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Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
July 19, 2007     Shelton Mason County Journal
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July 19, 2007
 
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00ournai of Opinion: Stop for Coffee If you care about how growth affects Shelton and the quality of" life you'll enjoy in the future, consider attending a meeting next Thursday about Coffee Creek Estates. The proposed 275- lot subdivision has the potential to change the face of sleepy neighborhoods in the southwest corner of town and beyond. The meeting will focus on the process of developing an environmental-impact statement for the 97-acre subdivision southwest of Angleside and adjacent to Eagiewood and Grandview Heights. It's to begin at 6 p.m. at the Shelton Civic Center. Owners of the property have a perfect right to develop housing on land zoned residential. Development pressure - the need and demand for affordable housing next door to expensive Thurston and Kitsap counties- is so great these days that City Planner Jason Dose has no doubts the Coffee Creek property will be developed sometime soon if not by the existing project developer. So the question becomes how the land can be developed with the least impact on the area. An EIS, in outlining the impacts of development and the ways impacts can be mitigated, can be used as a tool by the city's hearings examiner and the city commission in making decisions about the subdivision, including requiring certain conditions for approval. The traffic impacts alone raise cause for concern, but 275 houses with 700 people in them also affect many aspects of life. Schools and parks become more crowded, stormwater pours off cleared land, air and water pollution increases, fire and police departments receive more calls for help, lines at government offices grow, waits at the emergency room are longer and so on. Make no mistake: The benefts of the development will accrue to a few and the majority will pay the costs involved - everything from taxes for new schools to the unquantifiable losses in quality of life. That's the way growth works. It doesn't pay for itself and it forces adjustments by current residents, but communities have been accepting it forever as inevitable. One of the impacts addressed by the EIS will be mounting traffic. Planners use a rule of thumb that a house generates 10 trips a day - by its occupants and by anyone serving the house such as a postal employee, a deliverer or a garbageman. That means approximately 2,750 trfps a day out of and into Coffee Creek. What streets will the 2,750 vehicles use? So far, the developer .proposes that motorists use Wyandotte Avenue, Grandview Avenue, Eaglewood Way and Eagleview Place. That brings 16th Street at the top of Angieside into the picture, as well as Turner Avenue, the two streets off the Angleside hill, Seventh Street on Angleside and downtown, Second Street toward Five Corners, where drivers train to watch tennis matches, and Arcadia Avenue. Hardly a bunch of the city's finest and safest streets, and all but one without sidewalks. The traffic would funnel by necessity. Planner Dose points out that Coffee Creek motorists would gravitate to one of only three intersections to leave town - Seventh at Railroad, Arcadia at Olympic Highway South, and Turner at First. And a lot of them would be trying to leave town because Coffee Creek is being sold as a good buy for people priced out of the Thurston County market. So they'd commute to Olympia and return home on the same Shelton streets. Dose said none of those intersections as it stands is well designed for lots of traffic. It's disturbing that the developer has dropped a proposal to build a road west out of Coffee Creek toward the freeway, which would take a lot of the pressure off existing city streets, and instead plans to use existing streets for access to the subdivision. The new road would connect with East Deegan Road, giving motorists access to Highway 101. However, when the idea was first proposed, the Washington Department of Transportation had problems with it because Deegan Road is so close to a freeway off-ramp and the left- turn lane on Shelton-Matlock Road for traffic headed south on the freeway isn't designed for more than a few cars. The developer has become concerned about the permitting process for the new road because it would cross a wetland, Dose said. The city's position has been that the developer should build the new road and enhance the wetland, he added. Shelton residents have a chance to get involved in the review process for Coffee Creek starting next Thursday, when the subdivision proposal and EIS process will be explained. Dose said draft documents will be coming out during the EIS process that will be available for public review and comment. He wants as many citizens as possible involved, because often they can point out a problem to city staffers. He's confident the city and developer can come up with a mutually beneficial plan. Your voice can affect this growth process. In Coffee Creek and other projects, there are enough homes on the drawing board to double the population of Shelton. Nobody's going to stop growth in its tracks, but citizen vigilance can ensure that the development is done carefully. -CG  Shelton-00 ]Ylason ourn eounty usps 492-800 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Shelton-Mason County Journal, P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584. Published weekly by Shelton Publishing Inc. at 227 West Cota Street, Shelton, Washington Mailing address: RO. