The Vashon Library has been in the center of town for generations as a stimulating place for learning and entertainment. Having one of the highest per capita readerships in Washington has to be a measure of success. We should also take pride in our history of community support for a library. It started with the Vashon Island Women’s Club in 1911 providing books and services to enhance the learning experience for our citizens and their children.
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What happened to the third option for the Vashon library to be built anew just west of the Napa store? The branch would remain inside the town core, conveniently close to the Post Office, and offering a chance to revitalize nearby Vashon Plaza. Moving to K2 will only contribute to further sprawl and increased traffic congestion along Vashon Highway; tearing down and building a new branch at its present location would inconvenience patrons during construction and seems to be objectionable to the King County Library System.
I must admit that I was highly skeptical when I first heard of the Vashon High School bond issue. Why remodel a school that looks so great as you drive past it? To learn more about the situation, my wife and I took one of the school tours being offered, and grim reality quickly set in as we saw, firsthand, the inside story of overcrowded classrooms and inadequate facilities.
Issuing a bond in U.S. dollars to rebuild the high school will create future hardship. But that is not the only means, as there could be a parallel process in community currency: Vashon investors put up U.S. dollars, the dollars purchase stockpiles of critical materials at present prices, and the investors get repaid in community currency. The benefits of a parallel process go beyond the obvious merit of sidestepping inflation. The extra benefit is the economy resulting by use of Vashon talent compensated with community currency for all phases of design and construction. And there is a little engine of gain hidden in the parallel process. Islanders paying the tax in community currency to investors who have with good-will invested in Vashon will repay those investors with cups filled to overflowing.
My Grandma Skov wanted to help poor people back in the ’20s when the men came to the kitchen door asking for food. One time she gave a man a dime and then watched to see what he did with it. He went into the saloon with Grandma after him, demanding to get her dime back. It wasn’t going to make him less poor, and she didn’t want her dime to be used foolishly.
As we settle into our house here in Sebastopol, Calif. — a true sister city to Vashon — today I came across a large bundle of cards. It will be two years this April since David passed, his death touching all of us in some way.
I’ve noticed around the Island after the recent snows that the plows scraped many of the new reflectors off our roads. Some of them are still in good shape by the roadsides.
Not only do I not support the movement of the Vashon Library to the Vashon K2 facility, I do not support the agenda of the director, Bill Ptacek, the “vision” he has for the KCLS (and the Vashon branch in particular) or the manner in which he conducts his meetings. I have spoken with Mr. Ptacek on several occasions on the telephone and in these gatherings, and it is clear that he is not interested in the commentary that he invites.
