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LOCAL | Tahoma Junior High students win video contest [page 3]
DUAL DOMINANCE | Tahoma dismantled WEBSITE | Check the website for breaking Kentlake and Kent-Meridian in a double news stories and weather updates. FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 dual meet Jan. 4 [13] maplevalleyreporter.com or covingtonreporter.com
A DIVISION OF SOUND PUBLISHING
Mission expands for regional coalition
Community facilities district rescinded
BY KRIS HILL
BY DENNIS BOX
khill@maplevalleyreporter.com
dbox@maplevalleyreporter.com
If necessity is the mother of invention then the current economy may well be the catalyst for creative problem solving when it comes to the area’s transportation woes. For the past three years Covington, Maple Valley and Black Diamond have been working together on a commuter rail concept that would use diesel multiple units, or DMUs, on existing Burlington Northern Santa Fe lines to shuttle commuters from here to Auburn. But, as the economy has taken its toll on the checkbooks of government at all levels, leaders from the cities have realized there needed to be a shift in focus. After studying the issue, officials said, they realized the price tag for a long term commuter rail plan as they envisioned would cost tens of millions of dollars the cities don’t yet have. So, now they are pulling back to
The first community facilities district in the state received the thumbs up from one Black Diamond City Council and the thumbs down from the new council Jan. 5. At a Dec. 27 special meeting, the last act of the 2011 City Council was to pass a resolution authorizing the formation a community facilities district, a special taxing district, to complete 10 projects associated with the YarrowBay’s master planned development The Villages. The Kirkland developer is also planning to build a second MPD in the city, Lawson Hills. The first vote was 4-1 with council members Bill Boston, William Saas, Leih Mulvihill and Kristine Hanson voting yes and Craig Goodwin voting no. With the dawn of a new year and three new members in the seats at the dais, the council moved to rescind the resolution
Playing Your Heart Out
Jeffrey Lee, a Kentwood High senior, listens as judge Jennifer Bowman offers him feedback during the Green River Music Region Piano Competition Jan. 7 at Kentlake High. DENNIS BOX, The Reporter To view a slide show go to www.maplevalleyreporter.com and to buy photos go to the Web site and click on the photo reprints tab.
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Rich Young takes his final bow at Tahoma BY TJ MARTINELL tmartinell@maplevalleyreporter.com
Rich Young decided to take his final bow after 33 years of directing theater productions at Tahoma High. In November, he submitted his resignation as drama director to the school, after the department had wrapped up the production of “Much Ado About Will.” “I’m getting old,” he said. “It was just time.” Young, however, will continue to teach at the school. “We need someone with more energy,” he said. With more than three decades at the school, Young has
Your Neighborhood Veterinarian
seen its student population change and transform, as well as the venues for the school’s theater productions. When he first arrived in 1979 after four years as a Russian linguist in the Air Force, the region was sparsely populated with farming families. “It was still pretty rural,” he said. This became evident to him when he put on the school’s first musical, “South Pacific,” in 1980. When the cast was rehearsing the song “I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair,” Young recalled, “A girl came up to Rich Young me and said, ‘Why did you take the song out of a commercial?’” The commercial she was referring to was for a Clairol hair product which used samples of the song. “I realized how rural it was, how little the students knew of live theater,” he said.
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Some things, however, never changed as the years went by. Tahoma still does not have a theater or performing arts center. “South Pacific” was performed in the gymnasium, while plays were put on in the student lounge, where a sunken area allowed them to perform. In 1981, when he put on “Brigadoon,” the school built its multipurpose room, where the school plays have been performed since. “We had very minimal sets (in the lounge),” he recalled. “Virtually no set at all in most cases. We couldn’t have any background.” The first play Young put on was “Bad Seed,” a story about a child serial killer based on a 1954 novel by William March and the subsequent Broadway adaptation. “Because it was a shocking ending it went quite well,”
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Covington Animal Hospital 27045 174th Pl. SE (behind Jiffy Lube, adjacent to WalMart) r www.vcacovington.com
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