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584 Telephone (360) 426-4412 • www.masoncounty.com Periodicals postage paid at Shelton, Washington Member of Washington Newspaper Publishers' Association SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $31.00 per year in-county address, $45.00 per year in state of Washington $55.00 per year out of state Charles Gay, editor and publisher. Newaroom: Sean Hanlon, managing editor; Steve Patch, sports editor; Jeff Green, general assignment, city government, schools, Port of Shelton; Rebecca Wells, society editor, county government; Mary Duncan, police, courts. Advertising: Stephen Gay, advertising manager; Dave Pierik and Harvey Morris, ad sales. Front office: Julie Orme, business manager; Kathy Lester, circulation; Donna Kinnaird, bookkeeper; Cricket Carter, mailroom supervisor. Composing room: Diane Riordan, supervisor; Margot Brand, Jan Kallinen, pagination; Frank Isaac, pagination, photo technician; Koleen Wood, typesetter, computer system manager; William Adams, ad builder, computer system manager; Clinton Kendall, proofreader. PtQnroom: Nick Carr, pressman; Joey Parrott, pressman's assistant.  Page 4 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, July 19, 2007 i00eaders" 00Journal: No maintenance following LID Editor, The Journal: Everette Spatz of Hillcrest hit the nail right on the head in the letter last week about using local improvement districts to improve city streets. I have lived in my home for 50 years. Between 1966 and 1969 all the neighbors (property owners) on East E Street joined in and formed an LID with the city ad- ministration. East E Street was blacktopped from Olympic High- way North to King Street, with the promise to maintain the street and keep the shoulders maintained and the edges protected, because it was too costly to put in cement sidewalks. Well, guess what? East E Street has never been taken care of. As a matter of fact the edges of the blacktop have never been taken care of. If the property owners wanted to pay the city to spread crushed rock along their part of the street, well, that's not cheap. I have tried for years to get the street department bosses to fix the cracks and holes, etc., on E Street, but no luck. But a year or two ago, the street department chip-sealed Jefferson Street from C to D that had been dirt forever. Guess what? There are four houses'on one side of the block. Then at the same time, they chip-sealed three one-block streets that got no major traffic. Where's that reasoning? Right now East E Street is being used as a major through street; it never had been before. Now we have heavy dump trucks hauling heavy loads to and from the construction on North- cliff. Who is going to pay for the repairs on E Street caused by the heavy equipment? The city? I don't have a problem with buses. Their weight isn't exces' sive and they follow the rules speed limits. Also: Our three city leaders a supervisor for the street ment. He or she starts a street pair program and what That person leaves, comes on line and has ideas and priorities. goes on hold and another goes by and the prices keep going up. I paid for E Street to be black" topped, and once is enough! Another thing I'd like answered: Why do we (the citizens) need pay for an expensive city and street supervisor; when we voted in a mayor and two city missioners? Barbara M. Mountain Misguided teaching methods Editor, The Journal: Apparently some teachers aren't quite sold on new-age "con- structivist" education methods. The newspapers report that there are problems implementing the BERC Group's Powerful Teach- ing and Learning (PTL) project in the North Mason schools, noting that after two years, 68 percent of the teachers are still not "aligned" with PTL. It turns out that the teachers might have good reason to resist the change. There is increasing evidence that the "reform" movement in education, which PTL represents, and which was initiated by the Washington State Office of Su- perintendent of Public Instruc- tion in the 1990s, is seriously short-changing our children. This is most noticeable in math and science, but it cuts across all sub- jects. For example, the concep of small groups working together to solve problems actually discour- ages individual achievement. Emphasis on the teaching of "con- cepts" rather than "facts" doesn't prepare kids for the real world, where getting the right answer is expected. Dumbing down curricu- lum to the level of slow learners doesn't challenge the more capable students and cheats them out of a quality education. And there is a lot of "feel good" emphasis on the cultural aspects of curriculum. Even in math, OSPI uses criteria such as "incor" porates multicultural information, resources and materials in all the subjects and skills taught" to judge the alignment textbooks with state curriculunl objectives. Is it any wonder that a lot parents are