The Kent Chamber of Commerce appreciates the City’s interest in receiving input regarding potential funding mechanisms for transportation improvements. We have enjoyed a continuous relationship with City of Kent officials regarding transportation projects and funding. In July of 2009, after extensive meetings with City of Kent leadership, the Kent Chamber of Commerce wrote a letter offering our review of the City of Kent’s Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) and identified those projects that we believed were the highest priority of the business community. We gave priority to those projects that addressed freight mobility and congestion issues, which directly affect retail, commercial, manufacturing and industrial enterprises. We also put forth funding mechanisms such as Local Improvement Districts (LID) and Voter Approved Levies. In this recommendation we specifically warned against Impact Fees on new development for the following reasons:
I recently read the letter to the editor from Rich Wagner and strongly disagree with the claim that Senator Kauffman “is one of the few fiscal realists in the Democratic Party.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I hope that my story will inspire women to do everything they can to ensure that breast cancer is not on their lists of regrets.
This year the Kent Reporter is offering the following suggestions on some of the high-profile state initiatives on the November ballot. The overviews are the consensus of Publisher Polly Shepherd and Laura Pierce.
This election, citizens in Washington will consider Referendum 52, a $500 million bond measure to fund energy retrofits on public buildings. Voters should consider several key questions as they cast their ballots:
● Will the measure create or kill jobs?
● Will savings be greater than costs?
● Will we improve the learning environment of our schools?
● Should we ignore other education needs to fund this project?
R-52’s sponsors promise the measure will create new jobs and improve the health of schools by providing grants aimed at reducing energy costs. A closer review, however, shows R-52 is unlikely to live up to these promises, and will cost taxpayers a total of $937 million over the life of the bonds.
It’s the little things at first.
A put down.
A shove.
A household implement broken in anger.
But those things start to escalate, until a word becomes a tirade, a shove becomes a beating and the broken things have become bones.
Domestic violence is what happens when the love and the loyalty of a relationship get subverted into something pathologically wrong.
It can happen to anyone – even the people who are trained to deal with domestic abuse.
My friend, whom I will call Kim for the sake of a name in this column, is the survivor of domestic violence. She endured the verbal and physical abuse for nearly eight years, before she managed to break the cycle and walk away. She left with healed-over fractured ribs and a restraining order taken out on her partner, but at least she was able to walk away.
Do you remember this song?
“Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?”
Of course you do. Unless you have been living under a rock, sharing space with Mel Gibson, this was one of the shows of my generation and generations before and after. Now I’m afraid that after 41 years of educating youth, the head cheeses over at Sesame Street corporate have turned soft. They recently pulled a Katy Perry song for being inappropriate.
The Kent Chamber of Commerce (Kent Chamber) represents 440 businesses with over 24,000 employees. The Kent Chamber of Commerce urges you to Vote YES on Initiative 1082.
I spent part of an afternoon this week having lunch with State Sen. Margarita Prentice.
We hadn’t planned to have lunch - but by happy circumstance we found ourselves seated next to each other at a welcoming party in Kent for the new Consulate General for Mexico, Alejandro Garcia Moreno.
It was my first time meeting Prentice, who has been a state legislator for 22 years now. And while our paths seem vastly different - she was raised in a Hispanic household in California, I was raised an Irish kid in New York - there are some definite similarities.
I am a pet owner, and at times it’s a dubious honor.
I have a dog that is not unlike Tigger. She doesn’t walk – she more or less bounces everywhere. “Everywhere” includes the bed, the car, or on top of me if I’m languishing on the couch.
She’s eaten several of my shoes.
She habitually sticks her tongue in my ear and up my nose – God forbid if I open my mouth when she’s in range.
In recent weeks, some of President Obama's strongest supporters have expressed frustration with his HIV/AIDS policies. Unless the United States switches course and dramatically increases its funding for the global fight against AIDS, we could lose millions of lives and a generation of progress.
To Bill Gates @Microsoft
Dear Billy: I am writing you this letter on behalf of the thousands of Seattle Supersonics fans everywhere. We are still sick over the way that Clay Bennett rode into town, money whipped Howard Shultz, wrote another $45 million check to get out of the rest of his lease, and left town with our only franchise to ever win a world championship. I’m surprised we didn’t let him take the Space Needle too.
I realize in this era of recession it’s not always possible to fully staff a front counter.
I also realize fewer employees mean more work for those folks doing counter duty.
But when does being overworked cross the line with being helpful?
This was a question I asked myself last weekend, standing in line to return a box of cable-TV supplies to my service provider in Auburn.
As the school year begins, and the 2010/2011 budget was adopted by the Kent School Board, it is important, again, to consider Kent School District priorities.
Have we learned anything from British Petroleum’s debacle in the Gulf?
Frankly, I think we’ve learned just how much we don’t know.
And because of that, we should cease drilling in U.S. waters until there’s better science to be had.
Soon I will be taking part in another rite of passage. In less than a month, my daughter will be turning 21. I will be taking up a complaint against the Big Skipper on this one, however. Just yesterday it seems she was wondering what shoes go with grape Kool-Aid stains. Just yesterday she was fighting with me about cleaning her ears in the tub. Now she is fighting me on a new place for an earring.
Faced with yawning budget deficits, state legislators are looking for new revenue sources. Many think hiking cigarette excise taxes is the pain-free answer, but they're wrong.
I hope I’m not the only one who’s beside themselves with joy over the latest Kent City Council decision.
At long last, the ShoWare Center will have a video marquee sign. Finally we’re going to know, as we are driving down the street, what is going on in Kent’s biggest sports and entertainment venue.
Recently I took the family to the Willamette Valley part of Oregon for a family reunion. Normally family reunions give me a case of the heebee jeebees. I have never liked them up front; it always takes me at least two beers to loosen up and start talking.
A day doesn’t pass when I don’t get a political e-mail. Actually, I have to admit that some of them are incredibly clever and quite elaborate in their attempts to make me laugh, but at the same time encourage me to hate. However, this clever banter is not just creating an ever-widening rift between the left and the right; it’s creating a chasm between Americans.
