We’re well-acquainted with the relative powers of the pen and the sword. But there’s another tool which contends with both: The power of the budget.

As detailed in our page 1 stories this week, a cornucopia of island organizations will receive millions in combined funding from King County’s “Doors Open” levy to support science, heritage and arts efforts.

These grants will be a big part of how projects such as the Mukai Barreling Plant restoration reach fruition. They’ll inject life into many other efforts across the island, too.

In an unincorporated community such as Vashon, grant funding and community fundraising is often essential for taxing districts and nonprofits to accomplish much beyond the homeostatic maintenance of the facilities they already operate.

So we hope that the new year brings success and luck to organizations such as the Vashon Park District, which oversees a number of beloved island properties — and has no small number of projects to improve, renovate and rebuild them. Creative combination of money sources will be essential, for example, to rebuild Tramp Harbor Dock and make upgrades at the community pool.

Those tools also allow these organizations to avoid asking local voters for property tax increases. (Of course, government grants often come from taxes, too. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and all community goods, in some way, require that we put our own skin in the game.)

As explored in our Time & Again piece by Bruce Haulman in this week’s edition, those community partnerships have already led to the view clearing at the south end’s Inspiration Point.

Coincidentally, Vashon’s state senator Joe Nguyễn has just been selected to head Governor-elect Bob Ferguson’s Department of Commerce, a role in which he’ll lead the government agency responsible for promoting community and economic development across the state — including the disbursement of much grant funding.

Nguyễn has been an energetic leader in his time in the state legislature, and we look forward to seeing how that energy translates into the executive branch.

The sword can slay, and the pen can persuade. But the budget can beget — it can make realities out of dreams. That’s why these stories are important, and why we’ll continue to cover them in this new year.