I cornered a few old-timers who agreed without digital prompt that we can still get a consensus per the Review editorial (“What makes Bainbridge special?” Sept. 16). Usually it takes two or three tries.

First, our manhole covers clank. Their second was, yes, we have too many lawyers.

Also, we’ve had more sustained, intimate relationships with Seattle commuters than expected. We’ve got complected with banks coming and going since our first two.

Our developers study daily and blog about our modern midden more closely than officials admit. Many of us take for granted what’s done was achieved without schism.

We neglect how many subsidies from privately funded car washes and July 4th booths it took.

When it counted before this last one, we voted against a city manager. We paid for it.

We’ve lost our usual merchant sleeping dogs askew in parking places downtown once the Chamber of Commerce preferred PAWS cat ads and a lot more motor vehicles.

The visits of parents who stay for good have increased.

The old-timers didn’t mince insight about our past consensus getting, like 20 years ago when self-choice home rule barely passed on a third try.

Kitsap County planners say they partied across the bridge the same night at having gotten rid of us.

It took nearly two years to send across all our dispute files. Some wanted to start these disputes all over again. We took a one-year rest.

It makes you think our pretentious shoulder chips on each side of our heads are natural. Otherwise, we’d have moved away.

Border-town dwellers on a water divide between two worlds out West are usually more roughneck as they engage the more precise.

Those of us who stick around get curious about  what the next consensus could be.

R.O. Conoley

Bainbridge Island