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Bay Park to see grant-funded improvements

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey Reader Staff

The Bonner County commissioners on May 30 unanimously approved accepting a grant from the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation to fund improvements to Garfield Bay Park in Sagle.

The grant would pay for new picnic tables, benches and fencing at the park, which is adjacent to the Garfield Bay Campground and open from the weekend prior to Memorial Day to the weekend after Labor Day.

IDPR has pledged $30,600 in funds to the project, and the grant requires a $7,100 match from Bonner County.

“About half of that [match] is in cash and the other half is in labor,” Bonner County Recreation Director Pete Hughes told commissioners May 30.

During public comment, Deputy Prosecutor Bill Wilson commended Hughes for his work to improve the site.

“Those picnic tables out there are pretty tough to sit on right now,” Wilson said. “They’ve been out there a long, long time.”

Also at the May 30 meeting, Hughes received unanimous approval to request $116,200 in reimbursable funds from IDPR in relation to a Waterways Improvement Fund grant for the county’s Lakeview breakwater repair project, which Hughes said is now complete.

The final deal: the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit was extended until early 2025, and federal spending was cut by $1.5 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That would be accomplished by freezing some spending, limiting spending to 1% growth in 2025; reducing promised funds for IRS updates and catching wealthy tax cheats; pulling back unspent COVID-19 relief funds and ending the student loan repayment freeze. Hard right-wing Republicans wanted deeper spending cuts. Meanwhile, Democrats were alarmed by cuts that will affect environmental protections, food benefits and the IRS.

According to the CBO, food benefit spending will actually increase by $2.1 billion, since it will embrace the needs of veterans and the homeless. Also, the CBO stated that Republican-initiated cuts to the IRS will cause a loss in revenue and increase the deficit by $19 billion.

Had there been no bipartisan effort to address the possibility of a default, Biden said “America’s standing as the most trusted, reliable financial partner in the world would have been shattered.” As well, “It would have taken years to climb out of that hole.”

According to experts consulted by The Washington Post, the debt ceiling deal does little to balance the budget; 43 million will take a financial “hit” due

Blast from the past: President John F. Kennedy’s American University speech, in June 1963, not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis, moved the world away from nuclear catastrophe. The speech called for peace, rather than an arms race. JFK proposed a nuclear test ban treaty, preceded by discussions, in Moscow, with the U.S. and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet press, which usually suppressed American news, published the speech. JFK’s military leaders, who frequently wanted to use atomic weapons for conflicts around the world, were rebuffed by the president. That forced him to secretly reach out to Khrushchev; both leaders discovered they felt boxed in by their country’s military leaders, who wanted confrontations that would have led to catastrophe. Khrushchev convinced Cuban leader Fidel Castro that JFK could be trusted, and Castro cautiously explored how to proceed. He and JFK were due to meet for discussions, but the president was assassinated first.

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