When I wrote my recent progress report on the Puget Sound Partnership, my story included little more than brief quotes and snippits of information from a variety of informed people. It is somewhat rewarding to have a blog where I can bring you more complete impressions of the people I interviewed. Here is the fifth in a series of expanded reports from those interviews.
Puget Sound may be suffering ecologically at this point in history, but the Puget Sound Partnership would do best by explaining in a positive way how things can be improved, said state Rep. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island.
“Don’t spend your time trying to bum people out,” she told me when I asked her to offer some advice to the partnership. “Focus on bringing people together to make it better. We all want more fish, more birds, more parks. How do we engage people to make it happen? I would say to them, ‘stay creative, stay positive and think local.’”