The addition consisted of 12 power poles, 110 feet high, erected by Central Washington University through the center of town. The looming power poles spurred the formation of a new local group, Citizens for a Beautiful Community. The group gathered the signatures of more than 3,500 of Ellensburg’s 12,000 residents in a petition opposing the poles, but the university board members voted to keep them. Then on April 19, the citizens’ group filed a lawsuit and the university’s board of directors voted again, this time deciding to spend an extra $1.2 million to tear down the poles and search for an alternative power route. “They finally understood that we were not going away,” says Dale Otto of Citizens for a Beautiful Community.
*Bill Taylor
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Ellensburg wins back its beauty.
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