Seeking Silverdale and Central Kitsap

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I’ve just finished a fascinating book by Brad Hirschfield.

I heard Hirschfield interviewed on National Public Radio and decided to request his book, “You Don’t Have to Be Wrong For Me To Be Right,” from Kitsap Regional Library. It was certainly worth the read.

His website describes Hirshfield, a fellow Illinois native who became an Orthodox rabbi, as “a former activist in the West Bank (who) was committed to reconstituting the Jewish state within its biblical borders (but now) an Orthodox rabbi, devoted to teaching inclusiveness, celebrating diversity, and promoting acceptance.”

Hirschfield’s message is focused on the importance of accepting the views of people who believe in different religions from you. He uses his own biblical and Judaic scholarship, and his personal stories, to talk about how the holy books of the three Abrahamic religions all support the idea of tolerance and acceptance of other religious thoughts.

Worth the price of admission (in this case, the book was free from the library) is the chapter about his visit to a large mosque in Indiana at which he was to deliver a speech during a conference. After being introduced to the iman and beginning a conversation, the call to afternoon prayer was made. Unlike other previous visitors to the mosque, Hirschfield joined the iman in the prayer, praying in Hebrew the Jewish version of the exact same prayer that was being chanted from the Koran. It’s a fine description of a powerful moment which shows some of the commonalities of two religions that have been unnecessarily at war for hundreds of years.

I’d highly recommend it.

— Jeff

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It’s interesting to me that we haven’t heard much about health care reform in Central Kitsap or Kitsap County. Not even that many letters to the editor in the Kitsap Sun.

Perhaps the strident debate over whether to have a public option for health care is missing a spark in an area where many people already get government provided health care. Over the years, I’ve head my share of complaints from acquaintences who were covered by the Navy health plans and got their treatment from military clinics and hospitals. But I never heard any of them complain about the cost of their coverage, that they were being kicked out of the plan, or being denied coverage. I’ve heard complaints about some doctors that had served at Naval Hospital, but seldom heard complaints about the military program that I’ve heard about private programs the rest of us depend on.

For years, our nation has fallen behind in health care. Every other developed nation in the world, and some that aren’t so developed, have some kind of national health care program that covers every single person for their medical needs. In some cases, those plans are totally government run, such as Britain’s National Health Service, where most of the doctors are government employees. In many other cases, those national plans are build into a system with private doctors and private insurance companies. But in every case, the government takes the attitude that health coverage is a right of every citizen and those who can’t afford to pay their share get subsidized.

In America, there are still some people who receive Cadillac health insurance coverage with their jobs. For those people, our system provides quick, mostly high quality care using the most up-to-date procedures and drugs, at relatively low cost to the people who are covered. Count the members of Congresss who will vote on any health care reform among this group. They pay very little for very extensive, and sometimes very expensive, coverage that we subsidize as taxpayers.

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Big news on the Silverdale development front this morning. If you haven’t see Brynn Grimley’s story in the Kitsap Sun today, take a look. A group of developers headed by Gary Lindsay announced plans for the Woodbridge Crossing development of 659 homes on 122 acres north of Waaga Way and east of Silverdale Way.

At the south end, the development will touch the Ridgetop development, putting this new housing area right in my backyard (OK, technically, it would be my front yard, but you get the reference).

I’m not, however, going to get up and scream “Not in my backyard!” That’s because I believe in the idea of more densely developing parts of the county so that we can still retain a sense of rural and wild lands in the rest of it.

In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing Lindsay and his partners up the number of housing units in the development to the 798 that county zoning would allow. I would support that if the plans included some mixed use that would allow people to live within walking distance of where they might work. I would support that if the plans, as they do, clustered the housing in some areas of the affected property to leave some open space in other areas. And I would support that if the plans, as they do, included walking trails in the development that would tie in to the Clear Creek Trail system and to Ridgetop.

When Ridgetop was originally designed, the master plan called for a complex of walking trails throughout the development. Unfortunately, the people in charge of the county building and planning department never required the developers who built the various Ridgetop subdivisions to comply with the master plan. As a result, only one development on the Ridge does have trails, and the rest do not. Imagine the value of that amenity now had there been a trail system on the Ridgetop that linked into the Clear Creek Trail.

So I laud the part of this development plan that includes trails, and I urge the developers to consider how they could make Woodbridge Crossing a place where people could live, work and shop, all without having to get in their cars to do it.

— Jeff

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It’s been a long time in planning, but if anything, that time has proven the perseverence of a group of Central Kitsap teens who took it upon themselves to beautify the Anderson Hill Road overpass just west of Silverdale with a mural.

The project is now complete (see Brynn Grimley’s story from the Kitsap Sun) and the community has a point of pride as a result.

