Seeking Silverdale and Central Kitsap

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Illahee resident Jim Aho sent out an email today noting a lot of wildlife has been spotted around the Illahee area. A majority of it is seas life, however, there are a couple of shots of Illahee’s very own “Wiley Coyote”. I’ve included a couple of photos of the coyote, just so people can see their “hidden” neighbor.

Here’s Jim’s Illahee animal kingdom update:

Owls – There were recent reportings of a Barred Owl and a Pygmy Owl.

Salmon – Lots of activity along the Illahee waterfront with salmon. Returning salmon have been seen jumping. There also seems to be a bay full of immature salmon that can be seen surface feeding when the water is calm. They can be seen being eaten by sea lions as noted below, and probably by the seals, but seals don’t put on a show like the sea lions do.

Seals – The number of seals in the area seem to have increased with one person reporting 10 or more seals on a float each morning.

Sea Lions – Sea lions have also been seen in increasing numbers with six sighted in a group late Monday afternoon. Sea lions have been seen nearly every day for the past week feeding on small salmon. One person went out in a kayak and reportedly got within about 50 feet of a sea lion feeding and said the big guy didn’t seem to be bothered by his presence. He had seen some smaller sea lions or other mammals jumping completely out of the water and wanted to find out what they were, but by the time he got out there only the big sea lion was there. He is wondering what those smaller creatures might be.

And finally Wiley Coyote:

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Well it has been a few months since there were incorporation meetings held regarding the possibility of Silverdale becoming a city.

I am a bit surprised that no one has taken the bait and continued the talks. Maybe the history of failed incorporation attempts has soured people on the idea of proposing incorporation again. I hope that’s not the case because based on criticism and conversations I’ve heard in the community, it seems Silverdale’s incorporation is an inevitable event. (But maybe I’m wrong).

After hearing many questions raised about Silverdale’s future if it became a city, I asked Jennifer Forbes, an attorney at Tacoma law firm McGavick Graves, to answer some of the most commonly asked questions. Forbes lives in Poulsbo and has been on-hand during incorporation meetings to answer questions. She is very familiar with the law surrounding incorporation.

Below are the questions I asked and her overarching answer to all of them.

My Questions:

1. Will water or sewer rates increase/decrease/stay the same?
2. Will the cost of utilities like garbage collection or electrical service change?
3. What will happen with the cost of television, satellite TV and phone service, will it change?
4. Will the cost of fire/police protection change, and if Silverdale became a city would it have to establish its own fire/police departments?
5. Will property taxes costs more/less?
6. Will the sales tax rate change?
7. If a city government is established along with a court system, will that cost more money and what are the pros and cons?
8. How will the road maintenance be handled?

Jennifer’s Response:

Questions 1-8 can generally be answered in the same manner – No one at this stage can guarantee what taxes will or will not be imposed or increased by the City. The City would have the authority to impose or increase certain taxes but they are not required to do so. What this means is that the answer to the questions will depend heavily on who is elected to the governing body (City Council) of the City of Silverdale. Citizens can participate in that decision through their votes and by participating in City Council meetings.

The City can initially contract with the County, other Cities, or Districts for nearly all government services, such as police, fire, road maintenance, and the court system. Once again, this is a decision that would be made by the governing body of the City. The governing body may decide that they do not want to contract for some or all of these services. That being said, however, the typical way most recently incorporated Cities address these issues is by contracting for a period of time for the provision of these services and then slowly taking them over themselves. This provides a somewhat seamless transition of services into an incorporated City.

There are certainly pros and cons to having a City municipal court system versus contracting with the County. This is something that many existing cities struggle with. I cannot speak to the financial costs or benefits, as I think this varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I will say that it appears to me that most jurisdictions choose to have their own court system for a variety of reasons including but not limited to: providing a better level of service to citizens, having a better sense of the issues that are facing the community, and providing a more convenient forum for those who are parties to the court system.

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I wrote a story that ran in today’s paper (Oct. 23) about the Nurse-Family Partnership. This is the second time I’ve written about this, and it will not be the last.

In short, the program is geared to help first-time, low-income mothers with their pregnancy and child-rearing. The concept is to help these women stay away from abuse and neglect and create a loving, nurturing environment for their children. The thought is by helping mothers and fathers learn the proper parenting skills, the children will grow up and have a higher chance of staying away from drugs, crime and teen pregnancy. Now obviously there will always be exceptions to this, but research from other states where this program has been implemented show it has worked at reducing all of these issues.

