Be a scout for city salmon

The city is looking for participants to help with the third-annual Bainbridge Island Salmon Monitoring Project to begin next month.

Participants will have a rare chance to explore island streams that are normally inaccessible to the public due to private land ownership.

Volunteers will work in teams of two to monitor a stream at least once a week between October and early January.

The goal will be to look for spawning salmon or their nests, known as redds, in order to better understand the distribution and abundance of salmonids in island streams.

Volunteers must be able to attend a training program from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sept. 15, beginning at City Hall.

The training, which includes a free lunch, will involve a discussion of objectives and methods, an introduction to fish identification, and a visit to a nearby stream to introduce habitat assessment concepts. Teams will be formed and assigned streams that day.

Volunteers must be able to attend the training session and participate in an initial stream habitat assessment, which takes approximately three hours, followed by the weekly monitoring, which generally takes one to two hours.

Participants must be at least 14 years old, and should be able to traverse uneven surfaces and slopes, as monitoring will include walking beside and in some cases crossing stream channels.

The program is being organized by Deborah Rudnick of the Bainbridge Watershed Council.

To sign up or to learn about the streams involved call 780-3797.

Museum preps for re-opening

After nearly a year of renovation, the Bainbridge Historical Museum’s 1908 schoolhouse will re-open Sept. 16, with a fresh new exhibit and without its old interior covering of Homesote sound-proofing material.

When the Homesote was removed, staff members discovered an intact blackboard with samples of the Palmer writing method.

“They were so busy putting the tile over it that they didn’t even bother to erase them,” Executive Director Theresa Cosgrove said. “What a treasure for us.”

Once the wall and ceilings were uncovered, project and facilities manager Rick Chandler and crew set about re-furbishing the wainscotting, re-plastering the walls, re-finishing the floors and re-painting.

Chandler, who even found panes of the original type of hand-blown glass to replace a couple of cracked panes, hopes that the result is a schoolroom that will look largely as it did in 1908.

Cosgrove said that funding for the renovation came from several sources, including a grant from the Heritage Capital Projects Fund, the Peach Foundation, the Joshua Green Foundation, the Bainbridge Community Foundation and museum members.

Throughout the schoolhouse’s renovation, which began in October 2006, Curator Lorraine Scott said staff members encouraged docents to allow visitors to peek through the window to see what was going on.

Now, though, the room is closed for viewing as staffers put the finishing touches on the exhibit within, which Scott says will present a timeline of Bainbridge history grouped in themes such as the island’s native history and its milltown and agricultural periods.

“Which is challenging,” Scott said, “because one thousand square feet is a drop in the bucket for most museums.”

Scott said the goal, given the museum’s limited space, is to create a marriage of organization and “a lot of cool stuff.”

Chandler said his favorite discovery was the blackboard, which the museum elected to preserve behind peek-a-boo glass for visitors’ enjoyment.

Join the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum for its grand re-opening, including a ribbon-cutting ceremony, refreshments and a tour of the new exhibits, at 1 p.m. Sept. 16.

Find the museum at 215 Ericksen Avenue. Call 842-2773 or visit www.bainbridgehistory.org.

Reappraisal comes in low

A second look revealed a lower price – $700,000 for the 20-acre Meigs Farm Property, approved for purchase as open space by the City Council in April.

The new appraisal, completed by Columbia Valuation Group of Seattle and released Monday, values the land at more than half off the $1.5 million approved purchase price.

“Appraising property for open space acquisition is always difficult, given the many factors involved and the fact that the land is not intended for development, which often steers property values,” said City Administrator Mary Jo Briggs in a press release.

The city “will evaluate the significance of these two appraisals and consider any further steps” following Wednesday’s council meeting, she said.

Questions about the original appraisal were raised during the council’s initial discussions, prompting Briggs to seek a second appraisal. The disparity may have been caused by the presence of a utility-class well, the value of which hadn’t yet been determined, the city said.

The city is buying the land from islander Gale Cool.