North Kitsap Beat

Here’s a quick video I produced on International Championship Wrestling, which has matches at the former Suquamish tribal center on Sandy Hook. The next match is 7 p.m. Saturday. $10.

I just got word that Hood Canal Drive in Hansville could close for five weeks this summer.

There’s a public hearing at tonight’s County Commissioners meeting.

According to the agenda, the hearing is to consider closing the road between NE Ponderosa Blvd and NE Hood Canal Place between July 7 and August 15. Public Works plans to replace a culvert. (The area’s near the Shorewood Clubhouse)

I’ll call tomorrow for more details, but I’m guessing the culvert work is salmon related. There’s a statewide effort to replace small culverts that prevent salmon of swimming upstream to spawn.

“Oh, can you say we’re thankful for _____ support?”

Some variation of that question is pretty common when we write stories where people have sponsored or donated to an event or cause. Sometimes it’s not really news, and doesn’t ever make it into the paper. Other times it does. Most of the time, even if we wanted to, there’s no space in the paper for it. There’s no hard and fast rule about it.

On Friday at the groundbreaking for new community fields at Vinland Elementary, there were a LOT of people/companies/governments the organizers thanked.

I have a list of the people who helped the project, and agreed to share it here:

Contractors/Financial Contributors/Volunteers:
Mark Eisses, Map Limited
Rick Cadwell, Drury Construction
Chuck & Jen Silvernale – Vinland Parents
Mary McCluskey, Poulsbo Parks & Rec
Glenn Gracey, Gracey Nursery
Gary Chapman, AIS Engineering
Brad Casteel Pugh, Larson Casteel Landscape Architecture
Jenny Morgan, Larson Casteel Landscape Architecture
Ken Kline, Toro International
Bill, Viking Fence
Conner Warren, Troop 1571 – low ropes course
North Kitsap Soccer Club – Soccer Goals
Seabee’s
Suquamish Tribe
Parks Commission – City of Poulsbo
NKSD
Charlie McCabe
Dave Dumpert
Julie Marfut
Nancy Moffat
Vinland Staff*
La Rae Denney – Help with Ground Breaking Ceremony & Visuals
Terri Gleich & Cole & Kendall Miller – Cutting Cake
Caroline Butler, Stephanie Skansi, Kathy Loveless & Renee Hald – feeding Seabees
Cub Scout Pack 4556 – Flag Ceremony
PTSA Board for continued support of the field

Local Partners involved with Community Field Day last summer to announce the project to the NK Area
Armstrong Fitness
Bailey’s Traditional Tae Kwon Do
Central Market
Cub Scout Pack 4556
Liberty Bay Books
Lil’ Kickers
Maxx Nutrition
Mrs. Mann
My Gym
NK Fire & Rescue
Poulsbo Athletic Club
Poulsbo Cooperative Preschool
Poulsbo Running
Soroptimist
Sport Haus
Sportsmans Warehouse
Starbucks
Subway
The Zone
Wok Teriyaki

The Hood Canal bridge closure ferry survey results are in, and it’s South Point to Lofall that wins out.

It had been that route versus a Port Ludlow to Kingston route advocated by Kitsap, Jefferson and Clallam business and government leaders.

The results themselves (click the link above to see them.) provide some interesting perspective on bridge users. One no-brainer is that 70 percent of respondents are in Jefferson County, meaning most of the traffic is coming this-a-way.

But, while 39 percent is headed here to Kitsap, a large percentage – 30 – is headed to King and Snohomish Counties. My guess is retirees for medical appointments and commuters to Boeing and Seattle jobs.

I’m curious whether the appeal of the Ludlow/Kingston route wore off for some because there isn’t a foot ferry to Seattle from Kingston, as some out there have hoped for so long (and had for a short time.)

The cost of the shuttle and bus transportation to the temporary terminals will be free to riders, though the cost has been absorbed into the overall project budget.

If you’ve just moved to the area, or have been under a rock, the Hood Canal bridge will close for six weeks in May-June next year when DOT will replace the east half.

Click here for the KYW1060 story.

With all the hullabaloo over speed bumps (tables, pillows, whatever) in Hansville, and Poulsbo talking about its downtown traffic study, I tend to notice speed bumps in the news more often than I did.