home-schooling or sending their children to schools? Local school boards have the power to select traditional and in many cases internationally recognized curriculum and teach" ing methods. They should stand up and do so before this misguidedi experiment completely wrecks our schools. Bob Benze Silverdale Change mayors and priorities Editor, The Journal: Gary Cronce is my man for mayor. Here is why: (1) He has a history of honesty and integrity in the construction business, always building quality homes. (2) He is a man of purpose who locks onto objectives like a pit bull and sees them through to comple- tion. (3) He is not just project-orient- ed but he is also people-oriented, always trying to help individuals by training them or trying to give them a fresh start. (4) He plans to do something about the streets, which haven't changed much since I arrived here on November 1, 1974! Is it an impossible dream to imagine just the three streets parallel to Railroad and First be upgraded: Cota, Franklin and Front? I won't even mention the broken asphalt washboards, grav- el and dirt roads inside our city limits. We lived in a Third World coun- try town with better streets than Shelton! The mayor and the towV council of that place were deter- mined to make it a budget prior- ity. The budget for street repair here is rumored to be less than 1 percent. Let's change mayors and change budget priorities. Cronce wants to do that instead of raising taxes. Footnote: Whom do we thank the one nice block on Cota Street in front of the civic center? Dennis Teague Shelton Shelton built 'barn' Editor, The Journal: In response to Mary Profitt Johnston's letter in last week's Journal about the deteriorating old red "barn" on North First Street, I'd like to mention that records at the Mason County Historical Soci- ety show that the old bowling alley building she refers to was probably built by David Shelton, our town's founding father. Records are incomplete, but it appears that Shelton built the structure at First and Railroad in 1888 for Mrs. Margaret McDon- ald's general merchandise store, known as McDonald & O'Neill. (With her son-in-law, Thomas O'Neill, she had been running the business out of "the old Masonic Hall on Front Street.") In February 1930, the building was moved some 30 feet to make room for a "super service station." Apparently, the plan was to con- vert it to apartments and some storage space, but in July 1935, renovations were under way to convert it to a bowling alley, which became known as the Shelton Rec- reation Parlor. Jan Parker, secretary Mason County Historical Society Shelton Sure, the price of the median house is only $195,000, but why would you want to live in the middle of a freeway with all that traffic whiz- zing by on both sides? 00ournai of Opinion: Stop for Coffee If you care about how growth affects Shelton and the quality of" life you'll enjoy in the future, consider attending a meeting next Thursday about Coffee Creek Estates. The proposed 275- lot subdivision has the potential to change the face of sleepy neighborhoods in the southwest corner of town and beyond. The meeting will focus on the process of developing an environmental-impact statement for the 97-acre subdivision southwest of Angleside and adjacent to Eagiewood and Grandview Heights. It's to begin at 6 p.m. at the Shelton Civic Center. Owners of the property have a perfect right to develop housing on land zoned residential. Development pressure - the need and demand for affordable housing next door to expensive Thurston and Kitsap counties- is so great these days that City Planner Jason Dose has no doubts the Coffee Creek property will be developed sometime soon if not by the existing project developer. So the question becomes how the land can be developed with the least impact on the area. An EIS, in outlining the impacts of development and the ways impacts can be mitigated, can be used as a tool by the city's hearings examiner and the city commission in making decisions about the subdivision, including requiring certain conditions for approval. The traffic impacts alone raise cause for concern, but 275 houses with 700 people in them also affect many aspects of life. Schools and parks become more crowded, stormwater pours off cleared land, air and water pollution increases, fire and police departments receive more calls for help, lines at government offices grow, waits at the emergency room are longer and so on. Make no mistake: The benefts of the development will accrue to a few and the majority will pay the costs involved - everything from taxes for new schools to the unquantifiable losses in quality of life. That's the way growth works. It doesn't pay for itself and it forces adjustments by current residents, but communities have been accepting it forever as inevitable. One of the impacts addressed by the EIS will be mounting traffic. Planners use a rule of thumb that a house generates 10 trips a day - by its occupants and by anyone serving the house such as a postal employee, a deliverer or a garbageman. That means approximately 2,750 trfps a day out of and into Coffee Creek. What streets will the 2,750 vehicles use? So far, the developer .proposes that motorists use Wyandotte Avenue, Grandview Avenue, Eaglewood Way and