November 2010

(click on photo to start slideshow)

Gail Luhn’s street is a 50 feet dock, her yard is the Puget Sound and the 80-foot vessel that sits at the end of dock O is her home.

A resident of the Shilshole community, Luhn has lived on her boat, the Infinity, with her partner Dwight Kruger and their dog, Isabelle for the last seven years.

Located between the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and Golden Garden Park, Shilshole Bay Marina is home to approximately 500 registered liveaboards.

Originally from Alberta, Canada, Kruger decided to buy a boat in 1997 after a visit to Aruba and hoped to take it to Sydney, Australia for the 2000 Olympic Games.

“I just liked the freedom of living on a boat,” Kruger said. “It’s also a lot more peaceful than living on land. The loudest thing you hear here is the dryer.”

While he and his ex-wife never made it to Sydney, Kruger moved around on the boat from Fort Lauderdale, FL to New Orleans, LA and lived of his Microsoft stocks. Eventually he returned to the Seattle area and met Luhn. After a mere three months, they started thinking about potentially living aboard the boat together.

Press Release:
Members of the public who received physical damage to their home and or business from last night's windstorm are encouraged to report it to their local emergency management agency.

Business owners who suffered economic injury as a result of the windstorm should also report that information to their local emergency management agency.

Contact information for local emergency management agencies is available at http://www.emd.wa.gov/myn/myn_contact_info.shtml.

This initial damage information will be compiled and assessed to determine if citizens and/or businesses in the state may qualify for federal assistance in recovering from this storm.

Dear Editor,

The letter to the editor published in the Herald on November 12 by Robert Callard was so full of inaccurate information, that we are totally surprised that the West Seattle Herald published it.

This letter was clearly an attempt to trash good work by people from both the Barton and Murray basin communities to come up with needed solutions to CSO required projects mandated by federal and state requirements in both basins. There are typographical errors in the published text that make it hard for readers to know what is being referred to—we are surprised that the Herald editorial staff did not catch them. The project would not be within 200 years of Lincoln Park, nor east of 35th Avenue. This writer simply did not have his geography correct. Nor his facts. His letter is a biased, and totally unsubstantiated version of the report from the Murray CAG, of which I was a member.

The police report from the armed robbery at Country Deli-Grocery on Monday, Nov. 15 was released on Nov. 19 and provides further details. Southwest Precinct Operations Lieutenant Pierre Davis said detectives are still searching for the suspect as of Nov. 19.

According to the police report, at 6:17 p.m. on Nov. 15 the suspect walked into the store wearing a puffy black jacket with the hood up, dark clothes and sunglasses.

The only clerk on duty told the suspect to remove his sunglasses and hood, “but the suspect just smiled at him and stood there” while a woman in front of him completed her transaction.

After the female customer left, the clerk told the suspect he would not sell him anything, then the suspect walked up to the counter and pulled a “chrome over black pistol from his left hip and pointed it at him.”

The robber demanded all of the money in the till and told the clerk to show him underneath the till tray, then produced a black plastic bag which the clerk filled with approximately $250.

The suspect fled westbound on s.w. Kenyon St and the clerk called 911.

The print deadline for calendar submissions is two weeks before the date of the event to be publicized. Email calendar@ballardnewstribune.com, or to get it posted online immediately, email michaelh@robinsonnews.com.

Second Annual Ballard Filmfest: An Evening of Shorts by Local Filmmakers
Sunset Hill Community Club
3003 NW 66th Street
November 19th, 7-9 p.m.
Suggested donation of $1.00, bring pennies for the Penny Harvest program

Screening of “Back to the Garden”
Sunset Hill Community Club
3003 NW 66th Street
November 28th, 7-9 p.m.
Admission: $3.00

Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Public Hearings
Ballard High School
1418 N.W. 65th St.
Wednesday, Nov. 17, 6-8 p.m.

On Friday Nov. 12, the council, meeting as the Budget Committee, adopted some 147 amendments to the Mayor’s proposed budget and accompanying legislation.  The 2011 city budget is expected to pass when it goes to the city's full council for formal adoption on Monday, Nov. 22.

Due to the deep recession the city was forced to reduce this year’s budget by $15 million. Additionally, the city faced a $67 million budget shortfall for 2011, which with the passage of State Initiative 1107 and the continued decline in property sales resulted in another $5.8 million dollar reduction from the Mayor's proposed 2011-2 budget.


In non-monetary terms, this means ongoing layoffs and reductions in services in public safety , human services, facility maintenances, parks and streets.

Demi-TAS of Burien is the local chapter of The Applique Society. TAS is an International Association formed in Washington State in 1997 to promote, to teach, to encourage the love of all types of appliqué in quilting.

Demi-TAS was chartered in 2000 by a group of Burien women with a deep love of appliqué.

An annual display of yearly projects has been shown at the Burien Public Library for many years, but this year the showing was at the Yarn Stash, 615 S.W. 152 St. The "round robin" wall hangings featured hand appliqué, machine and fusible appliqué.

For the 2011 show, library patrons will once again enjoy the brilliant colors, designs, and many faces of appliqué.

Demi-TAS chapter also has an on-going project that provides hand-made baby quilts to the Birthing Center at Highline Medical Center.

In the eight years this project has been in effect, hundreds of baby quilts have been distributed to our community.

Joining Demi-TAS in this community service is the Three Tree Quilt Guild of Burien.

More information is available at www.theappliquesociety.org.

(Editor's Note: Jerry Robinson was scanning the trees and the water last week for an usual sights.)

One wonders if the only reason the Burien City Council exists is to totally frustrate the residents of Burien.

The new wave of signs for placing a 2-hour time limit on parked cars in downtown Burien is frivolous. It is another example of over-regulating for no apparent reason, except to provide revenue. Perhaps some of the city's spending should be utilized better.

Other questionable changes: (1) the standardized sign regulation, which outlawed sandwich board advertising. (2) The installation of 4-way stop signs on secondary streets, which make you stop and wait while there is no traffic in the cross-traffic direction. (3) The revisions to the downtown turning lanes, which require you to wait through another traffic-light cycle if the person in front of you got in the wrong lane. (4) The need to have traffic cameras on 1st Avenue intersections was for "safety reasons," according to City Manager Mike Martin. No accident statistics were ever divulged.

Rather than enhancing the business experience in Burien, these regulations do nothing but show merchants and customers that one cannot linger and enjoy the downtown area.

Frederick K. Novota
Burien

The high winds from the Nov. 15 storm caused a power outage for 4200 customers of Seattle City Light in the Shorewood area. Power was restored after 2:00 am.

The boundaries were Puget Sound to Seola Beach Drive, up to 106th s.w. over to Hicks Lake with patches of power outages extending to the Northeast over 1st Ave. So.
They began again just past 122nd Street s.w. extending down to Three Tree Point.

As of 4:35 a.m. power was still out for 345 people in White Center between 108th and 102nd Streets, 10th Ave. s.w. and 1st Ave. South. Caused by a downed tree, power was expected to be restored by 6:00 a.m.

Power for Three Tree Point in Burien was also still out affecting 232 customers but has now been restored.

You can check the status of an area in the City Light system here.