This from Sally Santana, who advocates for the homeless in
Kitsap County. Same disclaimer as always: Neither I nor the Kitsap
Sun can vouch for the credibility of this request nor the
trustworthiness of the person here mentioned. Sounds like the
family could use a hand, however.
Sally says:
We have a SK woman with three kids, ages (approx.) 3, 8, and 13.
Two will be in SK schools next month, hopefully. Life changed for
them when husband went to jail for an extended stay. They’re behind
rent 2 mo, which is $1300 per. Electric/water have been shut off;
neighbor is running an extention cord and letting them get water
from their house.
She’s been to KCR, The Salvation Army, One Church One Family,
called 2-1-1 and Crisis Clinic, and is basically in the middle of
their lists, i.e. no help in sight. Mother reports the landlord has
been nice but is reaching the end of what they can handle, they
need rent. She understands they can’t stay there, will have to
move.
If they begin to live in their vehicle, tires not so good. If they
are pulled over and ticketed, she will just begin to collect
tickets – no money for new ones or retreads. Is fearful for their
safety.
Person presenting info is Claudia Grimes, 253-225-2397, email
rcgrimes3@gmail.com. If you can help in any way please contact
her.
Skateboard Group Holds Ramp Jam Fundraiser Saturday
By Chris Henry
chenry@kitsapsun.com
SOUTH KITSAP
The
South Kitsap Skatepark Association will hold a Ramp Jam
fundraiser from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday at South Kitsap Regional
Park at the corner of Jackson and Lund avenues in South Kitsap.
The event is aimed at raising money for a world class skateboard
facility at the 200-acre park, which is owned by Kitsap County.
There will be skateboard contests, prizes, music and food for
sale.
Contests are open in beginner, intermediate and advanced
categories. The entry fee is $10 per person. Admission to the ramp
jam is free.
Kitsap County has committed $300,000 toward the first phase of the
one-acre facility, to be designed by Newline Skateparks of British
Columbia, as part of its plan for the park. The county last year
developed a master plan for the park that will address a range of
recreational pursuits.
The all-volunteer skatepark group, formed in 2008, has been working
to bring a top notch facility to South Kitsap since the county
obtained the park in 2007.
The group has committed to raise $100,000 in cash and in-kind
donations toward the $400,000 it will take to build the first phase
of the skatepark.
On Tuesday,
Claudia Barber-Martin of Detroit was having a treatment to
battle the breast cancer with which she was diagnosed last October.
By 3 a.m. Wednesday, she was boarding a plane to Seattle. Her visit
to Port Orchard for
Cedar Cove Days, a celebration of South Kitsap author Debbie Macomber, had been
arranged in secret by her 22-year-old son, Adam Martin of
Chicago.
Martin had scrimped and saved from his job at Hot Topic to buy
the discount plane ticket and sign his mother up for a couple of
reserved Cedar Cove events, including a cruise with Macomber. There
was only one thing he was unable to secure, lodging.
He tried, even contacting the Cedar Cove Association for help,
but nothing firm surfaced.
“I wanted everything to be very special for her, because she is
very special to me,” Martin wrote in an e-mail to the
association.
If anyone deserved this trip, it was his Mom, Martin said.
Barber-Martin, who works as a hockey scorekeeper, is also an avid
volunteer with scouting groups and at a Detroit Veteran’s hospital.
She has been honored for her work by the City of Detroit. She
raised Martin and his sister as a single mother and even put them
through private Catholic school.
Claudia
Barber-Martin
Martin – whom his mother describes as “a sweetheart,”
6-foot-four, with strawberry blond hair to his waist – sprung the
surprise on her while the two of them were celebrating her 51st
birthday at a restaurant in Chicago Tuesday night. Barber Martin
was undeterred by the lack of a roof over her head.
“I said, OK. I’ll figure something out,” she said.
I ran into Barber-Martin in Port Orchard on the first day of the
Cedar Cove Days festival. She had the name of a possible lead on a
room, but was having too much fun in Macomber’s yarn shop to call
just then.
