The business idea happened organically.

Twenty-nine-year-old Rebecca Darley, the marketing and events manager for the Leavenworth Winter Sports Club, was helping organize the club’s annual ski swap when she noticed some atypical winter sports gear popping in the mix – children’s accessories. Things like baby strollers, kids clothing, and jumpers.

The ski swap wasn’t quite the right venue for the baby strollers, so Darley made her own venue, and her own company to boot. It’s called the NCW Kids Market LLC and it’s a consignment market for kids gear that Darley plans to host in Wenatchee every Spring and Fall.

The first market was this past April, but she’ll be hosting the second one next week, September 10 to September 12, at 225 S. Wenatchee Ave.

“I know so may people that have children that they buy so much stuff for, especially in the first few years if they have a little one,” Darley said. “They go through strollers, jumpers, booster seats, all that stuff. It’s so essential for the first six to nine months that they need them and then they never get used again and they’re in really good shape.”

It’s a simple idea with simple benefits. Darley said that a stroller in a retail store could cost more than $100 and indeed, a quick google search for strollers in Wenatchee can yield results as high as $669. At Darley’s kids’ market, however, a gently used stroller goes for about $20 to $30, she said.

“Especially in this time right now where we’re in a recession and every dollar you spend counts, it’s a great way to get some of your hard earned money back,” she said.

But this isn’t just some backyard yard sale. It’s a legitimate limited liability corporation, and from inception to implementation, it’s a streamlined business model with cost-saving techniques written all over it.

It started online at the Washington Secretary of State website with the application for forming an LLC. It wasn’t the first time she had been through that process. Darley and another partner own AMS Inspection Services, Inc., a Leavenworth-based home inspection service. While Darley said they hired a lawyer to help them set up that company, setting up NCW Kids Market was fairly simple but important.

“It seemed safer for me, I mean, I do share responsibility for the event but it’s not all me,” She said. “If something happens, God forbid, I’m protected.”

Setting up the LLC cost a couple hundred bucks in application fees. Then she went on to creating a website and a logo. Darley said she was able to save a couple thousand dollars by having a friend develop the website for her, as opposed to using a commercial company, but when it came to management and point-of-sale-like software – which allows her to register seller and product information – she turned to an Atlanta-based technology company.

To buy that company’s software she said it would have cost her approximately $30,000. But for about $200, she could rent the software for the weekend. Perfect for a twice-a-year, week-long sale.

At www.ncwkidsmarket.com, interested sellers are prompted to enter their personal and product information, name their price, and print out the associated price tags so that the items are labeled and ready to go when they are dropped off at the market, saving Darley and her sellers hours of setup time. Profits are split 70-30, with 70 percent of an individual sale going back to the seller and 30 percent going towards marketing, rent, supplies and any other associated costs at the market.

And if the seller chooses, any left over items will be donated to the Wenatchee Women’s Resource Center, for which Darley can provide a tax write-off.

Darley found other cost-saving corners to cut as well.

In Seattle, she found a couple businesses that were closing their doors and bought their clothing racks at discount prices.

She developed relationships with the Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Wenatchee Downtown Association, which helped her with the difficult task of finding a space to lease for a matter of days as opposed to months.

And she got sponsorship from other local businesses, which for $25-a-pop were given the opportunity to include coupons and company information in “goodie bags” offered out to the first 200 customers. So far, 75 percent of the businesses that sponsored the market in April were choosing to participate again.

“I think that’s a true indicator that it was a success for them,” She said.

All in all, Darley said the start-up costs before the first market in April were pretty high but that they were paying for themselves down the road.

“I was definitely in the hole a little bit, but it wasn’t scary,” Darley said. “I knew that going into it. I set my budget, I did a ton of research and I knew exactly how much my costs were going to be, I knew how much I needed to make to break even and I didn’t quite get there. This go-round I’m looking way better.”

In Washington, the state government has controlled the sale of liquor since Prohibition was repealed in 1933, but two initiatives going before voters in November seek to change that.

Initiative 1100 and Initiative 1105 both want to get the state out of the business of distributing and selling liquor, but the measures are different in how far they open the door for privatization.

Currently, the state has a three-tiered control system, meaning it oversees the manufacture, distribution and sale of liquor. Manufacturers must purchase a permit from the Liquor Control Board and go through licensed distributors, who then supply the 315 various liquor stores, a majority of which are operated by the state.

As the state budget faces yet another tough fiscal year, there has been a general push toward scaling government back to its essential services — which some feel does not include controlling liquor sales.

“First off, the state of Washington has for 75 years been living under Prohibition-era laws,” said Ashley Bach, spokesperson for the Yes to 1100 campaign. “What 1100 does is modernize the liquor laws for the way we live today.”

Both initiatives propose to close state liquor stores and allow beer and wine sellers to also sell liquor. The initiatives would also force the state to sell its 250,000-square-foot distribution center in Seattle, which could bring in $27.8 million in one-time revenue for the state, according to the Office of Financial Management.

Initiative 1100 would do away with the three-tiered system, allowing retailers to purchase directly from producers, thus bypassing distributors, and get volume discounts. It would keep in place the state taxes on liquor and set a $1,000 flat annual liquor permit fee with a one-time $2,000 application fee.

By removing the state from distribution and sales, “this would allow the Liquor Control Board to focus more on enforcement,” Bach said.

Initiative 1105 would keep part of the three-tier system intact, namely the distribution model. Also, the price of a liquor permit would be adjusted to a percentage of gross liquor sales, rather than the flat fee proposed in I-1100.

I-1105 also proposes to repeal the state liquor tax and recommends that the legislature craft a simpler way of taxing liquor by the liter, said campaign spokesperson Charla Neuman.

Liquor sales bring in about $320 million in annual revenue for the state, according to a recent state auditor’s report. That revenue comes from a 51.9 percent markup of liquor prices and additional state taxes. Altogether, Washington has the highest liquor tax in the nation, at $25.73 per gallon.

One fact that the report also pointed out, however, was that state revenue from liquor sales is higher in monopoly states like Washington than in states with privatized liquor sales.

The Christian adoption agency Antioch Adoptions Wenatchee is changing its name to New Life Adoptions beginning Oct. 1.

The free adoption agency is currently affiliated with Redmond-based Antioch Adoptions and is striking out on its own because Director Mike Magnotti said they have been self sufficient basically since opening in 2007. It’s classified as a 501 (c3) nonprofit charity with tax exempt status and receives no federal dollars.

“I’m very proud to say that we receive no government help,” he said. “We pay our own bills and we’ve got our own child placement license from the state.”

Another reason for the split is that the two agencies deal with different adoptions situations. Though they both help children in the foster-care system, on the West side of the state Antioch helps pregnant women who want to give their baby up for adoption. He said those cases are pretty much unique to that side of the state and he deals primarily with children already in the foster system.

In three years, the agency has facilitated 10 adoptions, eight of which were for children in the Washington State foster care system. And eight more adoptions are in the works, according to a press release. New Life Adoptions will continue to follow established procedures of Antioch Adoptions, which are: to remove the financial, perceptive and practical barriers to adoption with the added vision of changing the names of “foster child” to “son” or “daughter”.

Since it is a Christian agency, people looking to adopt do need to subscribe to the faith and he said New Life caters to a niche group of people who are both Christian and looking to adopt. But he said it’s about finding suitable homes for children, not religion.

“That’s between them and God,” he said. “If people say they’re Christian and give me a reason to believe it then I’ll work with them.”

Magnotti said in order to subsidize the costs associated with adoption he asks people for money.

“I beg,” he said.

By Ryan Wynne

With effects of the recession still rippling through Washington state, it’s not surprising to see an anti-tax initiative make the general election ballot, but this ballot won’t have just one. On Nov. 2, voters will decide whether to approve two anti-tax measures: I-1053, which would require a supermajority to raise taxes, and I-1107, which would roll back some recently increased taxes.

Millions of dollars have been pumped into campaigns supporting the initiatives, mainly from notable, large businesses and organizations such as BP, the American Beverage Association, and the Washington Restaurant Association. Supporters say there should be more checks on government spending, especially while businesses and individuals are grappling with effects of the recession, but the initiatives also have their opponents.

Certain groups are particularly spooked because recession-related lagging tax revenues have led to funding cuts to state programs and budgeting nightmares for legislators, who recently held a special session to close a $2.8 billion shortfall. That gap was closed by, among other things, cutting $755 million in spending and increasing taxes by $591 million.

But it’s unlikely tax increases would have been an option just two months earlier. That’s when they suspended I-960, a 2007 initiative that established the same tax-raising requirements as I-1053.

It may take a village to raise a tax
I-1053 is the latest from initiative activist Tim Eyman to go before voters. If it passes and lawmakers want to raise taxes, they would either need to convince two-thirds of legislators to approve the increase, or get voter approval (think levy).

According to the Public Disclosures Commission (PDC), the Washington Restaurant Association has contributed $59,000 toward initiative campaign support efforts. Bruce Beckett, director of government affairs for the organization, said it supports I-1053 because the supermajority requirement spurs more discussion, and more debate should take place before lawmakers raise taxes.

“It brings about a transparency that doesn’t occur otherwise,” Beckett said.

The association’s members have had to weigh priorities and make cuts, Beckett said, and lawmakers should do the same.

“I think it would be appropriate for the Legislature to do the type of evaluations that our businesses have had to do,” Beckett said. “A very large number of these small businesses can’t afford to pay more taxes.”

In addition to representing its members, Beckett said the association also supports the initiative because voters have demonstrated their support of similar initiatives in the past and I-1053 would just reestablish voter-approved government spending parameters.

I-1053 has other notable supporters. According to PDC records, oil companies, including BP, Conoco Philips and Tesoro, have contributed at least $230,000. The campaign’s other major donor, the Washington State Farm Bureau, has contributed $50,000.

So far, the two committees campaigning for I-1053 have raised more than $1 million. At the same time, the opposition has not even formed an anti-1053 committee, and thus has no campaign contributions to report to the PDC. However, opposition is not lacking.

The Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) is one group to publicly oppose I-1053. Part of the reason for that opposition is a fear that Washington could end up in the same predicament as California if raising taxes requires a two-thirds vote again, said Kathy Cummings, communications director for the WSLC.

The Golden State isn’t so golden lately — it’s facing a $19.9 billion deficit. Many, at least partially, blame the shortfall on the state’s supermajority requirement to increase taxes.

“[I-1053] really is an attempt to jam up the whole government,” Cummings said. “Revenue is extremely important, and to have that held hostage by the minority is just not the way a democracy is suppose to work,” Cummings said.

Rolling back the Tootsie Roll tax
I-1107 would also make tax revenue harder to come by. The initiative calls for the rolling back of some recently approved tax increases on candy, soda, bottled water and certain processed foods. Those taxes were increased, along with taxes on items such as beer and tobacco, to offset part of the state’s budget shortfall.

In addition to increasing taxes, lawmakers also made millions of dollars in cuts to areas such as education, state government, and correctional facility capacity. If the initiative passes, more cuts could occur. According to the Washington State Office of Financial Management, it would mean a loss of more than $435 million over the next five years.

That’s why the Washington State Hospital Association has contributed $30,500 to the campaign to defeat I-1107 and keep the new taxes in place, said Cassie Sauer, vice president of the association. She said the association is worried about the effect rolling back these taxes could have on state-provided health care, which provides coverage to children, people with disabilities, the elderly, and low-income workers.

“We are very concerned about there being enough funding for health care for people who need health care in our state,” Sauer said.

Sauer said the association is also concerned because, if Medicaid is cut, hospital staff members will be laid off, which will not only affect hospital operations, but also the timeliness of care for patients.

As of Aug. 20, the committee to defeat I-1107 had raised $268,000. Some major contributors include the Washington Federation of State Employees, the Community Health Network of Washington and the Washington Education Association.

The side to defeat I-1107 is, so far, impressively outweighed in terms of financial might. The committee campaigning for the initiative has raised more than $10 million, and with the exception of a few contributions of $50 and less, the money has come from the American Beverage Association.

Kathryn Stenger, campaign spokesperson for “Yes On 1107,” said the Washington Beverage Association has a couple dozen members in Washington who represent thousands of jobs, so it’s not surprising they have contributed so much to the campaign.

“They have a reason to want to watch out for their members,” Stenger said.

In addition to putting a financial strain on businesses in a time when so many residents are out of work, Stenger said the new tax legislation is simply confusing in the way it’s written, and that taxing groceries is wrong.

“We just don’t want government in our grocery carts, that’s the bottom line right there,” Stenger said.

Voters will decide whether to pass these initiatives Nov. 2, but that doesn’t mean the decision will stick. Legislators can suspend a voter-approved initiative within the first two years of its adoption if they get a two-thirds vote in the Legislature. Once that two-year window closes, a simple majority will do.

Autumn signals the advent of football season, kids going back to school, amazing displays of vibrantly colored leaves, and the opportunity to exercise our freedom to vote. With so many options vying for time, which one will become our first priority? Hopefully, our freedom to vote will capture that position.

It’s a pretty awesome responsibility to have the fate of our country in our own hands. I wonder how often we stop and think about that, and what kind of a commitment we will make to be fully informed voters this fall. There are certainly plenty of campaign signs out there. (In fact, I feel a little sorry for anyone who is trying to sell a home this time of year.) And there are plenty of ads on radio and television stations, plenty of voice messages on answering machines, and plenty of flyers appearing on our porch steps. These are all good ways to know which candidates and initiatives are vying for our votes, but they are not good criteria on which to base our very precious votes.

I would like to encourage each of us to consider September and October as continuing education months, focused on studying candidates and initiatives before we cast our votes. Here are a few opportunities for learning about everything and everyone on the November ballot.

Candidate forums. Check with local media or the candidates themselves to learn when they’ll be appearing live and in person in your area. Go listen. Ask questions. Meet them face to face. Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce will be hosting several this fall. Call 662-2116 for more information.

Research each candidate. Which do you think is best qualified based on integrity, background, experience and platform? If the candidate is an incumbent, check out his/her voting record; the information is readily available on state and national government websites. If the candidate is not an incumbent, look at volunteer activities, service at the local level in city or county government and involvement in community projects.

