[4] July 5, 2013
BOTHELL KENMORE
OPINION
www.bothell-reporter.com • www.kenmore-reporter.com
EDITORIAL
Smith murder has been difficult for all
T
Yes: 74.1% No: 25.9%
he Bothell/Kenmore Reporter has produced 19 stories and counting on the Susann Smith murder case. All of those stories have appeared online as soon as they were ready to be published. Many had to be combined to run in print. I have personally written 15 of those 19 stories and it never gets easier. Any case this horrific impacts all who write about it - and read about it. While reporting in Kirkland, I had to cover many uncomfortable stories. Kirkland resident Leonid Milkin was in Iraq serving our country when his neighbor Conner Schierman killed Milkin’s wife, sister-in-law and two children and burned down their home to cover up the crime. Schierman is now sitting on Washington State’s death row. The details of the case were brutal. The fact that it involved two children was difficult for anyone to talk about. It is not something from which you can detach yourself. I also covered a fatal DUI accident that has stayed with me. Kirkland resident Steve Lacey was killed and left a wife and two children behind. As a father and husband, it is difficult to imagine how that family has dealt with the aftermath. The accident was so horrific it helped to get Washington State DUI laws strengthened. Snohomish resident Patrick Rexroat is now serving time in a Washington State prison for the crime. While the details of those two stories and the Susann Smith murder have some similarities, the aftermath affects every survivor in a different way. Smith’s children are in the custody of Washington State Child Protective Services. They no longer have a mother and their father is accused of killing her. Their lives are the ones that are impacted the most other than Susann Smith in this case. Their futures
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Last issue’s poll results: “Did you celebrate the Fourth of July in Bothell or Kenmore?”
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KENMORE
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community to have the full and accurate story. The details of this case have been shocking and hard to prepare for a community newspaper. The search warrant documents were detailed and gruesome at times. As the community paper of record for both Bothell and Kenmore we have tried to not over-hype or sensationalize the events and sanitize some of the information as much as possible. But we also have the job of informing the community of what is happening, and minimizing the gruesome details can give the impression that the events weren’t so bad. We want residents to have the facts and not rumor or innuendo. We will continue to follow this case as it moves forward. We know the community wants answers as to what happened on the weekend of Feb. 12, and whether the police and prosecutor are right about the events or Alan Smith.
Kenmore Reporter, 11630 Slater Ave. N.E., Suite 8-9, Kirkland, Washington, 98034; fax 425.822.0141. Letters may be edited for style, clarity and length.
Kenmore jackhammers residents, businesses out of profits BOTHELL
Matt Phelps
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“Do you plan to vote in the Aug. 6 primary for Bothell or Kenmore City Council?”
are uncertain at best. But the Bothell murder will have lasting effects on other family members, neighbors and police. Most will never be the same. It changes a community. We have tried to cover this story from all angles. Neighbors have come to us wanting answers and help. We almost never quote individuals without attribution. But the circumstances dictated that we must get accurate information out to neighbors and the community as a whole without potentially endangering innocent people. We have taken some heat for publishing descriptions of people who gave interviews to police. We purposely did not print their names, despite the fact that the search warrant documents were public record and anyone could obtain them. But we felt it was important for the
TWO SENSE
Question of the week:
The city of Kenmore has done it again! During a recent Kenmore City Council meeting the city adopted new ordinances with no written versions of the ordinances for the audience to read. Nor were they projected on the City Hall audio/video system. With some staff explanation and no debate on the merits, they voted. Even after citizens’ comments pointed out deficiencies in what they had heard in ordinances, the five council members in attendance passed all the measures. Five to zero. More than a year ago, Councilman Allen Van Ness had requested that all new ordinances be viewed side-by-side with the old ordinance showing all the red line changes. He was ignored by Kenmore city staff. Of concern is that the new ordinance gives greater powers of eminent domain to the city with less oversight and less ability for property owners to air their grievances in court. The city wishes to be able to take property and force improvements before residents can go to court. The city would also like to have the ability to level excessive fines when residents
and businesses refuse to proceed with city-mandated “improvements.” A lack of grace time for residents and businesses to fight a mandated improvement is business as usual: business owners that will be affected by the 90 percent finished design and drawn schematics for State Route 522 have not yet seen the design work up or schematics, and have not been extended the courtesy of face-to-face meetings with the design team. At the meeting in attendance was the owner of the Tie Ho Restaurant who spoke through an interpreter that he was willing to work with the city but needed more information. If the city takes away even one parking spot, such action will have a dramatic effect on his bottom line profit. Citizens have not been asked how the renovation of SR-522 should be drawn. It is feared, and likely, this lack of communication means redevelopment will include a wall of separation between northbound traffic and businesses north of 522. I believe we want a city that cares to know what helps the residents and businesses already invested in Kenmore. We do not want more self-serving council members who grab the WSDOT funds now and keep City Hall running a year. Or two? I believe expert draft people and
planners reside here, who themselves have invested in Kenmore and understand Kenmore’s needs. These resident designers would want to take a long-term approach, and these are the experts we should be paying. Our trust in a new plan is far more than the speed of those driving through our city. We need to hire local experts who will help the businesses and residents within Kenmore thrive, not jackhammered out of their hardearned profits by city officials granting themselves greater, more powerful eminent domain ordinances.
Patrick E. O’Brien, Kenmore City Council candidate
Kenmore is careless on economic development The city of Kenmore has agreed to sell the lower parcel of Kenmore Village for a $3 million loss. The sale price is half of what we paid for the property 10 years ago. The sale demonstrates the extent to which the city never cared about economic development. Behind closed doors, the primary goal of the project was always to build a lucrative municipal administration. The city received an objective financial plan at incorporation that emphasized and reemphasized, in the executive summary, that we did not have the
revenue and could not afford to staff such a City Hall. This critical fact was never a consideration, and any responsible discussion of this issue was (and still is) taboo and met with hostility, both by city management and the Kenmore Council that follows them. If you even questioned the financial consequences of the excessive City Hall, you were labeled a bad citizen who was against downtown economic development. The opposite was actually true. The city’s ability to influence economic development depends on our ability to fund infrastructure improvements. Much of that annual funding was lost as the city’s expenses have steadily grown and consumed all of that funding with day-to-day administrative and operating costs. These costs are going to continue to grow during the next five to seven years, requiring further tax increases, as this is part of the plan. To deflect attention away from the ongoing spending increases, and the upcoming parks bond issue, the council takes excess credit for state funding of the Bothell Way/State Route 522 project.
John Hendrickson, Kenmore more story online… bothell-reporter.com