While downtown Winslow has a parking problem, a multi-level public garage may not be the way to solve it, at least for now.
And though merchants would benefit from more parking, those benefits aren’t great enough to provide a funding source for a garage.
While studying Winslow parking and the feasibility of a merchant-financed garage, Anthony Gibbons gave considerable thought to the relationship between people, prosperity and automobiles.
As detailed elsewhere in this issue, his report dashes hopes that a garage could come courtesy of downtown property owners and merchants. Either the garage won’t happen, or it will become a city responsibility. And because the latter scenario involves your tax money, his views are worth considering.
Braden Duncan doesn’t mind being one-of-a-kind.
When the graduating senior – represented at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts this week with other award-winning students – ran out of high school art classes, she crafted an independent study.
“I sit in on (basic) Drawing I and II classes,” Duncan said. “Last year I did an independent study in Drawing III.”
Karen Driscoll sold writing supplies at Paper Products – the store she and husband Andy Driscoll owned from 1980 to 1992 – but she never thought of writing herself until she inherited a box of her uncle’s memorabilia.
Bainbridge Island’s economy is a complex mosaic of commuters, public- and private-sector employees, and solo entrepreneurs working out of their homes.
The mission of this year’s Bainbridge Economic Council’s Vitality Conference next week will be to pull all of those elements into focus.
A generation or two ago, sewing was an economic necessity, because not everyone could afford “store-bought” clothing.
Today, mass-produced clothes are so inexpensive that sewing has become a means of self-expression – a way to make distinctive or better-fitting clothes, an artistic medium or simply a means of getting together.
The new owners of Island Textiles on Hildebrand Lane hope to promote all of those goals.
Faced with three choices for Ericksen Avenue, islanders voted for four – and, this being Bainbridge, also found a way to stay evenly divided.
Perhaps the closest thing to consensus for the contested stretch of roadway was expressed by Ferncliff resident Jessie Hey: “As long as it doesn’t go through (to Hildebrand), as long as it doesn’t create a huge, wide street, it’s fine.”
“Buddhism for busy lives” might seem an oxymoron, but Tibetan Buddhist master Kilung Tulku Tsultrim Rinpoche shows students how to to live modern lives more fully.
Rinpoche, who spent five months in the Seattle area last year, returns to Bainbridge May 31 to give a week of teachings that are structured for both neophyte and acolyte, event organizers Barbara Berger and Susan Brown say.
There is a rule for surviving politics in a small community: Make it about the issue, not the person. Adherence to that simple maxim ensures that at the end of the day, regardless of which way the votes fall, everyone goes home friends and neighbors.
Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell where issues end and personalities begin, as one watches the new city council and mayor at work. A time that should be dynamic with policy debates and initiatives of substance has instead fostered a petty turf war, leaving the council divided and, we dare say, the public embarrassed for all concerned.
The Bainbridge School District is planning sweeping changes to the math curriculum changes for grades K-12.
The school board Thursday agreed to transfer $220,000 from the district’s capital reserves to the general fund, to pay for new programs and materials.
After years of sitting vacant, the contaminated former gas station property at Winslow Way and Highway 305 may finally be cleaned up and put to use.
Property owner Union Oil Company of California (Unocal), which operated a Union 76 station on the site, is studying the site, and looking at ways to remedy the contamination to the satisfaction of the state Department of Ecology.
That, in turn, would allow the property to be sold for development.
The power of palaver drives Conversation Cafe.
The moderated open discussions of selected topics, conceived by Seattle author Vicki Robins, were brought to Pegasus last summer by islander Kat Gjovik.
“I learned about it by word of mouth,” Gjovik said. “Then I went to an orientation session at Antioch College for Conversation Cafe facilitators and found that I was absolutely compelled to start one here.”
Bainbridge City Council chair Michael Pollock thinks Mayor Darlene Kordonowy should have a lawyer advise her on the parameters of her job.
His complaint: Kordonowy interjects herself into policy discussions, and policy is the exclusive province of the council.
“She really likes to be involved in policy discussions – she’s a policy person, not an administrative person,” Pollock said. “The council meetings are for the council to conduct business, and the mayor’s interjections are disruptive.”
The mayor sees matters the other way around.