The lines may grow outside, but the inside of the Harbour Public House isn't budging to accommodate. Read my story below.

Pub loses to condo dwellers in latest ruling
By Tristan Baurick

The state Court of Appeals ruled last week against the proposed expansion of the Harbour Public House, a popular tavern and eatery overlooking Eagle Harbor in downtown Winslow.

The court sided with the residents of the neighboring Harbourside Condominiums who believe an additional all-ages dining area would block views, boost noise and increase traffic and parking problems.

According to Judge Elaine Houghton, the expansion "would not fit the character" of an earlier agreement struck between the pub's owners and the condo's residential association. Houghton also noted that the pub's proposed roofline "would change the character of the view from the condominium property."

Waite had hoped to turn the existing Parfitt Way building and deck into a new family dining area and add a separate bar. Currently about 1,750 square feet, the planned expansion would have almost doubled the pub's size.

Harbourside condo resident Ronald McKinstry said he feels "very good" about the ruling but declined to discuss the matter further. In court testimony, McKinstry said he considered "the view and peaceful community" critical in his decision to buy a Harbourside condo. He characterized the pub expansion plan as "enormous" and "ugly in comparison," and predicted it would double the neighborhood noise level.

Calls to other condo residents named in the appeal and their attorney were not returned.

The appeals court ruling is the second legal setback for Waite. The pub's expansion was shot down in 2006 by the Kitsap County Superior Court in 2006. Like the recent state court, the Superior Court cited an agreement between the condo owners and the pub's founders Roger and Judith Evans that specified limited commercial activity.

Waite doubts he has much of a chance if he were to appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Built as a residence in 1881 by Bainbridge homesteader Ambrose Grow, the pub building was purchased and repaired by the Evans family in 1990. Opening it as an English-style neighborhood pub in 1991, the Roger Evans turned the operation over a few years later to his daughter Jocelyn and her husband Waite.

Packed on the weekends and busy most weeknights, the pub is a popular waterfront watering hole for a broad swath of islanders, from yachtsmen to liveaboards.

"We have limited capacity and it's not unusual to have a line out the door," Waite said.
The pub's popularity breeds the kind of revelry that doesn't fit the quiet life some condo owners envisioned when they purchased their homes.

"I don't live on Fifth Avenue in New York City. I live on Bainbridge Island," one condo resident told the Sun in 2006.

While never a bustling metropolis, the area surrounding the pub, including the condo site, was zoned commercial before it was considered partially residential, said Waite.
Jocelyn Waite said downtown residents who desire both rural quiet and urban amenities endanger the business her parents started.

"In the name of quiet character, we are observing the systematic dismantling of our urban core - the place that is supposed to be vibrant, according to the city's plans," she said.

Hoping for a possible 20 to 70 percent boost in business he says he needs to stay vital, Jeff Waite is not sure how the pub will ever measure up to his neighbors' expectations.

"I suppose if we are to build to fit our immediate neighborhood, a mausoleum is in order," he said.

The man has been identified as Scott MacGregor, who lived on Bainbridge and was an architect with Art Anderson & Associates in Bremerton.

Police were called to the scene at about 7:30 p.m. After an investigation, they found there was no evidence that would indicate a collision or that "any other persons or vehicles were involved," police said.

Deputy Police Chief Mark Duncan said all initial indications were that the man had suffered some kind of medical emergency.

A statement from the family on Thursday said, "His life was an inspiration to us all, and he will forever be in the hearts and minds of his family and friends."

National Park status was granted on to the Bainbridge Island Japanese-American internment memorial today.

President Bush signed into law the Consolidated National Resources Act and its package of 60 public lands measures, including the memorial designation and Snohomish County's Wild Sky wilderness preservation bill.

The memorial on Eagle Harbor's south shore honors the 227 islanders of Japanese decent who were sent to internment camps during World War II. The Bainbridge group was the first of 110,000 Japanese-Americans from various states incarcerated during the war.

