March 2006

Four community residents were honored at Discover Burien’s Annual Dinner, Silent Auction and the City of Burien Anniversary and 2006 Citizen Awards Recognition on March 3.

This year the Burien City Council presented awards to Rochelle Flynn, Carol Bobanick, Ede Seaman and Jim Hughes in recognition of their contributions to the community.

Rochelle Flynn, a member of the Burien Arts Commission, received the Community Leader Award.

“It’s exciting that two of the four awards tonight are going to members of the arts commission,” said Flynn.

The Des Moines City Council agreed March 2 to establish a police department substation in the Redondo Square Shopping Center.

Lawmakers unanimously approved a five-year lease with the Joshua Green Corp., owner of the shopping center, for the store-front facility at Pacific Highway South and South 272nd Street.

The city will lease the space at no cost, but is responsible for the cost of necessary interior improvements.

Council members authorized the spending of $51,630 for those upgrades.

Details of the lease must be reviewed and given final app

Two Irish transplants, Mick Purdy and Adrian Kelly, are gearing up to introduce Burien to a bona fide St. Patrick's Day celebration.

Co-sponsored by Discover Burien Association and Mick Kelly's Irish pub, co-owned by Purdy and Kelly, the three-day St. Patrick's Day Blowout begins on the March 17 holiday.

"The weekend festival, highlighted by St. Patrick's Day itself, will feature Irish music, dancing, food and an outdoor beer garden," Purdy said.

All festivities will be located at Mick Kelly's, 435 S.W.

An extended-day kindergarten targeting the district’s most struggling beginning students is a success, Highline School Board members were told March 8.

District staffers identified low-achieving students at the district’s half-day morning kindergartens for the extra afternoon sessions.

Special education and English Language Learners were among those chosen.

Susanne Jerde, co-director of elementary schools, said 63 percent were identified as needing “intensive” help, while 37 percent needed “strategic help.”

At the

Since 1924, when Highline High School in Burien opened, it’s been a “comprehensive” high school.

Students would take various courses, moving between classrooms with a different teacher in each one.

Over four years, a student could have close to 50 different instructors and a seemingly infinite variety of classmates.

But in September, Highline High students will be broken into four separate learning communities within the larger campus.

Students will take classes with a small group of classmates and teachers.

The move is p

After recently proposing a cooperative effort with Seattle and King County on the possible annexation of North Highline, the Burien City Council brought that plan closer to reality March 6.

In January, Burien lawmakers directed staff to pursue cooperation with cities adjacent to North Highline by bringing all parties together to find workable solutions regarding annexation.

According to the staff memorandum, March 2009 has been set as the target date for North Highline to cease existing as unincorporated area and be incorporated into an existing city.

During la

Let’s not obfuscate the obvious with a facade of journalistic balance.

It was enjoyable to see a healthy local conservative-liberal debate between Ralph Nichols and Eric Mathison. However, the Robinson Newspaper monopoly cannot claim to be unbiased.

Two weeks prior to the school bond vote there were six feature stories supporting and/or justifying the $148 million school bond. Opposing stories were zero. Letters to the editor written by self-serving minions of education ran 7 to 0.

A 31-year-old Renton woman died at Harborview Medical Center on March 4 from injuries she suffered in a two-car accident shortly before 2 a.m.

Lisa Troung had to be extricated from the Honda SUV she was driving before being transported to the hospital.

The other driver, a 43-year-old woman, was admitted to Harborview with non-life threatening injuries.

Northbound lanes of Tukwila International Boulevard were blocked by the accident at the intersection with South 130th Street.

A fully marked Tukwila police car responding to the accident was struck by

and the vacation from Hell

By Jerry Robinson

Elsbeth and I were having lunch at the Elks Lodge recently when we met Leo Macias. Leo used to work for us when he was 10 years old delivering papers on his White Center News paper route.

That was years ago but he remembers it well. His route was on the city side of White Center and he had about 55 customers. He was a small kid in a tough neighborhood but he had a lot of spunk.

One day he was accosted by the town bully while delivering his papers.

Mathison was 'spot on' on viaduct

By Ralph Nichols

"Big-government conservatism" will probably end up on the ash heap. The [Republican] party will have to relearn what it used to know: A strong government is a limited government."

Rich Lowry

National Review

Despite what some readers may believe, Editor Mathison and I don't shoot paper clips at each other all day.