Let’s make a new park at 305 and Winslow Way

Submitted by Bruce Weiland, bpweiland@comcast.net

The Citizens Park Task Force is an informal group of community volunteers who have come together for a single purpose — to convert the ugly vacant lot on the corner of Highway 305 and Winslow Way into an attractive and welcoming gateway to Bainbridge Island.  Our vision is to make this former Unocal gas station site into a source of pride for our entire community.

In connection with this campaign, we are committed to four key principals:

(A) No public funds will be spent to create this park;

(B) Every step of the project will be subject to the approval of the City and Kitsap Transit (the current owners of the parcel), and the Parks and Recreation District (the future managers of the park);

(C) the design of the park will integrate broad public input and ideas; and

(D) the park will be environmentally safe and responsible.

Gay marriage has the votes

By RACHEL LA CORTE, Associated Press – 25 minutes ago

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — As lawmakers held their first public hearing on gay marriage, a Democratic senator on Monday announced her support for the measure, all but ensuring that Washington will become the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.

The announcement by Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, that she would cast the 25th and deciding vote in favor of the issue came has hundreds of people filled the Capitol to advocate for and against gay marriage.

“I know this announcement makes me the so-called 25th vote, the vote that ensures passage,” Haugen said in a statement. She said she took her time making up her mind to “to reconcile my religious beliefs with my beliefs as an American, as a legislator, and as a wife and mother who cannot deny to others the joys and benefits I enjoy. This is the right vote and it is the vote I will cast when this measure comes to the floor.”

The state House is widely expected to have enough support to pass gay marriage, and Gov. Chris Gregoire publicly endorsed the proposal earlier this month. However opponents have already said they would challenge any new law with a public referendum.

Read the entire article here.

Ward, Lester add “performance review” to Wednesday’s Council agenda

This post has been updated as of 1/11. See italics below.

Yesterday Council member Dave Ward and incoming Mayor Debbi Lester delivered a document to City Hall, signed by both of them, directing that an item be added to the agenda in Executive Session at Wednesday’s Council meeting: “Review Employee Performance.” The closed session is scheduled to last 2 hours at the conclusion of the meeting (at approximately 7:50 p.m.), and already included two other matters, “Current and potential litigation” and “Collective bargaining negotiations.”

Under the Council/Manager form of government, the only employee whose performance may be reviewed by the Council is the City Manager.

The Ward-Lester action occurred less than 24 hours after the Council retreat on Sunday where the new Council committed to conducting themselves under the collaborative and transparent principles of the Governance Manual.

“Mrs. Johnson” sends ultimatum to City Manager

“Time is not your friend.”

So wrote the pseudonymous “Mrs. Johnson” in an email to Bainbridge City Manager Brenda Bauer yesterday, telling her that she can resign from her City position in exchange for assistance finding a new position, or wait to be fired and “not have our our support.” Claiming that Bauer’s time with the City is “coming to a close”, Mrs. J told her she has no choice on whether to leave her City employment, but still has time to choose the terms—voluntarily or involuntarily.

The emailer, who writes as if s/he is in-the-know with a majority of Council and can offer assurance as to the actions the City will take, is apparently hoping the City can avoid the terms of Bauer’s employment contract. That contract requires the City to pay severance of six months’ salary if she is fired without cause (“cause” is defined by the contract). If she could be induced to resign, she would get nothing. 

Let’s talk about our freedom to choose plastic bags

Bainbridge Island Council member Kirsten Hytopoulos will soon propose an island-wide ban on single-use plastic bags. The ban has the full support of our local grocery store, Town & Country, which has had a bring-your-own-bag incentive program for several years.  Plastic bags blow from hands, garbage cans, and dumps.  They end up in our ditches, beaches, forests and waterways. Many make it to the Pacific Ocean, caught by ocean currents in a giant collection of plastic known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, twice the size of Texas. Plastic doesn’t decompose but instead breaks up into ever smaller polymers. Birds, mammals and sea creatures eat it, get tangled in it, suffer and die from it. Or they don’t die, but instead land on our dinner plates, and WE eat the plastic. Bon appetit!