In addition to improving the lives of the people enrolled, the program saves taxpayer money because police and the legal system don’t have to get involved. While the program is somewhat expensive – in Kitsap they’re estimating it will cost $500,000 a year to run – according to Nurse-Family Partnership data, in the 30 years the program has been in operation it has shown that it repays its costs three to one.

In Kitsap the program is being proposed by a nonprofit – Healthy Start Kitsap. That group has worked closely with the Kitsap County Health District to localize this program. One reason for working with the district is because they don’t want to replicate any of the district’s existing programs. Another reason for the partnership is because the health district has said it will be the agency to implement the program.

In addition, Dr. Scott Lindquist, health district director, has said that assuming full funding is available for the program, he would be willing to allow two of the district’s existing nurses from the First Steps program shift to the Nurse-Family Partnership program.

The group is capitalizing on its momentum and trying to keep things going with the implementation of the program locally, but they still need funding. The health district’s in-kind contribution will come with the conversion of the two nurses, which costs about $180,000. The nonprofit was approved for a state-funded grant of $100,000, which once the program is established the group will receive 100 percent of that funding. They still need about $150,000 in donations to get the program up and running this year.

Group members are going to begin soliciting donations over the next few months in order to raise the money by the end of the year. They also plan to apply for many, many, many more grants, and hope to establish a plan to keep funding sustainable so that the program can remain in Kitsap County. Once things are settled, they hope to serve 85 families at a time. Each family with work with a nurse over three years, from very early in their pregnancy until around the child’s third birthday.

For more information – including statistics – on the nurse family partnership and how they operate, visit their web site.

To donate, make checks payable to the nonprofit, Healthy Start Kitsap, and send to Healthy Start Kitsap, P.O. Box 3968, Silverdale, WA 98383. If you have questions and want to learn more, you can email HSK board president Brian Nyquist at bnyquist@olympicanesthesia.com or call him at 360-479-3657.

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The Central Kitsap School District is currently considering changing its school configurations. At the request of the school board various committees have been formed to review the district’s spending and to see where money can be saved to help with the budget deficit.

One of those committees is the secondary school configuration committee. It has been tasked with researching and reviewing various configuration options for the district’s elementary, junior and high schools. Katharine Gleysteen, facilitator of the committee and district administrator, said her guess is the district will make a change to the current configurations.

However, because the committee is still very early in its work, there is no plan yet as to which configuration option will be chosen. An interesting thing to note is, CK is just one of five districts in the entire state that still lumps grades 7-9 for junior high and grades 10-12 for high school.

Committee members have already created a long list of “facts,” “assumptions” and “considerations.” Included in those are considerations about transferring students from junior high together into the same high school. Currently Ridgetop Junior High splits its students between Oly and CK High Schools.

The committee meetings are closed to the public because school administrators don’t want people disrupting the decision making process, or hindering it by attending meetings and intimidating committee members. The meetings are also closed because the committee is not a decision making body, but instead was created to make a recommendation to Superintendent Greg Lynch.

Lynch has said while the group is reviewing and generating a recommendation on configuration options, he and a steering committee will review the recommendation before it is presented to the board. During that review Lynch or the steering committee could change the recommendation significantly. Ultimately in January Lynch will recommend to the school board options for them to decide how the future configurations of junior high and high schools will look.

I am interested to see what people’s thoughts are on this. Do you like the current configurations? Would you like to see things changed? What are your concerns about the possibility that students may be switched around – is this good or bad?

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Today – Tuesday, Oct. 16 – is boss appreciation day. Here at the paper someone actually brought in carrot cake cupcakes and coffee, while someone else brought in Halloween cookies. While they might “technically” be for the “boss” you can’t ever bring food to a newsroom and expect everyone to stay away.

I am not sure if other offices are recognizing their bosses today, but I know of at least one CK boss that’s already been recognized by one of his employees.

Over the weekend the Sunday edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Seattle Times ran a story previewing National Boss’s Day in the Northwest Life section. One of the boss/employee situations highlighted was from Naval Base-Kitsap Bangor.

According to the story, Kathi Ferguson gave kudos to her boss, Jim Owens, chief information officer at Bangor, for his support during a hard time in her life. Three years ago her husband was sick and being treated at a Spokane hospital. He took a turn for the worse and when Owens heard this, he insisted on driving Ferguson to Spokane that minute. He stopped by his house long enough to get a suitcase that his wife had packed for him.

When they arrived in Spokane Ferguson told the Seattle papers “My husband sat up and greeted us as we entered the room, then laid back down and never spoke another word. He entered a coma and died the next morning.”

Ferguson is thankful she was able to hear her husband’s last words, saying if Owens hadn’t taken the initiative to drive her, she likely would have missed them.

