Friday, August 2, 2013
In touting her record, Lent noted that eight new restaurants have opened in the city, Wynco is doing business in West Bremerton, the SeeFilm Cinema is a popular destination and a parking garage with 271 slots is nearby with 71 unit apartments in the works above them. She also said she is in the midst of conversations with Bartell’s to open a location in Bremerton. Lent said that negative headlines about drugs and other issues in the city can make it hard to convince businesses to come to town, but she works hard to promote Bremerton as a friendly, beautiful city.
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ing people and they said it’s coming, it’s coming, but it never got turned back on. Once they did get the repairs made to the line, it just sat there for another two to three weeks waiting for Puget Sound Energy to hook it up.” As a result of all the delays and the dead grass, the field had to be reseeded. The 500 pounds of seed cost about $750 and it chewed up a couple hundred dollars worth of labor, Cressman said. In addition, the field is watered four times a day for about one hour each session. Cressman said he wasn’t sure what the costs are for all of that water, but noted that the field would typically only be watered once a day. While the seed is still taking root, no activity can occur on the field. That means that the Warren Avenue Pee Wee organization, one of the oldest of its kind in the state, cannot hold August practice sessions on their home field. Parks Department Director Wyn Birkenthal said this week that the field should be ready for Pee Wee games in September. “I think it will be ready by game time,” he said. “We’re paying a lot of attention to it.” Bremerton Managing Eng i neer Gu n na r Fridriksson said this week that the delay was the result of working with Century Link, Puget Sound Energy
Best said he has worked with business people, including a pair of downtown restaurant owners, to navigate difficult permitting issues. He had especially strong words for the city’s Department of C o m mu n i t y Development, which he has taken to calling the “Department of Community NonDevelopment.” “They have done nothing to help us,” he said of the department. “They’ve hindered progress in a lot of ways, and it’s one of the areas I’m gonna look at as mayor. How can we have them be more customer friendly?” While Best highlighted his “Cut the Fat Campaign” a couple of years ago and his efforts to save city workers’ jobs during a contentious budget season, Lent noted
that she has closed a $4 million budget shortfall in her first term and was the first one at city hall to take a five percent pay cut and spearheaded citywide furloughs. Both candidates also weighed in on the issue of drug activity and hypodermic needles littering the city. Best said he has always had to be careful while working on city park cleanup projects and noted that there are only ten year-round parks employees to take care of “38 parks and countless right-of-ways” that are “all littered with needles.” He said the city should look at the possibility of zoning “one in, one out” needle exchanges for drug users “Right now there’s no incentive, so they just dump their needles,” he
said. Lent said that all park employees are trained on how to handle needles when they come across them and she has worked with the health district and others to educate business owners and residents about needle drop boxes for drug users. “We don’t want you to pick them up,” she said. “We are working on a program that is really going to come through loud and clear in the next few weeks.” Lent, who was elected mayor four years ago and previously served on the county commission and worked in the travel industry, and Best, new to politics, who served in the Navy during the Gulf War, was a New York City fireman and has owned several business, painted very different pictures for
voters. Lent touted her bona fides as a politician and Best emphasized the fact that he isn’t a politician. Best said he would always give people honest answers, “not the politically correct answer.” “You were never gonna hear anything from our mayor up until May 17, 25 minutes prior to the deadline when I announced my candidacy and gave you an option,” Best said. “I mean business. This is not a stunt that I’m pulling here. I really want to be your next mayor of the City of Bremerton and I ask for your vote. I believe in Bremerton. We can do better and we will do better working together.” Lent, though, took a different tack in her appeal to voters. “You have to have
some political savvy to be an elected official in today’s world,” she said. “There are just certain things that you have to be able to negotiate, that you have to often times compromise. You need to know not just where the questions are coming from, but be detailed in your answers. You have to work with people inside city government in order to know what your needs are.” Lent highlighted her open-door policy and said the city is “not there to put up roadblocks that will hamper your growth A CUT ABOVE or the growth of the City of Bremerton.” “I am proud to be the mayor and I am proud to see it 360-479-4414 move forward,” she added. “We Ave are S. visionar450 National • Bremerton ies and we are moving in www.KitsapLumber.com the right direction.”
and Comcast to get work done. “A lot of folks think you can just move a pole, but there can be three to five utilities and everybody’s gotta move their stuff,” Fridriksson said, noting that working with different crews and dispatchers can be difficult, especially when outages or other critical incidents occur. “Of course, to get residences on line, crews will go to that and get it restored, which is totally understandable,” he said. Birkenthal initially refused Tuesday to give The Patriot copies of emails between his department and public works documenting the delays. “I’m not in the business of making staff look back
to find things that might make other staff look bad,” Birkenthal said. “I’m trying to move forward. I don’t think smearing public works through those communications is a good thing to do for anybody.” Birkenthal, later that day, made some of the emails available for pickup at the parks department headquarters on Lebo Boulevard. Public Works Director Chal Martin was out of the office this week and could not be reached for comment. It’s not clear if his department will be on the hook for the costs to reseed and restore the ball field. It’s also not clear if public works will pay the tab for a three-inch water line damaged a couple of weeks ago while crews were removing
a damaged light pole in the area on South Charleston Boulevard. Cressman said parks employees happened to be driving by when a public works crew ran over an irrigation valve box and busted
it. He said that work cost about $100 in parts and a couple hundred dollars in labor. When asked if parks employees have had any other issues lately with public works, Cressman replied,
“Not lately. Hopefully they 1x6-6’ leave us alone.”
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