June 2006

I wish to take this opportunity to respond to Ralph Nichols' comment in the May 24 Times/News regarding the lane striping of First Avenue South.

First Avenue South is the city of Burien's principal transportation arterial, with an average daily traffic volume of over 20,000 vehicles. This corridor also has the highest number of accidents, with 81 accidents and 38 injuries occurring during the past three years.

You are correct that the reconstruction of First Avenue South will take an estimated 18 months to complete.

Currently, Burien does not provide fire department services to all of its citizens. For several north end neighborhoods, Burien contracts out fire services to the North Highline fire department.

If Seattle annexes all of North Highline, Burien will have to find a way to provide fire protection to these neighborhoods.

One option for Burien is that after Seattle annexation, Burien could continue providing contracted fire services to these neighborhoods by using the Seattle Fire Department.

It is for us the living ... to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ...

After eating lunch at Azteca, Elsbeth wanted to go next door to Value Village. She must have a sixth sense. They were having a half-price sale on everything in the store. What a bizarre bazaar. It was like a trip around the world.

Burien is getting very cosmopolitan. Every nationality was on hand and, like my Germany-born Elsbeth, looking for bargains.

The store was busy, busy, busy. Crammed with teeming hunters squeezing past each other in the aisles.

Some Pathfinder K-8 School parents are speaking out against a proposal to move their alternative program to the Louisa Boren interim site, a building they say is no better than their current dilapidated facility.

Last Friday, Seattle Schools Superintendent Raj Manhas agreed with the district's community advisory committee on school closures and consolidations that the Pathfinder program would be better suited leaving the former Genesee Hill School and moving into the larger Boren School building on Delridge Way.

In its final recommendations to Manhas the committee said,

A plan that would close Fairmount Park Elementary School and merge its students with High Point Elementary was approved by Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Raj Manhas last Friday. It's part of a new set of closure recommendations that could save the district more than $300 million in capital improvements.

Manhas approved all of the community advisory committee's final recommendations for the southwest quadrant of the city, including relocating the Pathfinder K-8 program to the Louisa Boren interim school site, closing the E.G.

Two of the losing candidates in the recent election for the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council are protesting the election results because the write-in candidate who beat them distributed ballot stickers with her name printed on them.

Incumbent Steve Jeffries and challenger Jessica Stoneback both wrote letters to the North Highline Council challenging the election of Anette King May 18.

All parties agree that the old Malarkey asphalt plant on the Duwamish River in South Park needs an environmental cleanup, so the bone of contention now is, how clean does it have to be?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must clean the site enough so the land can be used again for whatever the zoning allows.

The asphalt plant began operation in 1937 as Duwamish Manufacturing Co. and continued until 1978.

During the 1950s, sediments were dredged from the Duwamish River to allow large ships to get up the river. Some of the sediments, believed to contain heavy metals and other pollutants, were dumped at Terminal 117.

During the 1970s, waste oil was delivered to the plant as fuel for the asphalt plant.

The Malarkey Asphalt Co. bought the plant in 1978 and manufactured asphalt roofing products.

A 43-year-old woman died May 31 after falling out of a delivery truck as it crossed the West Seattle Bridge.

Yen Nguyen, a cook, suffered fatal head and bone fractures when she fell out the rear door of the truck as it headed westbound over the bridge shortly after 7 a.m., said Officer Rich Pruitt, spokesman for the Seattle Police Department.