May 2006

Buying locally is the newest trend these days where sustainability and community activism is concerned. Last Wednesday April 26th a group of citizens gathered at the Ballard Neighborhood Service Center to discuss their own community's take on this movement, the Buy Ballard program.

A collaborative effort of the Ballard Chamber of Commerce, the organization Sustainable Ballard and local business owners, the idea behind Buy Ballard is to keep businesses within the local community, rather than have shoppers looking elsewhere for everyday staples.

In what one transit manager referred to as 'routes on steroids', King County Executive Ron Sims has a plan to get more buses in and out of Ballard.

Sims announced the plan, called Transit Now, on April 18. The executive is proposing a one-tenth of one cent sales tax hike, translating to about $25 a year in sales taxes paid by the typical King County family. The funding would provide a 20 percent increase in Metro's passenger capacity, or 21 million more bus rides annually, within ten years.

Ten minutes into the first half of the boy's soccer game against Roosevelt, Josh Guarino kicked the ball past the goalkeeper into the net and the Ballard Beaver fans went wild. Unfortunately it was the only point of the night at Interbay Stadium. As the sun went down and the temperatures cooled off, Roosevelt ran away with 3-1 win.

The defeat left Ballard 1-9-0 on the season in league play.

Even before it happened, I knew that the odds of an eventual emergency room visit for my newborn son were good. I'd done some research recently - 41 visits for every 100 kids each year was one published count. But I really didn't expect it to happen in the wee hours of the fourth morning of his life. My husband had fallen asleep putting our two year old to bed that night, so I didn't bother getting up every two hours when my alarm went off.

1. A woman, who lives in an apartment complex at 29645 18th Avenue South, contacted Federal Way police to report her boyfriend missing. On then night of April 18, the man left the couple's apartment around 9 p.m. en route to his brother's house. He drove away in his silver Buick. Around midnight, the boyfriend called home to say he would return in an hour. The girlfriend's report states that she heard voices in the background on the other end of the phone, and she believed he was at a bar. The boyfriend never returned home.

The news has not been good.

"Gas prices are expected to spiral this summer...Expect to pay more at the pump when the travel season begins...AAA reports rising demand for oil..."

The time had come and I knew that this time it would not be so easy. It was time to sell my truck, Big Red.

And to make things even worse, Big Red is actually (gulp) Mrs.

When Maggie Palm returned to her job as a sixth grade teacher at Illahee Middle School after spring break, colleagues passing her in the hall offered their congratulations.

Palm was mystified until she learned the reason for the goodwill: she is a winner of the 2006 Earth Heroes at Schools, awarded by the King County Executive's office.

Palm will receive the award at a ceremony on May 4th from King County Executive Ron Sims, held at 4:30 p.m.

The King County Housing Authority (KCHA) is accepting applications for their Housing Choice Voucher program waiting list. The deadline for applying is Tuesday, May 9.

Applications are available at the Federal Way Multi-Service Center at 1200 South 336th or the Federal Way DSHS at 616 South 348th Street, as well as online at www.kcha.org.

Also called "Section 8," after the part of the United States Housing Act of 1937 that created the plan, the nationwide program distributes funds from the U.S.

The 1,430 members of the Federal Way Educational Association (FWEA), the labor group representing teachers and certified staff district wide, will be seeing a slight increase in wages, in addition to gaining some respite from an ever-mounting workload.

At the regularly scheduled meeting of the school board last Tuesday, the board unanimously approved the new three-year contract, which will take effect September 1, 2006.

"Besides the compensation gains, we have some pretty innovative language on workload relief [in the new contract], " said Shannon Rasmussen, president of