Five Burien residents were chosen Monday, Feb. 7 by the Burien City Council to receive the city’s annual citizen awards.
The five are Debra George, business leader; Maggie Larrick and Eric Dickman, community leaders; Michael Stein-Ross, education leader; and Brooks Stanfield, environmental leader.
The awards will be presented at a dinner event on March 4 at 8:15 p.m. at the Burien Community Center, 14700 6th Ave. S.W. The event, organized by Discover Burien, will include a silent auction.
George is a former executive director of Discover Burien and plans events for the group. She is also co owner of the Mark Restaurant in Olde Burien.
Larrick, a former Times/News editor, is managing director of the Burien Little Theatre. Dickman, her husband, is artistic director for the theatre.
Stein-Ross teaches at St. Francis of Assisi School in Seahurst. He and his students are building a rain garden at the school.
Stanfield organized the bike rodeo at last year’s Burien Wild Strawberry Festival and has been an advocate for bicycle use.
The council also heard a presentation on the King County Library System’s North Highline Library Service Area analysis.
The analysis focused on the North Highline, Burien, Des Moines, Normandy Park and SeaTac areas.
Project manager Jennifer Wiseman said the new Burien library has drawn customers from a large area and serves as a regional library.
She said the analysis found the northern portion is “overlibraried” while the southern portion “is below system averages.”
Director Bill Ptacek said the library system is committed to equal distribution of resources, which is not necessarily based on income levels or amount of library use.
Ptacek said the system would do further outreach with the library’s board of directors receiving a recommendation in April.
Councilwoman Rose Clark, a retired Tyee High library assistant, said further cuts to the Highline School District’s budget could impact school libraries and make public libraries more important to the students.
Proponents for the White Center and Boulevard Park libraries, both recently annexed into the Burien city limits, fear the library system will close down one or the other library. They said the system promised to expand the White Center library during the last library bond election.
They also worry the White Center library will be scrapped because of its closeness to Greenbridge Library that could be annexed into the city of Seattle. Seattle has a separate library system.
The proponents argue that while the Boulevard Park and White Center libraries may not have large checkout rates, low-income patrons rely on using the computers at the libraries. They also say that low-income people cannot travel easily to larger, regional libraries, such as Burien so need neighborhood libraries.