Battle Ground Chamber welcomes new leader
Diane Rivera has taken over as the Battle Ground Chamber of Commerce’s executive director. Rivera is a veteran sales and marketing executive, served as the president of the executive committee for the Muscular Dystrophy Association for nine years, and while owning and operating her own advertising agency, she founded the Santa Barbara Beachside Business Association in Santa Barbara, Calif. There, she also was the director of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Association.
Rivera is now active in the Battle Ground community, although she hasn’t lived there long. She is a member of the Maple Grove Primary PTA and volunteers in school classrooms there. She believes in supporting local businesses and understands the importance of development and growth in the community for those businesses.
Papa Murphy’s turns 25, goes international
Vancouver-based pizza chain Papa Murphy’s celebrated its 25th birthday by opening its first store outside the U.S. in Vancouver, British Columbia. Five more stores are expected to open in Canada by the end of the year.
And for the fourth year, consumers chose Papa Murphy’s as the best pizza chain in America in Restaurants and Institutions magazine, and Pizza Today named it as the 2006 chain of the year, making it the only two-time recipient of the award.
As an added birthday bonus, most of the nearly 1,000 stores will receive facelifts that include warmer interior colors, new make-line systems and menu boards.
Leadership Clark County receives peacemaker award
The City of Vancouver/Clark County Mediation Services program announces three recipients of the first-ever Creative Community Peacemaker Awards. The Peacemaker Awards were designed to recognize individuals or groups who have thought of creative ways to make peace within families or the community or who have found creative solutions for compelling current conflicts. The award winners were chosen from nominations submitted by the public.
Leadership Clark County is being recognized for its proactive work in dealing with the challenges of the expanding community; for creating a network of leaders trained to work through differences to collaboratively solve problems and conflicts; and to create opportunities for a wide diversity of citizens to "cross-fertilize" and breed a richer, more sustainable community.
The other award winners are Carol Hansen, a retired city of Vancouver employee, and Sue Lintz, president of the East Minnehaha Neighborhood Association.
The awards will be presented during a lunchtime presentation at the "How Strangers Become Neighbors: Creating Cultures of Peace in Families and Community" event on Saturday, Oct. 28, at the First Congregational Church, 1220 NE 68th St. in Hazel Dell, free to the public.
County marks opening of Hotel Hope
Clark County celebrated the grand opening of the 16-bed evaluation and treatment center at the Center for Community Health on the Veterans Affairs campus in Vancouver on Oct. 19.
The facility will serve people in the midst of mental health crises or substance-abuse issue, and is more than eight years in the making.
The treatment center will incorporate the principles of Evolutions in Healthcare’s "engagement model," which promotes hope, choice and empowerment to reduce the use of seclusion and restraint.
The center will likely welcome its first client by mid-November, said Geoff Knapp of Clark County Community Services.
Washington employers add jobs in September
Washington employers continued to create jobs in September, with 4,100 new jobs added that month, according to the state Employment Security Department. At the same time, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate inched up one-tenth of a percentage point to 5.3 percent because more unemployed people began looking for work.
Health services and finance led job growth, adding 1,800 and 1,600 net new jobs respectively. The construction industry also saw strong growth, with 1,500 new jobs. On the other hand, local educational services, which include school janitors, bus drivers and cafeteria workers, lost 3,000 jobs over the month. The drop is an aberration caused by seasonally adjusting the figures for July, August and September – the sector actually grew by about 1,000 jobs during the quarter, according to the Employment Security Department.
During the last year, about 84,400 net new jobs were created in Washington, but there are an estimated 160,500 people who are unemployed and seeking work in the state.
SWMC shares consumer choice award
The National Research Corp. named Southwest Washington Medical Center as a winner of the 2006-2007 consumer choice award for the Portland metropolitan area. It is the first time the Vancouver hospital topped the annual survey, and shares it this year with long-time winner Oregon Health and Science University.
Winners are determined by consumer perceptions on multiple quality and image ratings collected in the company’s annual National Research Corp. health care market guide study, which surveys more than 200,000 households representing 450,000 consumers in the country.
Fed awards $150,000 to protect bus systems in Vancouver
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today a $150,000 grant to C-TRAN to improve intercity bus security and an $800,000 grant to TriMet in Portland to improve rail security.
These awards are part of $136 million in grants to cities across the nation to protect transit systems and the traveling public. TSA also provided additional funding of $1.2 million for closed caption television to Portland International Airport (PDX) and three Transportation Security Administration-certified K-9 teams recently announced for TriMet.
This year, nearly $400 million has been allocated through the Infrastructure Protection Program.
DNR to hold forest land planning public workshops
Public workshops will be held by the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to gather local information about forested state trust lands in Southwest Washington. This is the first step in the localized forest land planning process.
State trust lands are managed to provide revenue for specific trust beneficiaries such as the public schools and universities in Washington State, and Westside counties’ services.
A meeting in Clark County will be held on Nov. 2 at 6 p.m. at Washougal High School, 1201 39th St.
At the workshops, DNR will provide information about the planning project that will help implement the Sustainable Harvest Calculation and DNR policies finalized in July 2006.
At these meetings, DNR staff will use maps of forested trust lands to help the public provide specific local information that exist on state forested trust lands. DNR wants suggestions regarding managing those areas. This information will help DNR begin the process of developing strategies to implement forest management activities for those areas.
DNR will focus discussion on DNR-managed state forested trust lands in a specific area within the Columbia Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) planning unit. DNR also will accept comments on the other areas associated with this planning effort. Contact Pacific Cascade State Lands Assistant, Eric Wisch at 360-274-2005.
