June 2007

The third annual Fallen Officer Fund raiser is a triple play this year with a softball tourney, silent auction and golf scramble.

Event organizer, Detective Mike Garske, has plans to raise as much or more than the $15,000 the group achieved last year to assist families of fallen officers.

The family of Steve Cox, slain last December in White Center, was chosen to receive any funds collected from the three events.

While these are not King County Sheriff's sanctioned fund raisers, Garske and others have contributed countless off duty hours to making them hap

Shannon Eastman means it when she tells young people to "think before you do, think twice - if you don't, you are going to pay for it with your life."

Hers is a strong message to teens, a desperate plea that can save lives.

Eastman knows all too well.

Believe it or not some of you in West Seattle and White Center have not met her but here is your chance.

She is a purely positive powerhouse. She is president of South Seattle Community College and she is making quite a mark.

I first met her when she was a receptionist for the counselors and also was advisor to veterans. Every so often she came to Herald office to bring in a news item about the college. Her great smile and charming manner helped win instant friends here.

When will we face reality? Maybe never if we continue to be duped by those who have more power to control our economy and our tax system. Our own 34th District senator states that "Washington state has some 503 tax breaks on the books representing around $13.6 billion a year of lost revenue to the state."

I tried to research the corporations that get these tax breaks and was told by one state agency that this was private tax information.

It is a Friday evening in the early 1970s. The school week is over, but there is still some preparation required before my friend Larry and I can relax. The first thing we need to do is make a snack run to the Little Store (which became the Cat's Eye Cafe, and is now the Four Aims Center). At the store we each buy a can of Shasta black cherry cola, two 10-cent bags of potato chips, and a stick of jerky.

Summer is around the corner, and that means lots of activities and vacation plans for families.

Somehow, though, summer has a way of making us lazy. We don't get to that big project, the weeds grow, the time slows. And then there are the road trips, hundreds of miles around the state or nation with not too much to do, except read. Here are some new titles for teens to while away those long summer days and miles.

For the middle school set, several good novels stand out.

Having a primary election on August 21 will be a new experience for voters. In the past most media and a large number of the candidates refrained from talking much about candidates until after Labor Day because everybody was on holiday or otherwise engaged in summer in Seattle.

This year, though, we have to begin soon to find out who these candidates are and what they stand for. This newspaper will invite candidates to editorial board meetings - this year in late July and early August - to discuss with them their views on the issues.

Editor's Note: This was sent to this newspaper as a press release and is printed here in its entirety.

Long standing North Highline community leader Tim Healy and White Center resident Mark Ufkes have withdrawn from the North Highline Fire District Commission race.

Healy, a founding board member of the White Center Community Development Association, and Ufkes, a four-year member of the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council and president of the White Center Homeowners Association, withdrew their candidacies to throw their endorsement to the current Fire Commissioner,

I'm just venting some frustrations with the way this city is going about solving traffic congestion.

I live in West Seattle and work in Ballard. I have watched Ballard being transformed from a nice neighborhood in to the Mega Condo Ghetto. From the information I've read in your paper, once the condos are finished we will have easily 2,500-plus new residents in Ballard. These new residents will have cars and traffic and parking will be a problem.