Town square politics

There’s a tasty irony in the fact that although Bainbridge Island doesn’t have either a civic center or a community gathering place, next week we’ll be reviving that cornerstone of old-time democracy, the Town Hall meeting. When the rest of the country is watching results of Super Tuesday, islanders will gather at the American Legion Hall to talk about [...]

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Fields made to last…for millennia

I was undecided about the use of artificial turf on athletic fields when I went to last week’s meeting of the Bainbridge Island School Board. I’m a soccer, football and lacrosse mom. I understand the advantages of plastic over natural turf in lower maintence costs for cash-starved school districts, and increased resilience that allows year-round play in our [...]

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We’ll miss you Cindy

Sunday’s retirement party for Cindy Harrison, Bainbridge Public Library’s branch manager for the past 17 years, was a testament to the quiet power of her formidable literacy and diplomatic manner. As one of the most influential leaders on Bainbridge Island, Cindy has commanded respect and yielded results in a way that belies her unfailing humility. BPL’s board [...]

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I want my, I want my BITV

It’s not exactly money for nothin’ and chicks for free* but it is our island cable station. As the local media scene shrivels, we can’t afford to let another outlet go dark. BITV has been re-tooling its mission over the last couple of years. It has long filmed City Council meetings for live broadcast on Channel 12, [...]

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Ha’ pennies for grass

I’ve so far avoided blogging about the long-running and periodically explosive artificial turf debate on Bainbridge Island. But today, an interesting item from the anti-plastic turf group, ”Plastic Fields for Never” dropped in my email box. PFFN was founded by the guy sports fans love to hate, Chris van Dyke of ”Citizens for More Important Things” fame, which has [...]

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Ya think the insurance industry played us?

Remember those sky-high premiums the insurance industry promised we’d all be paying if we didn’t reject Referendum 67 on last November’s ballot?  To refresh (that was way back in 2007): After the state legislature passed a law authorizing treble damages against insurance companies that unreasonably denied claims, the insurance industry got R-67 on the ballot, putting [...]

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The goods on City Hall’s retreat

This post has been updated. Scroll to the end for details. You may recall a November episode of Desperate Islanders, when a score of City Hallers decamped to Port Madison for a week-long tryst with corporate coach Amba Gale. Tongue waggers and bean counters clucked over the ill-timed get-away (in the midst of drafting the ’08 City budget), and [...]

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More bondage

If you heard a mighty wind around 10 pm last night, it could have been the sound of buck-passing at City Hall. When explaining how councilmanic bonds went to market in December before the Council had an opportunity to review and approve them, the administration sprinkled a dash of mea culpa into large portions of revisionist legislative history, [...]

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Concrete exhibition: The primacy of paint

Blakely Harbor Park is hosting an exhibition of new work by anonymous taggers. Featuring exhuberant studies of spray painted color that awaken the bleak January landscape, the paintings explore the absence that haunts abandoned structures.

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About those bond$

Once in awhile, the read-between-the-lines, Kabuki theatre-style of political speech in City Council meetings collapses altogether and onlookers get an alarming glimpse of City Hall carelessness that seems to border on chaos. The December 12 Council meeting was one of those times, when the Council was asked to approve an ordinance authorizing the issuance of $4.1 million in City bonds to [...]

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