That evening, I threw a post up on the blog, saying she needed a
place to stay. I had given her my cell number and invited her to
call if she got in a pinch. When I didn’t hear from her, I figured
she was OK, but still, I wondered. So did many other people. On the
blog and by e-mail, I heard from nearly a dozen folks either
inquiring after Barber-Martin’s welfare or offering a room in their
homes. One woman offered a fully furnished travel trailer.
But by 9 p.m. Wednesday, Barber-Martin had indeed found a place
to lay her (by then) weary (and jet-lagged) head. A family with an
upstairs apartment had offered it to her for a fee Barber-Martin
described as “very reasonable.”
And she is happy to pay it. You see the husband of the family –
who picked Barber-Martin up in their van after the children’s
soccer practice – is a contractor. Things have been tough with the
recession and all, and they are behind on payments and in danger of
losing their home.
“I was very pleased,” said Barber-Martin. “You have to give
back. Someone gave to me, and so now, I’m giving back.”
The apartment is lovely, she said, and she awoke refreshed and
ready to take in more of Cedar Cove. At the opening ceremony today,
Jerry Childs of the Cedar Cove Association, inquired after her from
the stage to see if she’d been taken care of.
“I’ve become a little kind of celebrity,” she said.
Barber-Martin has become fast friends with other Cedar Cove
visitors.
“It’s been so much fun. Everyone is like one big family,” she
said.
Oh, yes, and then, as if things couldn’t have gotten better, she
and her buddies ran into Debbie Macomber herself at Port Orchard’s
waterfront park, and Debbie shared her lunch with them.
“It’s been a great time,” she said. “It’s amazing. Everyone has
their own story.”
According to Cedar Cove Welcome Center staff, Barber-Martin did
find a place to stay last night and presumably for the
duration.
Claudia
Barber-Martin
Doris Babcock, co-chair of the welcome center, said a family came
to pick her up at the center last night. Babcock’s understanding
was that Barber-Martin would be paying for the room. She said she
did not know the family’s name, but that the man who came in to get
Barber-Martin appeared to be known to some of the volunteers.
Babcock said Cedar Cove visitors continued to arrive “from all
over the country” well into the evening. There’s was great
excitement over “Debbie sightings and sightings of the different
characters.”
Claudia Barber-Martin of Detroit found out late Tuesday, while
celebrating her 51st birthday in Chicago with her son, Adam Martin,
22, of Chicago, that he had scrimped and saved from his job at Hot
Topic to buy her a discount plane ticket, as well as tickets to a
couple Cedar Cove events (including the cruise with Debbie Macomber
to Kiana Lodge). The envelope he gave her (she thought it was a
birthday card) even had some spending cash.
Martin had earlier contacted the Cedar Cove
Association about the lodging dilemma, but nothing firm
surfaced.
Barber-Martin, whom I met today at Macomber’s yarn shop, took it
in stride, ready for an adventure.
“I said, OK. I’ll figure something out,” she said.
Oh, just one other hitch. They had to be at the airport by 3
a.m. Wednesday (as in today) Chicago time.
“I was just very impressed with him, because he’s always going
out of his way to do things. He’s just a real sweetheart,” said
Barber-Martin, who, as of Wednesday afternoon, was still homeless
in Cedar Cove but enjoying herself immensely.
This year hasn’t been easy for her. Last October, she was
diagnosed with breast cancer, for which she currently receives
twice weekly treatments. Reading has been her salvation during long
hours in hospital waiting rooms she said.
Barber-Martin also does crochet and was excited to see Macomber
at her fabric goods shop across from the Victorian Rose
Tearoom.
In his e-mail to the association, Martin said it would be hard
to find a woman more deserving of a trip to Cedar Cove than his
mother. Barber-Martin, who raised him as a single mom, volunteers
with scouting groups and a hospital in Detroit. She recently was
honored as a volunteer of the year by the City of Detroit.
“I wanted everything to be very special for her, because she is
very special to me,” Martin wrote.