Eagleview Place. That brings 16th Street at the top of Angieside into the picture, as well as Turner Avenue, the two streets off the Angleside hill, Seventh Street on Angleside and downtown, Second Street toward Five Corners, where drivers train to watch tennis matches, and Arcadia Avenue. Hardly a bunch of the city's finest and safest streets, and all but one without sidewalks. The traffic would funnel by necessity. Planner Dose points out that Coffee Creek motorists would gravitate to one of only three intersections to leave town - Seventh at Railroad, Arcadia at Olympic Highway South, and Turner at First. And a lot of them would be trying to leave town because Coffee Creek is being sold as a good buy for people priced out of the Thurston County market. So they'd commute to Olympia and return home on the same Shelton streets. Dose said none of those intersections as it stands is well designed for lots of traffic. It's disturbing that the developer has dropped a proposal to build a road west out of Coffee Creek toward the freeway, which would take a lot of the pressure off existing city streets, and instead plans to use existing streets for access to the subdivision. The new road would connect with East Deegan Road, giving motorists access to Highway 101. However, when the idea was first proposed, the Washington Department of Transportation had problems with it because Deegan Road is so close to a freeway off-ramp and the left- turn lane on Shelton-Matlock Road for traffic headed south on the freeway isn't designed for more than a few cars. The developer has become concerned about the permitting process for the new road because it would cross a wetland, Dose said. The city's position has been that the developer should build the new road and enhance the wetland, he added. Shelton residents have a chance to get involved in the review process for Coffee Creek starting next Thursday, when the subdivision proposal and EIS process will be explained. Dose said draft documents will be coming out during the EIS process that will be available for public review and comment. He wants as many citizens as possible involved, because often they can point out a problem to city staffers. He's confident the city and developer can come up with a mutually beneficial plan. Your voice can affect this growth process. In Coffee Creek and other projects, there are enough homes on the drawing board to double the population of Shelton. Nobody's going to stop growth in its tracks, but citizen vigilance can ensure that the development is done carefully. -CG  Shelton-00 ]Ylason ourn eounty usps 492-800 POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Shelton-Mason County Journal, P.O. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584. Published weekly by Shelton Publishing Inc. at 227 West Cota Street, Shelton, Washington Mailing address: RO. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584 Telephone (360) 426-4412 • www.masoncounty.com Periodicals postage paid at Shelton, Washington Member of Washington Newspaper Publishers' Association SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $31.00 per year in-county address, $45.00 per year in state of Washington $55.00 per year out of state Charles Gay, editor and publisher. Newaroom: Sean Hanlon, managing editor; Steve Patch, sports editor; Jeff Green, general assignment, city government, schools, Port of Shelton; Rebecca Wells, society editor, county government; Mary Duncan, police, courts. Advertising: Stephen Gay, advertising manager; Dave Pierik and Harvey Morris, ad sales. Front office: Julie Orme, business manager; Kathy Lester, circulation; Donna Kinnaird, bookkeeper; Cricket Carter, mailroom supervisor. Composing room: Diane Riordan, supervisor; Margot Brand, Jan Kallinen, pagination; Frank Isaac, pagination, photo technician; Koleen Wood, typesetter, computer system manager; William Adams, ad builder, computer system manager; Clinton Kendall, proofreader. PtQnroom: Nick Carr, pressman; Joey Parrott, pressman's assistant.  Page 4 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, July 19, 2007 i00eaders" 00Journal: No maintenance following LID Editor, The Journal: Everette Spatz of Hillcrest hit the nail right on the head in the letter last week about using local improvement districts to improve city streets. I have lived in my home for 50 years. Between 1966 and 1969 all the neighbors (property owners) on East E Street joined in and formed an LID with the city ad- ministration. East E Street was blacktopped from Olympic High- way North to King Street, with the promise to maintain the street and keep the shoulders maintained and the edges protected, because it was too costly to put in cement sidewalks. Well, guess what? East E Street has never been taken care of. As a matter of fact the edges of the blacktop have never been taken care of. If the property owners wanted to pay the city to spread crushed rock along their part of the street, well, that's not cheap. I have tried for years to get the street department bosses to fix the cracks and holes, etc., on E Street, but no luck. But a year or two ago, the street department chip-sealed Jefferson Street from C to D that had been dirt forever. Guess what? There are four houses'on one side of the block. Then