Research each initiative. Instead of relying or what passionate advocacy groups say about the initiatives, do your own research. The Washington State website is a great place to start; you’ll find it at www.wa.gov

Study your Voter’s Pamphlet. Resist the temptation to toss it aside until it’s time to vote, then dig it out, glance through the big print, and fill out your ballot. I encourage all of us to read it when it arrives so we can research the issues we still don’t understand before we cast our votes.

Contact candidates directly. The people who want to represent us also want to hear from us. Send an email or give them a call if you have questions about their position on issues. Chances are good they’ll be happy to talk to you about it.

Host a neighborhood informational session. Each person/couple can be responsible for researching one initiative or candidate and reporting to the group.

VOTE! The only people whose opinions count are the ones who cast ballots.

I’m certain you can think of other creative ways to get the information you need to make a truly intelligent decision before you cast your one-and-only vote this November. It’s quite a privilege we have as citizens of this great country; let’s take it seriously.

With a ceremonially gilded spade, Wheatland Bank Senior Vice President and Central Team Leader Chuck Cooper broke ground at the site of the bank’s newest branch, Wednesday, Sept. 1, signaling the beginning of an estimated five-month long, $1.1-million construction project.

“When we first came to town nearly three years ago, it was our intent originally to build this office and we had hoped that we would get one sooner than this, but just finding the site took a while,” Cooper said over the ever-present hum of passing cars and honking horns indicative of the new branch’s busy corner location on 1115 N. Miller St.

For the last three years, that location was the former Burger King building, directly next door to where they are now. The project comes on the heels of an aggressive campaign by Wheatland Bank that began in December 2007 to expand into central Washington, and which, through its four newest locations in Wenatchee, Yakima, Ellensburg and Chelan, has generated approximately $100 million in combined customer loan and deposit accounts.

“We can’t wait to get into it quite frankly,” Cooper said.

Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Craig Larson also offered a few words during the ground breaking on the permanent presence of Wenatchee’s newest financial institution.

“Ground breakings are always fun to do, especially with the business climate that we have right now in this country,” Larson said of the positive message he said he felt the project sent to the community.

Larson said he was happy to see a site like the former Burger King franchise, which was no longer used in the local economy, converted into useful space.

“Now we’re going to have a brand new building at a great location and it’s definitely an upgrade for the city of Wenatchee and for this neighborhood as well,” he said.

As soon as the speeches were given, construction began straight away with a large excavator carving mound-fulls of soil from the previously demolished and graded, dirt pad.

Superintendent Bob Beaty with Vandervert Construction Inc., the general contractor hired for the project, said construction wouldn’t take long. Beaty said they would be pouring concrete footings by this Friday, the foundation by mid-next week, and within the next five weeks, he expected they would have the building completely framed up.

Wenatchee Valley produce powerhouse Stemilt is making its foray into the cutting edge medium of Internet viral marketing with the release of a YouTube series about two lovably oafish local farmers named Clem and Milty.

The characters are played by a pair of local actors and the series was shot in a Stemilt Hill orchard by Howell at the Moon Productions of Wenatchee. With Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as a company blog, The Clem and Milty series is the latest in a number of steps Stemilt is taking to improve brand recognition by utilizing Internet technologies.

Roger Pepperl, marketing director at Stemilt, said the reasons are because traditional methods of advertising, TV and radio, are expensive and this is not only cheaper but also very effective with the 25-to-30-year-old consumer demographic.

“If it really hits, this could bring the family farm to the world – (it’s) a way we can share our farms” Pepperl said. “People want to know where their food comes from.”

The videos, five in all, will be released Sept. 1 and feature the duo in overalls and flannel reminiscent of Hee Haw, attempting to recreate famous viral videos like the BMW tablecloth pull – but with a John Deere instead of a sleek European sport bike.

In another, the more rotund of the two, Clem, reenacts the popular “Star Wars Kid” video with a wooden stick as his light saber as he spins and karate kicks between the rows of fruit trees.

“Hi there, Milty coming to you from the heart of Washington apple country with another one of our virus videos,” announces one of the actors at the beginning of one of the videos, making a tongue-in-cheek reference to the viral medium.

In addition to being available on YouTube, Stemilt will launch a Facebook page for Clem and Milty so people can interact with the characters.

“Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to increase in popularity among people of all ages,” Pepperl said in a press release. “We already have an active following with Stemilt’s Facebook page and Twitter account. The addition of the Clem and Milty page will give our fans yet another place to engage with us.”

SEPT. 1 UPDATE: Here is one of the videos released today. You can find the rest at Stemilt’s YouTube channel.

At 27, Dr. Adam Trotter is a young man, his new practice is full of promise and he has found a way to blend his professional life and personal passion.

“I’m huge into jet skiing,” Trotter said.

Because of his affinity for the sport and his knowledge of the skeletal system, Trotter has been invited to serve as the official chiropractor at Blowsion’s Surf Slam 2010 in Pacific City, Oregon. The competition is part of the Freeride World Championship Tour and brings the globe’s most skilled riders to the Oregon coast for three days.

Trotter will be there to treat the pros as well as anyone else who thinks they might need a little back work while out at the races.

“It’ll be great because it will give me the opportunity to work on more sports-related injuries,” he said.

Trotter was born and raised in Wenatchee and after attending Western State Chiropractic College in Portland he moved straight back home to start his practice.

“(It’s) the sunshine honestly,” he said. “I love the area. When I was down in Portland I couldn’t stand how much rain it got.”

Trotter got an SBA small business loan from Cashmere Valley Bank to open his practice on 925 Fifth St., right across from Safeway. His business is about seven weeks old and he said it’s growing slowly but surely. He said the number of his patients has doubled since last month.

In addition to chiropractic services his practice offers massage therapy. He said the two massage therapists he employs have been seeing an average of five patients a day and their maladies have been anything from sports or work injuries to simple old wear and tear.

He said the overhead isn’t high for a small practice like his and other than the two massage therapists he has no other employees. That means he’s been doing his own bookkeeping, receptions and appointment making.

He said he’d like to hire someone to answer the phones and handle the bookkeeping soon, but performing those duties is teaching him quite a bit about managing his own business.

“Hopefully in a month or so I’ll be to the point where I can get a front desk person,” he said. “(But) it’s good to know so I know how to do the billing myself.”

An estimated $24.4 million in additional state and local sales taxes have been reported by the construction industry alone since Washington shifted to a more tightly controlled reseller permit system in January.

A higher percentage of businesses are paying sales tax on construction materials since the state eliminated the self-issued resale certificates that allowed a business to not pay sales tax if it declared the tax would be collected when the product was resold to the final consumer.  Not all such products were resold, however, and the state estimated it was losing up to $100 million annually due to misuse of resale certificates across all industries.

The Legislature in 2009 authorized the Washington Sate Department of Revenue to replace the resale certificate system with Department-issued reseller permits that were provided to about a quarter of the 800,000 registered businesses that previously could use resale certificates.

Preliminary results for the first five months of 2010 are encouraging, Revenue Director Cindi Holmstrom said.  Other industry sectors are being reviewed to ascertain the effect of the new system, she said.

“We are encouraged by initial indications that the reseller permit transition is having its desired effect of increasing the proper payment of retail sales tax on building materials,” Holmstrom said. “Collaboration with the business community was crucial to the successful implementation of this new system.”

She noted that from January through May, the ratio of taxed retail sales to untaxed wholesale sales for “Construction Sand and Gravel Mining,” went up 26 percent while the ratio for “Veneer, Plywood, and Engineered Wood Product Manufacturing,” increased 129 percent.

“The education process for this program was probably the biggest benefit,” said Amber Carter, the governmental affairs director for Tax & Fiscal Policy with the Association of Washington Business. “Just informing businesses about appropriate uses for the reseller permit was very beneficial.”

Vendors are required to collect sales tax when selling products to customers, except when a reseller permit or other exemption certificate is presented. Wholesalers and other businesses can now instantly check their customers’ reseller permit status by clicking Verify a customer’s reseller permit at http://dor.wa.gov.

Wenatchee City Council decided to hold off making a decision about a deal that would give food distribution rights for the Wenatchee Convention Center and Town Toyota Center to the food-services company Savor.

The council postponed because members did not want to make a decision without a finalized contract in hand. The final contract is expected next week. City staffers Allison Williams and Dan Frazier said the deal would increase profits and simplify things for the city by consolidating responsibility for both facilities under one company.

The council also heard a presentation by General Manager of Link Transit, Richard DeRock, about the new electric buses the city has on order – the first of which will arrive in three weeks. The buses, named “The Current,” are the first of their kind. Wenatchee will be the first zero-emission transit in the world because of these buses he said. And they’ll cost about $10,000 less than their diesel counterparts if everything goes as planned.

The council also heard citizen complaints, approved roughly $93,000 for a sewer construction contract and amended an ordinance so the Parks and Recreation Department could change their fees.

You can watch video footage of the city council meeting here, at the City of Wenatchee’s website.

At a time when many banks are feeling the heat – 11 banks have failed in Washington in the past two years, according to the FDIC – Wheatland Bank, a local Spokane-based community bank, is aggressively expanding in Wenatchee.

On Sept. 1, Wheatland Bank will break ground on a new 5,400-square-foot branch building at 1115 N. Miller St. The bank, which has been leasing its temporary location since 2007, has hired Vandervert Construction, LLC as the construction general manager for its new facility and construction costs are expected to be approximately $1.1 million.

That’s just a small price to pay in a massive campaign that began in 2007 to expand into central Washington. A campaign that has yielded huge results.

Wheatland Bank President Susan Horton said that at the end of 2007, Wheatland held approximately $173 million in total assets. Today that number is closer to $249 million, of which, most of that money came from the bank’s four new locations in central Washington: Wenatchee, Yakima, Chelan and Ellensburg.

“The foundation behind that is that we are very well capitalized, we have lots of liquidity, we enjoy excellent asset quality in comparison to what’s gone on in the industry and in our peer group, and so we have faired so well through this economic downturn and through this horrible time in our industry, by really just staying true to the fundamentals of good, solid, conservative banking practices,” Horton said.

A group of farmers and small business owners opened the doors to Wheatland Bank back in 1979 to meet the under served needs of the agriculture industry there. From there, the bank quickly began what Horton calls an organic expansion. In Davenport, that meant lending to wheat, barley, and other dry land farmers. Then they moved into Moses Lake and began lending to farmers in the Columbia Basin.

Since opening, the company has expanded to 13 branches throughout Adams, Chelan, Grant, Kittitas, Lincoln, Spokane and Yakima Counties. Horton said that by expanding into the central Washington and Wenatchee Valley areas, they hope to add tree fruit orchards and hay farming to their lending portfolio.

So far it has paid off.

At the end of 2007, Horton said the bank’s total loans were $134 million. By the end of 2008, total loans had risen to $169 million, a 26 percent growth in one year and a record for the bank. To put that in perspective, that was the year they were still opening their four new branches in central Washington.

Their Yakima branch had the highest amount of loans issued at approximately $24 million, but Wenatchee was a close second with approximately $23 million. All together, the four new central washington branches churned out nearly $70 million in new outstanding loans since first opening in Wenatchee in December of 2007.

How’d they get there? They hired the right people and went out pounding on doors, Horton said.

“(Our people) have proven themselves already,” Horton said. “They have brought in over $100 million of new business in less than two years time to Wheatland Bank, and we’re talking cream of the crop business. Because of the relationships that these people had within their communities that were so deep and so strong, we had opportunities with customers that, had we just been the new bank in town, I believe we never would have had.”

The year of their big expansion into central Washington was also a year that followed closely on the coat tails of the nation-wide financial banking crisis. Horton remembers when, around the fourth quarter of 2007, everything in the industry started turning upside down. For Wheatland Bank, it was too late to pull back.

“We were on the path and we were going to stay focused on our strategic plan,” Horton said. “We had already made the commitment. We had already hired the people, we had already applied for, and or, opened the branches, and it wasn’t a time to have fear and to step back. It was a time to step forward, trust our judgement, trust our people and stay focused on our plan. And we did and it paid off.”

In addition to loans and assets, deposits – which are typically slower to pick up – have also been increasing.

At the end of 2007, deposits were $149 million. At the end of 2009, they were $210 million, a 33 percent increase. Between their four central Washington branches, Horton said they have $25 million in deposits, with Yakima accounting for about $12 million of that. Horton expects that will increase with the construction of the new branch.

“Perception-wise, people are used to walking in and seeing a traditional teller line, and they’re used to having a drive through and an ATM,” she said of the amenities the new branch will have. “So we know that when we open our Wenatchee branch … I think that’s going to make a big difference to people. They want to see that we’re going to make a commitment. We are making a long term commitment to central Washington.”

Chelan County Public Utility District (PUD) will accept a $25 million federal grant to broaden its fiber optic network throughout the region, giving roughly 6,800 more county residents access to high speed Internet.

Chelan PUD commissioners voted unanimously in favor of accepting the federal funds on Wednesday. The money comes with the stipulations that the Chelan PUD must come up with a quarter of the funding themselves, roughly $8.3 million, and pledge responsibility for the network for more than two decades. The Chelan PUD’s share will most likely come from a 2 percent rate hike, which PUD General Manager John Janney recommended commissioners approve.

If things don’t go as planned though, Janney said there is a possibility of a four percent increase to cover the costs. John Smith, Chelan PUD managing director of Engineering and Technology, told commissioners at a previous meeting that the project could cost up to $1 million a month to complete.

According to the Chelan PUD, a quantitative survey of PUD customers showed that county residents are two-to-one in favor of expanding network even if that means a three percent rate hike.

Currently the network is available to about 85 percent of Chelan County residents. This project will bring that number to 98 percent.

Douglas and Chelan Counties had an unemployment rate 2.9 percent lower than the rest of the state in July. The unemployment rate for the month was 5.7 percent. The state’s was 8.6.

The Wenatchee MSA reported that while the month-to-month employment grew by 11,810 jobs – or 17 percent – there were 2,790 more people with jobs in July 2009 than there were in July 2010. The MSA reported strong seasonal employment in both agricultural and regular business sectors.

“The overall scene is that even with an increased labor force the Wenatchee MSA had strong agricultural and seasonal employment in order to keep a low unemployment rate for the month of July,” a report said from the Employment Security Department.

