Bainbridge Conversation

The city’s newly appointed interim hearing examiner allegedly reneged on a pledge aimed at satisfying concerns that she may favor the mayor in a property dispute.

In a March 2007 audio recording of an examiner hearing, Margaret Klockars, then serving as a fill-in examiner, said she would decline serving as examiner on future Bainbridge cases. She made the pledge to quell criticism that that she may use her decision to curry favor and future employment with Mayor Darlene Kordonowy, who was named in the case.

“Anything that would prevent me from being fair (might be) the fact that I might want to come back here,” Klockars said in a recording made by the city on March 22, 2007. “I can assure you…I would decline if invited to return for any other case.”

Despite her pledge to decline employment, Klockars accepted the mayor’s appointment as hearing examiner 14 months later. She is currently presiding over four cases involving citizen appeals of city decisions.

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Don’t go into debt for the small stuff.

That was the message residents sent to the City Council on Wednesday in reaction to a nearly $1.8 million slate of mostly small capital projects slated for borrowed funding.

“You can’t keep borrowing your selves out of a hole because you’re going to get deeper and deeper,” said island resident Liz Murray.

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Islander Lin Kamer-Walker writes in this week to argue that the proposed Winslow Way utilities fix will cost the public much and benefit the few.

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Owly, Owlsworth, Owlton, Owlson, Owlefeller, Hoot, Hooter, Hootsey, Hootenany.

That’s my shortlist of names for the unnamed owl perched above. What’s yours?

The West Sound Wildlife Shelter is sponsoring a naming contest for this injured bird. The island-based shelter hopes to have the friendly owl in good health before it makes the rounds in local classrooms, teaching kids all about night vision, hat snatching and and mice pellets.

Read Rachel Pritchett’s story below.

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High school students from Bainbridge improved upon scores that were already among the state’s best, with more than 97 percent of students passing the reading and writing sections. Math and science scores also improved among the sophomore class.

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Ralph Munro remembers the day when torpedoes struck the Crystal Springs shore.

He also remembers a gray whale slipping past Rich Passage’s submarine nets, and how Civil War vets were once the land barons of Bainbridge

Munro, an island native and former secretary of state, was one of the guides aboard the historic steamer Virginia V on Sunday. The sold out four-hour tour was aimed at highlighting the history of 30 ferry landings around the island.

At the end of the trip I hopped off the boat sure that the story I’d write would be full of Munro’s comments. It wasn’t. Munro, I realized after looking over my notes, had said very little about ferries, the topic of the tour and the subject of my story. But he had plenty of colorful and interesting things to say, especially about the island’s west side.

For my story about the tour of ferry landings, click here.

For highlights from Ralph Munro’s steamboat tour of Bainbridge, read on…

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If you didn’t catch Becky Fox Marshall’s latest column in the Islander, read it below. This week, Marshall warns that the island’s recent population growth slowdown doesn’t mean growth has halted, nor does it mean we should stop planning for growth.

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County prosecutors have filed felony charges against a Bainbridge Island man accused by police of offering candy to an 8-year-old boy, and then asking the boy to get in his car, according to documents filed in Kitsap County Superior Court.

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I had the chance to talk with former islander and microbrewery pioneer Will Kemper last week.

I was working on a story (read it by clicking here) about Kitsap County’s beer brewing history, which apparently had its start with Port Orchard’s Silver Springs Brewery in the early ’30s. After Silver Springs was purchased out and shipped away, Kitsap was brewery-less until Kemper teamed with the Thomas family of Seattle to form Thomas Kemper Brewery on Day Road in 1984.

Now best known for its old-fashioned sodas, the Thomas Kemper brand was one of the first of the microbreweries to sprout up in the 1980s. Only Redhook, Hale’s Ales and Hart’s predated Thomas Kemper in Washington state.

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Ever hear of that archaic city ordinance that grants legal amnesty to all island families that have resided on Bainbridge for 100 years?

Neither had the cops.

Looks like you can’t shove ferry commuters or hit police officers after all, not even if your great grandpappy was Ambrose Grow.

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During a Pritchard Park beach walk, the Seattle P-I’s Bainbridge blogger Kathe Fraga stumbled upon a solution to the island’s affordable housing problem.

“Steps away from the undulating shores of the Island’s gentle waves, this beautiful waterfront home boasts all the amenities that make Island living so great!” she writes of a rock-bottom priced charmer with a million dollar view.

Channeling the spirit of a honey-tongued Realtor, Fraga enthuses about the “sandy ambiance” of this “beachy vintage estate.”

She also plugs its “charmingly rustic” outdoor dining area and its “green” design and solar heating (“There’s no roof!”).

To see the entire floor plan of this very, very affordable fixer-upper, visit Fraga’s blog, Notes from an Island.

The long-planned expansion of the Bainbridge Island senior center was in the city capital budget, and then it was out of it. Now it’s back in.

Sort of.

The final approval of the budget is months away, but the City Council on Wednesday agreed to let voters have the final word on whether the $9 million expansion will move forward.

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