at the same time, they chip-sealed three one-block streets that got no major traffic. Where's that reasoning? Right now East E Street is being used as a major through street; it never had been before. Now we have heavy dump trucks hauling heavy loads to and from the construction on North- cliff. Who is going to pay for the repairs on E Street caused by the heavy equipment? The city? I don't have a problem with buses. Their weight isn't exces' sive and they follow the rules speed limits. Also: Our three city leaders a supervisor for the street ment. He or she starts a street pair program and what That person leaves, comes on line and has ideas and priorities. goes on hold and another goes by and the prices keep going up. I paid for E Street to be black" topped, and once is enough! Another thing I'd like answered: Why do we (the citizens) need pay for an expensive city and street supervisor; when we voted in a mayor and two city missioners? Barbara M. Mountain Misguided teaching methods Editor, The Journal: Apparently some teachers aren't quite sold on new-age "con- structivist" education methods. The newspapers report that there are problems implementing the BERC Group's Powerful Teach- ing and Learning (PTL) project in the North Mason schools, noting that after two years, 68 percent of the teachers are still not "aligned" with PTL. It turns out that the teachers might have good reason to resist the change. There is increasing evidence that the "reform" movement in education, which PTL represents, and which was initiated by the Washington State Office of Su- perintendent of Public Instruc- tion in the 1990s, is seriously short-changing our children. This is most noticeable in math and science, but it cuts across all sub- jects. For example, the concep of small groups working together to solve problems actually discour- ages individual achievement. Emphasis on the teaching of "con- cepts" rather than "facts" doesn't prepare kids for the real world, where getting the right answer is expected. Dumbing down curricu- lum to the level of slow learners doesn't challenge the more capable students and cheats them out of a quality education. And there is a lot of "feel good" emphasis on the cultural aspects of curriculum. Even in math, OSPI uses criteria such as "incor" porates multicultural information, resources and materials in all the subjects and skills taught" to judge the alignment textbooks with state curriculunl objectives. Is it any wonder that a lot parents are home-schooling or sending their children to schools? Local school boards have the power to select traditional and in many cases internationally recognized curriculum and teach" ing methods. They should stand up and do so before this misguidedi experiment completely wrecks our schools. Bob Benze Silverdale Change mayors and priorities Editor, The Journal: Gary Cronce is my man for mayor. Here is why: (1) He has a history of honesty and integrity in the construction business, always building quality homes. (2) He is a man of purpose who locks onto objectives like a pit bull and sees them through to comple- tion. (3) He is not just project-orient- ed but he is also people-oriented, always trying to help individuals by training them or trying to give them a fresh start. (4) He plans to do something about the streets, which haven't changed much since I arrived here on November 1, 1974! Is it an impossible dream to imagine just the three streets parallel to Railroad and First be upgraded: Cota, Franklin and Front? I won't even mention the broken asphalt washboards, grav- el and dirt roads inside our city limits. We lived in a Third World coun- try town with better streets than Shelton! The mayor and the towV council of that place were deter- mined to make it a budget prior- ity. The budget for street repair here is rumored to be less than 1 percent. Let's change mayors and change budget priorities. Cronce wants to do that instead of raising taxes. Footnote: Whom do we thank the one nice block on Cota Street in front of the civic center? Dennis Teague Shelton Shelton built 'barn' Editor, The Journal: In response to Mary Profitt Johnston's letter in last week's Journal about the deteriorating old red "barn" on North First Street, I'd like to mention that records at the Mason County Historical Soci- ety show that the old bowling alley building she refers to was probably built by David Shelton, our town's founding father. Records are incomplete, but it appears that Shelton built the structure at First and Railroad in 1888 for Mrs. Margaret McDon- ald's general merchandise store, known as McDonald & O'Neill. (With her son-in-law, Thomas O'Neill, she had been running the business out of "the old Masonic Hall on Front Street.") In February 1930, the building was moved some 30 feet to make room for a "super service station." Apparently, the plan was to con- vert it to apartments and some storage space, but in July 1935, renovations were under way to convert it to a bowling alley, which became known as the Shelton Rec- reation Parlor. Jan Parker, secretary Mason County Historical Society Shelton Sure, the price of the median house is only $195,000, but why would you want to live in the middle of a freeway with all that traffic whiz- zing by on both sides?