Rep. Jay Inslee, who pushed the bill through Congress, hopes national park designation will help the island's Japanese-American community group put the finishing touches on a memorial he says will attract visitors from across the region.

"I'm proud of our community for fashioning this memorial and hope federal designation will help them raise funds necessary to bring it to completion," the Bainbridge Democrat said.

Lowe said his three priorities in Olympia would be taxes, transportation and education.

"Every dollar that a person makes should be valued," Lowe said. He said politicians haven't been listening to the people who vote for them. "They all just feel like they're being taxed to death. Nobody in Olympia cares about what they want."

Kitsap gets little transportation attention and schools need to focus on core subjects, not teach to the WASL, Lowe said.

Lowe and his wife, Rebecca, live in East Bremerton with their son Garret, 11.

Longtime islander Iver MacDougall borrowed a line from comic strip character Pogo to say that the public shares some of the blame for the perceived dysfunction in city government.

"We have met the enemy and he is us," MacDougall said at a town hall-style meeting on Tuesday night (see post below).

MacDougall and others said the tone of public discourse has lately gotten a bit too personal and nasty.

But being too concerned about politeness could dampen citizen participation, said Kirsten Hytopoulos.

Perhaps too many islanders are sitting at home watching hours of City Council meetings on BITV.

"Some people may be alone watching TV and having a beer and they want to throw the can at the TV," said Charles Schmid.

Nothing breaks civic isolation and eases political frustration like teaming up with others and working for the common good, he said. With that in mind, Schmid encouraged the meeting's attendees to link up in neighborhood groups and put pent-up energy to use at the grassroots level.

So, what's your take? Is the tough talk on the island too tough to be productive? Is it not tough enough? Is talk enough?

The sequel, held Tuesday night, had a more conciliatory spirit. Billed as a discussion of how to improve city government, a lot of folks stood up at the meeting to tone down the rhetoric.

Read my story below.

Like a lot of islanders, Karen Ross is fed up with city politics. But it wasn't doubts about city finances, angry urges toward city staff or fears about the future of Winslow Way that spurred her to attend her first public meeting Tuesday night.

"My quest today is to ask people to be more civil," Ross said to about 60 people gathered at the island's American Legion Hall to discuss ways to improve city government.

Ross, who has lived on Bainbridge long enough to remember when "you could ride a horse across the island without getting hit by a car," said the level of public discourse has taken a dive.

"Times have changed," she said. "It's very depressing to hear all the nastiness."

There was a good dose of nastiness at the Legion's last town hall-style meeting three months ago. A handful of elected officials and city staff were corralled into the center of about 140 angry people who lobbed accusations ranging from managerial incompetence to financial malfeasance. The February meeting also helped launch a campaign to abolish the mayor's office.

While Tuesday's meeting had plenty of the angst and was jokingly billed by its moderator as a "typical bitch and moan session," a chorus of attendees urged their neighbors to ease up on the fiery rhetoric.

"With all the cantankerous letters to the editor and strong opinions we've heard, we have to ask ourselves: Who would really want to work for us?" asked Edie Hartmann, referring to a high city staff turnover rate and the recent resignations of the city administrator and planning director. "If we don't want people leaving after only a year, we'd better change our tone."

Hartmann's comments came after property rights activist Gary Tripp accused a city planner of tricking the public, using City Hall to push a personal agenda and encouraging off-island groups to sue the city.

Iver MacDougall said personal attacks against city staff are unnecessary.

"We need to have some civility toward the city people with which we disagree," he said. "These folks, in their way, are trying to do their best.

"Maybe they have the wrong point of view, but they're not bad people."

Kirsten Hytopoulos, a critic of recent downtown planning efforts, cautioned against "an atmosphere in which you can't be critical." She said some people didn't come to the meeting because they were afraid of being pegged as overly negative.

Attendees didn't spare criticism for Mayor Darlene Kordonowy, who sat quietly while weathering a salvo of sharp words.

One man said Kordonowy was incapable of running the city, which he equated to "a simple operation." Another attendee said Kordonowy "is not listening" to the public and doesn't understand the rudiments of city finance.