It required the cooperation of the county, the Navy (which owns the overpass) and the tireless efforts of CKHS Senior Laura Fedorko and CK graduate Victoria Cartwright. The pair decided two years ago, after passing under the graffiti-ravaged overpass many times, that they needed to find a way to improve their community. They enlisted the help of Tex Lewis of the Clear Creek Trail Committee and the CK Community Council and eventually made the project happen through community donations and volunteers. Port Ludlow muralist Bob Jamison did the primary painting for the work.

— Jeff

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I speak to you in this post wearing my hat as the Strategic Planning Manager of Kitsap Regional LIbrary, not simply as the Sun’s Central Kitsap blogger.

The development of KRL’s  strategic plan for 2010-2015 is a year-long process that will result in a draft proposal for  consideration by the KRL Board of Trustees in mid-December. Right now, we are in the phase where we are gathering as much public information and comment as we can. Public needs will drive the goals and action statements in the plan.

We have already met with more than a dozen elected officials and community leaders to talk about the changes going on in Kitsap County and the changing needs of the public when it comes to library services. From those discussions, and internal discussions among library staff and administration, the following five vision statements have emerged:

• Kitsap Regional Library’s branches will be energy efficient, safe, and welcoming gathering places for our communities.
• Kitsap Regional Library will support the intellectual development of Kitsap children to help them open their horizons and become life-long learners.
• Kitsap Regional Library will support Kitsap adults as a resource for building careers and for life enrichment.
• Kitsap Regional Library will make its services more convenient and find ways to meet patron needs beyond the normal hours of branch operation.
• Kitsap Regional Library will be effective, frugal and productive in its use of the money Kitsap taxpayers entrust to us.

These five statements are not set in stone, and could change as we hear more from the public about the need for library services. But, for now, we are using these statements to ask more questions and to seek more detailed ideas from the public and from staff.

I’d definitely like to hear your reaction to these vision statements. Do they speak to you? Do they describe a library that does a better job meeting your needs? Do they reflect your values for our community? Are we on the right track? E-mail me at jbrody@krl.org to share your thoughts.

And, while I’m asking for your help … and for your time to respond to these statements, I’ll ask for one more thing. KRL has just posted an online survey to get public reaction to our programs, the quality of our customer service and the experience of visiting the library. Please take the survey and encourage all your Kitsap-based friends and acquaintances to take it as well. We’d love to get thousands of responses to this survey and hear from a broad variety of Kitsap residents, from library power users to occasional patrons to people who don’t use the library at all.

— Jeff

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What can I say about Father’s Day 2009 in Kitsap?

We started from our home in Silverdale about 11:30 and headed toward Manchester to partake in the annual Father’s Day Salmon Bake that benefits the Manchester Friends of the Library.

Just coming down Highway 3 from Auto Center Way in Bremerton, we saw streaks of lightning in the sky over South Kitsap. It’s probably been a couple of years since I’ve seen lightning in the Puget Sound region. Then, heading into Gorst, we came upon a hail storm so heavy that my wife, Joyce, and I couldn’t hear each other talking in the car. The hailstones were just cracking against the windshield and it seemed hard enough to dent the hood of the car. The highway was immediately overwhelmed with water and the ride was actually bumpy as the tired rolled over the hailstones on the road. Then, in Gorst, it all eased up, only to resume again after we turned toward Port Orchard on Highway 166. Yet, by the time we got into Port Orchard, the sun was shining.

We were served a great salmon lunch by state Sen. Derek Kilmer, state Rep. Larry Seaquist, County Commissioner Charlotte Garrido and library Director Jill Jean, who together were dolling out the food at Manchester. The annual salmon bake is a great event, that draws hundreds to the small library building. Manchester Library is one of two branch buildings in the Kitsap Regional Library system owned by private, non-profit organizations (the other is the Bainbridge Library building). It’s a unique partnership between the Port of Manchester, which owns the land where the building sits; KRL, which provides library staff, materials and services; and the Manchester Friends of the Library, whose fundraising efforts constructed the building and pay for its maintenance. The salmon bake is the Friends major fundraiser each year.

We left Manchester seeminly just before the storm hit and made our way to North Kitsap, where Civil War re-enactors were finishing up a two-day battle/demonstration in Port Gamble, and where good friends in Eglon were celebrating the long process of building their new home with a house-warming party.In Eglon, the sun shone, the osprey searched the waters of Puget Sound for fish, and friends and family gathered to celebrate the near-completion of the house.

What a day. Unique to our place.

— Jeff

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According to the national contest sponsored by the American Water Works Association, Silverdale’s water is a close second in taste to that served up by the Macon, Ga., water system.

I haven’t gone to Macon to try it out, but I like the taste of the water I get from the Silverdale Water District.

