MLCC to host conversational town hall Thursday
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 3 months, 3 weeks AGO
Recovery coach Victor Estrada, left, speaks about gangs at a previous town hall hosted by the Moses Lake Community Coalition. This year’s town hall is Thursday and will encourage attendees to discuss community issues among themselves.
FILE PHOTO
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | June 22, 2026 3:00 AM
MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Community Coalition will try to kick-start some conversations Thursday at a town hall titled “What's Troubling You, Moses Lake?”
“The feedback that we've gotten for all of our prior town halls is people enjoyed them, but they wish there was more of an opportunity to talk,” said Coalition Coordinator Megan Watson. “So we (said), ‘Let's create a town hall event where that's the point – where you come and talk in small groups.’”
The coalition holds town hall meetings every year, Watson said, and in the past they’ve focused on specific issues, like gangs or addiction, with local experts on those subjects giving information to the community. This time, Watson said, the MLCC is partnering with Braver Angels, a national organization dedicated to helping Americans practice courageous citizenship across political differences, according to its website. The event, which will take place at the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center, is free and open to the public.
Civic discourse often devolves into political argument, Watson said, and that’s what the MLCC and Braver Angels hope to avoid.
“For our topic choices, we tried to boil it down … to the root of what some of those issues might be,” Watson said. One of the topics of conversation is, why are hard conversations so hard? A lot of times the root of the disagreement is just communication. We've got a topic about generations: what do generations get wrong about each other? We're seeing a lot of intergenerational vitriol for one another, so (we want) to come to an understanding about where we’re each coming from.”
Staff from the Columbia Basin Dispute Resolution Center will be at the event to serve as facilitators for the small discussion groups, Watson said. The goal is to foster community cohesion, she said.
“Sure, we have all these issues and all these things going on, but sometimes it feels difficult to get to the solutions because there's so much of a divide with people working together because they're coming from what feels like opposing viewpoints,” she said. “Our view of it is that there's a lot of shared values within this community; it's just hard to recognize that if there's too much contention involved. So we wanted to provide an opportunity to get past some of that and focus on what we have in common, our shared values, and see if we can move some things forward from there.”
‘What’s Troubling You, Moses Lake?’
6:30 p.m. June 25
Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center
900 Yonezawa Blvd., Moses Lake
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”