Unmet needs find a champion

Published 12:00 pm Saturday, July 17, 2004

A blue-ribbon report that’s getting blue-ribbon results? It’s true.

“It’s so exciting,” as one of our reporters beamed, “to see a report that actually goes somewhere.”

Her enthusiasm – and ours – sprang from news, detailed Wednesday in this paper, that Peninsula Community Health Services will open a “pay as you can” clinic in the Bainbridge Commons every Monday beginning Aug. 2. Peninsula’s full range of primary care services will complement immunization and family planning long offered by the Kitsap County Health District clinic in the same building every Tuesday.

Our unusually affluent community nonetheless has offered paltry options for the uninsured; the island’s woes were detailed on the medical chart of the “Community Needs Assessment” – prepared in 2003 under the auspices of the city’s Health, Housing and Human Services Council – which identified low-cost health care as a priority. As Peninsula CEO Barbara Malich drily recalls, “PCHS was ‘heavily requested’ to come and provide some services.”

Score one for HHHS, for getting tangible results out of the Needs Assessment. Too often with similar documents, problems are identified, hands are wrung, then the report goes onto the shelf to collect dust. Sometimes, that’s for want of advocates or funding, other times because a problem (affordable housing comes to mind) is just too big to tackle in any immediate or tangible way. This time, our community saw a need – affordable, primary health care for the island’s most vulnerable residents – and quickly found a way to meet it.

Exciting. And if they can point folks in the direction of low-cost Canadian pharmaceuticals, they’ll really have something.

Magic bullet

At first glance, there was nothing magic about this bullet.

It performed exactly as both manufacturer and physics would intend: it left the barrel of a gun at high velocity, described a parabolic arc in flight, then damaged whatever was at the end of its trajectory. That turned out to be the garage of the Robert King residence about 700 yards to the north, an incident on which we reported last August.

Readers will recall that the stray round’s introduction to a residential neighborhood prompted an immediate, voluntary shutdown of the Bainbridge Island Sportsmen’s Club rifle and pistol ranges off Sportsman Club Road. We suggested that without significant upgrades there, the club’s 70-year history in our community might be at an end.

We’re pleased to say that the club and its leadership were up to the challenge; financial commitments from the city and the National Rifle Association, along with donations of materials, equipment and labor by area businesses, resulted in outstanding improvements that meet club needs and neighborhood expectations. Fencing, concrete blocks and other enclosures (some actually designed by King, an engineer), and a new emphasis on firearms training promise a safe future. We had the privilege of touring the revamped ranges last Saturday,

and the project was rightfully hailed as a model of dispute resolution for this community.

Beyond its usual array of activities, the club has a new series of public gun safety classes to be announced shortly. Even the mayor was overheard expressing interest in a “ladies only” handgun class.

In the end, an incident that could easily have sparked lawsuits, and the probable dismantling of a venerable sportsmen’s organization, worked out pretty good. Maybe it was a magic bullet after all.