Former City Councilman Bob Scales also admonished Kordonowy for "mismanaging" city dollars.

"The city has been adrift (because of) a lack of leadership," he said.

Dennis Vogt gathered signatures at the meeting for a proposed ballot measure that could replace the mayor with a professional city manager hired by the council. Vogt and others have collected 400 of the nearly 1,000 signatures they need to put the issue on the November ballot.

Legion member Bill Beck said voters will likely vote the measure down, as they did a similar ballot item 15 years ago.

Bob Burkholder doubted a change in government will fix the problems residents identified at the meeting.

"It doesn't matter what kind of government you've got," he said. "What matters are the people."

With a recent infusion of new blood at City Hall, Burkholder expressed hope that change is on the way.

"We have a new council now and the administration has learned a lot," he said. "Let's give them a chance."

One man was willing to give them more than a chance. In a rare move at a public meeting, he offered an apology.

"I'm sorry to the mayor and council for every bad thought I've thought about you," he said. "Thank you and I'm sorry."

Knowing that hunting for Democrats on Bainbridge would be like shooting fish in a barrel, Kitsap Sun political reporter Steve Gardner trekked up to the island with notebook in hand. Steve was looking for a local angle to the national drama happening in North Carolina and Indiana. You can read about Steve's Winslow adventure in a Kitsap Caucus blog post entitled "What was I thinking?," and then check out his story and a video of the Bainbridge interviews here.

I learned about Yeomalt cabin when the park district announced about three years ago that it would dismantle and haul away it's rotting frame.

I wrote a story about it and soon got a call from local whirlwind Jerry Elfendahl. With his fiery passion for Bainbridge history, it was a rare week after the story came out that Jerry didn't barrel past the newspaper's receptionists, creep up behind me and begin barking into my ear (sometimes while I was on the phone) about the latest Yeomalt-related emergency.

Jerry applied that same enthusiasm to raising money and rallying volunteers to save the cabin. And it's worked. Jerry and the rest of Team Yeomalt are within striking distance of raising the final $13,000 they need to bring new life to a cabin that's hosted American soldiers, Russian sailors and generations of camp song-singing islanders.

See my story about the latest fundraising push below.

Final push to save Yeomalt cabin
By Tristan Baurick

Restorationists working to save a Depression-era log cabin are making a last leap toward their fundraising finish line this week.

"With a few more checks in the mail we'll be ready to roll," said local historian Jerry Elfendahl, who helped found Team Yeomalt to save the 73-year-old cabin at Camp Yeomalt Park.

After three years of fundraising, the cabin's supporters are within $13,000 of the $193,000 they need to shore up the cabin's sagging walls, replace its foundation and stabilize its stone chimney.

A professional house mover and a log building restorationist from Oregon are ready for the work to begin, said Elfendahl.

"They're standing by and just treading water," he said. "They're in-demand so they can't wait around much longer."

With the weather clearing up, Team Yeomalt also wants to take advantage of the prime construction season.

Set among a stand of trees north of Wing Point, the cabin was built by the U.S. Works Progress Administration between 1935 and 1937. The U.S. Army and Russian merchant marines used the cabin during World War II. Briefly used as an artillery base after the war, the building is best remembered as a camp for generations of Boy Scouts.

Neglect and disrepair allowed the cabin's roof to crumble and portions of its log walls to disintegrate from rot and insects. The Bainbridge park district's announcement three years ago that it would remove the cabin spurred Elfendahl and other into action.
Their efforts recently earned the cabin recognition on the National Park Service's Register of Historic Places.

Once the cabin's foundation and exterior are repaired, Team Yeomalt plan to begin work on a second phase. Estimated to cost $70,000, the second phase includes interior fixes, upgrading a nearby classroom and construction of access ramps for people with disabilities.

Donations to Yeomalt Cabin Fund can be sent to the Bainbridge Island Park Foundation, P.O. Box 10010, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110. For more information, call (206) 842-4164.