Nonfarm employers provided 39,000 jobs – a 300 job increase since June. And though there was a month to month increase the year-over-year loss was 1,200 jobs.

If you would like to see the Wenatchee MSA’s full report, click here.

According to a telephone survey done Aug. 7 to Aug. 12, approximately 64 percent of registered voters in Chelan County favor accepting a federal grant of $25 million to finish extending the Chelan County Public Utility District’s (CPUD) wholesale fiber-optics network even if it would cost about $1.50 a month in electric rate increases for all CPUD customers.

CPUD commissioners heard the results of the survey Monday afternoon from Don McDonough of DMA Associates in Seattle. CPUD hired the firm to do a telephone survey of 450 registered voters about their preferences concerning a $25 million grant from the Rural Utilities Service that would help the CPUD extend its fiber network to about 98 percent of the county.

The system presently gives about 85 percent of county customers access to service if they choose to sign up with one of many private service providers for Internet, television or telephone services. Accepting the grant would require the CPUD to match an estimated $8.3 million in order to finish the build-out over the next three years.

The CPUD has faced two financially stressed years with low water supply, low revenues from surplus power sales, and low interest income on its investment portfolio. The CPUD has already made spending cuts of more than $27 million, leaving a decline of about $14 million in net assets in 2009, and another projected decline of $20 million to $25 million this year.

Customers contacted in the phone survey said that they would not favor the CPUD spending the estimated $33 million to complete the fiber system without using the federal grant if that meant an increase of up to $5 a month in everyone’s electrical bills.

Commissioners also heard consultants from Uptown Services summarize an extensive study of fiber-optic finances and evaluate what options might be available for the PUD to move forward with the system.

Considering that the CPUD has already invested $105 million in the fiber system through the end of 2009, consultants said the CPUD should keep the system, accept the federal grant and move forward with continuing the build-out over the next three years.

They said they thought fiber optics would continue to be a viable technology for many years and that having a network available throughout the county would enable the CPUD to take advantage of other emerging uses such as what’s known as smart grid.

The term generally refers to placing electric meters on customer’s homes and businesses that can send data back to the utility, inform customers of periods when electricity may be priced higher and help customers decide when to use electricity at the lowest prices. A fiber-optic system is usually the preferred way to transmit data back and forth.

As far as selling the fiber system, consultants said exiting such a system is difficult and also has a lot of costs that accompany such a move.

Commissioners will hear further public comment on the grant proposal at a special meeting at 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 24, at the Confluence Technology Center in Wenatchee. The decision won’t be made until the following Wednesday morning at another special meeting set for 8:30 a.m. in the CPUD boardroom. The CPUD must answer the federal Rural Utilities Service about accepting or rejecting the grant by 2 p.m., Wednesday, Aug. 25.

In a little more than three months the Wenatchee YWCA Café AZ’s on First St. has provided more than 3000 hours of job training to those in need.

“The people that we train are new in the field, with no experience, and they come to us needing basic job skills,” said Jenny Pratt, executive director of the Wenatchee YWCA. “Most of them are very young.”

It took the YWCA about 18 months and $100,000 to renovate it’s largely unused basement and storage area and turn it into Café AZ’s. Pratt said the entire cost of the remodeling was accounted for through community donations of goods and services. The YWCA only spent about $2,000 of its own funds on the project, she said.

The cafe is a nonprofit charity and it accepts workers through organizations like WorkSource and the AARP. Pratt said that while they take both men and women into the training program, most are young mothers or women over 55 in need of job retraining. The cafe puts about 12 to 15 people a week to work but their wages are paid by the employment program that sent them.

Pratt said they had the idea to open the cafe because with common fund raising events like luncheons and golf tournaments the overhead was high and they didn’t help anyone in the process. But with this project Pratt said she expects the business will be self-supporting within six months and even help fund other YWCA programs.

“We did it because we have the space, we were training people already and we decided to move away from the traditional fundraising models,” she said.

The café is named after A.Z. Wells, a local orchardist and philanthropist who established a $1 million trust specifically to establish and aid the YWCA and other Wenatchee-area charities about 50 years ago. Pratt said that Well’s wife was a great supporter of the YWCA.

“This is a tribute to him and all they helped us to accomplish over that last 50 years,” she said. “We wouldn’t be here today without their forethought and support of local nonprofits.”

The café is open for breakfast and lunch and Pratt said they also provide catering and boxed lunches. Like other restaurants they have daily soup and salad specials but they also feature a few of their own unique creations. Pratt recommends the “Emma Gene’s salad,” named after A.Z.’s wife, replete with their homemade vinaigrette and the “Don’t Knock It Till You Tried It” sandwich, made with warm brie and chocolate chips on a toasted panini.

Wal-Mart announced Thursday, Aug. 19, that it has started construction on the expansion of its Wenatchee store located at 2000 N. Wenatchee Ave. The project, due for completion in late August 2011, will increase the store’s square footage by approximately 38,000 square feet. The store will remain open during construction.

Wal-Mart said it anticipates that the addition will create approximately 85 new jobs once the project is complete, and that it will be hiring a number of local temporary employees during the store’s construction phase. The store currently employs about 290 associates.

The expanded Wenatchee store will offer a full-range of general merchandise and food, including fresh produce. According to a press release, the project will also incorporate some advanced sustainable environmental features such as high efficiency HVAC units, ozone-friendly refrigerants and water conserving fixtures.

Currently there are 49 Wal-Marts, three Sam’s Clubs and one distribution center in Washington state employing approximately 17,462 associates. The average hourly wage for a full-time associate at Wal-Mart in Washington is $12.48. In its 2009 fiscal year, Walmart purchased $2,255,737,039 worth of goods and services from 831 Washington businesses.

In an exam room at the Eastmont Animal Clinic in East Wenatchee, Dr. Randy Hein held up an X-ray of a canine knee joint, and pointed to the dark lines of a condition that, up till recently, meant euthanasia for many aging pets: arthritis.

“There’s a dirty joint,” Hein said looking at the X-ray. “And again you can see the bony proliferation, see how it’s flushed out right there, and right in here we have a lot of arthritic changes. We still do have a little bit of cartilage though … so I thought we could do Jack some good.”

Jack, he explained, is an 11-year-old Golden Retreiver that had severe arthritis. Typically, dogs in Jack’s position would receive a combination of anti-inflammatory drugs and some physical therapy. When those finally ran their course, they would need to be put down, Hein said.

Thanks to a new procedure Hein is offering at his business, called Vet-Stem Regenerative Cell Technology, that Golden Retriever is doing much better.

“Jack was at the point where he wouldn’t walk up to the mailbox, and now he will trot and run up to the mail box about 40 yards from their house.”

The procedure involves isolating stem and regenerative cells from an animal’s own fat and then injecting those cells back into the injured or degraded tissue. The stem cells that are derived from the fat tissue during surgery, Hein said, are called mesemchymal stem cells. They are 1,000 times more abundant than the stem cells found in bone marrow, and can be differentiated into liver, heart, cartilage, nerves, and blood vessel cells.

For Jack, that meant surgically removing his stem cells from the fat, sending them to a laboratory for refinement, and then injecting them back into his aging joints within 48 hours.

According to the Vet-Stem – the San Diego-based company that developed the technology – website, the regenerative cell therapy has been effective in returning to prior levels of performance in up to 75 percent of the dogs that have undergone the procedure.

Those are pretty good chances of success, but Hein admits it isn’t guaranteed to work on every dog and the procedure isn’t cheap. It costs between $2,800 and $3,000, he said, which includes the costs for X-rays, surgery, lab work, and re-injecting the stem cells.

Hein said that Vet-Stem Founder, Dr. Robert Harman, originally developed the procedure for use in horses in 2002, and after receiving good results, expanded the application to dogs in 2007.

“The stem cell will attach to the injured cell, and like Dr. Harman said, it provides cellular CPR to that damaged cell, so that cell can literally repair itself and continue functioning as a normal cell,” Hein said.

According to its website, Vet-Stem has authorized more than 2,100 veterinarians throughout the United States and Canada to perform the procedure, but Hein said that he is the only certified veterinarian in Washington providing the service east of the Cascades.

So far, he’s performed the procedure on two dogs. Anne Conway is the owner of the first, a 14-year-old Australian Sheppard-Rottweiler mix named Roxy.

“She was getting to the point, just in the last four years even, where she was degrading and we were thinking, ‘Okay, how soon are we going to have to put her down?’” Conway said. “You know because you don’t want to have to see her get to the point where she can’t get up and out, and you have to carry her everywhere. She’s a really big dog.”

So she met with Hein and he recommended they try an experimental run at the procedure. The results were promising.

“She plays now,” Conway said. “She’s out in the yard and she plays at the fence with the neighbor dog and she plays in the house here more than she has in years … she’s just like a pup again.”

Since July more than $1 million in unclaimed funds from failed Washington Mutual Bank has been returned to the bank’s former customers.

Since the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) turned over $9.8 million to the state in July, the Washington State Department of Revenue has paid 448 claims and is processing another 179.

The Department earlier mailed claim forms to the last-known addresses of anyone with more than $75 in unclaimed deposits at Washington Mutual, and posted the names of anyone with $25 or more in unclaimed property on its searchable database at http://claimyourcash.org.

After Washington Mutual folded, inactive accounts were turned over to the FDIC, which forwarded them to the Department’s Unclaimed Property program. Accounts generally become inactive when the holder has made no deposits, withdrawals, or had any other contact with the bank for three years or longer. After 10 years, the Department is required to return any unclaimed WaMu funds to the FDIC.

City Engineer Steve King urged community members to form a coalition on Tuesday night, Aug. 17, to create and finalize plans for the Pybus Public Market project by December 2010.

King spoke at a public meeting at the North Central Regional Library about the project that would convert the old Morse Steel warehouse into a permanent public market and seasonal farmer’s market. King wants citizens to form a “build the market coalition” to hammer out the specifics of what the market will actually look like.

“Like they say, ‘The Devil is in the details,’ (and) we want to get this process going,” King said. “Hopefully in a year from now, we’ll be down there eating something good.”

He said that he and city staffers have looked at other communities in the state to discover a public market upon which Wenatchee can model its plans.

“We really focused on Bellevue and Olympia and we’ve made some narrowing of the scope,” King said.

But he said the city is a long way from a finalized plan. And that’s where the community comes in. King said the city wants residents to decide how the place should be designed, how it will be operated and what the total cost will be. He stressed community ownership and local fundraising, saying they are necessary for the project’s success.

“This is an estimated $5.5 million-type project,” said Wenatchee Mayor Dennis Johnson speaking about the project the following morning. “(But) it will require no general funds from the city.”

Johnson said that the Chelan County Port District bought the property for roughly $2 million and spent about a half million more on site work. Couple that with the $1.46 million in a federal grant secured for the project by Senator Patty Murray and that gives the city about $3.5 million for the project so far. Johnson said that’s enough to get started.

The rest will come from fundraising and money that will be phased in over time by vendors and tenants involved in the Pybus project.

“The more funds, the better the market – obviously,” King said. “(And the plans) will move with what comes out of the (public) every meeting.”

King said the city will be conducting a joint planning process parallel to the citizen coalition but emphasized that citizen participation is key. He wants Wenatchee residents in the coalition to form sub-groups tasked with coming up with physical plans, financial analysis and feasibility and promotion and fundraising, among others.

Wenatchee residents who attended the meeting offered their support and commitment to the Pybus project and gratitude to the Chelan County Port District for taking the financial risk of purchasing the property.

Wenatchee resident and Dietician Virgina O’Kelly was at the meeting as well and expressed her support for the project.

“I think farmer’s markets are good for healthy communities,” she said. “We have way too many fast food places around here.”

Washington state has been awarded a $1 million federal grant to improve the review of health insurance rates in the hopes to increase transparency and  American consumers’ knowledge of the insurance they purchase.

The grant award is provided under the Affordable Care Act signed into law in March 2010 by President Barak Obama as part of health care reform.

The terms of the grant say that Washington must use the funds to improve the oversight of health insurance rates, take action against unreasonable rates, and ensure that consumers receive value for their premium dollars.

“How health insurers determine their proposed rates and our review of those rates has been kept from public view for too long,” said Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler. “This award is a victory for consumers and will give us the resources to build a much more transparent system.”

Kreidler’s proposal included two key projects: Enhancing information technologies and filing systems to accept more detailed rate information from health insurers and increasing transparency for consumers on how premiums are set.

This enhancement includes building a consumer care website where people can see the average rates requested and accepted by year and type of market. Currently, the Insurance Commissioner’s Office collects a limited amount of rate information that can be publicly disclosed.

Kreidler’s office says it will seek legislation next year to maintain its authority over the individual market and to increase the public’s access to additional rate information, such as how much of premium money goes to pay claims, administrative costs and what is profit.

If the legislation effort is successful, that information also will be available to the public through the new consumer care website.

The Chelan PUD is considering submitting the final paperwork for a $25 million federal grant to expand its fiber optics system to remote areas of Chelan County, according to a PUD press release.

The PUD’s fiber optic system has been online since 2001 and its service is available to about 85 percent of Chelan County currently. This grant from the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service Broadband Initiative Program, a program funded with 2009 Recovery Act stimulus money, would make is possible for the PUD to extend the network to 6,800 new customers.

John Smith, PUD managing director of Engineering and Technology, told PUD commissioners at a meeting on Monday that the project would have to be completed in three years and the budget may cost nearly $1 million a month to complete.

PUD Communications Director Steve Lachowicz said the PUD has worked on projects that big before but a $1 million-a-month  project is about as big as it gets for the Chelan PUD.

Smith said the PUD would have to provide a quarter, or $8.3 million, of the project funding itself and pledge to operate the system for a minimum of 22.4 years after the fiber optics network is in place.

PUD commissioners expressed concerns over the 22.4 year commitment. Commission President Dennis Bolz pointed to the change in cell phones during the past 20 years as an example of technology evolving rapidly.

Lachowicz said that though the grant process is in its final stages, PUD commissioners are weighing the decision carefully.

“(It’s) a big decision that could carry a significant amount of risk,” Lachowicz said. “That’s why they’re being so careful about it.”

The commisioners will hold a special public meeting at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 24, at the Confluence Technology Center. Lachowicz said the PUD will provide maps so people can see where the service areas may be expanded.

