Congratulations to the Weiser High School Band! This last Saturday, the band lead by director Jake Fortin competed in the annual District 3 Marching Competition at Boise State. Weiser’s band marched away with the first-place trophy in their division! There are five categories that the bands are judged on, Auxiliary (the flags, etc.), Visual Effect, Percussion, Music, and General Effect. Weiser’s swept the first four and barely missed taking first in the General. Great Job! And Thank You for representing Weiser High School so well!

There is quite a bit to cover in City news this week, so we will get right to it.

We all need to say a HUGE Thank You to the Weiser Police Department! Every year, Safewise, a home security company, does a study of cities across the country to rank them from safest to least safe, state by state. Weiser was named the safest city in Idaho last year and has earned that honor for several of the last ten years. However, Safewise has now notified the City that Weiser has tied with four other communities as the Safest Small Town in America! It appears that the designation is based on the number of violent crimes and property crimes per 1,000 population. If you would like more information, you can find it online at safewise.com/safest-towns-america/. So, next time, and maybe every time, you see one of Weiser’s Finest please thank them for the fine job they do in town in keeping us and our property safe!

In other news, the Street Department, along with help from other departments, will begin alley clean-up either this week or next, depending on available personnel. If you still have yard waste to be disposed of, now is the time to get it into the alley to be picked-up and carted off. Please keep the waste out of the center of the alley. It should be up against a fence, garage, or the property line. Please include only normal yard waste, such as grass clippings, weeds, tree and shrub trimmings, etc. The City is more than happy pick-up and cart off the waste in order to help you keep Weiser nice and beautiful.

In addition to the alley clean-up, the Street Department, along with the help of others, will also begin picking up leaves either this week or next. Please be sure to get the leaves to the curb and out in the street. Please do not leave the leaves between the sidewalk and curb as the vacuum will not pick them up off the grass. Also, please do not rake the leaves onto graveled areas as the rocks will damage the vacuum. Again, the City is more than happy to provide this service in order to help you with your fall yard work and to keep Weiser beautiful.

Also, our Fire Chief Kerry Nyce, who is retiring this week, wants to remind you of several things for fall. If you have a wood or pellet stove, please have the chimney cleaned before firing it up for the year. Creosote build-up is one of the leading causes in home fires.

If you heat with natural gas, please provide protection for your gas meter from snow and ice falling off from your roof and burying your meter. It turns out that your gas meter will “burp” or release a small amount of gas if there is too much pressure built up in your home. A meter buried in ice and snow will “burp” more often than an uncovered one. You obviously pay for the gas loss from “burping” so please do yourself a favor by protecting your meter.
The Fire Chief also would like to remind residents to check your home’s address identification. Many address labels are not readily visible from the street. Address numbers need to be in numerical form, not spelled out, with each character not less than 4 inches high and the stroke width at least 1/2 inch wide. In an emergency situation, being able to identify a house in a moment can be critical. So please take the time to check your address for visibility.

Well, that’s it for this week. Sleep well at night knowing you live in the safest small town in America!

Well! You can really tell that fall has arrived with the cooler days, windy weather, and overcast skies. Although I don’t always look forward to winter, as it is my least favorite time of year, I do enjoy the changes in the seasons since they add variety and change the pace of life.

This last Saturday was the annual Angel Wings Network Walk/Run. There was quite a turn out for the event which seemed to go very smoothly. This is the main fund raiser for this organization each year. For those of you who don’t know, Angel Wings Network is a local group who provide emotional and logistical support for cancer patients, their families, and even caregivers. The members give this support by giving rides to and from appointments and treatments, providing gas cards, and a number of other ways including just being a friend. Weiser is very fortunate to have this service. Thank You! to all of the volunteers who provide this support when families are in need due to cancer.

And speaking of people in need, Weiser is fortunate to have other selfless organizations that provide help for people in the community.

One of those organizations is Love Inc of Washington County. Love Inc is part of a national organization serving the spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, material, and physical needs of underserved people. Last year I had the privilege of touring the local operation with Pam Burris the director. I was impressed by not only the range of services provided, but the thoughtfulness with which the services were intelligently provided. In addition to providing food, they teach food preparation. In addition to financial services, they teach financial management. In addition to providing for material needs, they teach life skills in ways that government agencies are not able to. And these examples illustrate just a small part of what they do. We are truly blessed to have these workers and volunteers among us.