Plea to Bainbridge Review for fair reporting

When Doug Crist was Bainbridge Review editor during the Darlene Kordonowy years, I had a lot of heartburn over his Kordonowy administration boosterism, particularly his favorable editorials about her Winslow Tomorrow program. I was also shocked when the Review accepted Jeffrey Sneller’s attack ad on Kim Brackett as she ran for City Council. When Dennis Anstine took the reins, I was relieved at the prospect of a more open-minded and down-to-earth editorial philosophy. But we didn’t get fairer reporting, just a different bias.

Here’s a copy of the letter I sent today to Anstine and his reporter Richard Oxley, with a cc to his bosses at Sound Publishing (including, ironically, Mr. Crist).

Dear Richard and Dennis:

I’ve had my disagreements with the Review over the years, particularly with the previous editor. But even as I disagreed with his editorial positions and the Review’s advertising decisions, I acknowledged and appreciated the editor’s skill as a writer and journalist. I am writing today over issues with the Review’s professionalism and journalistic standards.

Dennis, you’ve made no secret of your biases and loyalties in local politics, and you have every right to your opinions. Readers expect and want to see the views of the local newspaper on the opinion pages. Increasingly, though, you have let those opinions bleed into the news, which is quite apparent in your decisions about coverage, placement and quotes, among other reporting techniques. In the past month alone the Review has quoted Councilman Knobloch extensively in a report on a Council meeting discussion, even though Mr. Knobloch was not at the meeting.

You also posted an article about the “Knobloch memo” on your website, but did not include it in your print edition only a day or two later (I can’t pinpoint how long because your website has re-dated the article to 12/23.) Although you did not include the potentially unfavorable article about Mr. Knobloch, you ran a front page story about the public record request made by Councilman Bob Scales, with the lede, “Council member Bob Scales has filed a public records request involving fellow council member Bill Knobloch that targets his personal email accounts and private communications with various members of the Bainbridge Island community.”

This sentence reveals a jarringly ill-informed understanding of the Washington Public Records Act. I believe a good grasp of the principles of the PRA, which is used so often these days, is a fundamental requirement for any news organization, especially if it is writing about a records request.

In a nutshell, there is no such thing as “private communications” between community members and government officials involving the performance of a government function (unless they fall within one of the narrow exemptions of the Act). Even a records request itself is a public record. The Act covers all writings in any form, including public or private email, recordings, Facebook accounts, notes, etc. You can imagine the reason: open government would not be served if officials could circumvent the Act by hiding communications in personal accounts.

Knobloch’s parting shot

At last week’s City Council meeting, four new Council members–Sarah Blossom, Dave Ward, Steven Bonkowski and Anne Blair–were sworn in, and four others–Hilary Franz, Barry Peters, Bill Knobloch and Kim Brackett–were bid warm good-byes. Sadly, the occasion was marred by some good old-fashioned political hackery. A memo (posted below) surfaced at the meeting, purporting to give advice to an unnamed voting bloc of four on the incoming Council, on such statesmanlike topics as the lying habits of City employees, how to force a management shake-up at City Hall, and how to sandbag Council opposition. 

According to information obtained by Inside Bainbridge, outgoing Council member Bill Knobloch was behind the memo. Inside Bainbridge quotes City Manager Brenda Bauer as saying Knobloch used the copier at City Hall and “immediately after he left, [a] staff person who walked past him into the room to use the copier found the document in the originals tray. They shared it with another staff person or two who came into the copier room, and then it was given to me.”

When contacted by Inside Bainbridge, Knobloch denied responsibility, saying, “I am not the author of that document.” Knobloch added that “we should not be conjecturing about something that we had no way of knowing,” and repeated that the accusation was “totally false.” Inside Bainbridge reported that he “questioned the reasoning behind sharing the document at the Council meeting: ‘What good is that especially since it was a festive evening?’” I’m willing to entertain the idea that he didn’t write it, or wasn’t the only author, but at the very least it seems clear he was involved with crafting and conveying the message.

I got my hands on it after the Council meeting and was so disgusted I wrote the email below to members of the new Council. I promptly received two or three emails from another citizen who has been active in trying to shred the City for the past couple of years (I can’t bring myself to name him, but let it be said he loves to clog our inboxes with his anti-everything musings.) This citizen gave it the old spaghetti on the wall trick, throwing up as many defenses as possible to see what sticks. His argument boils down to one point: this is politics, honey, so get used to it.