Phil Blakney, CPA of Cordell, Neher & Company, PLLC, in Wenatchee attended the National Society of Accountants for Cooperation (NSAC) Tax and Accounting Conference August 2 – 4, in Orlando, Fla. The conference highlighted accounting and taxation issues facing cooperatives. Blakney was also a co-presenter for a session entitled “Practical Applications of the Risk Assessment Standards,” which discussed the application of certain audit standards to Cooperatives.

Doing away with paperwork is paying off for Washington State revenue collection.

Nearly 1.3 million out of 1.8 million state tax returns were filed electronically during Fiscal Year 2010, a 30 percent jump over the prior year, the Washington State Department of Revenue reported today. More than 70 percent of returns are now filed electronically and the Department expects usage to increase.  Nearly 75 percent of all excise taxes are now paid electronically.

Revenue Director Cindi Holmstrom said the resulting reduction in paperwork is helping the Department operate more efficiently, and it benefits businesses too because they make fewer errors when filing electronically.

She noted that efficiencies such as E-file have helped the Department accommodate a 109 percent increase in registered businesses over the past 15 years with only a 2.7 percent increase in staffing.

“The less paperwork we have to do, the more attention we can pay to education and enforcement to ensure that all businesses are paying their fair share,” Holmstrom said. “Businesses also benefit because the online E-file system checks for errors before the return is filed. That really cuts down on the number of amended returns.”

E-filing got a big boost in 2009 when the Legislature passed legislation requiring Washington’s largest businesses, which report on a monthly basis, to file and pay returns electronically. Most monthly filers already were filing electronically, but the legislation brought in the remainder and also required those businesses to both file and pay electronically – another efficiency move.

The Department maintains a secure website within http://dor.wa.gov for taxpayers to file returns electronically, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This year, taxpayers have accessed the Department’s secure online applications more than 1.4 million times through July 31.

“More than 90 percent of taxpayers accessing our website have a high-speed connection, and a significant amount of online traffic occurs after business hours,” Holmstrom said. “We’re pleased taxpayers have responded positively to the E-file service, which provides speed and flexibility for submitting returns while greatly increasing accuracy.”

With the Cascade foothills looming over his shoulder, Greg McPherson, owner of Tiny’s Organic in East Wenatchee, surveys a 10-acre field of vegetables and reminisces on his farm’s latest metamorphosis.

“Probably any grower who grows apples here in the Valley can tell you that you might have one or two good years, and then you might have one or two bad years and it can wipe you out,” he said of the hardships of growing for the wholesale market. “It’s always a challenge.”

As a farmer, McPherson has probably been through every business model in the books. From the 1980s to present, McPherson has sold his crops on everything from the wholesale market to the farmer’s markets. They even implemented a home delivery model at one point. Nothing paid off.

So a few years ago, instead of growing crops and praying for good weather and customers to buy them, McPherson switched the equation: sell first, then grow.

It’s a model called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and it is one that, for many small farmers, is the difference between owning a farm and working at, say, a fast food chain.

“CSAs started in the early ’90s as a model for getting the small-scale farmers a set core group of subscribers who would help them stay afloat,” said Mike Cochran, CSA coordinator for Farm House Table and Community Farm Connection, a local non-profit that connects customers with CSA programs in the Valley. “It was a risk-sharing strategy, so if their crop failed, the people investing don’t get as much produce as they would (normally), but if the crop is huge, and if they have an unbelievable amount of peas, the subscriber gets a lot more peas in their boxes.”

For anywhere from $750 to $1,000, depending on the time of year they sign up, customers can buy shares in Tiny’s CSA program. But unlike stock on Wall Street, these shares buy subscribers a 10 to 18-pound box of straight-from-the-farm produce, every week, for 22 weeks. That’s typically enough for a family of four or two very enthusiastic vegetable lovers.

Tiny’s runs a relatively large CSA and has found a niche market by selling to Seattle-based customers who don’t have the ready access to fresh produce as local Wenatchee residents do. Erin McPherson, Greg’s daughter and Tiny’s CSA program manager, said they started with 150 shares but are now closer to 400 and are hoping to grow further.

“Basically we’re guaranteed that everything we grow is going to get sold because it gets sold up front,” Erin McPherson said. “So when I go to plant seeds in February and March, I usually know how many people I’m planting for.”

Sherri Schneider, executive director for Farmhouse Table, which also runs it’s own 150-member CSA,  said that part of the beauty of the CSA business model is its ability to sustain what has traditionally been a rich farming heritage.

“We have a great agricultural history and tradition here in Wenatchee, but a lot of it is based around big orchards selling to big warehouses where fruit is shipped out globally,” Schneider said. “There are a lot of micro farmers that can’t grow that kind of volume, nor are they interested in that. They want a different kind of lifestyle.”

About 12 miles out the Chumstick Highway in Leavenworth, Tierra Garden Organics is one of those farms.

In a sun-baked valley, surrounded by steep hillsides and green pine trees, time at the little four-acre plot has the unique quality of being told in vegetables.

With her pants rolled up to her knees and a pair of muddy flip flops on her feet, Eron Drew, co-owner of Tierra along with her husband, Willy, steps gingerly through the spray of a water sprinkler and points to the living sundial that is their farm.

“Generally it starts off in the spring geared more toward greens, and then as we get into the high season you start getting things like the corn, and tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplants, and then we taper in the fall with pumpkins and winter squash and potatoes,” she said nodding to different plots as she bounced along.

It’s a small farm that operates between a CSA and the farmers’ markets. For $400, share holders get 18 weeks of vegetables. Enough to fill an 18-pound rubber tote each week.

Last year, Drew said they sold about 35 CSA shares but found it to be a bit too much. So this year they tailored it back to 25, which she said allows them to grow a greater diversity of produce and to interact with more people at the markets.

So far for the couple, the CSA has been a very sustainable business model.

First of all, they operate on a strictly cash basis, i.e. they have zero debt. They lease the land, and while the couple has owned the business for the past three years, Drew said it has supported their family for the past two. The first year they broke even.

In addition, after the initial infrastructure was set up, their costs have been scaling back each year. Last year, she said their expenses were approximately $15,000. This year, she expects that to be closer to $7,000.

While their costs are going down, Drew said having that money in advance of the harvest has been key to their success.

“It definitely helps us bridge the gap between winter and spring and gives us start up money so we can purchase seed and amendments and any replacement equipment that we need in the spring,” she said.

But another big plus to the CSA is the diversity of vegetables. Walking through the farm, Drew points to things like purple Kohlrabi, softball-sized leaks, and a yellow bean called Indian Woman, which is good for cooking in tacos and soups, she said.

“It’s like Christmas every week,” she said. “If you love to cook and you love to eat, it’s like Christmas because you open up this box and there’s all this amazing produce.”

In addition to providing new and exotic veggies, the CSA farms typically include a weekly newsletter with recipes that help educate their customers on how to use them.

At the time of reporting, it was lemon cucumber and snow pea week at Tiny’s.

“You can’t get this kind of stuff at a grocery store,” Erin McPherson said. “If we’re not getting the support of the community to be able to do this, then we’re all just going to have to buy everything from the grocery store and won’t have the variety, the freshness, or small farming really.”

The U.S. apple harvest is expected to be down 4 percent this year, but that’s good news for Washington apple growers — the state’s yield is expected to be up 5 percent, according to the USDA’s 2010 Apple Estimate released Aug. 12.

“We have a nice place in the market right now,” said Charles Pomianek, executive director of the Wenatchee Valley Traffic Association. “(But) every apple that gets picked doesn’t get packed.”

The Wenatchee Valley Traffic Association released its own harvest forecast on Aug. 11, a day before the USDA’s national forecast, and they project Washington’s harvest to be a 108.8-million-box crop, Pomianek said. But the Traffic Association and the USDA use different methods when totaling the expected crop.

Pomianek said that the USDA’s estimates include processing and slicer apples and the Traffic Association estimates only include fresh shipments. So even though the government projects the state’s apple harvest to be up 5 percent, after the processing fruit is separated the actual total will be roughly the same as 2008, said Pomianek.

“It’s a very similar crop to 2008,” he said. “But there are less apples available (nationally) so the headline likes to read ‘record crop’ but realistically it’s the same as 2008.”

Which is still good considering the fact that the ‘08 crop yielded roughly 10 million more boxes than the previous year. Compound that with the news that the national average is supposed to be down 4 percent and Pomianek’s observation about Washington’s place in the market rings true.

In addition to a higher yield, central Washington apple growers and packers have also been able to maximize their profits by managing their supply more effectively, said Dan Kelly, assistant manager of the Washington Growers Clearing House in Wenatchee.

“From a pricing standpoint the industry has a more stable pricing system,” Kelly said. “There is more of a controlled situation than before.”

Kelly said that packers know they have 13 months to sell the crop. So rather than flooding the market at the beginning of the season and driving the price down, they more effectively manage the supply and thus, their profits.

In addition to managing the supply better, Kelly said that many growers pick more selectively, reducing the amount of culls making it to the warehouse. Some growers even have sorters in the orchards picking out culls to minimize the amount of undesirable apples they ship to the packer. He also said that improved growing practices, like trellised orchards, allow more light to get to the fruit and reduce the amount of bad apples.

Another way that local apple growers and packers ensure a steady and sustainable supply of apples throughout the season is by growing a crop of diverse varieties.

“It used to be that there was 70 percent red delicious in past years and now there’s a better mix,” Kelly said.

All these factors converge to create a lucrative environment for Washington apple growers in the national marketplace this year. But both Kelly and Pomianek agree that the main reason is because growers have figured out it’s more profitable to send 100 boxes of clean fruit to the packer rather than 150 boxes of whatever they can get off the trees.

“The industry has figured out they can’t pick everything,” Kelly said.

Pat Haley, director of the Port of Douglas County (POD), announced his resignation during the POD council meeting, Wednesday, August 11.

While the announcement came as a surprise to many on the board, POD Commission Chair Jim Huffman said that he had been aware of Haley’s intent for several weeks, but did not want to make the information public before Haley was ready.

“I’ve been in my position for 10 years now and my responsibility is the development of port properties out here, and in the last 10 years I haven’t really been able to make that happen,” Haley said. “And I just came to the conclusion that maybe it would be better for (the port) to have somebody else to take it to the next level or to the level that it needs to go.”

Haley said that the development of airport lands was an essential revenue source for the airport and one of the central ways the port funds airport operations. While Haley said leaving the port was a tough decision, he said that he hoped a new director would be more successful in bringing that revenue source into the county.

But Haley’s career at the port has also been one of economic success for Douglas County.

Huffman said that he and Haley have worked together at the POD for the past 10 years, and during that time, Haley’s experience as an engineer and marketing specialist have been invaluable to the board and the county. One of the projects Haley was instrumental in overseeing was the extension of domestic sewer lines up Grant Road in East Wenatchee to Pangborn Memorial Airport.

“His engineering skills have really paid off,” Huffman said. “He was very instrumental in bringing ideas to the table that made that a much better project in the end.”

Huffman said Haley was also instrumental in bring Sabey Corporation, the data center company, to East Wenatchee.

“Economically, that has just been a huge shot in the arm for the county,” Huffman said. “Matter of fact, Douglas County was in the black because of Sabey Corporation, whereas a lot of counties were operating in the red this last year. (Haley) was a real catalyst in terms of bringing the Douglas County public agency players together so that we worked pretty much as a team to help serve Sabey.”

While Huffman didn’t want to comment himself as to the reasons why Haley had chosen to resign, he did say that the board commissioners were currently reviewing their strategic plan and that there were likely going to be some significant shifts in their direction as they moved forward.

“One of the things we want to do to stimulate economic growth is retain the businesses we have and try to grow them as opposed to focusing so much on recruitment because, right now, there’s just really nobody to recruit,” Huffman said of bringing new industry to the area.

In his letter of resignation, Haley said he was grateful for his tenure with the POD.

Haley’s resignation becomes affective August 31. While the port looks for a new director, POD Business Manager Doug Provo will take over the day-to-day responsibilities of the port with assistance from other staff and board members.

The Wenatchee YMCA turns 100 this year. That’s the news, but there’s more to the story.

The Y in Wenatchee is one of the oldest YMCA’s in the state, as well as one of the oldest businesses still in its original building in the city of Wenatchee, said Eric Nelson, executive director of Wenatchee’s YMCA. But it is also no stranger to financial hardship.

Its hundred-year-long history is marked by a financially turbulent beginning but eventual fiscal triumph.

“There were a lot of times (that) they were very close to going out of business,” Nelson said. “So I look at those times and tend to look at things in the long-term viewpoint that there’ve been tough times before and we know we’re going to be here for another 100 years.”

In its first 100 years, the YMCA has become an institution in the lives of many Wenatchee Valley residents. The Y serves one in three children in Chelan and Douglas counties. Through its youth scholarships, leadership programs, aquatic center and camp the YMCA impacts the lives of roughly 10,000 local children and young adults a year.

Of its 5,000 members, Nelson said about half are under the age of 18 and it’s the Y’

s policy that no child who wants to participate in YMCA programs is ever turned away because of an inability to pay. As a result the Wenatchee YMCA gave about 6,000 youth scholarships in 2009 and he said they expect to award even more this year.

Nelson said that while roughly 75 percent of the Y’s operational costs come from membership and program fees, the remainder is covered by individual financial contributors and endowments established by community members throughout the years to help subsidize youth scholarships.

“We’ve been blessed with some tremendously generous people in our history,” Nelson said. “(The) United Way and contributors allow the Wenatchee YMCA to put 100 percent of the money they raise in a year to youth scholarships.”

With summer leadership camps like the T-Wave program, which focuses on promoting service, teamwork and social responsibility, costing nearly $200 for non-members, providing thousands of scholarships a year can be expensive. The Y also offers an adult program, called the open door program, which allows adults and families making less than the median income for this area to pay substantially lower prices for a membership.

“Pretty much everybody, regardless of income, can have access to the YMCA,” Nelson said.

Yet since each YMCA is individually incorporated, not every Y enjoys the financial stability the Wenatchee Y does. Thanks to endowments funds, financial contributions and sound fiscal management, the Wenatchee YMCA has been debt free since 1944 and was even able to step in and take over the Eastmont Aquatic Center in East Wenatchee after voters turned down a levy in 1999 that would continue to fund the center.

