RECORD YEAR 2011 SOUTH WHIDBEY
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2011 | Vol. 87, No. 105 | WWW.SOUTHWHIDBEYRECORD.COM | 75¢
THE
IN REVIEW
It
was a year where what was old — an unsolved Christmastime murder, unresolved controversies at Langley City Hall, lingering lawsuits — was new again. On the dawn of a new year, the Record looks back at the news that made headlines in 2011.
Brian Kelly / Record file
ABOVE: Accused murderer Peggy Sue Thomas listens to her attorney, Craig Platt, after her bail-release hearing in September. BELOW: Sommer Albertsen surveys flooding damage to her family’s cabin in Maxwelton in March.
INSIDE: Southern exposure, Community, A8
Students gather to remember Zippy Leonard BY BEN WATANABE South Whidbey Record
LANGLEY — There, front and center in Pam Muncey’s classroom, was Tobiah “Zippy” Leonard’s empty desk. On the desktop stood her framed school picture, a lit candle and a vase of lilies, white daisies and green button flowers. Zippy, a fourth-grader at South Whidbey Elementary School, died Sunday afternoon when a tree fell on her family’s Ford Explorer. On Tuesday, her classmates and their families gathered together in grief in Room 208 at the school.
Behind her desk, three pictures were on display of Zippy hard at work in Muncey’s class. Christmas, holiday and New Year’s greetings scrawled in red, yellow and blue chalk covered the chalk board: “2012,” “Merry Christmas” and “school’s out.” Eighteen of Zippy’s 27 classmates and their parents gathered in Muncey’s room to talk about their classmate. Three of the district’s counselors, including two employed by SWES, were there to help students and parents work through the SEE STUDENTS, A6
Port OKs lease at park for cell tower BY BRIAN KELLY South Whidbey Record
January
G
ov. Christine Gregoire announced a plan to form a regional ferry district that would raise more money for the ferry system through a new government entity that could raise taxes in the nine counties served by Washington State Ferries. Gregoire floated the idea as the solution to the ferry system’s continuing budget woes, but the proposal was immediately met with a bipartisan iceberg. Local lawmakers and others were chilly to the idea, to say the least. “This just creates another layer of government,” said Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, chairwoman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “We already have too much government in this state.”
A
round-the-clock emergency pumping in the upper Glendale Creek area near Clinton helped spare Glendale Beach from the threat of flooding. The water levels on both sides of private Frog Water Road, which had increased to more than 32 million gallons this month because of a collapsed culvert, dropped more than two feet since county public works crews began pumping Jan. 5. County officials said they were worried water surging over the road would have overwhelmed two beaver dams downstream, which could have caused another flooding event for the tiny beach community of Glendale.
O
rganizers of the Whidbey Island Mudder said they would take the year off while trying to find a new location for the off-road bicycle race . Founder Robert Frey said the
Mudder, a South End fixture for 11 years, was left high and dry after its last race this past spring when the private property it had been using became slated for development. Frey said he hoped to move the event to the nearby Trustland Trails.
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onsultants told South Whidbey school officials they couldn’t meet their fall 2012 construction deadline for closing Langley Middle School and moving students to a combined campus with South Whidbey High School on Maxwelton Road, and said they should give up on asking voters right away for more money to pay for the idea. The advice followed the failure of a $25 million bond measure in November 2010 that would have helped pay for the consolidation effort. SEE YEAR, A2
FREELAND — Commissioners for the Port of South Whidbey unanimously approved an agreement with AT&T at a special meeting Wednesday and will lease part of the port’s park property at Possession Point so the company can put up a 140-foot-tall cell tower. Commissioners voted 3-0 to approve the 26-page, fiveyear agreement at the close of a seven-minute meeting where public comment was not allowed. Commissioners immediately adjourned the meeting after the vote, though officials did stay for a few more minutes as neighbors to the controversial cell tower blasted the board’s
decision. “I think what you’re doing is wrong,” Clyde Monma told port officials. “And you should be ashamed of yourselves, frankly,” he added. Monma, a longtime critic of the cell tower, owns a home next to the park property where the cell tower will be built adjacent to the Dorothy Cleveland Trail. He promised commissioners after the meeting he would continue to fight the proposal. Monma had previously offered the port $150,000 for the land so the cell tower wouldn’t be built. The port rejected the offer and later pulled the property off the market. SEE PORT, A6