Parents with children in the Yakima Valley School for the developmentally disabled see a bad omen in a consultant's recom-mendation that the school be downsized and ultimately converted to a community center with a limited number of beds.
A new draft report recommends either closing the old buildings at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla or downsizing a facility on McNeil Island to a minimum-security prison.
A Yakima prison for elderly and infirm inmates, a juvenile-rehabilitation center in Thurston County and all of the state's intermediate-care facilities for the developmentally disabled have been placed on the chopping block in a state consultant's cost-cutting report.
A new draft report recommends either closing the old buildings at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla or downsizing a facility on McNeil Island to a minimum-security prison.
Wallace Nolen, left, and Fred Aylward pass the time in E-Unit, where the Ahtanum View Corrections Center houses its most medically challenged offenders.
After cutting loose more than 8,000 offenders from probation in the past two months, the state Department of Corrections is considering an even more drastic cost-reduction measure: closing at least one prison.
The walk to and from school for kids in Union Gap may soon become safer. The state gave the city nearly a quarter million dollars for a new a traffic light on Ahtanum Road.