Six candidates for the island’s three city council seats tried to persuade the island’s business community Thursday that they are better able to keep the wheels of island commerce turning.
Each candidate answered three questions at the Chamber of Commerce’s monthly lunch meeting at the Commons.
The giant pumpkin in front of Johansson Clark and Associates is extra big this year.
An orange monster appears in front of the realtors each Halloween, but this oversize squash tips the scales at 966 pounds – close to the world champion 1,200-pound colossus.
Chris Llewellyn knows what it’s like to be poor on Bainbridge Island.
“I was a single mother at one point,” she recalls, “and I was so poor that I had to sell my bed to buy a chainsaw to cut firewood to keep the house warm.”
Llewellyn has shared a lot of experiences with a lot of people on the island where she has lived most of her life.
“Pigasus” may not be as graceful as her mythical near-namesake, but she has her feet on the ground.
The prodigious pink porker – a 3-foot high, 100-pound fiberglass sculpture – landed on the northwest corner of Wyatt and Madison this week sporting running shoes, wings and a big grin.
Driving up to the home of Suzanne and Cameron Fischer, one notices the bright plastic toys scattered across the green lawn. The interior of the house is neat – considering that six kids call it home.
Three are the Fischers’ own and three are foster children. All are crammed onto the sofa to watch movies.
“You can tell which are mine by the hair,” said Suzanne Fischer, indicating the three whose tousled mops are, like their mother’s, flaming red.
The infant, toddler and 5-year-old who are the foster additions are otherwise indistinguishable from the Fischer kids.
The Great Island Friday walking group may not travel fast, but it goes the distance.
“Power walkers drop us right away,” member Ron Williamson said. “We are a meandering group – we stop, we look.
“We especially like small houses and mailboxes that are funky, the art that people have in their yards – the things that make this island what it is.”
In four years of casual Friday rambles, TGIF has covered more than 700 miles of island trails, beaches and roadways.
Surveying the field of city council candidates on the Nov. 6 ballot, voters may ask: Whatever happened to the simple goal of public service?
We wonder. Over the past few elections, we’ve watched council races veer into the politics of reaction against previous policies, decisions and trends. In 1997, the successful theme was “fiscal responsibility.” Two years later, candidacies were largely defined by skittishness over growth. We see this year’s races as an extension of the latter contests; among the six candidates, two are Ferncliff-area residents galvanized by controversial developments in their neighborhood (following the successful bid by Michael Pollock two years ago on the same theme).
After three years of negotiations, the city has reached agreement with owner Akio Suyematsu for public purchase of his 15-acre farm on Day Road East, to preserve the land as open space.
For amateur archaeoastronomer John Rudolph, the Bainbridge petroglyph is like a postcard from the past.
Rudolph believes he can read the meaning of the carved stone that juts from a Bainbridge beach as if it were a message from ancient islanders.
“The purpose of the site is to determine what time of year it is,” Rudolph says. “The petroglyph lies precisely west of the Skykomish canyon 60 miles away. On the vernal and autumnal equinox, one sees the rising sun shining straight through the canyon, if one is standing at the petroglyph.”
For a property manager, the loss of a major tenant in the middle of a less-than-robust market is a crisis.
When the Day Road industrial park lost Watson Furniture Systems, Sheri Watson saw an opportunity. And by offering high-speed internet access, she has filled the vacant space and then some with what she believes will be the jobs of the future on Bainbridge.
Jonathan Miller-Lane loves a good question.
“A really good subject can hook anyone,” Miller-Lane said. “You have to have a question that you yourself are truly interested in.”
He poses one both pointed and timely when he asks a panel of Bainbridge youth and adults Oct. 24 how Americans perceive their national values – as opposed to what the rest of the world understands them to be.
Few encounter Bainbridge nonprofit organizations without meeting the retired volunteers who contribute time and money to many of these organizations.
And as more families need both parents in the workforce and have less time to give, retirees take up the slack.
If the number of candidates is any indication, the most sought-after elective position on Bainbridge is the fire commission seat that Alan Corner is vacating after two six-year terms. The race drew a total of four hopefuls.
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