If you can help offer this woman lodging, contact the Cedar Cove
Association, (360) 801-4311, or me at (360) 792-9219, or
chenry@kitsapsun.com. (Same disclaimer as on previous post, but in
my opinion, she seems like a nice woman. Cedar Cove organizers
Googled her and only found reference to her volunteerism. )
Cedar Cove Days continues with bus tours and other paid and free
events daily, a character parade at 6 p.m. Saturday, followed by a
sock-hop, both free to the public. On Sunday, there is a
non-denominational worship service at 9:30 a.m. on the waterfront,
followed by a pancake breakfast.
On Wednesday, throngs of Macomber’s fans will arrive — a good
percentage from outside the region — eager to see the real life
places and people behind the fictional town of Cedar Cove. Here’s
what Debbie had to say about the event.
Macomber, 60, sold her first book in 1982. Since then she’s hit
The New York Times best-seller list multiple times, and more than
100 million copies of her women’s fiction books, also in other
languages, have sold worldwide.
It’s safe to say this is a really big deal for little old
PO.
Macomber once said she wants fans to see Port Orchard/Cedar Cove
“warts and all.” She may get her wish. Word is, her sons, who will
be bus tour guides, will tell stories on “mom.”
And as visitors roam the town, chances are they’ll encounter the
dumpsters on the back side of Bay Street and
bail bond businesses aplenty — serving Kitsap County’s
courthouse up the hill.
Macomber, born with a “happy gene,” is not the least bit
worried.
“If you come to my house, there’s a tricky little toilet. You have
to jiggle the handle. … Whenever anyone comes to my house, I bet
they don’t remember my toilet,” Macomber said. “Everyone wishes
they were perfect. It’s a real town with real people. When company
comes, they look for the real people, not the flaws.”
So Port Orchard, during this, your big chance to make a good
impression on the millions of Macomber fans worldwide who, though
they can’t all be here, will surely be watching us with avid
interest, my advice to you is, “Be real, be yourself … just be
subtle about it.”
While most of the by-reservation events have sold out (check the
Cedar Cove Web site for availability), there are a number of
freebies (see schedule below).
cedarcove
As noted in
today’s Kitsap Sun editorial, voter turnout throughout Kitsap
County in Tuesday’s primary was a “deplorable” 22 percent. Kitsap
County elections manager Dolores Gilmore said the turnout was
comparable to off-year elections in the early 1990s, before
all-mail balloting.
Voter turnout in South Kitsap was even lower, but was it apathy
or something else? With 39,199 registered voters eligible to vote
in the South Kitsap School District race for the district 3
position, only 5,385 ballots were counted as of the close of
business at the auditor’s office on election day. That’s up to
6,023 today, still a scanty 15 percent.
Is it possible South Kitsap voters were boycotting what amounted
to a
straw poll? Current unofficial results show incumbent Naomi
Polen, with 31.73 percent of the vote, trailing challenger Chris
Lemke, a former board member, with 45.03 percent. A second
challenger,
Gail F. Porter, is ineligible to serve because she moved out of
the director district after filing. According to the Kitsap County
auditor’s office, the deadline to withdraw had passed by the time
Porter made the move known. Porter’s name, therefore, appeared on
the ballot, and she received 19.06 percent of the vote. Now,
there’s nearly 20 percent of the 39,199 who are either in denial or
not in tune with local media. As the editorial notes, we ran a
story on the issue.
The hey of it is, the primary, results of which carry no weight,
will cost South Kitsap School District an estimated $70,000. Before
the election, I checked with Dolores Gilmore to see if the district
would save any money if people did in fact boycott the primary.
Dolores said no; most of the cost associated with the primary is
incurred in preparation and distribution of ballots.
Based on turnout numbers in the South Kitsap race, however, one
might guess some people made that assumption and shredded their
ballots. Either that or SKSD voters are in a complacent slump.
There’s been considerable discussion on the
blog entry post posted the day of the primary about Porter’s
ineligibility and its implications for South Kitsap School
District. I’ll respond to a few points made.
Bob Meadows pointed out that there are essentially two deadlines
for withdrawal from a race. The candidate can withdraw up to the
Thursday following filing week without having to give any reason.