Do you have a great boss story? A boss that has supported you, or encouraged you or helped you become a better person/employee? Please only leave positive comments, this is boss appreciation day, not “Knock Your Boss Day”.

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A quick look at the recently released “snap-shot” of Census data for 2007 shows that Silverdale’s population has declined by almost 0.1 percent.

According to the spreadsheet, the change in population from the 2000 Census to the 2007 Census was a decline by 17 people living in Silverdale. Another decline to note was the loss of 133 people on Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. That’s pretty self-explanatory – subs come and go…which makes me wonder, maybe those 17 people who left Silverdale were a part of the Navy?

The question is, if Kitsap is supposed to get 100,000 more people in the next 20 years and many of them are predicted to relocate within Silverdale’s Urban Growth Area, where are they? This decline makes me wonder how accurate these projection numbers really are. While 17 people leaving an area is minor, shouldn’t Silverdale be growing, not declining?

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Central Kitsap’s Cottonwood Elementary was named as a “School of Distinction” by the state’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction for its improvement in student reading and mathematics on Washington Assessment of Student Learning tests over the past several years.
Superintendent Greg Lynch and Cottonwood principal Jane Chapin joined the state superintendent of public instruction, Terry Bergeson, along with representatives of Cottonwood’s staff on Wednesday to accept the award at a statewide press event in the Seattle area.
Cottonwood was one of 86 schools recognized.
Schools of Distinction represent the top 5 percent of elementary, middle and high schools whose students have shown outstanding growth in both reading and mathematics skills during a six-year period. This year’s winning schools include 51 elementary schools, 20 middle schools and 15 high schools — out of nearly 2,500 schools in the state.
To be considered for the award, each school had to meet the current year’s state learning targets on the WASL for students in both reading and mathematics. Schools that met those targets were then evaluated for six-year gains on the state’s “Learning Improvement Index.”
Additional information on the award program and a list of all Schools of Distinction can be found at www.k12.wa.us.

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The Central Kitsap Community Council is hosting its regular fall Town Hall meeting Oct. 17 from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Evergreen Room at the Silverdale Community Center.

While the guests haven’t been firmed up, it sounds like there will be some local legislators there to tell voters what their goals are for the short legislative session. They’ll also take questions from the audience and plan to hear from voters what they’d like to see done this year in Olympia.

In addition, SK, NK and CK commissioners will be in attendance. They’ll each talk about what’s going on in their respective areas and what’s upcoming. (I’m guessing there will be some budget talk going on too…)

CK Commissioner Josh Brown is scheduled to further discuss the proposed YMCA project, so anyone interested in hearing more about it really should attend the meeting. This is the time to get your questions answered – which I know there are likely a lot of questions out there.

CKCC council members really want to see more people in attendance at these meetings because it shows the county and state legislators that the meetings are important and that the public really does care about what goes on in Olympia because it directly affects us here in Kitsap County.

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Like Silverldale’s fabulous Clear Creek Trail, Silver City Restaurant & Brewery has been recognized by the King 5 Evening Magazine television show as one of it’s “Best Of…” winners.

The restaurant actually got two “Best Of” awards: “Best Neighborhood Watering Hole” and “Best Brewmaster.” I am not surprised about the brewmaster award, since local brewmaster Don Spencer has been recognized numerous times for his great brewing techniques and Silver City’s beers are often receiving awards for their taste. But to be considered the “Best Neighborhood Watering Hole” in ALL of Wester Washington – that’s a significant award.

Considering Silverdale was up against Seattle – which has so many “neighborhood” watering holes it’s hard to count. Silverdale was also up against many other great communities, so this is a sign, I think, that Kitsap County is finally getting some recognition. (That, or there are a lot of Kitsap people that watch Evening Magazine and they voted a crap load of times because they want to win the grand prize for voting – a new Honda car.)

Regardless, it’s pretty cool that Silver City is being recognized and that the Clear Creek Trail is the “Best Hidden Hiking Trail”.

The show runs its “Best Of” series from Oct. 8 to Oct. 12 at 7 p.m. on King 5 and then sums it all up Saturday, Oct. 13 starting at 8 p.m.

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While Klahowya’s Kristen Eddings smiling face graced the pages of the Kitsap Sun numerous times during her year as Miss Washington and as a competitor in the Miss America pageant, it’s time for a younger face to take over.

In May Farrell Tally, 13, of Central Kitsap, was crowned Miss Jr. Teen Washington. One (out of many) interesting things about Farrell? She too attends Klahowya Secondary School.

I joked with her Sunday that there has to be something in the water at the school…

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