Another organization that provides a vital service to Weiser and the surrounding area is Rose Advocates.
Rose Advocates helps people who are some of the most vulnerable of us – domestic and sexual violence victims. This dedicated team provides protection, counseling, and life rehabilitation to those who have had experiences no one should ever go through. Their compassion, determination, and comfort have helped more people in our community than most of us would care to admit. Again, we should all be very appreciative for each of the workers and volunteers that meet these needs.

There are many other groups and organizations in town that meet a variety of needs in the community. The ones named above are just a few. Communities such as ours cannot function effectively without dedicated volunteers who fill in the gaps. If you are not already involved, please consider volunteering in an area that is of interest to you. Volunteering is rewarding, educational, and can be life altering.

Well, that’s it for this week. Let’s all be thankful for the volunteers among us who make life better in ways most of us don’t ever see.

Wow! Friday’s football game with Fruitland was one for the books! Cathy and I were watching the game with our friends, Ron and Pat West. I made the comment to Ron that it looked like it might be a painful night when Weiser was down 6 to 18. But what a comeback! Thirty-four unanswered points for a win of 40 to 18! Good Job Weiser Football!!! And a 5 and 0 season to boot!!!

Every Monday morning the city department heads get together first thing to discuss what they have going on for the week and coordinate their efforts. At last week’s meeting, Pat Malay of the Street Department said he needed the help of whoever was available to crack seal on Commercial, Main, E. 9th and State Streets, as well as the airport taxi way.

Crack sealing is a very labor-intensive effort involving routing smaller cracks to create an opening, air-blasting cracks to clean them out, sweeping up the debris, and at least a three-man team to seal the cracks with a rubber product at a temperature of 360° F. All of this takes place while also dealing with traffic control.

So, I thought this request for help would help me learn a little more of what goes on around the City. I looked at my schedule and figured Friday would be a good day. By that time, the crew had taken care of all of the City streets and were working at the airport.

Ron McDaniel was in charge and was very good at educating me on the process. A student helicopter pilot had swept the taxiway with his bird the day before and the cracks were wide enough to make routing unnecessary. So, it was a four-man crew I was working with at that point consisting of Ron, Rayne Loomis, Keilan Phillips, and Brian Downing. It was fun watching this group work as a well-oiled machine and seeing how much they could accomplish in a day. My part was doing whatever unskilled work could be done and then staying out of the way. I’m still trying to get the black stuff out from under my fingernails.

In other City news, a company named Energy Services Group has been distributing packages of energy efficient light bulbs to residents. If you have not received yours already, you should receive them this week. The light bulbs ultimately came from Bonneville Power which supplies electricity to Weiser. The City receives what amounts to points for purchasing power from Bonneville. The points were used to supply you with the light bulbs. In addition to the light bulbs, you are eligible for more free energy saving devices including 14 more light bulbs, a power strip, a showerhead, and two aerators by either filling out the post card included with the lights or by going to bit.ly/weiserkit. So please take advantage of these free products. You earned them just by paying your city bill.

There are also a number of rebates available through Bonneville Power for energy efficient projects, such as new windows, heat pumps, insulation, etc. For more information you can go to the cityofweiser.net website, find the Documents and Links tab, and scroll down to IDEA. The rebates are fairly substantial and may just be able to help you afford that project you have wanted to do.

Some good news on the COVID front. The number of new cases is leveling out. At this point it does not appear that the worst-case scenario projected earlier will be realized. However, the situation remains very serious. More information may be found on the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Website.

Well, that’s it for this week. Hope you are enjoying this beautiful fall weather!

This last Thursday, Dave Jeppesen, the Director for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, activated the Crisis Standards of Care for all Idaho hospitals in order to deal with the influx of COVID-19 cases into Idaho hospitals. This decision followed the recommendation of the Crisis Standards of Care Activation Advisory Committee which had been convened the day before.

According to information from the Department of Health and Welfare, “Crisis standards of care are guidelines that help healthcare providers and healthcare systems decide how to deliver the best care possible under the extraordinary circumstances of a disaster or a public health emergency. Crisis standards of care guidelines would be used when resources are insufficient to provide the usual standard of care to people who need it. The goal… is to save as many lives as possible.