Secondly, the candidate can withdraw beyond that date at the
election official’s (auditor’s office) discretion up to the day the
ballots are ordered. I checked with Dolores Gilmore. The ballots
were ordered June 15. According to Gilmore, she did not learn of
Porter’s ineligibility to serve until Aug.June 18, when
Porter came in to change her voter registration address.
School Board member Kathryn Simpson (in comments on the previous
blog post and elsewhere) has given a different accounting of who
knew what, when. I invited Dolores to respond to Kathryn’s
statements, and Dolores declined, saying it was the formal position
of the auditor’s office not to engage in discussion on the blog
regarding this issue. In short, she had no comment. South Kitsap
School District is pursuing legal advice on whether there is any
way to mitigate the amount is has to pay for the primary. Stay
tuned.
Finally, Bob Meadows notes that Porter would be eligible to
serve if, hypothetically, she were to move back into district 3.
Bob suggested that the nearly 20 percent of voters who favored
Porter may have been encouraging her to do so. Porter would be
eligible to serve under those hypothetical circumstances if she
were still in the race. But that’s a moot point now, because she
still got the fewest votes in the primary.
South Kitsap’s situation is a cautionary tale for both school
districts – who are liable to incur the cost of elections even in
the rare instances like this when they turn into straw polls – and
candidates – who set in motion the wheels of elections law when
they file for office.
Let it be said here that school board candidates probably aren’t
in it for the money. SKSD board policy based on state law allows
board members a stipend of $50 per meeting, but, according to
district spokeswoman Aimee Warthen, not all claim compensation.
They are paid for travel expenses to conferences (not in glamorous
locales – unless you consider Spokane glamorous). The position
requires hours of reading dry materials laden with edu-speak and
sitting through meetings that are typically well attended (or
attended at all) only when constituents are angry about
something.
Given the above, the district ostensibly should be grateful for
anyone willing to run. Regardless, potential candidates should be
fully informed of the responsibility of the position and the
financial implications to the district.
For the record, I became aware on July 1 that Porter had moved
out of district 3 and did not act on it until late in July (my
story ran July 28). Technically, acting on the information sooner
would not have made any difference because the deadline had already
passed. But it’s been a cautionary tale for me. And believe me, if
a similar situation arises in the future, I won’t put it on the
back burner.
Disclaimer: I absolutely cannot vouch for the authenticity of
the request below or the character of those who made it. Anyone
jumping forward to play Good Samaritan does so at his or her own
risk. CTH
I spoke with Cindy Lucarelli, executive director of the Cedar
Cove Association, about how things are shaping up for Cedar Cove
Days, a celebration of the work of local author Debbie
Macomber, who based her Cedar Cove series on Port Orchard. The
four-day event, starting Aug. 26, will feature bus tours of the
real-life locations mentioned in the books, teas with and without
Debbie, a gala cruise to Kiana Lodge and more. I’ll be writing
about what it took for Port Orchard to “become” Cedar Cove for a
story to run Sunday in the Kitsap Sun. I also had a nice chat with
Debbie Macomber herself today.
Cindy tells me there will be visitors from 37 states and a
couple of foreign countries (if you count Canada as foreign), as
well as an expected 9,000 or so regional visitors over the four
days. Many of the notes accompanying requests for tickets to
reserved events are touching tributes to the loyalty of Debbie
Macombers fans, which brings me to the topic of this blog post.
Cindy & Co. on Aug. 18 received an e-mail from one Adam B.
Martin, who says he’s a 22-year-old Chicago resident whose mother
is an avid fan. The family wasn’t well off when he was growing up,
and Mom is now living on disability due to having been diagnosed
with cancer. Her birthday is Aug. 25, and so young Adam had
reserved and paid for (Cindy verified this) his mother to attend
several reserved events during Cedar Cove Days. He also bought her
an airline ticket. Alas, he said, he has not been able to find any
place for her to stay.
“Everywhere that I have tried is booked up solid,” Adam wrote.
“And since my mom is having a great deal of trouble walking these
days, I really wanted her to be close to the event. Is there
anything you can suggest to help me with this surprise for her? … I
haven’t told my Mom about this trip yet. I wanted everything to be
very special for her, because she is very special to me.”