As a testament to the success of its youth programs, a few of the Wenatchee YMCA’s native sons, including Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed and Publisher of The Wenatchee World, Rufus Woods, spoke at the YMCA’s centennial luncheon in June. Both attended YMCA leadership camps in the ’40s and ’50s, Nelson said.

“There’s an awful lot of people who have given a lot of time and money to get the YMCA where it is today,” Nelson said. “And to put us in a position to be of even greater service in the next 100 years in the Wenatchee Valley.”

This month the Cashmere-based company Crunch Pak is celebrating the anniversary of its tenth year in business.

Since coming to the conclusion that people would eat more apples if they were easier to eat, Crunch Pak founders Tony Freytag, Craig Carson and John Graden developed a new way to keep sliced apples fresh.

“Very few companies can claim that they helped launch a completely new concept to the marketplace that has become an international success,” said Freytag in a press release.

This concept, employing a combination of vitamin C and calcium, as well as a very specific way of cutting apples to a certain width and then packaging them in breathable containers, ensures optimal freshness and keeps the slices from withering and turning brown. It’s using that process that the company’s 300 employees in Chelan County make it possible for sliced packaged apples to be shipped across the nation and still maintain that light, crispy apple crunch with which Washingtonians are so familiar.

Through its slicing process, Crunch Pak can get 12 slices from a single apple and when packaged the slices have a 21-day shelf life.

Founded in 2000, the company gained its first major supermarket customer two years later and within five years was selling sliced apples at Costco stores and at Disney Gardens. By 2009, the global franchise Burger King was providing Fresh Pak’s apples to its customers and business had tripled.

Already the largest sliced apple producer in the United States, this year the company opened an East Coast plant and expanded distribution to Canada as well.

With obesity rates in some states reaching as high as 21 percent, Crunch Pak has the potential to alter the way that Americans snack, especially by tapping into the fast food market.

“The most rewarding aspect of our success is seeing kids eating Crunch Pak apples at lunch or after a game,” Freytag said. “We’ve helped revolutionize snacking by making nutritious options easy and accessible. It will have an impact on our kids’ health and eating habits for years to come.”

The Washington Apple Education Foundation (WAEF) honored more than 100 scholarship recipients and raised approximately $31,000 for its scholarship program at the 5th Annual WAEF Scholarship Celebration Luncheons, July 26 and August 2.

Approximately 365 students, parents, donors and guests attended the two events, held in Wenatchee and Yakima, to honor the scholarship recipients and celebrate their accomplishments. Northwest Farm Credit Services was the presenting sponsor.

Both events featured a keynote address from Dr. Vincent Bryan, an accomplished Seattle neurosurgeon and small business entrepreneur. Bryan’s investment firms include the integrated fruit harvesting company, Picker Technologies, the Gorge Amphitheater, and Cave B Estate Winery and Spa. During his speech, Bryan spoke about his experience of being raised in an immigrant household, achieving success, and making a difference in humanity.

Current WAEF scholarship recipient Cristina Espinosa from Wenatchee, and former recipient Pedro Garcia from Yakima, thanked donors for their assistance with their educations and encouraged students to pursue their educational dreams while enjoying the college experience.

This year WAEF is assisting students raised in tree fruit districts with scholarships valued at close to $400,000.  Scholarship funds are raised through voluntary donations with several awards sponsored annually by tree fruit industry employers and families and others honoring the memories of past tree fruit industry leaders.

Supporting sponsors for the event were:
Northwest Farm Credit Services
Moss Adams LLP
AgroFresh Inc.
Allan Brothers
Bayer Crop Science
CCM Scholarship Fund
Tree Top, Inc.
Velikanje Halverson P.C.
Washington Fruit & Produce Company

Table sponsors for the event were:
Keyes Fibre Corporation
Chamberlin Distributing
Chelan Fresh Marketing
Conover Insurance
Crane & Crane, Inc.
Crunch Pak LLC
Foreman Fruit
Gebbers Farms
J&J Wood Products
Ken and Sharon Smith
L&M Companies
LeMaster Daniels PLLC
Matson Fruit
McDougall & Sons, Inc.
North Cascades National Bank
Sagemoor Farms
Strand Apples
Washington Fruit and Produce Company
Yakama Juice

For more information, please contact WAEF at (509) 663-7713, or www.waef.com.

Kris Kruse, owner of the Gentry Hair Salon & Shoppe, knows that in order to bring customers in to her business, she has to go out and get them first. So Kruse set up a new interactive website, which is closely connected to the salon’s social media networking to do just that.

“I think as a business you have to go where your customers are, and everybody is on the Internet,” Kruse said. “People are using Facebook and I think the people that don’t take advantage of this now, in this climate, are going to get lost.”

Poignant words coming from the owner of a business that has been in Wenatchee for 35 years. Today, Kruse said there is no shortage of hair salons in Wenatchee. Just next door to their location at 204 S. Wenatchee Ave., is the Academy of Hair Design beauty school. But while the Gentry may have longevity on its side, Kruse said it is up to them to differentiate themselves as a business.

So she hired locally-based Zanshin Designs to build her an interactive website with online booking capabilities.

“What I wanted the website to do is for someone who has never been here, they could look at the website and get a feel for what to expect when they walk in,” Kruse said. “Maybe not for a man, but for a woman in a strange town, it’s pretty scary to walk into a salon and not know anything about it.”

With yellowing, aged paper motifs and deep maroon colors, the Gentry website reflects the old red brick walls and polished hard wood floors of the salon’s historic downtown building. With some fading flash images of the store and links to its menu of services, if clients feel compelled to make an appointment they can do so by clicking the icon of an old book in the lower, right hand corner. A pop-up window will ask for a name, e-mail, and will offer available times for the appointment.

Perhaps not the most revolutionary of ideas in the age of technology, but it’s all about staying competitive and offering ease of access, Kruse said.

“I can be at Applebee’s, pull my phone up and make an appointment,” Kruse said.

And while building the website wasn’t cheap, Kruse said it was a one-time cost that will open up further marketing opportunities down the road.

“I can go to our Facebook page and say, ‘Enter this discount code and get 10 percent off,’” she said. “That will help direct people to our Facebook page.”

And, hopefully, to the shop.

The following commercial building permits, permits for residential projects valued at $250,000 and more or multiple projects by the same owner were issued recently.

Chelan County

Danny and Sheila Visker, 17994 Entiat River Road, Entiat; $252,213 for a single family residence. Contractor: Not listed.

Michael and Lori Worden, 9675 Dye Road, Leavenworth; $330,295 for a single family residence. Contractor: Mike Hendricks.

Terry E. Pittman, 124 Banks Ave., Manson; $265,780 for a single family residence. Contractor: Not listed.

Douglas County

Douglas County PUD #1, 685 S. Nile, East Wenatchee; $36,568 for a commercial retaining wall. Contractor: Potelco Inc.

Todd and Chery L. Marangon, 28 Moser Lane, Orondo; $326,990 for a single family dwelling. Contractor: Owner.

Robert B. Mitchell, 507 N.W. 32nd Place, East Wenatchee; $357,520 for a single family dwelling. Contractor: Hoffman Homes.

Katherine Jensen, 262 Vineyard Drive, Orondo; $599,455 for a single family dwelling. Contractor: Parmenter Homes Inc.

Todd M. and Kerri V. Parmenter, 114 Orchard Place, Orondo; $507,095 for a single family dwelling. Contractor: Parmenter Homes Inc.

David and Michelle Marden, 45 Singleton Road, Orondo; $367,930 for a single family dwelling. Contractor: Owner.

Wenatchee

Chelan-Douglas Land Trust, 18 Wenatchee Ave. N., Wenatchee; $85,000 for a tenant improvement on an alleyside deck and storage. Contractor: Lill Construction Co.

Aut-to-Mocha, 536 S. Mission St., Wenatchee; $30,000 to replace an existing coffee stand with a new one. Contractor: Phoenix Construction.

Overall Handyman Services, 1221 Pershing, Wenatchee; $38,000 for a 1,710-square-foot addition. Contractor: Owner.

Wal-Mart Real Estte Business Trust, 2000 Wenatchee Ave. N., Wenatchee; $8,120,000 for a retail and storage addition. Contractor: TBD.

Bollinger Construction LLC, 1837 McKittrick St., Wenatchee; $247,792 for a 3,460-square-foot home. Contractor: Owner.

Forte Architects, 23 S. Mission St., Wenatchee; $20,000 for an interior remodel. Contractor: JT Elliot Construction.

Wheatland Bank, 1115 N. Miller, Wenatchee; $810,000 for new construction. Contractor: Vandervert Construction.

Stemilt Growers, Inc. announced the recipients of its 2009 Grower Awards during its annual grower barbecue, Thursday, August 5. Award recipients were selected based on the quality of the fruit they produced during the 2009 crop year.

“We honor our growers because they are kind of like the life line of our company,” Stemilt Communications Specialist Brianna Brue said. “Without them we woudn’t be able to succeed, so its a really fun way for us to give back to them for all that they do.”

The 2009 Stemilt Grower Award recipients, listed by orchard name and then by owner/manager, are as follows:

Braeburn Award: Harris Orchards – Jim & Barbara Small
Fuji Award: DNR Mattawa – Stemilt Ag Services
Gala Award: Ice Harbor – Stemilt Ag Services
Golden Delicious Award: Atwood Family Partnership – Paul and Myron Atwood
Granny Smith Award: G&P Finest Kind – Andy Gale & Dave Piepel
Pink Lady Award: Taylor Orchards – Mike Taylor Sr., Mike Taylor Jr., & Steve Paganelli
Red Delicious Award: Paul Marker
Organic Apple Award: Stormy Mountain Ranch – Ray Fuller
Organic Pear Award: ERV #9 – Mike Taylor Sr., Mike Taylor Jr., & Mike Jurgens
Pear Award: Jon Small
Rainier Cherry Award: Covarrubias Orchards – Porfirio Covarrubias
Valley Cherry Award: Luebber Orchards – Jan & Fern Luebber
Hill Cherry Award: Cherry Creek – Derek Carlson
Organic Cherry Award: Chelan View Orchard – John Marker

When it comes to banking, it’s hard to think of money as having grass roots. But in an era marked by billion-dollar bailouts, failing financial institutions, and fledgling cash-strapped businesses, a grass roots banking movement is in full swing.

It’s called “Move Your Money.” It is a national campaign designed to inspire depositors to transition their money away from the large, international banks that received hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in bailout money, and into the credit unions and community banks that bolster local communities.

“The government policy of protecting the ‘too big and politically connected to fail’ is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so,” said Arianna Huffington, owner of The Huffington Post and one of the founders of the Move Your Money movement.

John Annaloro, president and CEO of the Washington League of Credit Unions, has been watching the movement take hold.

“In my career, I cannot remember a time when the public has been so worried about the health of the financial services system,” Annaloro said. “Most people are evaluating, or reassuring themselves that where they have their accounts is the right place to have them.”

And for good reason.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) Troubled Banks List, the number of financial institutions reporting quarterly financial results dropped from 8,012 to 7,932 in the first quarter of this year. During the same quarter, 41 FDIC-insured institutions failed, 37 were merged into other charters, and the number of insured commercial banks and savings institutions on the FDIC “Problem List” increased from 702 to 775, bringing the total assets of “problem” institutions from $403 billion to $431 billion.

In Washington alone, nine banks have failed so far this year.

“It’s the financial system that’s seemingly having the most problems and the largest banks in the United States that were deemed too big to fail that needed to be bailed out with hundreds of billions of dollars of capital injections,” Annaloro said. “The community banks and credit unions are in a much different configuration.”

Jennifer Lehn, executive vice president of Numerica Credit Union, can attest to that.

“We had tremendous deposit growth in 2009,” Lehn said. “It was well in excess of 20 percent and so I think that was certainly a case where consumers were perhaps not feeling good about where their money was sitting and wanting to move it to a strong locally based organization.”

That’s in comparison to a typical year of deposit growth of 10 percent, Lehn said.

Why are they seeing that growth? Lehn said she felt it had to do with the structure of a credit union. Operating on a not-for-profit basis, credit unions are 100 percent owned by the members who bank with the institution. There are no stock holders, she said, and any profits made by the credit union are either retained in equity or are distributed back to members in one way or another, through advantageous loans, deposit rates, or lower fees.

According to a May 2010 report by the Federal Reserve, commercial and industrial loans on banks’ books fell 18.5 percent in 2009, the steepest annual decline since 1985. At a time when most banks are cutting back on lending to businesses, Lehn said the amount of Numerica’s loans grew by 8 percent last year and was on track to increase to 11 percent this year.

Additionally, Lehn said Numerica had approximately $100 million in outstanding business loans and their goal this year was to administer $25 million in new business relationships.

“We do absolutely realize that, at this point, some of the banks are having to hold back and we’re trying to step in and fill that void,” she said.

Scott Anderson, president and CEO of North Cascades National Bank (NCNB), said being rooted in the community allows them to more readily offer lines of credit to local businesses.

“It’s much more personalized and I think because we’re smaller and more fleet of foot, we’re able to offer a more flexible kind of customer-tailored solutions for businesses in our communities rather than a one-size-fits-all approach,” Anderson said.

Started in 1986 to meet the under served needs of farmers and orchardists in Chelan, Wash., Anderson said NCNB had also seen significant growth from disillusioned businesses and individuals leaving Wall Street and depositing their money locally.

According to the company’s 2009 annual report, average deposits were $273 million last year, a year-over-year increase of 4.5 percent.

But growth isn’t everything.

Ken Martin, president and CEO of Cashmere Valley Bank, a local institution whose roots go back in the community to 1932 and now has approximately $1.05 billion in total assets, said their objective this year was to make safe and stable decisions, and to limit deposit growth in order to follow the limited lending opportunities in the community at the present moment. As a community bank, Martin said Cashmere Valley Bank is ultimately tied to the local economy.

“A community bank’s performance is just a reflection of the overall community,” Martin said. “We don’t out-perform our community.”

Martin said that while having that community presence, and keeping community dollars locally was an important aspect of community banking, customers’ thinking about moving their money should choose a bank based on its menu of services and individual merits.

