Valley Record SNOQUALMIE
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015 n DAILY UPDATES AT WWW.VALLEYRECORD.COM n 75 CENTS
1021 S YEAR
U.S. Rep talks small business U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert meets with Valley officials at Snoqualmie City Hall By EVAN PAPPAS
LOCAL
LOCAL
Staff Reporter
12s day brings in $13,000 for food bank Page 2
Minimum wage, small business support, and the Affordable Care Act were some of the topics discussed when Eighth District Congressman Dave Reichert came to Snoqualmie City Hall on Nov. 12 to talk about his work in Congress. In attendance were representatives from many Valley institutions including the Northwest Railway Museum, Encompass, Snoqualmie Valley Hospital, and the Snoqualmie Valley School Board.
Evan Pappas/Staff Photo
U.S. Eighth District Representative Dave Reichert explained his views on the minimum wage at the Snoqualmie city hall on Thursday morning. The first question Reichert tackled was about the possibility of a rising minimum wage. He said the movement to increase it further needs to be careful not to
Back to the farm
Carnation gets first look at Tolt Ave. redevelopment options Page 6
County officials ready to return golf course property to dairy production By CAROL LADWIG Editor
INDEX Opinion Puzzles Blotter Obituaries Classifieds
reduce jobs or increase prices of products. “There are two concerns. How does that affect small businesses and their decisions to hire people
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Vol. 102, No. 26 Carol Ladwig/Staff Photo
John Taylor re-locks the door to an empty, moss-covered building, marked “Keep Out,” at Tall Chiefs Golf Course. The property will soon become farmland again.
Shouldering the door open, John Taylor cautiously stepped inside what used to be the Tall Chiefs Golf Course pro shop. Vacant since 2009, the county-owned building was roofed with moss outside, and filled with mold inside. Chunks of the ceiling littered the spongy floor, evidence of damage from accumulated water and neglect. “This isn’t the worst building, but it’s not the best, either,” said Bob Burns, deputy director of King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks. The best building, a steel pole barn, was so overgrown with blackberries, that door could open only halfway. Burns, Director Christie True, Taylor, assistant director for the department’s
or lay them off if minimum wage goes up too fast? We don’t want to create a situation where we reduce the number of jobs,” he said. “The second issue associated with that is concern about the prices of products increasing and those customers having to pay a higher cost for services or goods.” Reichert thinks the minimum wage should be handled in a thoughtful way with consideration and input from small businesses. “In Snoqualmie we have a lot of small businesses operating and you want to keep those healthy, you want to keep them vibrant,” he said. Reichert said he was excited to see bipartisan support for small businesses. Now he is trying to make the Section 179 deduction of the IRS tax code permanent. Section 179 lets business owners fully deduct the price of equipment or software during the tax year, in order to get businesses to invest in themselves. He also has plans for two small business bills. SEE BUSINESS, 9
Water and Land Resources Division, and county media spokesman Doug Williams led a tour of the damaged buildings and other features of the Tall Chiefs property last week, and talked about the 191-acre site’s future. That future will look a lot like its past. About 50 years ago, the site had been a working dairy — one of 100 in King County, said True — and King County officials are now negotiating a sales agreement that would put dairy operations back on the land, possibly as soon as spring 2016. Steve and Janet Keller, owners of the neighboring property across the river, and fourth-generation dairy farmers, are the future tenants, along with their four children. The Kellers submitted the winning proposal for using the often-flooded old golf course last fall. Their plans include clearing trees from the lower part of the property, which is in the floodplain, to grow feed crops for their dairy cattle, to build greenhouses on the hillside above the floodplain and sublease those to area farmers, to save the existing buildings, if possible, and build farm worker housing. Long-term, they propose a milk-processing plant on the land, SEE DAIRY, 3
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