MLCC to host conversational town hall Thursday
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 9 hours, 6 minutes 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
Hard-earned success
BBCC students step into the world armed with diplomas and courage
MOSES LAKE — Genuine success is neither quick nor easy, as the students who graduated Thursday from Big Bend Community College attested. There's a simple story I remember when I was younger,” Associated Student Body President Pedro Lopez said, alternating between English and Spanish. “It's about a kid who plants a seed. At first nothing happens. They water it every day, but the ground still looks the same. They start to wonder if anything is happening at all. They think about digging it up to check, that maybe it didn't work. Maybe nothing is growing. But they keep watering anyway.
MLCC to host conversational town hall Thursday
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.
Long service
Lind couple steps down from ministry after three decades
LIND — They say time goes by quickly when you’re doing what you love, and maybe it goes twice as fast when you love doing two things. Steve Schofstall retired last week from both the ministry and the Lind Dryland Research Station, after three decades of devoted service to both. “Our oldest daughter was a kindergartner (when I started), and now she’s 36,” Schofstoll said. “The years have gone by very quickly.” Steve and Kim Schofstall were called to Lind Calvary Assembly of God Church in 1996, and Steve came on board at the WSU Lind Dryland Research Station at the same time, he said.