This week I am going to dedicate this space to a married couple. A happily married couple. And that is worth noting, and remembering.
For the past couple of years I have played in a sextet with Rob Reynolds. Rob is the best jazz sax man I have ever had the opportunity to work with in a band.
A trial budget balloon sent up by the Kent School District administration about cutting physical education and music has been met with a volley of letters to the editor and heaps of worry.
The emotions of those I have talked to range from anger, suspicion and questions about hidden agendas. I have yet to hear from anyone who thinks cutting PE and music programs falls in the good idea category, or is even an acceptable option despite the dire budget numbers the board members and administration are staring down.
I’ve tried not to pick on our state legislators too much, since they have an incredibly difficult job to do right now. Faced with a $5 billion hole in the budget, we’ve declined their offers to help pay for it. We rejected their attempts to tax our Twix bars and Fiji water and even tied their hands by requiring them to get a two-thirds majority to pass any new taxes or fees.
No new fees, no new taxes and revenues are falling. I think voters should make it easier for the legislators and just vote for Libertarian and Tea Party candidates. They’ll be happy to cut the budget using a rusty machete and with little regard for the consequences.
I receive quite a number of releases about events going on around the region and I spotted one today that made me stop in my tracks.
The 47th annual Polish spring bazaar at 1714 18th Ave. in Seattle from noon to 7 p.m. April 16.
The bazaar sounds like fun, although I admit my fun threshold is embarrassingly low.
But the bazaar wasn’t what hooked me. It was the pickle soup.
At work, I get a lot of phone calls from sales representatives. They’re always trying to sell stuff of course, but lately they always ask, “So, how’s business?”
Fine, I say. Sales are steady, profits are slightly up. What do you hear from your other customers? “Oh, most of them are not doing that great. You know, Macy’s and Amazon are doing all right, but most of the little guys are struggling.”
The AT&T plan to purchase T-Mobile for a cool $39 billion has been hot news the past week.
I am hoping this means I will no longer need to stand in the street and wait for a cement truck to nearly run me over before I finally get those funny little connection bars.
Personally, I think an argument can be made that a couple of Dixie cups and a string works about as well as my cell phone.
Sleepy voters; it's time to wake up again. The school levy machine is gearing up in the Tahoma school district, and school officials are looking for $125 million to construct new schools and remodel others. That sounds like a lot, until you learn that Kent just passed a school levy last year that will collect around $240 million, and that's just to keep the schools operating.
Our First Amendment got a major test recently, when the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s reversal of a multi-million dollar judgment against the Westboro… Continue reading
There is an old saying that new jobs are a lot like blind dates – a little scary and fun all at the same time.
I don’t know anything about blind dates, but as I write this column, it is the second day of a new job for me as the editor of the Kent Reporter. So far it has been lot of fun and not too scary.
I took over the position this week. I have been the editor of the Covington-Maple Valley Reporter for the past two years. My new position is officially the regional editor of both publications.
Last week I sat in on a meeting about the new strategic alliance that’s being vetted between Valley Medical Center and the University of Washington School of Medicine.
If you haven’t heard about this concept yet, you should - and over the next few months, unless you have been living under a rock, you probably will.
Under this proposal, Valley Medical Center would join forces with the UW, as a way to expand the health care Valley provides to South King County. Valley wouldn’t give up its name, employees or identity, but it would get more of the specialized medical services that the UW can provide. And the UW, which already has clinics in South King County, would add south King County as part of its service area.
Overall, I think this is a good idea. We live in an era where smaller public hospital districts – like the one operating Valley – are getting eaten up by bigger health organizations. They’re losing their identity and vision in this gobbling-up process.
Under the alliance proposed by VMC and UW, our local hospital wouldn’t be losing those things. In fact, it would gain things that should keep it au courant with the bigger health-care providers coming into the region.
Enough said. There are people lining up to say these things – and they’re saying them better than me, if that informational video by Valley, which shows apparently dozens of supporters saying this idea is great, is any indicator.
But what I did find worrisome at last week’s meeting, was the response audience members got, when it came to who would run the thing.
There’s a buzz on the downtown streets of Kent.
Really – and it’s even about an insect.
The Kent Downtown Partnership is in the early stages of putting together an arts idea that wouldn’t cost the city anything, but perhaps could put Kent on the map for something unusual.
Dragonflies. Yes, you heard me right. The KDP is hoping to run a proposal past our local arts commission to have handcrafted dragonflies grace our downtown merchants’ buildings. Crafted by welding students at Green River Community College and funded by any merchant wanting to purchase one for a nominal fee, these brightly colored insects would be rendered from recycled metal and could be gracing more storefronts.
In this week’s Kent Reporter, we’re asking you, our readers, to tell us what you want from your hometown newspaper.
And more. The survey will help us shape our product, and understand how our community does business as we partner with local merchants and other advertisers to foster a strong local economy.
As the new year rapidly unfolds, we want to reach out to our KSD family with several updates regarding important issues impacting the district. As always, we should start by focusing on our students and there are a great many things to be excited about.
I don’t make a habit writing columns about news stories I am covering.
But this week I made an exception, in the case of the Denny’s shooting lawsuit.
It’s our front-page story, and it’s a statement about a lot of things: the utter randomness of a criminal act, a survivor’s hopes, and Denny’s statement that it was not responsible for the bullets that flew that night.
These were things I expected to hear – by their nature, lawsuits have at least two sides, if not more.
The thing that surprised me?
The reaction by some of our readers. They weren’t just disgruntled Denny’s was being sued – they were close to outraged.
It is always interesting to read the Letters section of the Kent Reporter. Unfortunately, I feel one recent column inaccurately blamed the city for “problems” in downtown Kent.
It is tough running a business anywhere right now. We are feeling the negative impact in our historical downtown. It is never as simple as one reason why our retail businesses are hurting.
Imagine this: You are wrongfully accused and convicted of rape. Sentenced to 30 years in prison, you serve your sentence, all the while proclaiming your innocence. Appeals come and go. Fifteen years of your life passes behind bars. Finally, someone listens and DNA proves you did not commit the crime. Released from prison after 15 years, it’s time to start your life again. The government responsible for putting you in prison doesn’t even say they are sorry. Rather, they send you a bill for $100,000 in unpaid child support.
State legislators are looking for ways to pare down a budget deficit projected to be $4.6 billion in 2011–13, and ease recessionary burdens on local governments, too.
SB5360 and HB1478 would allow cities and counties to place public notices on their Web sites instead of publishing them in their local newspapers. The idea: to save local governments the cost of publishing those notices in print.
But those savings would be minimal, particularly compared to the resulting disintegration of the public’s access to information about what their government is doing.
Go to nearly any state Department of Licensing office in Puget Sound and you’ll see the crowds.
Kent’s office is no different: if you need a driving exam, brace yourself for a long wait. It’s a poignant symbol of just how slow and painful Big Government can be. Take your number, sit in a plastic chair and wait for someone to summon you. You can spend the better part of a morning just sitting.
I was dumbfounded with the results of a reader survey on our Web site last week.
We asked, “Have you ever successfully completed a diet?”
Astoundingly (at least to me) 85 percent of respondents said they had, in fact, done so.
For myself, I suppose the same could be said: I have successfully lost a total of 400 pounds.
Now that 2010 is in the rear-view mirror and 2011 is one exit away, I can shift my attention to the time-honored tradition of making my New Years’ resolutions.
