Grant County vets still have no home

MOSES LAKE - A disagreement between a veterans' advocate and county officials is leaving Grant County vets with limited options for getting emergency food and shelter, counseling and help filling out benefit paperwork.

When the Grant County Veterans Coalition closed its doors permanently in June, a sign on the door stated the center would reopen at the same location with a different staff in late July.

Jim Pace, of the Vietnam Veterans of America, met with county commissioners earlier this month and both sides said that they agreed in principal to opening the center with Pace managing it. Pace placed an ad in the Columbia Basin Herald's classified section asking for a disabled vet to work at the center.

Pace said he made several trips from his home and office in the Seattle area to Moses Lake to transfer utilities. He said he could have already opened the center if commissioners would have allowed him to reopen in the same place.

Now Pace said commissioners have relegated his office to open in a much smaller space inside the Grant County District Court on Wheeler Road.

"I wanted to get in there and get this thing opened for Grant County veterans, but now I can't and I don't know if it's going to be a month or two months or three months," he said. "I don't want to piss them (Grant County commissioners) off, but it would have been nice if they would have been talking about that from the beginning," he said.

Grant County Commissioner Cindy Carter said the district court office needs to be remodeled before the veterans can use it. She said the county owns the former Grant County Veterans Coalition office on Ivy Street and would use the building for other county offices. She said that the veterans office could open as soon as mid-August.

"We have a need for office space in the county," Carter said and added that it doesn't make sense to let the veterans coalition use a large, six-office building when they only intend to open for three days a week and will only need one or two offices. She said that it makes more sense to give the vets the smaller office in the district courthouse and let a larger agency get the former veterans coalition building.

"We are not treating Grant County veterans as second-class citizens, we are just trying to be good stewards of taxpayer money," Carter said.

Pace said that whatever the reason, it is Grant County veterans who will suffer.

He said some vets need regular counseling, which the office could provide, but without a building the vets can't get those services. He added that vets who need emergency food and shelter can come to the American Legion from 9 a.m. to noon on Tuesdays to file paperwork.

Carter said the details of where and when the veterans coalition would open would be finalized at a department head meeting on Monday.