Cyclists will silently wind their way through the roads of Bainbridge Island on May 21 to honor fellow riders killed or injured on public roadways.

The island's planned 'Ride of Silence' is one of over 300 set to happen at the same time around the world. The first such event on Bainbridge, organizers plan to make the ride an annual event.

The ride is a reminder for motorists that cyclists share the roadways and have a legal right to do so, said ride organizer Kim Bottles.

The free event is also aimed at promoting cycling as healthy recreation and as an Earth-friendly mode of transportation.

Global participation in Ride of Silence events has more than doubled over the last two years, with over 270 communities taking part in 2007. Seattle's ride drew over 1,000 cyclists.

Three island cyclists have suffered nearly fatal collisions with motorists in the last four years. Last month, a Bainbridge man was struck and injured by a truck on State Route 305. The crash forced the man's head under the rear tire of the truck but his helmet prevented serious injury. The motorist left the man unconscious on the roadside and was later arrested for hit-and-run and driving while intoxicated.

In 2004, art teacher Chris Stanley was hit from behind at 50 mph by a motorist who was distracted while reaching for her cell phone. Stanley suffered internal bleeding, a collapsed lung, four broken ribs, a cracked skull and four breaks in his left leg.

Also in 2004, island resident and emergency medical doctor Ernie Franz was struck by a drunk driver on High School Road. Franz sustained multiple injuries, including a broken neck, and can no longer practice in the emergency room.

Ride of Silence organizers are asking participants to travel slowly, silently and in a single file line on May 21. The ride will depart from the Marge Williams Center, 221 Winslow Way, at 7 p.m. The course will range from eight to 12 miles. Participants are encouraged to wear a black armband if they wish to honor a cyclist killed on the road or a red one to honor an injured cyclist.

For more information, call Kim Bottles at (425) 702-6628.

The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission's new "No Child Left Inside" grant program awarded $200,000 in total to IslandWood, the Sedro Woolley-based North Cascades Institute and the Olympic Park Institute in Port Angeles.

The grant is expected to subsidize the participation of more than 10,000 low-income students in environmental education programs. It will help fund outdoor field trips and after-school programs.

According to IslandWood spokesman David Hunting, Washington's children are increasingly "plugged in" to television and other technologies. Fewer hours each day are spent outdoors and in nature. Outdoor education programs, he said, can help turn this trend around while reducing stress in overscheduled youth, increasing attention spans and boosting test scores.

Located on Bainbridge Island's south end, IslandWood's forested 255-acre campus draws children from around the region for hands-on lessons in biological and cultural diversity.

Quiet week on the island. A few utility poles took some hits, and a handful of runaways didn't make it past the ferry terminal.

Read the blotter below...

Hit-and-run: A Bainbridge woman in a Chevrolet Silverado truck ran over a small tree and hit a pole on Hildebrand Lane shortly after 6 p.m. The driver fled the scene but was apprehended by police after she parked in a nearby parking lot. She was cited for hit-and-run and damaging property.

Crash: A Port Orchard woman crashed her vehicle into a utility pole on Lofgren Road after a verbal dispute with her husband. The woman blamed the crash on her heightened emotional state. She was transported to a hospital for treatment of undisclosed injuries.

May 2
Runaways: Officers were dispatched to the ferry terminal to apprehend pot-smoking juveniles just after 5:30 p.m. Three young females were spotted by police near a bus shelter. Background checks revealed that all three were listed as runaways by their parents. Two of the females had outstanding juvenile arrest warrants and were transported to the county juvenile center.

May 1
Runaway: A 16-year-old Bainbridge girl was reported by her parents to have run away from home. The girl turned herself in at the ferry terminal but said she would not return home because she could no longer tolerate her mother's behavior. Her mother consented for her to go to a local residential crisis center.

April 29
Theft: An antique phone booth was reported stolen from the yard of an Old Mill Road home.

