REVIEW BAINBRIDGE ISLAND
HOME GUIDE: It’s time to prepare your home for cold weather. INSIDE
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2011 | Vol. 111, No. 39 | WWW.BAINBRIDGEREVIEW.COM | 75¢
Civil Service dispute persists
HARVEST FAIR
By JESSICA HOCH Staff writer
Willie Wenzlau/Staff Photo
Youngsters gravitated to The Landslide, the popular ride made from irrigation pipe at the annual Harvest Fair Sunday. Cloudy skies and windgusts, harbingers of fall weather, didn’t deter fairgoers who came out to support Friends of the Farms. For more photos, see page A10.
The city’s Ethics Board and the City Attorney Jack Johnson issued mixed preliminary statements about the facts behind the complaints filed by Kim Hendrickson, the former Civil Service Commission secretary/ chief examiner, regarding the actions of two of the commission’s three sitting members. Hendrickson has alleged that David Hand and George McKinney met with City Manager Brenda Bauer and Johnson in violation of the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) and the Code of Ethics of the city’s Ethics Program. Neither Commissioner Robert Fernandez, who later self-reported SEE CIVIL SERVICE, A10
Main Street program could benefit Winslow Way Little known tax option may be used to fund Main Street program for Winlsow Way. By JESSICA HOCH Staff writer
Winslow Way is among an increasingly small number of cities with an active main street that serves as the heart and soul of its community. The effort to save and restore small-town main streets is challenging in a world filled with big box stores – a fight with which the island is familiar. To its credit,
the Bainbridge downtown is still dotted with mom-and-pop stores, despite the lingering construction dust and slow tax receipts that caused many business owners to scramble to keep the lights on. Also struggling to keep the doors open is the non-profit agency dedicated solely to the viability of the downtown business community. After a funding shortage forced the departure of the Bainbridge Island Downtown Association’s executive director, BIDA has quietly kept the pilot light on for a year while it waited for better times. Now that a page appears to have turned with construction nearing its end, BIDA is experiencing a resurgence of energy and a push to save the organization and its affiliation with the state’s Main
Street program before the year’s end. “Bainbridge Island is an interesting case because when the program went away, everyone realized that they had needed it most in the middle of a street reconstruction and a poor economy,” said Sarah Hansen, coordinator of the Washington Main Street Program – a branch of the Washington State Trust for Historic Preservation. “We are hoping Bainbridge gets the program back on track, and certified for 2012.” Up until 2011 Bainbridge Island was one of 11 communities in the state to earn a national accreditation through the Main Street program with other cities SEE MAIN STREET, A09
Bainbridge Island Historical Museum/Courtesy Photo
Madrone, as Winslow Way was known in 1898, has evolved to become one of Washington’s few active “main” streets.