I have to admit that a lot more of the water I buy from Silverdale gets flushed down my toilets and sprayed over my lawn in these dry months of the year than the amount I ever actually taste. But I do tend to drink a lot of water. And I almost never drink it from bottles unless I have no other choice. After all, most of the water you get in those bottles came out of the tap in some municipal water system anyway.

I have a large stainless steel tumbler that started life as a mixing container for milkshakes. Every day at home, I load ice cubes into it and fill it with tap water. I usually go through three or four tumblers full in an evening. When we’ve traveled to countries where tap water isn’t safe, I’ve found the thing that I’ve missed the most was being able to take a long, cold drink of water.

So here’s to Silverdale’s water. Maybe second in the country, but first in our hearts.

— Jeff

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I hope everyone noticed Friday’s story in the Kitsap Sun indicating that Ron and Nadean Ross have pledge $1 million to the YMCA project that is to be the first tangible development of the Silverdale Community Campus.

It’s an extremely generous gift, and an extremely important one.

First of all, it gets the Y one-fifth of the way toward it’s $5 million private fundraising goal and makes it that much more likely that the project will become a reality. Second, pushing the Y project forward also pushes the community campus forward.

Any project becomes much more solid when the first piece becomes actual, rather than conceptual. The community campus has been stuck in the conceptual stage for many years. Tangible action toward making one part of the campus plan a reality will make it much more likely that other parts of the campus plan will also happen. No one ever wants to be first — the first store in a shopping center, the first one to ask a question in a class. The psychology is strong, but once the ice is broken, the first is seldom the last.

The community owes the Ross family a debt of gratitude for their donation and for what it may ultimately mean for the community campus.

— Jeff

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I’m not sure this will have much impact, but I see some good news in the announcement that the county commissioners have approved a project to set the left turn arrows at several Silverdale intersections to blink yellow rather than to be solid red at all times when the green arrow is not in force.

At times when traffic is light, the blinking yellow arrows will allow people in left turn lanes at 10 intersections to make their turns when there is no oncoming traffic. With the lights as they are now, drivers must wait for a green arrow even when there are no other cars on the road. It’s similar to the decision made by the city of Bremerton several years ago to convert many of its traffic signals to flashing red after 6 p.m. on weekdays. That recognized that there was no justification to having people wait at red lights when there was no other traffic around.

Silverdale is different. There is more traffic, more hours of the day, than in downtown Bremerton. But, still, there are times when being required to wait for a green arrow justs wastes time and gas.

It’s interesting. Some people, I’m sure, will objet to this change because they think there will be more accidents. That’s certainly possible, and the county certainly should monitor the results after this change to make sure that the result isn’t carnage on Silverdale streets.

But I remember moving to Washington 20 years ago and being surprised that every controlled intersection had green-arrow lights. In Illinois, where I grew up and lived for 35 years, most traffic signals were simply red, yellow or green. Most did not have green arrows for left turns, and drivers in a left lane preparing to turn left simply had to wait for oncoming traffic to clear to make their turn. In some busy intersections, green arrows gave left turners opportunities to turn that they would never otherwise have. But the majority of intersections simply allowed left turns on green, yielding to oncoming traffic. So I don’t think there’s anything inherently dangerous about allowing left turners to turn after yielding.

We’ll see.

— Jeff

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As the seven loyal readers of this blog know, my real job is to be the strategic planning manager of Kitsap Regional Library. After spending 34 years as a journalist, it’s been an interesting change to be in the library environment. But I do find the two institutions — libraries and newspapers — share many of the same values when it comes to access to information.

Last week, I participated in the KRL Board of Trustees annual retreat. The board, five volunteer members who represent the five geographic areas of Kitsap County, spent last Friday together talking about the status of the library and the future of KRL.

I’m in a somewhat awkward situation in that I can’t report on this meeting as a journalist would. KRL pays my salary, not the Sun, so I am first and foremost obligated to serve the interests of KRL. I can tell you that had a journalist attended that retreat (as an event attended by at least a quorum of the board, it was a public meeting and public notice of it was given as required by the Open Meetings Act), she would have had some interesting story fodder. The board talked openly about the future and what KRL must do to serve the community as Kitsap continues to develop and change over the next several years.

A significant amount of time was spent talking about the strategic planning process and the development of the strategic plan for 2010-2015. The main part of my half-time job is to gather information and write that plan. We will have a number of opportunities for the public to participate in the process through the summer and into fall, and then I plan to have a draft of the document for initial board consideration by mid-December.

Another block of time was devoted to reviewing the library’s financial status and its financial future.

As you may know, the library proposed a levy lid lift in May 2007, asking voters to approve an 18-cent property tax rate increase for the library. That levy was defeated, 45.5 percent voting yes, 54.5 voting no. Rather than going back to voters again, as many agencies do when they lose a levy, the library listened to the message being sent by the voters and looked inward.

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