PARKS AND SCHOOLS

Commons proposal made without input

For more than 30 years, the Vashon Commons has given our community access to school facilities for recreation, youth sports and arts. We generously funded school bonds with the assurance of community use of these same facilities.

But now, after a series of meetings without adequate public input, representatives of the school district and the park district propose to unceremoniously end this longtime island institution.

We can only scratch our heads and ask “why?”

The Commons serves thousands of islanders every year. It is the hub of youth sports. Adults play softball, soccer and walk the track. For our island, the Commons just works.

We ask both the school board and the park board to put this idea on hold in order to allow full public discussion and input. The reasons for ending the commons are unclear. It raises questions that have not yet been answered. For example, how will the end of the Commons affect user fees? Will public access decrease to facilities built with our tax dollars? Why risk messing with the Commons when it has worked well for three decades?

There is no reason to rush toward the end of the Commons. Our elected officials need to step in and require an open community process. Questions need to be answered before making any precipitous decision to end the commons.

Robin Magonegil, President, Vashon Basketball

Scott Thorpe, President, Vashon Soccer

Peter Walker, League President, Vashon Baseball

Brian McWatters, President, Vashon Lacrosse

COVID-19

A plea to the schools

There has been a truly frightening surge of COVID cases on Vashon in the past couple of months; a fifth islander has died and at least one other has been very ill despite being “triple vaxxed.” The Senior Center is closed, the Heritage Museum is closed, and I, as an elder, am once again leery of indoor eating and gym exercise. It doesn’t seem the time to take unnecessary chances.

Not long ago NPR and other media reported regional wrestling matches as sources of infection. Vashon students were involved. The Beachcomber outed student onlookers who should have been socially distanced and masked, but weren’t. Now it’s déjà vu. A VashonBePrepared report (e-mail, 2/4/22) states young people under 18 have four times the case rate of adults, not attributable to classroom presence, but to gatherings before and after school and on weekends. The same report stated that two wrestling coaches have tested positive as the wrestlers continue training practices in preparation for upcoming competitions, relying on daily testing. By the time of a positive test, many others could have been exposed.

I hope in general that students and parents will be a little more thoughtful, but to coaches and student-athletes I’m issuing an urgent plea: have compassion for your fellow Islanders, especially the elderly, and be willing to wait until it’s safer to compete.

Ellen Kritzman

BEACH RESTORATION

Return to nature takes time

In response to Joe Yarkin’s recent letter regarding beach restoration: it is true after human constructions are removed from waterfront there will be some silt plumes and erosion afterward. Not all plantings will survive. Some trees, native or not will fall. These are natural events in ecosystem function.

More than 200 feet of a bulkhead were removed at my home. For years there were plumes of silt and erosion. Plantings were lost. More natives were planted. Now there is a more natural shoreline. The surf spawning upper tide zone is expanded. On warm sunny days when the tide is out the temperature below the surface in that area is cooler even though the plantings do not actually shade much of the beach.

All things considered, I did not “lose” part of my property. I gained a much more aesthetically pleasing beach.

Pat Collier

PUGET SOUND ENERGY

Reliability woes

I’m appreciative of the PSE workers that venture out in storms to restore our electricity, but at the same time, I ask myself why we have so many outages. Last year I had 7 electricity outages here at my home on Maury Island, not just little blips, outages that lasted for hours and hours. Invariably the outages were due to trees and limbs falling on the electric lines. Rather than armoring lines, which a recent Beachcomber article spoke about, how about PSE doing a better job at cutting back vegetation or better still burying lines?

PSE has filed a three-year plan rate increase request with the UTC, a plan that PSE says will provide safe and reliable energy to its customers. This plan will increase our electricity bills by 12.9% in the first year. I don’t consider 7 outages in a year reliable. If granted this rate increase, PSE should use the additional revenue to address the vulnerability of electrical lines to outages here on Vashon and truly provide reliable energy to us.

Robert Kommer