 students, so it is quite different in some ways from Dayton High. There are more kids, two lunches, lots of portables to house the overcrowded classrooms, but very much like Dayton in many ways as well. English teachers were teaching the same literature, and math teachers were using project-based lessons to teach math concepts.

Observing teachers spend part of a class period with a participating teacher in class. Afterward, they meet to discuss the traits they were watching for in that particular lesson. Each debriefing gives the observers a chance to assess what they have seen and also their skills of observation. "One of the most valuable things during the debriefing is the self-reflection piece. That's where we look at the lesson and compare the things we saw to ourselves and how we would change or not change our own style to become most effective," said Shelly. All the teacher participants feel that seeing others in action has been very beneficial and has helped them toward their personal goals as teachers, to be the best they can be.

Mira McMasters
Columbia County Health System

Continuum of Care

As we age, the likelihood of having multiple medical specialists becomes higher. You want to be confident each specialist is taking care of their area of training. But who or which specialist do you trust to insure they are all working together and who do you feel most comfortable talking to about your needs? In the 1960s, specialty medicine became more common because it improved the overall quality of care. Now, in 2008, medicine has become so specialized that, in some cases, a patient may be seeing several specialists at a given time. In conversing with Dr. Roy Myers, a Family Practitioner at the Waitsburg Clinic, he explains his role as a Primary Care Provider and how he develops patient relationships in planning for long-term care as needs increase.

As a Primary Provider, Dr. Myers refers patients to specialists, as needed, to insure they get the best care possible. He does not believe there is competition between your Primary Provider and the specialist, in that, many times, the specialist refers follow-up care back to the Primary Provider. Your Primary Provider is there to identify the need for a specialist and insure that you have a continuum of care no matter how many specialists you see. Primary Providers build relationships with specialists, which builds a trust similar to what you build with your Primary Provider.

Having a relationship with your Primary Provider, with even just as simple as yearly exams, helps your Primary Provider detect changes and better understand you. Dr. Myers explained one incident, where a patient on his way out mentioned that he was having a little difficulty catching his breath. Was it old age, or just being out of shape? Or was it a symptom of a bigger problem? Incidents like that are why Dr. Myers enjoys working in rural communities, which enables him to focus on and follow-up with his patients. He learns about your pain tolerance, your character, learns to pick up clues of something which may be wrong that you've disregarded as "old age", and works with you.

As a Family Practitioner, Dr. Myers is board-certified to take care of people from "conception to grey". Dr. Myers says treatment is different with age because "children are not little adults". Consequently, Family Practitioners are trained in pediatrics as well. As a child's primary provider, he may refer young patients to pediatricians from time to time but in most cases can handle their care needs just fine. Dr. Myers enjoys working with children and likes the uninterrupted care family practitioners provide. As a Family Practitioner, the most common misconception is that a specialist has more education. In the case of a Pediatrician, the education is the same but the focus varies. If you or members of your family are seeking a primary provider, CCHS encourages you to stop by the new Waitsburg Clinic on Monday, May 5th and meet CCHS's healthcare professionals.

Madeline Cavazo
Dayton High School

Budding Author Ashlee Warner Introduces "The Quylouse Path"

Seventh-grader Ashlee Warner has been a writer since second grade. She started out the way most writers do, with short stories and fairy tales. Now, however, Ashlee is a serious writer. Only twelve, she has finished The Quylouse Path. It's to be the first in a series called The Eumier Chronicles. The next thing to do, of course, is to publish it.

"I have an author's relation representative to help me. I'm printing with Outskirts Press," Ashlee says. "I am taking donations to help with the cost. The book will be dedicated to all of the contributors."

It took Ashlee about four months to write The Quylouse Path. "I'll write about ten to twenty pages a day, more on weekends. It's just so hard to resist!" she says. "I know exactly what to write. It's sort of weird how I get the story. I'll be dreaming and these characters will set everything out for me. The next day I'll be sitting at the computer and know just what comes next."

The Quylouse Path is a novel about a ship called the Quylouse. It is home to Captain Brandon Ausvic, a crew of five, and an eight-year-old orphan girl named Amelia. When the Quylouse encounters the Boscull, Amelia finds herself in a new home, with the pirate crew of the Boscull. Amelia, aided by new friends, must find a way to return to the Quoylouse, the only home she has ever known.

Ashlee's English teacher, Jeff McCann, was floored by the extent of her writing ability. "The depth of her characters, the development of the plot. Everything involved is just above and beyond any of her peers," he says. "I'd like to take credit for it, but I didn't do anything. She walked into my classroom with all of those skills."

Tanya Patton
Columbia County Rural Library District

If You Want It, We've Got It
(or We'll Get It)

More hours and more books—the Columbia County Rural Library District Board made these goals the top two priorities of the 2008 budget. When the District assumed management of the Dayton Memorial Library on January 1, 2008, the hours of operation doubled and the book budget QUADRUPLED!

Years of meager book budgets had taken a toll on the collection, but now the library has the financial resources to begin rebuilding and diversifying the collection. The staff is actively soliciting requests for new titles because it's important that the collection reflect the varied reading tastes of the community.

It's very easy to request a new book: simply ask a staff person for a book request form and fill it out with at least the title and preferably the author of the book(s) you're interested in. Unless the book is pretty old or so unique that it likely wouldn't be of interest to many other people, chances are that it will be included in the next new book order. The best part about requesting a new book is that you get to be the first person to check it out!

Older editions or very specific reference books are usually requested through interlibrary loan (ILL) channels. The Library District can request books from libraries throughout the United States, but they are usually available from one or more libraries within the state of Washington. There is a $2 fee for each ILL to help cover the cost of postage.

Library District Director Janet Lyon's customer service philosophy is "Never Say No". She and the other friendly and helpful staff will go to great lengths to obtain a book or information requested by a patron. So if you've ever felt that the library just didn't have the kinds of books you liked to read, or enough new books to keep you busy reading, please give the library another try. You'll be pleased to see shelves sparkling with lots of new books, and if you don't find something to your liking, don't be shy about asking for what you want. It's YOUR library.