As Sherman Severin often says, if you want to be a futurist, look at the present.
Judging by who’s present, the future of the Bainbridge Island Graduate Institute’s “ethical MBA” looks promising indeed.
In the nine months since formally launching the program, Severin and BGI co-founders Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot have attracted a host of top talent to the institute’s five research centers and its flagship degree program, which was accredited by the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board last month.
A proposal to jack up Winslow water rates by 54 percent over the next five years drew only mild reaction at a Monday public hearing, with the only questions being whether better conservation could blunt the increase.
But a plan to hike rates for Rockaway Beach customers by up to 150 percent of the Winslow rates drew heated opposition from residents there.
An early front-runner for this season’s Grinch Award paid an unwelcome visit to the Bargain Boutique over the weekend.
Persons unknown dumped a truckload of useless appliances and other items outside the Winslow Way shop, manager Willie Grimm said. Items included a box springs and mattress, washer and drier, a television and bags of miscellaneous refuse.
Santa Claus would feel at home.
The big red barn at Hazel Creek Montessori, hung with festive baskets of poinsettia and featuring elf-sized Adirondack chairs in red and green, looks like a perfect North Pole workshop. The illusion is supported by the buzz of activity within, as industrious tykes in elf garb frost gingerbread houses.
The work is in preparation for this weekend’s Christmas in the Country tour; the island preschool will be among the hosts for the ninth annual holiday event, with seven other venues including historic homes, farms and artists’ studio.
Not a week seems to go by without graffiti vandalism at Bainbridge High School, outside or in.
A chagrined school Superintendent Ken Crawford cites what he perceives as a “cultural acceptance” of graffiti by islanders, manifest most prominently in “Paint Night” at school year’s end.
“There seems to be this acceptance that ‘tagging’ roads and signs is okay,” Crawford said. “If roads and signs, why not a school?”
Someday, Washington State Ferries plans a major upgrade of its Bainbridge Island terminal, which handles some 7 million passengers and vehicles per year.
But given the state’s financial straits, that “someday” is a long ways off. In the meantime, a multi-agency task force is taking a look at relatively minor changes they say could improve safety and efficiency around the facility.
“There are so many user groups and they’re all there at one time,” said Trooper Glen Tyrrell of the Washington State Patrol. “We have drivers, bus riders, bicyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians, and van-pool riders in one small, heavily used area.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
For Bainbridge gymnastics coaches Cindy Guy and Lori Gilbreath, that means a minor shake-up in the roster from last year, but another upbeat and promising season for their team.
A small plaque reading “Wrestling Room” is posted above a handle-less, Spartan-blue door on an otherwise featureless wall.
Inside, the atmosphere is overwhelmed by a cloud of oppressive humidity generated by 24 hard-working wrestlers.
Equipment was stolen from an Island Center rental outfit Tuesday evening, the second “smash and grab” burglary there in a month.
A store alarm summoned police about 7 p.m. to Bainbridge Rental, on Fletcher Bay and New Brooklyn roads, according to reports.
The island’s municipal water system is showing signs of age at a time when both regulatory and user demands are increasing, meaning that some significant upgrades are required.
And because the system only serves about a quarter of the island’s population, it isn’t supported by general-fund tax dollars, only by the rates that users pay.
The bottom line: a significant rate increase for next year – to $44.75 per month for a typical Winslow-area residential customer that uses 10,000 cubic feet of water each month, a 27 percent boost from the current rate of $35.28.
“The lines we have aren’t built for the flow we’re seeing today, and those flows wear them out faster,” said city Public Works Director Randy Witt. “When you keep the rates low, you eventually need larger increases.”
Was the table half empty, or half full?
In a tough year, it might have been tempting to let our gratitude for the bounty laid before us on Thanksgiving be tempered by the challenges that would remain before us thereafter.
Only one corner of four is landscaped, and the extent of the public art is the banners and kids’ murals on a fence surrounding a vacant lot.
Informational signs are few, and after the ice cream store, it’s one long block before any signs of commerce and culture resume.
Yet for ferry visitors, this is the “gateway” to Winslow and the island beyond. It is, many agree, less than welcoming.
A farmer can spend a lot of time just thinking – particularly a farmer like George Rohrbacher, groomed for academia before the allure of rural life changed his plans.
When he wasn’t worrying about how to hold onto his Goldendale ranch in the face of record drought, Rohrbacher’s “mental exercise” was outlining a book.
And when a friend suggested that there ought to be a board game about agriculture, all that thinking came together in “The Farming Game.”
“This had been in gestation for several years and I didn’t know it,” Rohrbacher said. “Ninety-five percent of it was done in one day.”