A focus group comprised of interested passenger-only (PO) ferry riders gathered on Saturday, Feb. 21, to meet with a number of King County Ferry District representatives.
You want proof that our species is resilient?
Look at the babysitting that kids survive.
I was in the middle of updating a client’s harassment in the workplace policy and customizing my over 100th training on the topic when I heard the news of Lanora Hackett’s win in her lawsuit against Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR).
It’s a hard thing to watch a 14-year-old boy cry.
Islanders talk a lot about growing and buying local food — an act that helps to sustain our environment, strengthen our community fabric and support a fantastic lot of people. Equally important — and for all the same reasons — is shopping locally.
Islanders have before them ballots for one of the most significant elections Vashon has faced in a while: a school bond measure that would lead to a major overhaul of our aging high school. And as the letters and commentaries on these two pages suggest, Islanders are, of course, divided on this issue.
Kate Hunter is right: The media does not always present the Israeli-Palestinian conflict accurately. Unfortunately, the media is willing to do exactly what she does — present a small part of the real story in sound bites and headlines that distort the truth.
At a time when Seattle is forced to close schools due to the economic crisis that the city and state are facing, property owners on Vashon are being asked to support a $75.5 million school bond to renovate the high school. With interest included for this 20-year bond, the total will come to $150 million for a community of just over 10,000 residents.
Vashon citizens want our schools to be among the very best in the state and the nation. To get this, we need to assure that our first priority needs to be all children reading at grade level by the third grade.
On Sunday, the best and brightest in film will be recognized at the 81st annual Academy Awards in Hollywood — and thanks to Vashon Film Society, the event will take center stage on Vashon as well.
I write this with considerable trepidation. I own a business here on Vashon and have always avoided taking a public stand on political issues in an effort to avoid misrepresenting the ideas or wishes of my company’s associates. But when the school bond issue approached, I felt I must take a stand since there is so much at stake.
I love our Vashon community. And I should not be surprised that once again our small community is a microcosm of a dysfunctional family — complete with skeletons lurking in the closets and elephants in the living room that need to be acknowledged.
In the ongoing siege and bombardment of Gaza, Israel has prevented outside journalists into the territory, ensuring that the media slant paints Hamas as the villain and itself as victim. This is what has prompted me to write — to balance the information Islanders may have received.