As to the voting bloc to whom the memo is addressed, an educated guess would be the three new members whom Knobloch publicly endorsed: Dave Ward, Sarah Blossom and Steven Bonkowski. The identity of the fourth might be gleaned from the public reaction of Debbi Lester, who has been aligned with Knobloch on several hot button issues in the past few months, such as divestiture of the City’s water utility and the swamp surrounding the in-sourcing of the Civil Service Commission’s Secretary/ Chief Examiner position. After I read the memo, I communicated with Councilors Hytopoulos, Scales, Franz and Peters, who were uniformly disgusted and outraged. In contrast, Lester made light of the episode when contacted by Inside Bainbridge, saying, “Everybody should go have some eggnog and chill out.”

Police Guild President suspended for tailing Council member

Bainbridge police officer and Police Guild President Scott Weiss has been given a 160-hour suspension in lieu of termination after a Washington State Patrol investigation found that he followed Council member Kim Brackett to the home of Council member Bill Knobloch for “personal reasons.” According to a Notice of Discipline issued by City Manager Brenda Bauer and Police Chief Jon Fehlman, Weiss was on duty and in a patrol car when he followed Brackett after a meeting at City Hall in October of 2010. He blogged about her activity in the press the next day, under the pseudonym, “Hunter”, as follows:

“The true test of will for the council majority will be to continue to do the right thing and withstand the eminent onslaught of the arts & ‘cultural element’ that will surely descend on the council like a biblical plague. I am told that Kim Brackett went straight to Bill Knobloch’s house after the council meeting. No doubt to commiserate and plan the attack to try & sway or undo the council decisions.”

The Notice of Discipline noted that Weiss’s actions were directed at leaders of his employing agency, and cited numerous violations of the Bainbridge Island Police Department Canon of Ethics and General Orders Manual.

The investigation disclosed that Weiss, who admitted to blogging under the alias, posted comments on local media sites about police matters as well as City issues over a several year period.

The City initiated the investigation after Brackett made a complaint that she had seen Weiss following her and read the subsequent blog comment, and felt unsafe.

The suspension is in effect from November 9 through December 3. Weiss has the right to appeal or file a grievance.

Here are the investigation and disciplinary documents, which I obtained through a public records request to the City.

Weiss Investigation Part 1
Weiss Investigation Part 2 
Weiss Investigation Part 3 BI Review

Serenity House’s sad ending

One of the island’s (and the state and county’s) greatest failures in tending to its humanitarian safety net was the closure of Serenity House at Lynwood Center which, until this year, was home to 18 developmentally disabled adults. In March, Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority closed the facility because of financial problems and relocated all but two residents off island.

Photo of Serenity House by Jay Trinidad.

South-end islanders know that a couple of the former residents still frequent the neighborhood. Recently, I saw Jerome (I don’t know his last name) who used to do odd jobs at Walt’s. According to Walt, Jerome is a cousin of guitar great Jimi Hendrix, and suffered traumatic brain injury after a stint as a boxer. When Serenity House closed, he was placed in a nursing home in Bremerton, and now takes a bus to the island a couple of times a week just to visit. I asked how he was doing in his new home.

“I don’t like it,” he replied, shaking his head forlornly.

Island photographer and artist Jay Trinidad has posted a photo essay of the empty Serenity House on his blog. His pictures are full of absence and abandonment, as well as the humanity of those who lived there.  Take a look. Take a moment to consider the sorrow of some of our most vulnerable (and beloved) former neighbors, as their lives were up-ended through no fault of their own.

Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Don’t forget the island’s first-ever-in-this-blogger’s-memory Soup Kitchen, Saturday night, May 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. on Madrone Lane across from Mora Iced Creamery. Free food and fun for all—soup, cornbread, rhubarb lemonade, lots of music and conversation with neighbors and friends.

For more info, visit the Soup Kitchen’s blog here.

I’ll be on cornbread-making detail, along with a horde of other volunteers, so come on down. There’ll be a full menu of music too, the better to feed both body and soul. With a couple of lemonades on board, we might even sing the Mock Turtle’s soup song, if anyone can remember the words.

Fans of Alice In Wonderland can sing along after the jump.