April 28
Crash: A Bainbridge woman driving a Mazda car sharply accelerated onto High School Road after stopping at a stop sign. She attempted a left turn but swerved into the oncoming lane. She over-corected her steering, sending the car over a sidewalk, down an embankment and through some shrubbery. Her car suffered significant damage to the passenger side. No injuries reported.

Last Wednesday night I watched an hour-long discussion about the City of Bainbridge Island's capital facilities planning process.

The mayor, city administrator, council members, and planning commission members were saying what a great job the city is doing developing the plan. I agree. No city plans better than Bainbridge Island. The city spends millions of dollars each year on consultants, studies and surveys. Every project and issue is examined and reexamined down to the minutest detail.

Winslow Tomorrow was a three-year, million-dollar. "award-winning" planning effort. The city has an "award-winning" non-motorized transportation plan. In fact, the offices at City Hall are crammed full of "award-winning" plans and studies.

Planning is not the problem. Implementation is the problem. What is the use of having an "award-winning" plan if it just sits on the shelf and is never implemented? Two years ago the city council expressed concern about the city's inability to complete projects funded in the budget. The council funded a Benchmarking Study (yes another study) to find out how Bainbridge Island compares with other similar-sized cities.

The study found that our government costs more and produces less than most other cities. The executive and planning departments alone cost twice as much on Bainbridge Island as they do in comparable cities. The higher cost of our city government wouldn't be so bad if the city was getting things accomplished. Unfortunately, the city has little to show for the $50-million-plus they collect in taxes and fees. For example, each year the public works department is only able to complete 30 percent of the projects that are funded in the budget. Money is not the problem, it is the city's inability to complete the tasks assigned to it.

So what can be done to improve the situation? The Benchmarking Study provided a long list of recommendations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our city government. Unfortunately, I do not believe that any of those recommendations have been acted upon. Implementation is the responsibility of the mayor and her administration. If the mayor and her team are unable to do their jobs, then it is time for a change.

The city council approves and funds projects but they are not responsible for implementation. However, the council often wants to tinker with projects that have already been approved (e.g. waterfront park bathroom). This just delays things. Once a project is funded, the council should get out of the way and let the administration go to work.

The latest community values survey clearly shows that our residents are not satisfied with the city's performance in two high priority areas -- water quality and supply and nonmotorized transportation. How many more studies will the city conduct before it decides to take some action?

I am not optimistic that the city will be able to climb out of the malaise it finds itself in. Radical changes are needed in both personnel and process. These changes cannot occur without strong and decisive leadership.

Who is going to lead the city out of this mess?

Bob Scales
Bainbridge Island City Councilman, 2004-2007

Before the boutiques, condos and Volvos, Bainbridge Island was known for producing some of the finest 500-ton schooners and work-horse steamers in the world.

There's not much left of that not-too-distant past. Blakely Harbor, once a forest of sails, riggings and masts, has only a few blunted pilings to hint at where the Hall Brothers Shipyard sprawled along the northeast shore. Winslow, where Hall ships were launched after 1900, bares even fewer markers.

You have to use a lot of imagination to picture the old shipworks now. To help get a sense of Bainbridge's saltier days, maritime historian Gary M. White is coming to Eagle Harbor Books on Sunday to present dozens of rare photos and decades of research from his new book "Hall Brothers Shipbuilders."

Read my story about White's 35-year pursuit of all things Hall brothers below.

Book a Look Into BI's Boat-Building Brothers
By Tristan Baurick

With only a glimmer of curiosity leading him, Gary M. White made a quick stop at the library to peruse a few history books on Puget Sound shipbuilders.

"I just started poking around," he said. "But I got hooked."

Curiosity quickly turned into passion, drawing him into a three-decades-long journey through 20,000 archival newspaper articles, 400 photographs and 350 hours of recorded interviews about Bainbridge Island's Hall brothers and their world-renowned shipyard.

White, a Tacoma resident, recently boiled down his 35 years' worth of research into the 127-page "Hall Brothers Shipbuilders," a slim tome you can almost fit in your back pocket.