Now, I’ve noticed speed bumps that aren’t. Above is a photo from Philadelphia’s KWY 1060, and a story they did on a multifaceted effort to do something that isn’t easy. Getting drivers to slow down.

These fake speed bumps are just three-dimensional-looking paintings on the roads. The driver’s obvious response: “Uh oh, something in the road, better slow down.”

The obvious snag? The second time through, I’m guessing they’ll be a little less effective.

In Hansville, the debates been largely over whether there was really a speeding problem in the first place, and the process that allowed the bumps to be installed. But when speed studies there were conducted, it appeared that the speeders were largely people who lived there.

I’d guess a novel approach like Philly’s wouldn’t work in a place like Hansville because people would catch on real quick.

In a place like downtown Poulsbo where there are more tourists? That might be a different story. (Except for locals and commuters who cut through every day.)

It’s clear from reading the story that Philadelphia didn’t just put down some fake speed bumps and declare victory over speeding. There are more signs, real speed bumps, and police enforcement. The best part? The whole program is called “Drive CarePhilly”.

Fake speed bumps are definitely an approach I’ve never seen before. Have you ever seen anything like this?

A while ago I wrote a blog entry about timing traffic lives.

A blog entry on Wired.com spurred the entry, and the fact that Poulsbo Councilwoman Becky Erickson and I had informally discussed the issue previously.

To save gas and time, the theory goes, you time traffic signals to keep traffic flowing, instead of the lurching stop-and-go dance that you’ll sometimes run into between signals.

Now, Erickson is proposing a joint resolution between Poulsbo, Bainbridge Island and the Suquamish Tribe to encourage WSDOT to look into sequencing lights between Poulsbo and the ferry terminal.

“It has been suggested that this sequencing could cost a substantial amount of money. From the eye of a novice, light sequencing would appear to be low hanging fruit relative to major highway construction to relieve congestion. The purpose of this joint resolution is to encourage WSDOT to begin this process,” she wrote in an e-mail to other government officials.

The sample resolution cites increased traffic on neighborhood collectors, aggressive driving and more fuel consumption and carbon emissions related to traffic congestion.

During Poulsbo’s Highway 305 construction, there’ve been plenty of drivers peeved when it takes forever to make a protected left, or to cross the highway. It’s because the sequencing devices had to wait until final paving. (Which is supposed to finish soon.)

When the construction is (finally) over, the lights in Poulsbo will be sequenced. But this plan takes it all the way through Suquamish and BI. It could be before committees on BI and Poulsbo by mid-to-late month.

From what I’ve heard, the major hurdles are coordinating cross-freeway traffic, and the ever shifting nature of traffic patterns. My uneducated, non-traffic-engineer hypothesis would be that timing the lights in some way Monday-Friday with the commute-hour ferry schedule would be a logical tactic, since that’s when you’re getting all the traffic rushes.

I’m sure it’s much, much more complicated than that. But this is an idea being thrown out in lieu of adding lanes (which obviously presents a problem at the Agate Pass Bridge.)

So, do you think it’s part of the solution, and worth doing?

The Seattle Times ranked the Northwest’s 100 best publicly traded companies, and Poulsbo’s Pope Resources was 10th.

Impressive, indeed, but a drop five rungs down the ladder from last year. It’s the fourth-ranked company in Washington.

Pope is the parent company of Olympic Property Group, which is the real estate division of the organization. There’s an awful lot of timber land in the company’s pockets, too, which is easy to see from the map on their home page.

For the company rankings, the Times measures success by focusing on “four separate performance measures: sales per employee, operating income, return on equity and stock price.” (Read the numbers on Pope HERE. As I read it, the shorthand is “Does the company make money for its shareholders?”

That’s why a relatively small company (in number of employees, anyway) like Pope can rank much higher than Microsoft (32), or Starbucks (54).

One of the figures in the Time’s calculations really stands out.

According to the paper’s number crunching (based on SEC filings and Bloomberg News), Pope’s 55 employees generate a “sales per employee” figure of $996,236.

I hope the janitor gets a raise.

I’m back from a nice (hot) vacation visiting family in Texas. If I’ve missed any interesting stories over the last week, feel free to let me know here, or e-mail me at dsheppard@Kitsapsun.com.

Now I just need to get through my 84-bajillion e-mails.

As a reminder, again, I’m now in our Bremerton office, and my new phone number is (360) 792-9212.