To the editor:
It may be time for another clear demonstration to awaken, or reawaken, the city council.
A few years ago, when the council was hell bent on imposing totally unreasonable regulations on beachfront property owners, it was finally necessary to respond with a demonstration up Madison Avenue and to city hall.
I had the honor of leading that parade, and the foolhardy idea of spending $100,000 to find out whether we should or could create an Island-based electrical utility all our own — or even considering something most do not want — tells me it is time for an other demonstration beyond just letter writing and futile appearances at city hall.
Creating a whole new utility, complete with top to bottom professional, technical, administrative, security and other personnel is hardly within the talents and funding currently available. The implications go far beyond just the mountainous fiscal realities. It would mean retention of more consulting firms to figure out the complexities of executive and other recruitment, salaries to obtain topnotch talent, planning for pension, health and other normal programs currently in the PSE operations, just to mention a few realities. Once that was done, are we to believe that such a public corporation would also have the city council as its board of directors?
Already your shoulders should be drooping from the sheer weight of realities already presented but hardly all of the demands of running such a corporation efficiently.
It was Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” who would constantly be having problems reaching inclusions and would speak “On the one hand” and “On the other hand” to keep from being decisive. That is, until the final act, with all sorts of pressures so clear, he could only say “There is no other hand!” And so it is with the utility idea.
It’s a lovely Island. Worry about schools and streets and how to use our taxes effectively, how to properly take care of our police and firefighters and simply maintaining the community level that is Bainbridge.
There is no other reality.
JOSEPH J. HONICK
Bainbridge Island