“There has certainly been the backlash [against Wall Street banks] as people have looked for a safe place to put their money,” Martin said. “I would prefer to get new customers over time for other reasons than a crisis. I would rather have a long-term success because of your convenience, your products, your value and your people. That’s a much more stable, manageable, and sensible type of growth.”

The state Department of Revenue announced on August 5, it has surpassed $400 million in unclaimed property refunds issued since 1955. For fiscal year 2010, which ended June 30, the Department processed 98,362 claims and refunded more than $44.5 million.

Over 55 years, the Unclaimed Property division has collected more than $1.1 billion. More than $750 million is still available for refunds. As of August 1, 2010, approximately $417 million had been refunded since 1955.

About 3 million names – including those of familiar public figures and business leaders – are on unclaimed property lists at www.claimyourcash.org. Checking if you, family members, or friends have unclaimed property takes only moments.

“This is something that is a bit of good news for people who may not be aware,” Washington State Department of Revenue Spokesman Eric Jones said. “It’s free and almost instantaneous to find out if they have money due to them. A lot of times its a rebate check from an appliance they bought they may have forgotten or left after a move. So it’s a positive thing.”

Once a year businesses are required to report to the state any unclaimed property held for at least three years. It can include a variety of items, such as paychecks, utility deposits, bank accounts, retailer refunds, equities, securities, and other lost property.

Fiscal year 2010 claims increased from 2009 when more than 88,000 claims were processed in refunding $45 million. In fiscal year 2008, about 75,000 claims were paid, worth $38.7 million.

Allstate Insurance Company has recognized Allstate Exclusive Agency owner Brad Huddle for high standards in customer satisfaction, customer retention and profitable business growth. The recognition earned him an invitation to attend Allstate’s 2010 President’s Conference and Leader’s Forum, which was held in New York city this past April. During the conference, Huddle said he had the opportunity to meet with some of Allstate’s top officers.

Huddle’s agency, located at 235 N. Mission St. in Wenatchee, was one of the top Allstate agencies in the nation, ranking in the top 10 percent in sales, customer service, and customer renewals, Huddle said. The branch specializes in auto, property, commercial, power sports insurance and financial services sales.

“We’ve been real proactive because the economy has been in a bad situation,” Huddle said of his office’s efforts to step up sales. “So we’ve been actually picking up the phone and calling our clients. Keeping in touch with them.”

American Shoe Shop
Bella Sera Bridal
Caffe Mela
Collector’s Gallery
Collins Fashions
Cribs2Bunks
Drop Dead Fabulous
Forget Me Not Kids
Gallery 4 South
Imperato’s Cigar & Pipe
Mills Bros.
Pak-it-Rite
Palmer Shoes
Performance Footwear
Pickle Papers
The Floor Factory
The Gilded Lily
The Kitchen Sync
The Sun Dog Bead Co
Wood & Things

In a tight economy, a little elbow grease and a good idea can go a long way.

Darren Reynolds, owner of Caffe Mela, can attest to that. With polished hardwood floors, a neon sign hanging from warm, greyish-brown walls, and a sparkling chrome Diedrich coffee roaster in the corner of his newly remodeled basement, it’s hard to imagine the downstairs space was ever anything other than a cozy room for sipping coffee.

But when Reynolds opened the doors to his cafe, located at 17 N. Wenatchee Ave., back in 2006, the basement was nothing more than a dusty storage space full of decades-old junk.

“We referred to it as the dungeon,” Reynolds said. “It was extremely dirty. The floor was covered in a felt, linoleum pad that was placed there in the ’20s when the building was built. It would disintegrate as you stepped on it and become air born; and it was a health hazard, and you just really couldn’t be down here.”

But Reynolds didn’t let that dissuade him from finding a creative use for the dingy digs. After hundreds of hours of moving leftover garbage from previous businesses, scraping the floors, painting, cleaning, and all the other dirty jobs that came with the turf, the newest addition to Caffe Mela is finally ready for business: coffee classes.

Starting August 14, Caffe Mela will be holding regular coffee classes in everything from home brewing 101 for the casual coffee drinker, to advanced espresso making for aspiring baristas. For Reynolds, it’s all part of adding value to his original product – a Seattle-style coffee house – and coming up with creative ways for it to expand.

It’s not the first time Caffe Mela has grown. In addition to importing and roasting its own coffee beans for sale on the wholesale market, Reynolds just opened a second branch of Caffe Mela in East Wenatchee this past April. Offering classes, he said, is a way to support his wholesale customers by helping to train their employees, and a way to educate his own retail clientele by inspiring their palates for the bean.

Admittedly, Reynolds said that the expansion was an exciting yet risky venture, but one that was managed by performing most of the labor himself, with the help of employees and family. By keeping most of the grunt work in-house, Reynolds said he was able to keep his remodeling costs to about $3,000. He estimates that number would have been more than $10,000 if he would have hired a contractor.

“It’s definitely taking a gamble on something like this,” Reynolds said. “With our sales, we don’t make money to just cover this kind of thing. We had to go out on a limb and invest in this facility down here in the hopes that we would recover this in the future, as with any business venture.”

Expansion can be a risky investment for any business, especially at a time when most businesses are cutting down on costs. But Reynolds said that, rather than a deterrent, the down economy motivated him to find better ways to make his business thrive.

“It comes down to finding ways to diversify and make money effectively,” he said. “If we were just screaming along and making all kinds of money I wouldn’t be as motivated to get out there and try to find new ways to do business. We have to be creative. You have to come up with new ways to expand the business and really search out what the best hat is going to be going forward.”

Local entrepreneurs looking for some worldly advice will have an opportunity to hear it this Thursday and Friday, August 5 and 6, at the Free Methodist Church in Wenatchee.

Located at 1601 Fifth St., the church will be hosting a live webinar called the Global Leadership Summit, which features talks and interviews with world-renowned business leaders. The summit is sponsored by the Willow Creek Association, a not-for-profit Christian church development organization, and is broadcast via satellite to more than 170 church locations across the nation. This will be the first time in the summit’s 15-year history that it will be available in Wenatchee.

“It is decidedly Christian, but the principals and the people they work with are not necessarily Christians,” said Wenatchee-based J. Russel Creative Marketing Principal and Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce Board President Kristina Stepper, who is helping to organize the summit. “They’re renowned business leaders who have learned some tricks along the way and are happy to share with other people. Some inspiration for the rest of us to help us ramp it up a bit.”

Among the speakers and interviewees will be Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, Tony Dungy, former coach of the Indianapolis Colts and NBC analyst, and Terri Kelly, president and CEO of W.L. Gore & Associates (the makers of GORE-TEX products), among others.

“It’s an opportunity to learn from successful business leaders, what’s worked for them, and really to get inspired to move things to the next level,” Stepper said.

Cost of admission for the two day event is between $75 for students and $265 for individuals, but other discounts apply. To view the full schedule and to register for the event visit http://www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/2010/index.asp. Tickets will also be sold at the door.

Contact the church at (509) 662-1501 for additional information.

Chelan County Public Utility District (CPUD) commissioners unanimously approved hiring John Janney as the next general manager during a special meeting Aug. 3. Commissioners said they had great confidence in Janney’s ability to carry the PUD forward with the momentum established through strategic planning and strong new financial policies.

“I think the first and foremost thing we had to consider is we worked pretty hard over the past four years to establish a specific direction,” Commission President Dennis Bolz said of the PUD’s strategic and financial planning process. “John Janney is unique in the sense that he has a couple year history of being one of the architects of that direction, and at the same time he brings to us a wealth of outside experience.”

Bolz said that the PUD received several inquiries for the position of general manager from highly qualified individuals, but Janney’s experience and familiarity with the PUD made him the perfect candidate.

“He has worked with people as far up the food chain as Alan Greenspan,” Bolz said. “So when you’re a small utility in the middle of the state of Washington and you have someone that has that financial background … it’s just kind of that whole financial background that is pretty tough to find if you’ve only worked locally. It allows our organization to see a little bit further out on the horizon in terms of what some of the other possibilities are, as well as what some of the other trip wires might be.”

A new general manager was needed after Rich Riazzi announced last month that he was leaving after four years to take a job as president and CEO of Duquesne Light Co. in Pittsburgh, Penn. Janney, 48, has been with the PUD since 2007, when he joined as executive manager of risk and chief risk officer. He has also been serving as chief financial officer since 2008. Janney was the principal architect of new financial policies that were adopted by the board on June 21 as part of a new strategic plan being developed for the next several years and beyond.

Accepting the position, Janney said, “I’m really excited about where we are as a utility.”  He said he has great confidence in his co-workers, and that he will be counting on them for help as he takes over his duties permanently. Janney had been the interim manager since Riazzi’s departure last week.

Chelan County Public Utility District (CPUD) commissioners voted Tuesday, Aug. 3, to authorize legal action against the Washington State Department of Revenue to get a refund of about $168,000 in taxes erroneously collected from CPUD customers between 2008 and 2009.

As explained to commissioners by General Counsel Carol Wardell, the privilege taxes were collected by the state on basic service charges that are part of CPUD bills along with the charges for kilowatt-hour power use. Sixty percent of the taxes paid by the CPUD were distributed to Chelan County and the cities in the county.

A state Appeals Court ruled last December that the state was not entitled to apply the privilege tax collection to the basic service charges, setting the stage for refunds. The state, however, said it will not issue refunds without being sued by the affected agencies. The state Legislature took action in 2010 to change the state law and allow the state to collect the privilege tax on basic charges from now on.

“There’s some precedent already established by a couple of other public utility districts that have gone through the suit process and we would utilize an outside attorney who successfully sued on behalf of Clark County for that, so that you’re not going back and having to re-educate a person through those steps and processes, connections and logic that has served before,” Commission President Dennis Bolz said. “So our staff will supervise that process but we will utilize that outside attorney and that’s a whole lot cheaper process than if you go up and initiate that on your own.”

Wardell recommended the CPUD join with Grant County PUD in suing the state to save on legal fees. The two PUDs will be hiring the same legal firm that represented Clark PUD and Grays Harbor PUD in their initial successful lawsuit against the Department of Revenue. Legal costs are expected to be between $10,000 to $20,000 for CPUD and would increase if the state raises defenses.

Based upon a prior settlement, it is expected that the refund would be applied as a credit against future tax collections, Wardell explained.

CPUD commissioners voiced frustration that the state was requiring costly legal action by the PUDs before granting refunds. Commissioner Norm Gutzwiler said the CPUD was showing due diligence by taking action on behalf of customers.

Grant PUD authorized similar legal action last week.

For as long as Dr. Ed Womack has owned Cascade Veterinary Clinic, Inc., P.S., he has made a point of providing health care for his employees. It was just good business.

In addition to offering the latest in things like ultrasound imaging, digital radiographic x-rays, and laser-guided surgical procedures for his animal clientele, providing health care for employees was an integral part of attracting good people and staying competitive.

“We want to have something that makes people feel like they are worthwhile here and that we are providing things that they might not be able to get elsewhere,” Womack said from the clinic’s large, hospital-clean procedure room, amidst a bustle of scrub-wearing veterinary assistants and furry, four-legged patients.

Womack became part owner of the business in 1996 and full owner in 2002, but the business began in 1964 as more of a mom-and-pop operation. In 1998, Womack moved with the business into a brand new, 6,250-square-foot facility, complete with an in-house lab for diagnostic testing, boarding facilities, and multiple rooms for treatment and surgical procedures. Over the years, the business has grown from a handful of staff to 18 full-time employees and six full-time veterinary doctors.

But while the business and its menu of services has grown, Womack said that paying for health insurance has gotten harder.

“Our problem in the past five to 10 years is, it seems like every year that we would re-new the premiums for the same amount of insurance, (the cost) would go up 20 to 30 percent and that’s a huge amount to jump,” Womack said. “So what that would force us to do then is to change the policy to raise the deductible that people have to pay, or make some changes so that we could still afford to provide that insurance for people.”

If you’ve had to buy insurance in the past decade that testimony probably comes as no surprise.

According to a 2009 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit research organization that focuses on health care issues facing the United States, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have gone up a total of 131 percent since 1999. To put that in context, the report found that worker’s wages had risen only 38 percent, and inflation only 28 percent in the last 10 years. In 2009, the average premium for family coverage under an employer-sponsored health insurance plan was $13,375, with employees paying $3,515 and employers paying $9,860 on average.

Nancy Porzio, director of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Seattle District office, said she has seen many small businesses cutting health insurance in an attempt to pinch pennies.

“In these difficult economic times, (business owners) need to look to where they can cut some costs and unfortunately (health insurance is) a place they can immediately cut some costs,” Porzio said. “They don’t want to do it. The employers I meet with consider their employees part of the family and they want to give them as much as they can, but if you’re trying to keep your business operating at a profit sometimes you have to make those hard decisions.”

Obama’s health care reform law

To stem the problem of rising health care costs, on March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. The culmination of 15 months of political debate, the implications of the law are broad, controversial, and for many business owners like Womack, they are unclear.

For a fun brain teaser, flip to any page in the thousand-page collection of legalese and see if you can wrap your brain around it. The section applying to small business tax credits begins:

“IN GENERAL.—Subpart D of part IV of subchapter A of chapter 1 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (relating to business-related credits) is amended by inserting after section 45Q the following: …”

Fortunately, the government has set up two websites that can help employers navigate the murky waters of health care reform, www.healthcare.gov, and its former archived, yet still viewable site, www.healthreform.gov.

According to healthreform.gov, in addition to extending health care to millions of uninsured across the country, beginning this year, an estimated four million small businesses will qualify for health insurance tax credits that will dish out $40 billion over the course of the next 10 years. That could be huge for qualifying companies like Cascade Veterinary Clinic, which pays nearly $70,000 a year in employee insurance premiums, and could save nearly a third of that cost under the new law.

How do we pay for it?

According to the Employment Security Department there are 2,930 firms in Chelan and Douglas counties with fewer than 20 employees that could conceivably qualify for the small business tax credits.

While that could be a great opportunity for many small businesses, Womack and Porzio remain skeptical about where that money will come from and how it will affect businesses down the road, especially when there are so many conflicting reports from various organizations.

