A new year and an old goal await us. The year will willy nilly be, and it can trump our game, but that’s all the more reason to make 2011 the year Vashon puts a skate park, a teen center and a bowling alley downtown.

Here we go. Propose to the county that we cancel the UAC agreement and Vashon-Maury Island Community Council and instead put the money into planning for a new youth- oriented downtown. POI did their part, let’s do ours.

Don’t get me wrong, I love art and a good time. It’s ill-spent youth and see-no-evil upright citizens that have to change.

Look, when our library was headed for the skids, you blocked it, and when Maury was about to be docked, POI dug in. So when the entire Island is threatened by U.S. economic and social collapse are you going to brush it off?

Yes you are, Vashon, because you think everything will be just fine. You think all we need to do is put the heat to Gregoire. Sure Gregoire is in with big business and we should object, but that’s secondary.

Primarily, we weld our Island back together.

— Tom Herring