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Apologies
January 26, 2011
By Mike Weland
Publisher

There have been two reports recently published on this site and picked up by local media which were inaccurate and for which I am solely responsible.

I reported that the cost to the county for medical treatment needed by former inmate Dariusz Michalski came several times a week came at a cost $10,000 a visit, raising serious consternation among local taxpayers.

Sheriff Greg Sprungl informed me that the costs to county taxpayers aren't nearly that high,

We're working together to present a more accurate picture of the costs, based on actual facts and figures ... which show that in the last year, less than $35,000 was spent in taxpayer money to tend to the medical needs of inmates.

According to his family, Michalski has dropped all his claims against the county, and is now in Seattle, awaiting deportation to Poland.

I also made an egregious error in my report on Big Foot, the mangled mascot ripped from its foundation near Eastport.

His body, I said, had been recovered in Addy.

I made a mistake, i.e., an error, as to ie, compared to y.

One of my favorite people in the world, Ina Pluid, held Bonners Ferry Herald editor Julie Golder responsible, when, in fact, the error was mine.

Ina, all the wrath you laid on her shoulders belong on mine.

I should know better.

In my defense, however, I will say that the news that usually happens up in the  Eastport area is good, and the Addie community is seldom mentioned.

We in the media don't get called on to go up that way very often to report crime ... and we certainly don't hear enough from the Red Hats to give that part of our neighborhood the recognition is deserves.

Ina, I am abject. I am the one deserving the brickbats, not Julie or the Bonners Ferry Herald.

Theirs may be to oldest media in town, but somehow, I've become the oldest reporter. I beg forgiveness, Mrs. Pluid, and promise that I now know the difference between Addy, a town in Washington, and Addie, the place in North North Idaho where one of my favorite people grew up.

I am sorry I had to mention it in association with the "demise" of styrofam Big Foot.