Beware of city’s faulty Prop. 1 info | LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Published 11:42 am Saturday, October 17, 2015

To the editor:

Incorrect data on the city of Bainbridge Island police station web pages has convinced me to vote no on Proposition 1.

• Sept. 25 Manager’s Report map representing “Analysis of emergency calls involving light and sirens in the Winslow area.” No field in CENCOM file to identifying light and sirens calls. Map reflects 24,300 island-wide calls for police services from July 1, 2012 to July 1, 2014. About 50 percent of those calls consisted of traffic stops, patrol checks, wireless 911 hang-ups, follow-up calls and field interviews. Less frequent are animal calls, warrants, accidents, assaults, DUIs, domestic violence, and many others. This map represents all calls for police service from 911, not light and siren calls.

• Oct. 2 Manager’s Report lists 28 cities purported to use combined city hall/police/court facilities. Only four of the 28 have populations between 20,000 and 50,000. Bainbridge has about 23,000. Of those four, only Mercer Island and SeaTac have a combined city hall/police/court facility.

• “Majority of Bainbridge population is located in Winslow.” Census Tract 909 runs from Eagle Harbor to Murden Cove down Sportsman Club Road to Eagle Harbor, it contains 7,032 citizens. The other census tracts equal 15,993.

The current highly visible police site sits next to the second busiest Kitsap Transit hub, ferry terminal with 3,087,786 foot passengers in 2014, five parking lots, and is larger in size than the proposed site.

Three Madison properties would pay $318,700 in property tax to schools, fire, parks and library as commercial property.

DOUG RAUH

Bainbridge Island