What this means in a nutshell is that:

1. The hospitals are overwhelmed.
2. There are not enough resources to go around.
3. If you need to go to any hospital for ANY reason, your situation will be triaged to determine if it is a priority.
4. If your chances of survival are not high enough, you may not get the care you could normally expect if another patient’s chances of survival are better.

Going strictly by information posted on coronavirusidaho.gov, Washington County’s new cases for this past week were down. However, our six-county District Health office noted in their last communication, nearly two weeks ago, that there were about 3,500 new cases in our district that had not been posted yet. In other words, they are also overwhelmed.

If those new cases were spread evenly across the population in our six-county district that would mean Washington County has had around another 180 cases that have not been posted.

One of the City employees asked me recently if there was any information for a recent time period about the number of hospitalizations of those vaccinated against COVID-19 compared to the unvaccinated. Our District Health office graciously took the time to have one of their people provide information for the month of August which I would like to share with you.

“In the month of August 2021, SWDH had 4,363 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19. Of these cases, 151 (3.5%) were fully immunized. Of the 160 individuals in SWDH (our District) who were sick enough with COVID-19 to need hospitalization, 8 (5%) were fully immunized. Of the 44 individuals in SWDH who died due to COVID-19, only 1 (2.3%) was fully immunized.”

The email went on to state “Whether looking at what has happened in our six-county region over the past 8 months or just in August, there is strong evidence to support the benefits of vaccine.”

Any way you look at it, the numbers support the vaccine as the best weapon in fighting this virus with study after study to support the numbers.

I have heard some people say they will take their chances and rely on alternative therapies if they contract the virus. My response, to quote an old saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Also, with the surge in cases going on now, the “alternative therapy” may not be available when you are in need. The vaccine is available now.

The county has seen a recent surge in the number of people getting vaccinated. Please make sure you are one of them.

This last weekend Cathy and I decided to get out for a little bit and take a day trip. We didn’t decide this until about 11:00 in the morning so our options were limited. Lucky for me, Cathy keeps a list of potential places she would like to check out, just for situations like this.

We hopped in the little roadster of ours and ended up going to a hot spring in Crane OR, just this side of Burns. It was a very nice facility with plenty of room to spread out for the few people there. The weather was perfect for a top-down drive. Dinner was outdoors in Ontario on the way back. It was just a nice quick get-away.

Now for a little more serious business. Our official COVID number for new cases was 89 last week. However, the Health District let us know our numbers are very understated. Because of how quickly this surge has come on, our 6-county Health District is 3,500 cases behind in allocating the daily totals. We also had 3 more deaths last week, bringing Washington County’s total since the beginning of the pandemic to 28.

At this time, Washington County has the third highest COVID incidence rate in Idaho. It is time to resume the preventative measures we became used to earlier in the pandemic—wearing masks, distancing, and sanitizing. As stated in last week’s article, the current surge is expected to be five times larger than the worst that Weiser experienced last winter.

In City business this week, Weiser’s new head librarian Timbra Long would like me to let you know about a new way to access books. Her name is Libby. Or should I say its name is Libby.

Libby is a free online service through the library to access electronic books from any device. All you have to do is have your library number available, type “libby” into your browser, find the Libby app by Overdrive, then follow the instructions. With this app, your Weiser library can provide you with an additional 26,000 books, besides those that are kept on the shelves. So, give it a try.

Also, the Citizens-On-Patrol or COPs program is looking for volunteers. These volunteers assist the police department with a few extra sets of eyes to call in out-of-the-ordinary situations they observe as they cruise around town. The program has been on pause for a while due to the lack of available vehicles from the Police Department. The City should have the car problem resolved within the next week or so. So, if you are interested in helping out, just contact the Police Department at 208-414-2244 for more information.

On another note, the Parks Department would like to strongly request that if you enjoy watching football games at Memorial Park, please be respectful and clean up after yourselves. For some reason, it is an issue this year and is causing your City employees a considerable amount of extra work to make the park and the stands a nice clean environment for you to enjoy the games.

Well, that’s it for this week. Please stay safe out there.