Patriot Bremerton
Adventurer State Farm agent Jeff Reed never sits still for long Page 8
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2013 | Vol. 16, No. 35 www.bremertonpatriot.com | 50¢
School board candidate has history of theft By KEVAN MOORE and SERAINE PAGE
By KEVAN MOORE kmoore@soundpublishing.com
kmoore@soundpublishing and
ments, that is all that survives because it was in her ID packet,” said Ingrid Boswell, a Bellevue Police Department support specialist. “When she was arrested, she was photographed and fingerprinted, and the first page of the report was slipped into the ID packet.” A judgement and order deferring Stevens’ sentence was entered Feb. 11, 2002, in King County Superior Court and she was ordered to pay $500. Stevens made that payment Feb. 6, 2003. The Bremerton School District, which has employed Stevens in the past, has not turned over any of her personnel records
Did Bremerton Public Works Director Chal Martin veto the Bremerton City Council? That’s the question being asked this week after a conduit and four electrical boxes popped up in nearly the exact location that city councilors unanimously nixed them earlier this summer. During the city council’s June 19 meeting, council members made it abundantly clear that none of them wanted electric vehicle charging stations across from the post office as part of the $3 million Pacific Avenue project. The council also voted unanimously to “direct the mayor to execute a change order with RV Associates to remove from the contract the installation of charging stations and related infrastructure on Pacific Avenue.” Late last week, though, several residents noticed that four electric boxes were installed where the charging stations had been proposed. Martin bristled at any whiff of wrongdoing this week. “You can probably tell this frustrates me because, basically, you know, what I get out of this is that somehow I’ve got some nefarious friggin’ plan to lie to everybody about this infrastructure,” Martin said. “You know, I just have too damn many things to do to be hatching up some plot to contravene what the council wants me to do.” Martin said he believes firmly that his
See STEVENS, A13
See POWER, A13
spage@soundpublishing.com
Allegations that Bremerton school board candidate Wendy Stevens stole money from the Naval Avenue Parent Teacher Association before disappearing Sept. 26 after being questioned about the alleged embezzlement is not her first run-in with the law. Prior to moving to Bremerton, Stevens was caught on video stealing $1,000 cash from a Target store where she worked on Factoria Boulevard in Bellevue. Stevens, then going by the name of Wendy Winn, got a deferred sentence for theft in the second degree and paid a $500 fine, according to King County Superior Court records. Incomplete records from the Bellevue Police Department, which claims to excise records after six years, show that Stevens was arrested at the store at 5 p.m. March 30, 2001, and security camera footage showed her stealing $1,000 from a register. “I have no other docu-
Power boxes are installed where charging stations were voted down
Wendy Stevens
Courtesy photo
Four electrical boxes were installed recently on Pacific Avenue in nearly the exact location that electric vehicle charging stations were nixed by the city council.
Port commissioners take issue with budget increases By Leslie Kelly
lkelly@soundpublishing.com
Revenues are projected to increase about 5 percent for the Port of Bremerton next year. But expenses are expected to be up more than 22 percent. That was the preliminary report given to port commissioners Tuesday when they began the process of looking at the 2014 operating budget for the port. While the document that was presented by CFO Becky
Swanson was a draft budget, commissioners didn’t respond well to the increases in expenditures from $3.4 million this year to $3.6 in 2014. “It’s just not right,” said Larry Stokes, chairman of the port commission. “If my math is correct, we’re spending more than we’re taking in. There’s no way in good faith we can do that.” C om m i s sioner A xel Strakeljahn agreed. “Being up 5 percent in revenues while we’re up 21 or 22 percent in expenditures just
doesn’t pencil out,” he said. Commissioners spent more than 90 minutes going through the draft budget line item by line item looking for places to cut . Among the items that were reduced were the port’s contributions to the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance (KEDA) which was proposed to be $25,000. This year the port contributed $20,000 to KEDA, an organization that markets Kitsap County as a place for businesses including aerospace companies to locate.
“Just how many businesses has KEDA brought to us?,” asked Stokes. “What you’re asking for is a 25 percent increase in what we give to them. Tell me that we’re getting our money’s worth.” Port CEO Tim Thomson said the work that KEDA does is important to the success of the port’s industrial and airport properties, but that there was not a number certain of businesses that KEDA had brought to the port. “I can’t say that there are any,” Thomson said. “But the
work the (KEDA executive director) John Powers does is important to us. He’s done a good job of presenting his work in updates to the commissioners.” Ultimately, commissioners decided to keep funding KEDA at $20,000, the same level as in 2013. Commissioners also elected to fund KADA, an aerospace and defense group that is a spin-off from KEDA, at $10,000 and contribute $7,500 See PORT, A13