OMG (valid word added to the Oxford English Dictionary) this year, there are only 18 inches of soil over the asphalt at the Strawberry Plant Park meadow. Apparently, the asphalt covered tainted soil that would have cost a bundle to remove and replace.

It is my opinion that Mr. Wierzbicki made a correct decision that, apparently, some of the City Council found troublesome. Kim Brackett is quoted: “We don’t allow people to have impervious surfaces on our shoreline, so here we have left acres of asphalt near Eagle Harbor and just covered it up with dirt.” Acres? Not really.

I don’t know if she has ever done any gardening on Bainbridge, but after over 40 years of attempting to prepare the soil for my wife’s rose gardens, I’d love to have had 18 inches of “dirt” on top of the impervious clay I tried to dig through.

There is another large part of this state that lives on top of a vast lava flow that would be happy with six inches of “dirt” on top of a truly impervious layer. Eighteen inches of “dirt” is not a trivial layer of soil.

Whether or not the work done by Mr. Wierzbicki was in compliance with the original thoughts of the council, he was at least using common sense and paying attention to bottom-line costs while providing an appropriate solution to the problem. For that, I applaud him.

Dick Culp

Bainbridge Island