"That wasn't easy," said White, who will read from his book and present a slide show of historical photographs at Eagle Harbor Books on Sunday. "I wanted to tell so many stories and had all this massive research. I really had to cut back."

The end result is an overview of a family business that became central to the Northwest's early industrial history. The Halls, unparalleled on the West Coast in the production of big ships, built more than 100 vessels -- from a five-masted, lumber-hauling schooner bound for Australia to fat-hulled steamers that plied the rough waters of Alaska. Their work over the course of the late 1800s birthed the "Hall model" of naval architecture.

"I can look at an old photo and spot a Hall vessel immediately," said White, who works as a model ship appraiser. "You can see the Hall model in the beauty of the sterns and the lines of the ships themselves."

Drawn to the region's seemingly limitless stands of firs, the three Massachusetts-born Halls -- Isaac, Winslow and Henry -- established their first shipworks in Port Ludlow in 1874. At the invitation of lumber baron William Renton, the Halls relocated the company to Port Blakely on Bainbridge's south end. There, the Halls spent 22 years working in symbiosis with Renton's giant lumber mill to turn out ships that worked the Pacific "triangle trade" -- Washington lumber to Australia, coal to Hawaii and sugar on the return trip to the mainland.

In 1902, the Halls moved their growing operation to Madrone, the town now named after Winslow Hall. Winslow was the middle brother who led the business side of the shipyard. The Winslow site remains, to this day, linked to its past though the state ferry maintenance yard, where a handful of modern shipwrights ply the old trade.

Not lasting long after Henry Hall's death in 1909, the company's heyday was in Blakely Harbor, where the Halls built their most infamous ship, the Hesper, White said. A fast vessel that set numerous Pacific voyage records, the Hesper is best known for the mutiny, ax murder and federal trial that dominated the front-pages of San Francisco newspapers in 1895.

White dug deep into the Hesper's story, successfully lobbying a federal judge to unseal century-old documents connected with the trial.

"Some of the crew decided to make the Hesper a pirate ship and take it all over the world," he said. "One young sailor was hanged. His fiancee waited at San Quentin for the body and took him back to Norway."

Only two pages of "Hall Brothers Shipbuilders" touches on the Hesper, but White said his mountain of Hall brothers research could fill a series of books.

"The mutiny on the Hesper is a fascinating story that I want to do an entire book on," he said. "And there's a couple more I'd like to do."

In the meantime, White hopes his book will spark some of the same curiosity in readers that drew him into decades of research.

"You don't see much that's left when you go to Blakely Harbor today," White said. "But I've read so much and seen so many pictures that, in my mind's eye, I can pretty easily picture it. The history Bainbridge has in its backyard -- or rather, its front yard -- is just marvelous."

AUTHOR APPEARANCE
Gary M. White will present photos and stories from his book "Hall Brothers Shipbuilders" at 3 p.m. Sunday at Bainbridge Island's Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way.

Bainbridge Island was recognized this week as one of 11 communities across the country to earn a "Bicycle Friendly Community" award by the League of American Bicyclists.

The award recognizes communities that have made "impressive, measurable efforts to integrate bicyclists into the community," according to the league.

"I have to say this is a huge accomplishment," said Don Willott, chair of the city's Non-Motorized Transportation Advisory Committee. "The designation is one with real meaning - it is a very competitive process,"

Communities are judged on their support of cycling in five key areas: engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement and planning.

"This is a great opportunity to celebrate our island's commitment to alternative transportation," said Mayor Darlene Kordonowy. "We're fortunate to have a cycling community which is committed not only to riding their bikes, but to educating the rest of us about the needs of bicyclists and the benefits of alternative transportation."

The award has four levels -- platinum, gold, silver and bronze. Bainbridge received recognition at the bronze level, as did Port Townsend. "This is some really good news, it is something we can build on as we work for continued improvements, and for now, it is an acknowledgment of our efforts and our potential," said Levin.

Initiated in 2003, the Bicycle Friendly Community program has given awards to 84 out of over 210 cities and counties that have applied for it.