“It concerns me a lot,” Porzio said. “As a tax payer and a home owner, I’m very concerned about (how we’re going to pay for the reform), and I have a daughter and I wonder what the future is going to be like for her. Personally, I think there will be some changes to the health care reform before it actually takes place.”

According to a March 2010 report by Deloitte LLP (a worldwide firm, dealing in audit, financial advisory, risk management and tax services, that develops proprietary research in order to help its clients understand issues of the day), the health care law will raise nearly $438 billion over the next 10 years through tax increases on high-income individuals, excise taxes on high-cost or “Cadillac” health plans, and new fees on selected health-care related industries such as medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and tanning salons.

According to the Deloitte report, $86.8 billion of the moneywill come from Medicare tax hikes that will affect higher-income tax payers, and $123.4 billion will come from a new Medicare contribution levied on unearned income.

That may seem like a lot of money, and it is, but Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler said that by providing coverage to the uninsured, it will reduce the cost of uncompensated care in the system, which will result in $500 million in savings each year in Washington state alone.

“It’s also important to point out that the current system was not sustainable,” Kreidler said. “It was devolving around us as we saw the growing numbers of uninsured, the growing numbers of employers that were dropping health insurance. It meant that the level of the percentage of the population that were either exposed to being underinsured or had no insurance was growing and the cost was rising exponentially. This is a good reform from the standpoint of helping us transform the system.”

Effect on WVMC and other larger employers

Dr. Stuart Freed, medical director at Wenatchee Valley Medical Center, said that the hospital estimates
it will see an additional 20,000 to 25,000 previously uninsured people from the four-county area it serves seeking primary care and preventative maintenance as a result of the new legislation.

“Many of those folks are seeking care now or already have been seeking it, and they’re seeking it at their most vulnerable time and they’re least effective time,” Freed said. “In other words, I’m going to wait till I have chest pain before I see a cardiologist.”

Freed said that there will not be enough physicians at the hospital to provide primary care to all those people, but that the hospital is currently working on a contingency plan to handle the increased load, such as using nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants more efficiently.

Another question being raised by the new law is how its new insurance mandates will impact larger employers, such as the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center, which also provides health care for its employees.

Beginning in 2014, employers with more than 50 employees that do not offer coverage, and who have at least one employee who qualifies for government tax credits, will have to pay a fee of $2,000 for every full-time employee after the first 30 employees. For those employers with more than 50 employees that do offer health insurance, but still have an employee who qualifies for government subsidized health insurance, they will have to pay the lesser of $3,000 per qualifying employee, or $2,000 per full time employee after the first 30 employees.

According to Wenatchee Valley Medical Center Accounting Manager Carol Frasier, the hospital employs 1,209 full-time equivalent employees. In 2009, it paid $12 million in health-related benefit costs, and covered approximately 2,583 people. Under the new law, if the hospital decided to drop its health care coverage the possible cost for doing so, instead of being $12 million in costs, would be closer to $2.4 million in fines.

Dr. Roger Stark, health care policy analyst for the Washington Policy Center, a Seattle-based non-partisan think tank, foresees this dynamic having big consequences for Washington state.

“You look at a fine of $3,000 and you say, ‘Whoa, I could save $7,000 here if I just pay the fine and allow my employees to go find their own insurance.’ It’s a dollars and cents thing,” he said. “It’s going to be an economic decision for businesses and our guess is it’ll start with small and medium-sized but ultimately we could foresee Microsoft and Boeing doing this, rather than paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars of health benefits for their employees.”

Freed said that while the center has no intention of dropping its health insurance plan, it would likely have to adjust its deductibles and premiums in order to drop below the threshold of what is considered a “Cadillac plan.”

Meanwhile, business owners like Womack are still wondering what the health care reform will mean for them.

“It’s a little bit scary for us as employers to see what our employees might have to go through and deal with,” Womack said. “But it’s one of those things that I guess we just take it as it comes.”

By trimming spending and taking advantage of higher-than-expected recent river flows, the Chelan County Public Utility District (PUD) has improved its overall financial outlook for the year by about $4 million from the previous forecast, commissioners were told in a quarterly financial update Monday afternoon.

Instead of seeing a projected loss of about $27 million for the year, the projected number is now down to about $23 million. The shortfall is covered by PUD unrestricted cash reserves, which now stand at about $190 million. When the 2010 budget was adopted last December, the 2010 change in utility services net assets was forecast between $6 million positive and $32 million negative, depending on water supply, power prices, interest rates and other influences.

Kelly Boyd, director of Strategic Financial Planning, told PUD commissioners Monday she was more comfortable forecasting a shortfall of between $20-$25 million rather than landing on a precise number.

‘There is still a lot of time left in the year,” she said. “And things could change.”

A report from Energy Planning and Trading Manager Janet Jaspers showed that water runoff forecasts have bumped up to about 77 percent of average for the Columbia River at Grand Coulee Dam, from a previous forecast of 67 percent. Lake Chelan’s runoff forecast has gone from 83 percent up to 101 percent of average, but much of that water had to be spilled because of modernization work on one of the two turbines in the Chelan Falls powerhouse.

Despite the additional water lately, the first few months of the year were abnormally dry. Jaspers showed that the amount of surplus power available for sale has only been 49 percent of what was budgeted, and the revenue resulting from power sales (due to low prices) has only amounted to 53 percent of budget.

In an effort to stabilize revenues in the future and provide a more stable financial foundation, the PUD has begun selling power at auction for several years into the future. Sales for 2012-2013 have gone well, said Gregg Carrington, managing director of Energy Resources.

The first four-year slice auction will take place over the course of the next few weeks.

Online Directory Scam Warning
Global Trade Control.com of the U.K. is sending fake online listing service notices to businesses. BBB even received an “update notice” from the above mentioned UK group.

BBB Tip:
Anytime you receive a notice to “update your info,” first ask yourself two questions: 1) Do I know of this group at all? 2) Did I ever sign up with this group to begin with?

Given that BBB could answer ‘No.’ to both those questions right off the bat, we knew to take the notice as a red flag warning. Businesses have been receiving these fake notices from www.globetradecontrol.com / info@globetradecontrol.com fax 44-2079002519 / 44-207-9002519 / 1-212-898 1249 / Euro Business Contact 2010 / Globe Trade Control.

HIV-free Generation (HFG) – www.hivfreegeneration.co.uk
Phishing Job Scam, Don’t Respond or Share Personal Info

The above mentioned group is sending random faxes and e-mails to people attempting to get them interested in being a donation collector for this so-called organization. The scam attempts to get you to follow the directives in the email/fax by asking for personal information, opening the doors to the scammers communicating with you so that you divulge further information to them.

BBB Advice:
Watch for misspellings in communication. Also, educate yourself about job scams and how they work, because if you are looking for work, this is NOT the way to do it.

If anyone randomly sends you a fax, it’s considered unsolicited, and there are rules for that. You can file a formal complaint about it to the FCC website: www.fcc.gov.

Business Beware!
National Association of Professional Women of NY is sending random letters to women business owners. That organization has an F rating with BBB.

A regional BBB-accredited business contacted BBB last week stating the following:
Do you know anything about the National Association of Professional Women? I just got a letter from then telling me I’ve been selected to be a member. (There’s no fee or anything.) Sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is.

Well, when we looked the association up, this is what we found:
BBB processed a total of 68 complaints about this business since Oct. 1, 207. Of the total 68 complaints closed since October 2007, 43 were closed in the last 12 months.

The Wenatchee Business Journal

Washington residents who’ve been uninsured for at least six months and who have a pre-existing medical condition now can apply for coverage under the new, federally funded Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, starting Aug. 2.

The new Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan is being run by the state’s current high risk pool, the Washington State Health Insurance Pool (WSHIP), and funded by a $102 million grant from the federal government until 2014.

“If you’ve been without health insurance for at least six months, and have a serious medical condition or just received a diagnosis, this could be the plan for you,” said Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler.  “Unlike the state’s high risk pool, coverage for pre-existing conditions under the new Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan begins immediately.”

“The new plan is designed to be a stop-gap measure to help those most in need of coverage until 2014, when full health reform takes effect and people cannot be denied insurance because of a pre-existing medical condition,” he added.

To qualify for the new plan, you must be a Washington state resident and:

• Be a citizen or national of the United States or a legal resident of the United States
• Have been uninsured for at least six months before applying and
• Have a pre-existing condition

The benefits under the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan vary depending on which deductible you select, $2,500 or $500:

• Rates for the $2,500 deductible plan range from $161-$769 per month, depending on your age and whether or not you smoke.
• Rates under the $500 deductible plan are $324-$1,577 per month, also depending on your age and whether or not you smoke.

Coverage for those who apply by Aug. 15 will begin Sept. 1, 2010.

“There are many benefits to running the new plan ourselves,” Kreidler said. “By maintaining local control, we can modify the proposal to meet the needs of Washington residents.”

Applications for the new plan are available at https://www.wship.org/PCIP-WA or by calling toll-free 1-877-505-0514.

The Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) is warning Washington homeowners and businesses to beware of asphalt paving scammers that may pressure you to repair your driveway.

The seasonal scam has been reported recently in Cowlitz County.

In the summer months, it’s common for these paving crews to come into the state and travel around hitting different communities – often targeting senior citizens. The workmanship may be poor, the asphalt inferior and the prices inflated, but by the time problems appear, the crew has moved on to a different area or another state.

Typically, the representatives will approach a homeowner or business and offer to repave a driveway or parking lot for a great low price. They’ll claim they have just enough asphalt left over from another job nearby. The representatives are usually polite, drive nice work vehicles and can be very persuasive.

In a recent instance in Cowlitz County, a young couple was persuaded to go to the bank and withdraw cash to pay for the asphalt paving job. Within a couple of weeks, the asphalt started breaking up and coming off in chunks.

“Never let anyone rush you into making a decision about home repairs or improvements, no matter how good the deal seems at the time,” said Rich Ervin, L&I’s program manager for contractor registration. “Be wary of great bargains, lifetime guarantees and other high-pressure sales tactics.”

L&I recommends these 10 tips for hiring the best contractor to avoid getting burned by a shady contractor:

1. Plan your project. The more clearly you can describe what you want done, the less chance there is for miscommunication or cost overruns.
2. Interview several qualified registered contractors/remodelers and solicit multiple written bids. Evaluate all aspects of the bids, including scope of work, warranties, references, time frames and price.
3. Make sure a contractor is registered, with a bond and insurance. Ask for their identification and contractor registration, then verify potential contractors at Lni.wa.gov. The “Look Up: Contractors or Tradespeople” link will show how long a contractor has been registered, if they have lawsuits against their bond and if they have been cited for violations.
4. Check whether a contractor is paying workers’ comp. If someone is hurt on your property, you can be held liable. Make sure your contractor is up to date on workers’ compensation insurance if they will have workers on the job site.
5. Check for other complaints. Check with the Attorney General’s Office(http://www.atg.wa.gov/SafeguardingConsumers.aspx) and the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org)
6. Check references. Verify references by visiting a job site in progress and interviewing the homeowner.
7. Ask for a disclosure statement before work begins. A disclosure statement clearly states the contractor’s registration and bond information.
8. Watch for signs of a scam. High-pressure sales techniques, asking for all cash, or working on just weekends can be signs you’re dealing with a shady character. Remember: If a deal sounds too good to be true, it is.
9. Pay for work as it is completed. Beware of contractors asking for large deposits or entire costs upfront. You want to pay for progress on the project as it is completed.
10. Get lien releases from subcontractors. Prior to making final payment, make sure your subcontractors aren’t owed any money. Unpaid subcontractors can hold you responsible for their work by putting liens on your home.

USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) recently announced the crop expansion availability of the Canola/Rapeseed Multi-Peril Crop Insurance (MPCI) program in Douglas and Okanogan counties. Federal crop insurance is now generally available in most locations where canola or rapeseed is grown in the Pacific Northwest.

RMA also reminds Pacific Northwest producers of the fast approaching 2011 crop year sales closing deadlines for MPCI programs:

• Canola/Rapeseed – August 31, 2010 (for Fall Planted types)
• Onions – August 31, 2010 (Fall Planted types – Umatilla/Walla Walla counties only)
• Mint with Winter Coverage – September 30, 2010
• Forage Production - September 30, 2010 (Klamath and Malheur counties, Oregon)
• Forage (Alfalfa) Seed Pilot – September 30, 2010 (in selected counties)
• Fall Planted Barley with Winter Coverage – September 30, 2010 (in selected counties)
• Fall Planted Dry Peas/Lentils with Winter Coverage – September 30, 2010 (in selected counties)
• Wheat – September 30, 2010
• Apiculture (Honey) - September 30, 2010
• Pasture Rangeland Forage - September 30, 2010

Current policyholders and uninsured growers must make all of their decisions on crop insurance coverage, especially which crops to insure and which level and type of coverage to obtain, prior to the sales closing date.

RMA reminds producers of the important link between Federal crop insurance and Farm Service Agency (FSA) Supplemental Agricultural Disaster Assistance programs for the 2011 crop year. To maintain eligibility for FSA’s disaster programs, producers must have a policy or plan of insurance at the catastrophic (CAT) level of coverage or higher. If there is no coverage in a county for a specific crop under the traditional MPCI program, producers may ask a crop insurance agent whether they would be eligible for coverage under a written agreement.  For those crops that are non-insurable, a producer may also buy coverage under the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program by the closing date. For further information about timetables, please contact the local FSA County Office.

Producers are encouraged to visit with their crop insurance agent soon to learn specific details for the 2011 crop year. Federal crop insurance program policies are sold and delivered solely through private crop insurance companies and agents.  A list of crop insurance agents is available at all USDA Service Centers throughout the United States or on the RMA website.

Chapter 7 — Straight bankruptcy; debtor gives up non-exempt property and debts discharged.
Chapter 11 — Business reorganization; protection from creditors while business devises a plan of reorganization. Income/expense reports must be filed monthly.
Chapter 13 — Plan is devised by the individual to pay a percentage of debt based on ability to pay. All disposable income must be used to pay debts.
This information comes from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Spokane. Monetary amounts including liabilities and assets are no longer provided by the court.

Chapter 7

Michael J. and Karen S. Jeffris, P.O. Box 454, Peshastin, WA 98847. Filed on June 30.

Harvey A. Smith, 2115 Columbia View Circle, Wenatchee, WA 98801. Filed on June 30.

