Flour girls | Carolyn Ossorio goes toe-to-toe with her inner baker, kids [9]
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Hospital district falls $3.3 million short of taxes to pay debt
Renton’s Steve Sholdra, left, won two state titles and Liberty’s Raymond Ha, right, won one of his own on Saturday. And that’s just the start of the impressive postseason performances for local athletes. Check out pages 12-14 for more sports coverage of swim and dive, wrestling, gymnastics and basketball.
Champs in the water Submitted
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Engineering a future Boeing engineer helps to inspire next generation who will figure things out By ADAM McFADDEN amcfadden@rentonreporer.com
Tom Bradley was an engineer from the start and now, along with Boeing, he’s doing his best to get the word out about the profession to local youth. “I was probably a born engineer and didn’t know it,” Bradley said. “I had every Erector set there was, I did all the science fairs growing up, but I didn’t know it was called engineering until I went to college.” Bradley, who lives in Fairwood, was part of Boeing’s effort to send engineers to local middle and high schools last week. About 375 volunteers from Boeing gave 226 presentations at 47 schools, hoping to reach nearly 7,000 students. Bradley has many reasons to talk up engineering as a career to students, but the most obvious is that it’s simply a good job. “I’ve never been bored,” he said. “If there are students out there who will like it, I want to encourage them because I don’t think it’s going to disappoint them.” After 40 years with Boeing, he’s also interested in bringing in the next waves of talent.
District to backfill with patient revenues from Valley Medical Center By DEAN A. RADFORD dradford@rentonreporter.com
Public Hospital District No. 1, which owns Valley Medical Center, is losing about $3.3 million in property-tax revenue this year that pays off bonds sold to build such campus buildings as the new trauma center. The hospital district will use patient revenues generated at the medical center to backfill those dollars, said Jeannine Grinnell, the hospital district’s interim superintendent. “The district will pay its outstanding bond debt this year with the pledged tax revenue, and the shortfall will be made up with patient revenue,” said Grinnell. Most of the property taxes the hospital district receives goes to pay off its bond debt, while a variety of funding sources pay for medical services, including patient payments, insurance and other sources. The hospital district had expected to collect about $20.1 million in property taxes in 2012; that figure is now $16.8 million. The day-to-day operations of Valley Medical Center are overseen by a 13-member Board of Trustees, which also approves its operating budget. The board includes the five elected commissioners of the hospital district, who oversee the district’s tax dollars. The declining tax collections also will mean fewer [ more TAX page 7 ]
Boeing engineer Tom Bradley talks to a class at Kentridge High School about the opportunities engineering and Boeing can offer as career paths. adam mcfadden, Renton Reporter “I have an emotional investment in the company and I’d like to see that it keeps going,” he said. “The cool things we work on, if I get to hand them to someone in the next generation, that’s great.” His willingness to invest in future generations of engineers comes at a critical time for Boeing and for the state. Boeing will need thousands of engineers over the next several years as current ones retire in increas-
ing numbers. To keep competitive with other aerospace centers in the country, Washington state is creating new engineering slots at Washington State University and the University of Washington to train their replacements. Growing up in Montana with a host of outdoor hobbies, Bradley started at Montana State as a geology major. But it didn’t take him long to notice who [ more engineers page 8 ]
School bond fails; board to decide what to do next By TRACEY COMPTON tcompton@rentonreporter.com
The Renton School District bond measure, “Building for a Lifetime of Learning School Construction,” has failed by two percentage points. School Board members will decide at their meeting Wednesday whether to place the bond measure before voters on the April 17 ballot. The tally has changed little in recent days as new [ more bond page 8 ]
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