July 2010

The Municipal League of King County has released its non-partisan evaluations of 122 legislative, judicial and local candidates. The ratings are available online at www.munileague.org and appear below.
From the 34th District Position 2 only Joe Fitzgibbon was rated 'Very Good' by the group while Joe McDermott earned an 'Outstanding' rating in his run for the vacant District 8 position on the King County Council.

From the Municipal League press release:

To determine candidate ratings, volunteers throughout King County have joined the Municipal League's Candidate Evaluation Committees to study the public record, review candidate questionnaires, speak with references, and conduct interviews with candidates. Committee members then rate each candidate on four criteria: Involvement, Character, Effectiveness and Knowledge. The possible ratings are: Outstanding, Very Good, Good, Adequate, Not Qualified and Insufficient Information to Rate.

In the week and days before Independence Day (July 4th), my Shorewood on the Bluff neighborhood resounded with explosions.

Being the curmudgeonly sort, I strolled the area engaging neighbors as I dared about fireworks.

My question always was: "Did you know fireworks are prohibited in Burien?" Many said the city can't tell them what to do. Yea, I'm noticing.

So, I asked about opinions on the public vote to ban fireworks. The common reply was, "Well, I didn't vote for that."

The bottom line seemed to be that "I'm gonna do what I want to and 'they' can't stop me;" or "I didn't vote for the ban so #$%@ (expletive) the city." It was an interesting survey...and a noisy few days. The debris littered the streets afterward.

One person had actually been at the city council meeting where one councilmember forced the police chief on camera to make instant public policy and carve out an exception (minors won't be cited) that isn't in the law.

As this neighbor said: "I'll just hand the rockets to my kid if the police drop by." Success-- someone who pays some attention to the city council.

The first thing I spotted after sitting down was a fawn-colored teddy bear on the bed.

"That's Rosie Resilient," chirped 90-year-old Jean Hueston. "She's my reminder - no matter what, I've been able to bounce back."

Jean has been a mover-shaker for over 50 years in the Des Moines area, but the roots that anchored her started out clear across the country in Virginia.

She was born to an Episcopal minister, and her mother became bedridden right after her birth, so her father took her with him on ministry calls.

"With all the bouncing around in a hot car, the milk would turn to butter, and I couldn't get anything out of the nipple," she laughed. "He was a wonderful father."

After her mother recovered, they all moved to Missouri and then on to Chicago in 1928, where her father trained to be a Unitarian minister.

Jean was now school age and was sent to live with her two schoolteacher aunts in South Carolina.

She loved her aunts, but also remembered the racial discrimination.

"A black woman came to the door selling fish and I went to tell my aunts 'a lady is at the door.' After they saw that she was black, they said that 'they (blacks) weren't ladies.'

On Aug. 14, intrepid athletes will once again brave the chilly 50-degree waters of Puget Sound to swim 2.3 miles between Des Moines Beach Park and Point Robinson on Maury Island.

Monies raised for the event by sponsors, athletes and donors will go to the Brent Rice Memorial Foundation.

Seventeen-year old Justin Moser, who wanted to honor his friend and mentor Brent Rice who passed away just over four years ago in a car accident, started the swim in 2006.

Rice once did the swim himself as a personal challenge from one of his brothers. Rice was a local swimmer, and he competed at both the state and national level, receiving All-American honors.

With forty-five swimmers taking the plunge in 2009, the foundation raised $4,000. The first year, eight made the journey.

The foundation will help provide swim lessons for low-income families and aquatic safety education programs in the Puget Sound area.

Last year's funds will be awarded to Mt Rainier Pool, Kent Meridian Pool and Evergreen Pool for swim lessons and other aquatic programs.

Information included in a July 2 article by reporter Eric Mathison in the Highline Times may have been confusing to some readers. The article titled "SeaTac retreats from entertainment district," was reporting on information presented to the SeaTac City Council at the June 22 Council Meeting.

This information related to a proposed budget amendment that, in part, removed the 2010 budgeted expenditure appropriation amounts for various capital expenditures in the SeaTac/Airport Station Area in accordance with previous City Council actions. It was more than anything else an accounting mechanism.

In the first three sentences of the article, it was stated, "The City of SeaTac will receive $9 million less in estimated revenue this year. But SeaTac lawmakers also voted June 22 to not spend $18.1 million in capitol (sic) expenditures that were part of the original budget. That left a net gain of $9.1 million."

On May 24th, King County Water District 20 received a call from a puzzled customer whose water had been cut off.