Disclaimer Part II: You know, folks, we could be totally getting
played here.
Anyway, I have the guy’s e-mail. If you want to look into his
request, e-mail me at chenry@kitsapsun.com.
Here’s another Cedar Cove request, this one from Debbie herself.
Seems there are a few more characters needed to fill out the cast
of Cedar Cove folks who will be appearing at events throughout the
festival. Debbie was off to scope our South Kitsap Fire & Rescue
for a firefighter to play the part of Mack. I suspect she’ll have
no trouble there. But she’s having trouble finding a couple of
20-somethings to portray Ian and Cecelia, the Navy couple who lost
a baby. And the are a few other parts to be filled, mostly by
people in their 20s or 30s. There is a considerable time commitment
Aug. 20 through 30. If you think you can help, sing out, and I’ll
forward your contact information to Debbie. She’d need to hear from
you no later that tomorrow afternoon.
E-mail me at chenry@kitsapsun.com. And remember, “Wherever you
are, Debbie takes you home.”
BTW, a number of activities during Cedar Cove Days are free — a
character parade, a sock hop, waterfront church service, to name a
few — but if you haven’t yet signed up for the bus tours, teas or
the cruise, know that most everything is already sold out.
The city inherited responsibility for the systems under a
development agreement.
By Chris Henry
chenry@kitsapsun.com
PORT ORCHARD
The Port Orchard City Council is contemplating what to do about 605
homes in McCormick Woods whose septic systems the city
services.
The cost of the the service, formerly covered by a 50 percent
surcharge on McCormick residents’ sewer bills, fell onto the city’s
plate when McCormick Woods was annexed in July and the surcharge
went away.
McCormick Woods was not alone in paying the sewer surcharge, and
the extra 50 percent was not directly tied to the septic servicing.
All South Kitsap residents who live outside Port Orchard but
receive sewer and water service from the city pay a 50 percent
surcharge on those utilities.
The city council in 2010 will likely add a new surcharge applying
only to those 605 homes to cover the cost of inspecting and pumping
the septic systems.
The homes in question have a type of sewer system — called STEP for
“septic tank effluent pumping system”— that includes an onsite
septic with a connection to the city’s sewer line. Solids are
processed in the septic tank; liquid waste is pumped to the sewer
line and delivered to the treatment plant operated jointly by Port
Orchard and Westsound Utility District.
Before the sewer, effluent from the STEP systems was pumped to a
community drain field.
An additional 30 homes yet to be built are also vested to have STEP
systems.
The remainder of homes in the McCormick Woods annexation area have
grinder pumps that deliver liquid and solid waste to the sewer
line.
Like any septic system, the STEP systems need periodic maintenance
and repair. The city inspects each system every three years. While
most people with septics are responsible for servicing their own
systems, the city inherited responsibility for the McCormick
systems under a development agreement that existed when the sewer
line went in.
Before the annexation, revenue from the sewer surcharge paid by all
McCormick residents more than covered the cost of servicing the
STEP systems. The current annual cost is about $72,000 per
year.
Public works director Mark Dorsey gave a summary of the STEP system
and its financial implications for the city at a work study meeting
Tuesday. According to John Clauson of the city’s public utilities
committee, the council plans to address the STEP service cost in
its 2010 budget.
Before the end of the year, city utility customers — including
those in McCormick Woods —will see an increase in their bimonthly
water and sewer rates to make up for the loss of McCormick Woods’
utility surcharge revenue. The increase — $3.50 for water and $7.50
for sewer — will replace an estimated $280,000 to $300,000 per year
in revenue lost through the annexation.
While the McCormick Woods surcharge was in effect, the revenue
generated more than made up for the septic service cost, in effect
subsidizing service for other city sewer customers to the tune of
about $128,000 per year, Dorsey said. That helped keep rates down.
Now everyone, including those in McCormick Woods, have to share in
making up that lost revenue, but only those who have the STEP
systems will pay the additional charge for that service beginning
in 2010.
Also in 2010, the city must address revenue needed for improvements
to the sewer system. Considering the poor economy, the council
deferred a rate increase in 2009 that would have funded those
capital improvements.
