voice of bainbridge

A strong assessment of our city's situation

As presented by Bob Scales in the Bainbridge Postscript blog.

A message/invitation from Rod Stevens

City Government: How Can We Make It Work Better?

The American Legion has scheduled a town meeting, and you are the invited speaker!  No special guests, just you, your fellow citizens and a great moderator!  Come express your feeling about city government, and what we need to do next. 

Tuesday, May 6, 7-9 p.m.
American Legion Hall (near the Bucklin Hill fire station.)

Who is responsible for the disastrous "pruning" of the trees in the parking at the ferry terminal?

Reading the February 20 issue of the Bainbridge Review we don't learn what firm was responsible for this job. A manager for Diamond Parking does not provide any specific information nor apologize for anything wrong. The City acquiesces by saying nothing inherently wrong (illegal) was done and we get the usual argument about private property. Diamond Parking is a big corporation, they claim to be the biggest private parking company in the world (and I bet they are). It is not clear that they were in charge of this "pruning" as they could only be in charge of operating the parking while the property is owned by somebody else. This somebody else could be an entity called Winslow Marine LLC but the property tax map does not provide any clue about who they are, but for the address of an accounting firm in Bellevue. I think the people deemed "responsible" should publicly say so and offer a compensation to our community or explain to us why all is well. What type of compensation? They could plant more/new trees in this parking lot and/or provide money for trees to be planted. They should come up with internal guidelines to avoid such bad practices in the future.

Congratulations to Kim and Bill

They won the two contested seats for City Council. I hope they'll defend the trees, more parks downtown, no round about that is absolutely not needed (99% of the time as the public works people acknowledge), no useless gigantic underground garage (absolutely not needed as well contrary to what consultants/lobbyists try to have us believe). I wish Kim and Bill start blogs to keep us informed and incite other counselors to do likewise. Best wishes to all members of the Council.

City Meetings Go Audio But

City meetings are now recorded but accessing them is a very complicated and not user friendly story. They have kept each audio on the page related to the meeting that is recorded instead of having one index page where all the audios are listed and you can very quickly and easily select the one(s) you want ot listen to. Of course the best way is to provide an automatic subscription via email (feedblitz) and an rss. Until this is (easily) done, getting to the recording you care for looks very much like a labyrinth... Although the intent is laudable, this is NOT the right way to do it :)

The community forestry commission wants to hear from you

The Community Forestry Commission (pdf) is holding an open house session on Tuesday September 12 from 7 to 9 PM. I am not sure there is much to gain but if a few good people wish to attend. Maybe you can also email your suggestions? So many of our previous suggestions have been totally ignored it's hard to persist but what else is there to do? All my best wishes to the people who want to attend. If someone wants to take a digital mp3 recorder contact me and I'll lend you one.

Nezam's answers

Hello Philippe.  Nice to hear from you again.

I opted for a web site without a blog primarily due to my own time constraints.  Also I do not have the support needed to create and maintain a blog.  As you know, I am not accepting financial contributions to my campaign.  This meant I had to go with a simple web site that was rich in content.  I am not sure if you are offering to help with creating and maintaining a blog but, if you are, I am game.

Questions for Darlene

Hello Darlene!
I just visited your very traditional website, :)
It is a nice initiative but it does not allow visitors to ask you questions for everybody to see and post comments.
In my opinion it is with this type of interactive communication that one can see what candidates think and stand for.

Questions for Nezam

Hello Nezam!
I just visited your very traditional website, :)
It is a nice initiative but it does not allow visitors to ask you questions for everybody to see and post comments.
In my opinion it is with this type of interactive communication that one can see what candidates think and stand for.

The blog solution for local media and civic life

The bad news is I have been frustrated with our local media (The Bainbridge Review, the Kitsap Sun, the Bainbridge Islander, BIB) for quite a while. I think the City website is abysmal and our elected officials totally fail in  responding to our needs to be informed about what's happening to our community under their watch.