"We went out and investigated, and the meter was gone," said Dick Swaab, general manager of the Burien-area district. Since that first incident, Swaab noted, five or six additional water meters have been stolen from residential and commercial customers in the district, the last one on July 6th.

Typically, this water meter removal does not damage the meter case or the surrounding property, so property owners are not aware of a problem until they discover their water supply has been cut off.

"It's almost like it's a professional," Swaab said of the perpetrator(s). He suspects that the poor economy has made the possibility of selling the meters for scrap more attractive.

Because of their bronze content, the meters command about a dollar each.

As far as Swaab knows, none of the neighboring water districts have experienced similar thefts. He encouraged residents who see anyone suspicious near their water meters to call the King County Sheriff's Office or Water District 20.

For more information, visit www.kcwd20.com

Ballots for the Aug. 17 all mail-in primary election will be sent to voters by July 28.

The candidates in Highline districts are bunched up in two races.

Four candidates have filed to run for Sharon Nelson's Position 2 state representative position in the 34th Legislative District.

Nelson, a Democrat, is running unopposed for state Sen. Joe McDermott's 34th District senate seat while McDermott is seeking the King County Council post once held by County Executive Dow Constantine, and now being temporarily held by Jan Drago.

Democratic party candidates running for Nelson's old spot are Joe Fitzgibbon, Burien Planning Commission member; Mike Heavey,

Drago's director of Outreach and Constituent Relations; and Marcee Stone from West Seattle. Geoffrey 'Mac" McElroy, also from West Seattle, is running as an independent.

Besides McDermott, candidates running for the nonpartisan County Council No. 8 seat are Diana Toledo, a former county employee, carpenter Tim Fahey and Normandy Park City Councilman Shawn McEvoy. Constantine gave up the seat when he was elected county executive. Drago was appointed to fill the seat but is not running for election.

For those who really want to delve into the nitty-gritty technical details of the Port of Seattle's airport noise study, a special public workshop will be held July 29 from 12:30- 1:30 p.m. at Sea-Tac Airport.

The meeting is in response to requests at the last Part 150 Noise Compatibility Public Workshop for a technical session regarding detailed noise modeling and input data topics.

Led by Vince Mestre, the Part 150's noise analyst task leader, the meeting will be held in the airport office building's Beijing Conference Room on the mezzanine level.

Participants at the session will have the opportunity to discuss the mathematics and detailed data used to measure as well as model aircraft noise levels in the vicinity of Sea-Tac Airport.

Participants will also discuss sound propagation effects associated with different types of meteorology. The discussions will be informal and focus on questions raised by the participants.

The comprehensive report from the June 9th public workshop is now available on the airport's website at http://www.airportsites.net/SEA-Part150/default.htm.

Des Moines business owners and officials have embarked on a "semi-secret" effort to revive the downtown area of Des Moines," according to Wayne Curran, owner of Page Turner Books.

After years of disappointing results, Des Moines business owners report that they are partnering with the city of Des Moines to revitalize the area.

To facilitate these efforts, Destination Des Moines, a group of business promoters recently dormant in the poor economic climate, has re-formed, planning to focus on drawing tourists and local visitors to Des Moines. Michelle Fawcett, owner of Salon Michelle and member of the Destination Des Moines board, said that the new board was elected at a July 13th meeting.

"We had people in the community interested in... getting this show on the road," she said. At this point, the board will primarily focus on recruiting members, but they will likely take over several traditional community events in the future.

"We're definitely committed to bringing back the [Waterland] parade," she added.

We were having lunch at Huckleberry Square the other day when I spotted a regal looking lady seated across from our booth.

When I asked her where she lived, she said McMicken Heights. That is the community that sits atop the hill just east of the Sea-Tac airport.

Huckleberry Square is on Ambaum in Burien.

She is 92 and her name is Elysa Dohms and we had a great chat about that 70-year-old housing project where we once bought a house.

With a fireplace. For $4,000. Nothing down, $50 a month for 30 months and then lowered to $30.

It had two bedrooms, a coal heater, with a homemade ladder in the boy's bedroom up to a bend-over attic workshop where I fixed things on a bend-over work bench with a bend-over vise and a scrap plywood floor. I hit my head on rafters a lot.

When glowing chunks of coal somehow fell out of the heater, we got a fabulous Quaker oil burner and ran a copper tube from a 50-gallon tank on our back outside wall.

I built a barrow from a junkyard steel wheel and some scrap wood up in that cubbyhole.

Then I found a piece of hardware cloth screen and dug up a millyun shovels of blacktop dirt from the forest behind the house.