Grant County plans to renew gun club lease
EPHRATA — About 20 people gathered in the Grant County commissioner’s hearing room to support renewing Moses Lake Gun Club’s lease.
The club leases a building at the Grant County Fairgrounds, next to Paxson Drive in Moses Lake. They’ve been at the location since about 1950. The group practices trap shooting on Wednesdays and Sundays.
“The club has about 47 members and a lot of others that just come along. It is open to the public,” said Anne Fisher, the club’s treasurer. “We try to do a lot of youth activity out there, really focus on their gun safety and it’s a good activity out there for the kids with their parents.”
The last lease the county could find for the club ran from 1998 to 2002, Commissioner Cindy Carter said. The county discovered the lack of a lease, when the club asked to place a berm on the fairgrounds to help with noise.
Fisher said the group tries to be a good neighbor to everyone and is trying to find ways to lessen the amount of noise from the guns, Fisher said.
“We definitely want to be there. We would love to relocate, don’t get us wrong, but we just don’t have the money to do it,” she said. “There’s grant money out there, but without having a piece of ground to put us on … If you guys have suggestions, hey we’re really open to that. We’d love to go somewhere, but that’s what we have right now and we really love the club.”
Fisher said she only heard of one complaint during the past two years from a person who was tired of the noise.
“There’s not any formal complaints that I’m aware of. We did try to talk to (fairgrounds Event Manager) Bill West, because we don’t want to annoy people. When we annoy people, they don’t want us there. So basically he said, ‘I’m not hearing anything,’” she said.
Craig Talbot, the club’s secretary, said he’s not sure why the lease has become an issue now.
“We try to have a very well run, safe event out there,” he said. “I personally have had no complaints.”
He said the group benefits more than the local people, adding a Quincy rodeo association contacted him about using their shooting range.
“I think the gun club provides an activity for the youth in Grant County that’s safe. As Anne mentioned, it’s something the family can participate in. It teaches the shooters discipline and I think it’s a lot safer than a lot of the other activities they engage in,” Talbot said.
Commissioner Carolann Swartz said they were looking at the lease and asked for public comment simply to find out how residents of the area felt about the club.
“There really wasn’t ruckus involved. It was a time when we needed to review the lease, or come up with a new one. I guess it was in anticipation that there might have been some concerns, considering that there are so many more houses being built around the area,” she said. “ I think we were trying to be very proactive here as opposed to having to put some Band-Aids on something later on.”
Commissioner Richard Stevens echoed Swartz’s comments, saying the meeting wasn’t meant to be a witch hunt.
“We just needed to know what the feeling of the community was around there because when you guys organized this thing there wasn’t any city out there growing up around it,” he said. “Since the only people who showed up for this thing were gun club members, I don’t see where you’re going to have a lot of problems.”
Carter said the commissioners plan to discuss creating a lease with Grant County Prosecutor Angus Lee Tuesday.
No one spoke in opposition to the lease.