Tami Gossard, 5818 Batterman, East Wenatchee, WA 98802. Filed on June 30.

Gregory J. and Rebecca J. Cerino, 21611 Primitive Park Road, Leavenworth, WA 98826. Filed on July 1.

Joseph I. Crystal Gail Wilson, P.O. Box 133, Rock Island, WA 98850. Filed on July 2.

Clara Silva Gonzalez, 401 South Kentucky # 8, East Wenatchee, WA 98802. Filed on July 2.

Judith D. Crandall, 1151 Eastmont, East Wenatchee, WA 98802. Filed on July 2.

Joseph D. Alexander, 1102 Carolyn St. S.E., East Wenatchee, WA 98802. Filed on  July 2.

Robert W. and Shay L. Smith, 6761 Navarre Coulee Road, Chelan, WA 98816. Filed on july 6.

Paul Dean Floyd, 1905 Pensione Place, Wenatchee, WA 98801. Filed on July 7.

Michael Randall King, 1225 Westview Drive, Wenatchee, WA 98801. Filed on July 8.

Timothy M. Brenda L. Lamb, P.O. Box 5, Entiat, WA 98822. Filed on July 8.

Christopher M. Phipps, 2329 Herndon Drive, East Wenatchee, WA 98802. Filed on July 8.

Duane M. Jeanna M. Fout, P.O. Box 913, Waterville, WA 98858. Filed on July 8.

Joseph Lane and Tabitha Dell Spears, 657 N. Baker #C201, East Wenatchee, WA 98802. Filed on July 13.

Michael D. and Marina G. Lemons, 4697 U.S. Hwy 97, Peshastin, WA 98847. Filed on July 14.

Douglas L. Bell, 1151 Washington St., Wenatchee, WA 98801. Filed on July 14.

Ean Matthew and Jennifer Lynn Fenty, 1803 Jefferson St., Wenatchee, WA 98801. Filed on July 14.

Anita M. Surita, 801 Yakima St., Wenatchee, WA 98801. Filed on July 15.

Bryan Macon, 1939 Valley View Blvd., East Wenatchee, WA 98802-4044. Filed on July 19.

Kevin E. and Kari D. Warren, 889 S. Kentucky Ave., East Wenatchee, WA 98802. Filed on July 21.

Emerrae Alohr, P.O. Box 384, Dryden, WA 98821. Filed on July 21.

Anastacio Sanchez and Sandra Luz Mejia, 924 Monroe, Wenatchee, WA 98801. Filed on July 22.

Billy D. Burns, P.O. Box 36, Chelan Falls, WA 98817. Filed on July 22.

Chapter 13

Velma (Kathy) Shiflett, 202 N. Keller, East Wenatchee, WA 98802. Filed on July 19.

Thomas Canterbury and Shelley Canterbury, 12843 Wilson St., Leavenworth, WA 98826. Filed on July 21.

On Thursday, July 29, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the state Department of Revenue’s (DOR) interpretation that local brokered natural gas (BNG) use tax is imposed where the gas is burned regardless of where it is first received by the taxpayer. The decision, authored by Justice Debra Stephens, allows the DOR to deny refund claims against local jurisdictions that levy these taxes and collect unreported taxes, totaling $25 million.

At issue were differing interpretations of where “use” occurs for purposes of the local BNG use tax. More than 50 Washington cities impose a local BNG use tax, including Wenatchee. Tacoma also imposes a BNG use tax and is where G-P Gypsum – the Atlanta-based gypsum manufacturing company that brought suit against the DOR – consumed the natural gas that it first held in unincorporated Whatcom County before transferring to Tacoma.

G-P Gypsum had argued that “use” occurs where it first takes control of the gas. Unincorporated areas of Whatcom County do not impose a local BNG use tax. G-P Gypsum’s position was supported in a May 2008 state Court of Appeals opinion.

Today’s 5-4 ruling overturns that Court of Appeals decision. Since May 2008, the DOR has received refund requests for previously paid local BNG use tax totaling more than $14 million. Based on today’s ruling, the DOR will deny those refund requests. Since the Court of Appeals opinion, some taxpayers had stopped reporting the local portion of BNG use tax. The DOR is billing these businesses more than $11 million for the unreported tax.

In finding for the DOR, the court’s majority opinion stated, “The legislature expressed its clear purpose to authorize municipalities to tax entities for the use of natural gas within city limits.”

Earlier this year, the state Legislature passed ESHB 3179 to clarify that the local BNG use tax is imposed where a taxpayer burns or stores gas. The law went into effect June 10, 2010, and applies to the use of natural gas on or after that date. The court’s decision applies to the use of gas before June 10, 2010.

The DOR has issued a special notice on the effects of this law. It is available at http://dor.wa.gov/docs/pubs/specialnotices/2010/sn_10_brokerednatgas.pdf

The case is G-P Gypsum Corp. v. Department of Revenue. Related documents, including the decision and dissent, are online at www.courts.wa.gov

History is chic and downtown Wenatchee has it for sale.

That was the message to business owners and business professionals on July 28, during the Wenatchee Downtown Association’s “Downtown is Looking Up!” tour.

About 20 to 30 people gathered in the afternoon heat for a casual stroll down Wenatchee Avenue and a brief glimpse of some the historic buildings that comprise Wenatchee’s nationally recognized historic district. Some were vacant, some newly remodeled, but all were shown in the hopes of igniting some creative sparks in the minds of local entrepreneurs.

The tour included stops at Fuel Sports Bar & Rock House, The Gentry Hair Salon and Shoppe, Caffe Mela, the Dore Building and Jones & Jones Funeral Home, and the YMCA.

“A lot of people have business savvy, but they don’t necessarily have a vision for design and so when you walk into 12,000 square feet of office space that’s still ‘landlord white,’ still has the previous tenant’s carpet, it’s hard to see the vision,” said Wenatchee Downtown Association Executive Director Sarah Dempsey of the large, block-sized property of the Dore Building at 135 N. Wenatchee Ave., which is currently up for rent.

Dempsey said she hoped that by showing people what was available and what other business owners have already done, it would inspire people to reclaim some of the unique facades that comprise Wenatchee’s historical and architectural heritage.

“We are fortunate that we have a nationally recognized historic district and that we have so much of the original building stock left,” Dempsey said. “That gives you a sense of place. To be cliché, you could go to a mall and every mall looks the same. When you have buildings that were built in 1906, or a whole block that was built in 1920 for a car dealership, that’s the sense of character that you want to retain because nothing else is like Wenatchee.”

Here’s a little history behind some of the stops:

The Gentry
Built in 1920 on the site of one of Wenatchee’s oldest homes, the Warren Building was originally an automotive business. Over the years it housed various restaurants and cafes, and most recently The Gentry Hair Salon and Shoppe. Featuring the original brick walls, the salon has a rustic yet newly clean vibe. “There’s drawbacks to these old buildings as well,” Gentry Owner Kris Kruse said. “These bricks are pretty old and even though we dust weekly, there are little chips from time to time.” But she says she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Caffe Mela
In the basement of Caffe Mela is a spot that owner Darren Reynolds hopes will become a tasting room of a different sort: a coffee tasting room. What was once a dusty storage room now features an enormous Diedrich coffee roaster – that looks more like a steam locomotive than a bean machine – the original yet newly refinished hard wood floors, warm, earthy wall paint, and a green-electric sign on the wall that proudly displays the word, “open.” Reynolds and his wife live in the apartment above the cafe. “I do love living downtown,” he said. “It’s kind of like urban living in a not-so-urban environment, which is great.”

The Dore Building
The Dore Building at 135 N. Wenatchee Ave., is a humongous, block-sized empty space for lease. Built in 1905, it originally served as a box factory and then became an auto dealership for the next 20-odd years. From 1929 until the late ’80s it was used for a variety of furniture stores, and due to the large size of the ground floor – 12,000 square feet – owner Gary Dore said that a furniture store is probably what the space is best suited for. Dore said he hoped to rent out office space above the ground floor, as well as a 5,300-square-foot space below it, and that prices were negotiable. “You just gotta tell me what you want, but I’d like maybe 50 cents a foot,” Dore said.

Jones & Jones Funeral Home
It’s a funeral home, there’s no mistaking that. The cremation furnaces in the basement make it hard to forget, but it wasn’t always so. Built in 1906 by Conrad Rose – an assertive county commissioner who carved out Chelan County from Kittitas and Okanogan counties  – the large, mansion-like building was Rose’s home until 1924 when he sold it to David Jones for use as a mortuary. Over the years, the layout of the building has been changed and remodeled, and in 1967 a chapel was built on the main floor. Today the building is home to a maze of hallways, apartment complexes and what Pat Scofield, the real estate representative for the home, thinks could make great office space. For $995,000, the 23,000-square-foot building could be yours.

A Quicksign Source, Pam Davick, 315 N. Mission St., Wenatchee

A Sprinkle Above, Kevin Story, P.O. Box 5125, Wenatchee

Affordable Welding & Repair, Charles S. Tate, 1961 S. Wenatchee Ave., Wenatchee

Alatorre Concrete, Felix Alatorre and Jaime Alatorre, 750 N. Grover Place, East Wenatchee

BCK Construction, Bob Faulconer, 1421 Seattle St., Wenatchee

Brian’s Salad Bar Express, Brian Wintermeier, 25 N. Wenatchee Ave, Suite 107, Wenatchee

Cashmere Valley Construction, Kyle Bowles, 106 Birch St., Cashmere

Centimark Corporation, Edward B. Dunlap, 12 Grandview Circle, Canonburg, Penn.

Courtney Blanchard LMP, Courtney Blanchard @ Therapeutic Touch, 1601 N. Wenatchee Ave., Wenatchee

Columbia River Visions, William Layman & Susan Evans, 1101 Appleland Drive, Wenatchee

Crimson Electronics LLC, Vikki Mellenberger, Wenatchee

Danibella’s Ice Cream, Claudia J. Robles, 10 13th St., East Wenatchee

Eaton Building Services LLC, Edwin Eaton, Wenatchee

Etcetera, Amy Aquiqui, 28 N. Wenatchee Ave., Wenatchee

The Establishment LLC, Todd Crisman, Wenatchee

Frontier & Company, Mark Dirk, Wenatchee

G & S Painting and Drywall, Garland A. York, 87 Viewdale St., Wenatchee

Gallery 4 South, Charleen Martin, 4 S. Wenatchee Ave., Wenatchee

Global Elite Motors LLC, Kevin Kennedy & Brian Thorpe, 1840 N. Wenatchee Ave., Wenatchee

Industrial Electric & Mechanical Inc., Bryan Williams, 1512 Walla Walla Ave., Wenatchee

Insignia Sign Inc., Cindy Thomson, P.O. Box 2849, Renton, Wash.

Kelly A. Dempsey LMT, Kelly Dempsey @ Therapeutic Touch, 1601 N. Wenatchee Ave., Wenatchee

Kimili Thorson, Cosmetologist, Kimili Thorson @ Shear Obsession, 607 S. Mission St., Wenatchee

KW Homes LLC, Kevin Wilson, 2111 5th St., Wenatchee

LILL Construction Company, David Lill, P.O. Box 9925, Spokane, Wash.

Madison Tours & Travel Inc., Sandra Richardson, Wenatchee

Maria Hernandez Daycare, Maria Hernandez, Wenatchee

McCue Construction LLC, David McCue & Jason McCue, 480 Boyd Road, Chelan, Wash.

O’Neal Consulting, B. Joyce O’Neal, Wenatchee

O’Terrys Unique Home Transformations, Beth Terry, Wenatchee

Objective Medical Assessments Corp., Steffen Nelson, 247 N. Chelan Ave., Wenatchee

On the Road Productions, Ronald Medeiros, 7 N. Wenatchee Ave. Suite 201, Wenatchee

Paleteria La Sabrosa, Isidro Sanchez, Wenatchee

Papa John’s Pizza, Michael Carnovalz, CG Group Inc., 845 S. Mission St., Wenatchee

RC Construction, Chris Cusick, 319 32nd St. N.W., East Wenatchee

Reliable Remodels, Robert Carlson, Wenatchee

Roberts Construction LLC, Glen J. Roberts, 311 N. Perry St., East Wenatchee

Rocky Mulliken, Cosmetologist, Rocky Mulliken @ Salon Coutre, 404 S. Chelan Ave., Wenatchee

Saul’s Car Carpet Cleaning, Zenalda Aguilar, Wenatchee

Tatiana Briones, 15025 Allourtis Ave., Norwalk, Calif.

Teresa’s Cleaning Services, Maria T. Perez, Wenatchee

THR & Associates Inc., Jeffery A. Parsons, 3200 Pleasant Run, Springfield, Ill.

TNT Landscaping, Thomas Cumpton, 1820 4th St. N.E., East Wenatchee

Tony’s Treasures, Tony Armstrong, Wenatchee

Wisdom Seekers, Francis RG McCormick, Wenatchee

City of East Wenatchee

Amrose Painting, John Crowl, 3123 Edwards St., Malaga, Wash.

Columbia Grove Ministry Center, Linda Belton, 802 Valley Mall Pkwy, East Wenatchee

East Wenatchee Motor Inn, Eugene Yon, 10 13th St. N.E., East Wenatchee

Edible Bouquets, Michelle DasCombaz, East Wenatchee

Electronic Gaming Inc., Bill Tackitt, 5917 Evergreen Way, Everett, Wash.

Johnson Electric Northwest LLC, Robert Shane Johnson, P.O. Box 1967, Wenatchee

La Carretta Mexicana, Husam Alsarame, 960 Valley Mall Pkwy, East Wenatchee

Sander’s Construction, Art Sanders, 5180 Stemilt Creek Road, Wenatchee

SaviorFaire – Angela Johnson, Angela Johnson, 530 Valley Mall Pkwy, East Wenatchee

The Bike Doctor, Michael Earing, 1065 Corum Circle, East Wenatchee

The Ink Spot Tattoo Studio, Noah Lynes, 818 Valley Mall Pkwy, East Wenatchee

Timberwood Homes LLC, Mark McNaughton, 788 Grant Road, East Wenatchee

Walle’s Childcare, Ramona W. Ramirez, 518 Newport Plaza, East Wenatchee