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Snow hammers Arlington BY KIRK BOXLEITNER kboxleitner@marysvilleglobe.com
SPORTS: Eagles overpower Bruins for 61-23 win. Page 8
Kirk Boxleitner/Staff Photo
Carrie Cassaday, senior water service specialist for the city of Arlington, left, joins Gus Tararan, senior water distribution specialist for the city, in shoveling snow out of the gutters of Olympic Avenue on Jan. 20.
SPORTS: Van Loo garners soccer honors. Page 8
tion the folks who might be in wheelchairs.” Arlington Assistant City Administrator Kristin Banfield explained that the city is still determining the impact to its budget of dealing with the snowstorm, but she was able to report that more than 400 staff hours were directly connected to the city’s snow response. “Our city staff coordinated their 12-hour shifts to include their normal eighthour workdays, so we were able to keep the number of overtime hours to a minimum,” Banfield said. “Right now, we’re estimating about 125 hours of overtime for the storm and the cleanup.” From Saturday, Jan. 14, through Friday, Jan. 20, city street crews spread approximately 800 tons of sand-andsalt mixture over a total of approximately 2,500 lanemiles with their three trucks, SEE SNOW, PAGE 2
Many see need for drug take-back program
INDEX
BY KIRK BOXLEITNER kboxleitner@marysvilleglobe.com
CLASSIFIED ADS 12-14 LEGAL NOTICES
7
OBITUARIES
6
OPINION
4
SPORTS
8-9
WORSHIP
11
Vol. 123, No. 28
MARYSVILLE — The three-day weekend for Martin Luther King Jr. Day turned into a full week’s worth of snow-days for many Arlington residents, but even as the snow finally stopped falling and started melting on Friday, Jan. 20, there were still veritable mountains of cold, grey, thick slush left behind on the streets and sidewalks of downtown Arlington. Gus Tararan, senior water distribution specialist for the city of Arlington, joined Carrie Cassaday, senior water service specialist for the city, in shoveling snow out of the gutters of Olympic Avenue that afternoon, before Tararan hopped up into the driver’s seat of a backhoe to plow the remaining mounds of slush into piles half as high as the cars parked curbside. “I usually deal mostly with water meters, but with all the
snow covering them, I haven’t been able to get to them,” Cassaday said. “It’s been a few years since I was pulled off my regular duties to help clean up a heavy snowfall like this.” Even after Tararan’s backhoe had removed most of the stubbornly unmelted snow from the streets, Arlington residents like Marv Jackson were still faced with the task of making their portions of the sidewalk accessible to pedestrians. Marv is the husband of Arlington American Legion Lounge Manager Debbie Jackson, so he took that afternoon to shovel the stretch of the block around the Legion Lounge’s front entrance. “This stuff might stay here for two or three days otherwise,” Jackson said, as he hefted heavy shovelfuls of relatively white snow off the concrete. “We need to make sure it’s safe out here for people to walk on, not to men-
OLYMPIA — Snohomish County could serve as the model for a proposed drug take-back program designed to save lives statewide, which is why Snohomish County Sheriff John Lovick is among those urging citizens to contact their state Legislators to voice their support for it. “When I was in the state Legislature, we were told never to say that a bill was a ‘no-brainer,’” Lovick said. “But this proposed program should be a no-brainer.” Although Snohomish County has taken part in national drug
take-back days in the past, no permanent statewide, state-funded drug take-back program exists for the sorts of controlled substances that Dr. Gary Goldbaum, health officer with the Snohomish Health District, cited as responsible for a significant percentage of the deaths from unintended poisoning in Snohomish County. Goldbaum also reported that deaths due to unintentional poisoning have exceeded the deaths due to motor vehicle accidents in Snohomish County, and across the nation. “These aren’t suicides, and while people do overdose on ille-
gal drugs, most of these are prescription drugs,” Goldbaum said. “Children have access to them at home. Well-meaning healthcare providers prescribe more than people need, and it sits in their medicine cabinets, unused.” Goldbaum acknowledged that people might have received mixed messages on how to dispose of old drugs, with advice ranging from flushing it down the toilet to mixing it with coffee grounds in solid waste, but he asserted that incineration of such drugs is the only guaranteed way to avoid the risk of SEE DRUGS, PAGE 2
Snohomish County Sheriff John Lovick