Final Story Pitch

As heroin makes a national and state resurgence and opiate abuse continues to be an issue, small, rural towns like Pullman are ill-equipped to deal with local addiction problems. The national influx of opioid painkillers and medications in the last decade has caused many people to develop addictions, which in turns sends them to the street to look for cheaper options like heroin. Pullman is without any local inpatient rehab facility and has only a limited number of outpatient facilities. Palouse Recovery Center, one of the few, has seen a significant increase in opiate abusers in the last few years. My story will examine the trends and the difficulties preventing, policing and treating heroin and opiate issues in small towns like Pullman.

Why now: Rural communities across the country are seeing growing problems with heroin abuse, and many are turning to federal help to deal with the issue.

Format: Feature, 750 words

Sources: Palouse Recovery Center (interviewed), Palouse River Counseling (interviewed), Quad City Drug Task Force, Dr. Pete Mikkelsen: Medical Director of the Emergency Department at Pullman Regional, Pullman Police Chief Gary Jenkins, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Washington State Department of Social and Health Services

Public Records Request

Dec. 4, 2014
Washington State Department of Health Financial Services, Contracts, Properties & Procurement
PO Box 47901 Olympia, WA 98504-7901
Dear Ms. Molly Zirpel,
Pursuant to the state open records law Wash. Rev. Code Secs. 42.56.001 to 42.56.904, I write to request access to and a copy of the record of state expenditures for publicly-funded chemical dependency treatment services in each of the last 15 years. If your agency does not maintain these public records, please let me know who does and include the proper custodian's name and address.
I agree to pay any reasonable copying and postage fees of not more than $100.00. If the cost would be greater than this amount, please notify me. Please provide a receipt indicating the charges for each document.
As provided by the open records law, I will expect your response within five (5) business days. See Wash. Rev. Code Sec. 42.56.520.
If you choose to deny this request, please provide a written explanation for the denial including a reference to the specific statutory exemption(s) upon which you rely. Also, please provide all segregable portions of otherwise exempt material.
I would note that violation of the open records law can result in a fine — payable to me — of up to $100 for each day that I am denied access. Litigation costs, including reasonable attorney fees, may also be awarded. See Wash. Rev. Code Sec. 42.56.550(4).
Thank you for your assistance.
Sincerely,
Conor King Devitt
1048 NE Monroe St. Pullman, WA 99163
Reporter, Murrow News Service
206-661-4652

Visiting Comedian Teaches Students about Storytelling

A large, three-sectioned triangle colored the whiteboard. The top partition was labeled “Brilliance”, the thin middle section “Worst” and the lowest “Mediocre”.

“Can someone tell me why it looks like this?” asked filmmaker and comedian Ted Tremper, to a class of less than 20 undergraduates. “Why is mediocrity below worst?”  

This was one of many questions posed last week at WSU’s most recent “Visiting Writers” workshop.

Led by the swift-speaking Tremper, the class consisted of three discussion-based lessons and a personal meeting with each student at the end of the week.

Tremper’s simple answer to the question: risk. In creativity and storytelling, risk is necessary to achieve the best possible work. Without an element of risk, without taking a chance on an idea that could be the worst, work will be relegated to mediocrity. It is better to try and fail than live in the tame and forgettable bottom section.

“Your best and worst ideas will both be memorable,” he said.

Trember graduated from WSU in 2006 with a degree in Creative Writing. After a one-year stint teaching English in Japan, he moved to Chicago and began working his way up the Chicago improv comedy scene and learning filmmaking. For several years he was a member of the renowned Chicago improv comedy troupe Second City, the same organization that birthed the careers of comedy icons like Bill Murray, Chris Farley and Tina Fey.

While in Chicago Tremper created, directed and acted in an improvisational web series called “Break-ups: The Series.” The videos won the 2010 Vimeo Global Film Festival Award for “Best Original Series”.

Tremper led the class in writing-room fashion. Pacing back and forth in caffeine-hyped strides, he illustrated his points again and again through student-created examples.

“The class was really interesting and helpful,” said senior Baylee Sinner, a general studies major and aspiring filmmaker.

The class-generated stories were worked and molded like clay. Genre was shown to be transitory. White board story ribosomes illustrated the limitless quantum universe of fiction. Romantic comedies were tweaked to become dramas, which then turned to horrors. All at the light speed intuition of creativity. Tremper smiled with enthusiasm at all suggestions, quelling self-doubt and encouraging the weird.

“Yeah!” Tremper said in response to a student-originated story scenario about a woman who would never realize she’s beautiful. “I looove that. Oh! That’s tragic.”

Tremper encouraged the workshop participants to live out the dynamics of creative storytelling in their own lives. To embrace the risk and shoot for the top section of the pyramid, and to accept failure constructively.

“Get to know those woods,” Tremper said, when asked by a student on how to deal with failure. “Failure can be the best thing for you.

