This month, the King County executive, along with the sheriff, prosecuting attorney and judges from around the county revealed that King County is facing a budget crisis of great magnitude. This year alone, we may have to cut $20 million from the $660 million general fund. An additional deficit between $40 million and $70 million is predicted in 2009.
In this day of artificial insemination, single parenthood and adoption, women can certainly have children without men. So what do dads bring to the picture?
Many studies have shown that children do better in just about everything when they have an involved father. From better grades to higher self-esteem, dads have a positive effect on their kids all the up to adulthood.
King County’s top cop, prosecutor and judges are rightly taking a stand – albeit a natural and plainly obvious one – against proposed budget cuts in the countywide criminal-justice system.
My youngest child and only one still in school will be in ninth grade starting next fall, leaving her just four short years from high school. I’m already getting excited about the day she does the gown-and-diploma thing.
This may surprise you: King County Metro Transit is buying a fuel that is significantly more expensive than diesel, may be worse for the environment, may increase local food prices, may lead to global hunger and potentially cost King County more as a member of the Chicago Climate Exchange.
Thumbs up to the local libraries for giving a boost to their communities’ poets and the overall literary level.
On the surface, it may not seem all that significant that Friends of the Covington Library, Friends of the Black Diamond Library and the Maple Valley Library Guild jointly sponsored a poetry contest. But consider this: In an age when literature sometimes fades in the haze of technology-generated interests, validation of old-fashioned literary pursuits is more than a worthy thing. It’s essential.
The Washington State Republican convention last weekend in Spokane should have been dull and uneventful. All they had to do was approve a slate of national convention delegates to support the obvious presidential nominee, John McCain, vote for a short, concise party platform and leave town.
Instead, the tenacious Ron Paul people, who made up more than a third of the delegates, contested the McCain forces on virtually every front.
The election season is approaching and the state’s two major political parties are in a twitter.
It’s never too late to do some spring cleaning of column items:
Thumbs up to the repeat state champion tennis player from Kentwood High School, the champion long-jumper from Kentlake High and the near-champion baseball team from Kentlake.
I am a 43-year-old male with a beautiful family and am very fortunate. My children and fiance are very wonderful and supportive of me. Especially these days.
Thumbs up to state officials for taking environmental health warnings about Lake Meridian seriously and not sweeping them under some bureaucratic rug.
Spring is here and summer is one the way at the lakes and parks in our area, so inquiring minds want to know: How are you at handling your dog and your boat?
Me thinks there is a political ploy at play.
Call this a spring cleaning of column items:
Thumbs up to the organizers behind April Pools Day, an an annual, statewide activity that will be marked locally at Covington Aquatic Center today.
In an effort to stop Yarrow Bay from purchasing and developing Lake Wilderness Golf Course, the city of Maple Valley purchased the course. Now the city is looking to bail out the golf course residents again by establishing the conservation easement which would prohibit any further development – forever (March 29, Reporter, “Whose green should pay for greenery?”). And they’re asking the residents of Lake Wilderness Golf Course to help pay for it. One resident exclaimed, “I didn’t buy a golf course, [Maple Valley] did.” She’s not alone. Other golf course residents are complaining that it’s not fair.
It hurt very much for your paper to portray King County Animal Control in such a light in a political cartoon in the March 29 issue on the Opinion page. Without permission to do so or even a visit to see if it is really true, your paper made it look like we were neglecting the animals.
If you or I wanted to own a barber shop, or a gas station, or a used car lot, would taxpayer money be used to build us a place of business? Of course not. Yet, professional sports teams take it for granted that taxpayers owe them state-of-the-art business facilities.
