March 2006

An update on the anticipated fiscal impact that annexation of the North Highline unincorporated area would have on Burien was presented to city council members March 20.

The update will serve as a benchmark in future city deliberations over annexation.

Community Development Director Scott Greenberg explained that Burien first issued a review draft of the potential annexation area-study, designed to identify the fiscal impact on the city, in 2004.

Although the city did not produce a final report in 2005, Greenberg noted that council members and staff addressed q

Fifty years ago next week, my mother told me, or I heard her tell someone else, that one of our neighbors, a pilot, had died when a commercial plane crashed between Des Moines and Maury Island

April 2, 1956, was typical of those gray, low-overcast but calm-and-dry Seattle days.

The Highline School District’s $148 million bond has been officially certified by King County Elections as approved by voters.

Final totals showed 64.46 percent (11,410) of Highline voters approved the bond while 35.54 percent (6,292) rejected it.

The bond needed a 60 percent supermajority to be approved.

“I want to express my appreciation to the entire community,” Superintendent John Welch declared at the March 22 school board meeting.

He credited Highline Citizens for Schools, the volunteer group which ran the pro-bond campai

After graduating from college, many students launch their careers.

But Amber Johnson, fresh with a bachelor’s degree in literature from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, realized her educational journey must continue.

“After graduating in 2004, I recognized that opera was really my true love and that to pursue any other course would be to betray myself and my talent,” Johnson said recently.

For her, it wasn’t simply a career choice.

hits hotels in Tukwila

A brazen robber who has been targeting South Sound hotels is including Tukwila on his hit list.

The Tukwila robberies started March 20 with the most recent on March 24.

On March 20, around 2:30 a.m., the robber, armed with a handgun wrapped in a plastic bag or towel, entered the Comfort Suites Hotel at 7200 Funcenter Way.

Before the man entered the lobby, however, the clerk saw him and hid in the employee restroom, where he called 911.

The suspect did not take anything and left.

The Tyee and Evergreen track and field teams were at it in sleet, hail, sunshine, and rain, altogether on the Highline stadium turf, black rubber and Cintrex sand field event areas -- and let's not forget those danger-zone javelin competitors way out back in the baseball diamond area of Mosier Field all Friday afternoon.

Best at competing was Charles Seriser, a senior distance runner for the Totems who won it in 4:48.32 over his closest foe, Jan Wnek of Hazen leaning a little later, in 4:49.82.

"It was a good race but not my best race," said Serisier.

Serisier'

1. A man called Federal Way police to report that he was having problems with some 8-to-10-year-old juveniles in his neighborhood. Upon arrival, officers said, the man demanded that they take a police report indicating that the juveniles has said some "lewd" words and touched his window. The juveniles did not damage his window. Officers explained to the man that the boys had done no crime.

In light of the March 17th dog attack of a Spanaway woman by a pitbull in Mountlake Terrace and the animal abuse case of a pitbull puppy in Federal Way burned by acid, apparently on purpose that same day, animal advocates and people in general all over the world are angry.

Pictures of the pup on the website 'Pasado's Safe Haven' are wrenching to see and are evidence of the cruelty humans are capable of and calls and emails to their website have come from all over the U.S., Canada and Europe.

A usually quiet council chambers erupted with the voices of 150 people, many of them demanding answers to the growing number of questions stemming from the tragic story of Mooie, a three-month-old pit bull puppy scalded by chemicals.

Veterinarian Ivy Engstrom at the Valley Animal Hospital in Auburn euthanized the puppy due to the severity of its injuries, which the vet believed stemmed from a deliberate attempt to douse the puppy with the substance.

From the time of the puppy's death through the current FWPD investigation, Mooie's journey has ignited a conflagration of ac

Woo Yang Ha's eyelids, brushed lightly with a golden shimmer shadow over a touch of pale peach, crinkled in answer when asked how she was able to move with her husband and two children from Seoul, Korea to Federal Way, buy and operate a teriyaki shop in Auburn, and settle into life in a new country, all within the past three months.

"Self-confidence," Ha succinctly replied, trying out the saying in English.

"The hardest part is, of course, the language," she went on to say through an interpreter, Kim Hensley, the Korean Community Liaison with the city of Federal Way.