After creating “Break-ups,” Tremper went on to create “Shrink”, an improvised web series that won the 2012 New York Television Festival Awards for Best Comedy Pilot and Critic’s Award. “Shrink” is about a young doctor who loses his residency and begins to operate as an independent clinical therapist. It features many well-known Chicago improvisers.

He now lives in LA and is pursuing a career in television.

Sources:

Ted Tremper: tedtremper@gmail.com

Baylee Sinner: 425-281-8757

Numerous Regulations Make Life Difficult for the State’s Aspiring Marijuana Merchants

Summary: Those hoping to set up a marijuana retail shop in Pullman or elsewhere in the state are forced to satisfy a large number of bureaucratic regulations, ranging from heavy security requirements to occupancy permits.

Outline:

I) Introduction

·         Bureaucratic regulations

II) Security and Fire Requirements

·         Liquor Control Board

·         MJ’s Pot Shop

·         Security Details

·         Fire Inspection

III) Change of Occupancy Permit

·         Definition

·         Lack of Precedent

IV) Zoning Issues

·         Commercial Three Zone

·         Difficulties for MJ’s Pot Shop

·         City’s Rebuttal

·         Future Stores

Sources:

Rich Dragoo: (509) 338-3274

Pete Dickinson: (509) 338-3213

Mary Jane Smith: (509)332-5203

Marijuana may be legal in Washington, but it can be quite difficult to sell.

As new marijuana production, processing and retail businesses attempt to set up shop across the state and in Pullman, the aspiring entrepreneurs behind these operations must comply with a wide array of bureaucratic regulations before they can start to profit off of the plant. Some of these regulations are standard for any new business; however, some are not.

The Liquor Control Board – the agency in charge of recreational marijuana implementation – has laid out an expansive list of security requirements that all retail stores must abide by.

For the only retail marijuana outlet in Pullman, fulfilling those requirements came with a price.

“You just pay a lot of money to have a specialist do it,” said Mary Jane Smith, the owner of MJ’s Pot Shop. “You have to have everything ready to go. You put a lot of money out before you can get a license.”

The risk associated with spending a significant amount of money without a guarantee of receiving a license is enough to dissuade a lot of people, Smith said.

Some of the security requirements include identification badges, alarm systems, video surveillance and a traceability system that tracks all marijuana from “seed to sale.”

Like other businesses, all Pullman marijuana retail shops must pass a fire inspection before opening. According to Rich Dragoo, Pullman’s fire prevention officer, establishing fire code for these new businesses has not presented any issues locally.

The retail outlets also have to fill out a “change of occupancy” permit, Pullman planning director Pete Dickinson said. A change of occupancy permit is required any time one type of business is planning to operate in a building previously used for a different purpose. Since there have not been any precedents for marijuana shops, all potential Pullman outlets will need to get a change of occupancy permit.

“We require the businesses owners to hire an architect to show what they intend to do with that building space,” Dickinson said.

Dickinson said another issue facing marijuana shops is that many landlords are not interested in leasing space to the stores due to the drug’s illegal status federally.

Beyond MJ’s Pot Shop, two other retail outlets are zoned for Pullman. According to Dickinson, all potential marijuana shops are restricted to Pullman’s Commercial Three Zone, covering parts of Grand Avenue and Bishop Boulevard. The zone is the only area of Pullman that satisfies all of the state’s spatial restrictions on pot shops, which require minimum distances from different places where minors congregate.

Finding an acceptable spot for a store was one of the most difficult parts of the process, Smith said.

Smith found the Liquor Control Board easy to work with and receptive to her questions, but did not feel the same about local government.

“The city building and engineering department were not the nicest people to work with,” Smith said.  “It seems like the city of Pullman makes up rules as they go.”

Dickinson had a different opinion, noting that Pullman’s six month moratorium on marijuana businesses allowed the city time to adequately prepare for the new state industry.

Because of the limited space available to them, the next two marijuana shops might share a facility, Dickinson said. They would be located at 1340 SE Bishop Blvd, where the current Tanfastic building is. MJ’s Pot shop is across the street.    

  

The air was salted with the heavy scents of sweat, chemical and fish. Bright yellow waterproof suits milled to their required positions. Freshly-murdered salmon proceeded slowly through the belt system, headless and bloody.

Clad in a contrasting orange rain suit, I maneuvered through the darkened maze of machinery. I was ready. Ready to dominate, ready to succeed, ready to clean. Hard-wired from a foamy blend of swiss miss and coffee and manic from a week and half straight of getting three hours of sleep a night, I trotted to the damp floor feeling like a high school football player plunging out of a tunnel. 

Turning the corner, I approached one of the fish house walls. The instrument of my sanitation capabilities -- an overused squeegee -- hung on pegs against the dark stone. As I reached for it a voice pierced through my ear-bud protected ears.

“Someone left the top off the head grinder.”

Robert McKenna, $13 million

26.5 million

Joe Schmick

$900

$250

Carter Suzan

Radio Advertising

$122

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/10/13/where-marijuana-is-legalized-decriminalized-or-on-the-november-ballot/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/09/exploding-marijuana-soda-bottles_n_5956718.html