INSIDE Callan leaves his mark on Manchester school A9
SPORTS Cunningham hoping for big-league experience A32
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INDEPENDENT PORT ORCHARD
FRIDAY, JULY 4, 2014 ✮ VOL. 123, NO. 23 ✮ WWW.PORTORCHARDINDEPENDENT.COM ✮ 50¢
Commissioners accept $958,000 bid for replacing Harper Pier
FATHOMS O’ FUN FESTIVAL
School has been plagued with leaks for years
By DANNIE OLIVEAUX Editor
Port of Bremerton commissioners unanimously approved the bid from a Texas-based company for the Harper Pier Replacement Project during a 10-minute meeting. At the June 30 meeting, the board accepted Orion Marine Group Inc.’s bid of $958,000 for the project. Orion, which has been in business for more than 80 years, is headquartered in Houston with a Pacific Region office in Tacoma. The port has allocated $1.4 million in the 2014 budget, which includes $500,000 from the Aquatic Lands Enhancement Account (ALEA) of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, $776,000 in state funding and $131,300 from the port. Work on the pier is scheduled to begin in September with a Jan. 15 completion date, according to Fred Salibury, director of Airport and Industrial Operations. The port received five sealed bids on June 25. Other bids came from American ($1 million), Quigg ($1.167 million), Redside ($1.156 million) SEE PIER, A31
Kitsap County not among the hardest places to live in U.S. Staff report
An interactive map from the New York Times shows that Kitsap County is in the top one-fifth of more than 3,000 counties in the U.S. for easiest places to live. According to the Times, rank is based on six factors: education (percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree), median household income, unemployment rate, life expectancy and obesity. SEE KITSAP, A31
Work underway to replace Sidney Glen’s tile roof By CHRIS CHANCELLOR Senior Reporter
See Slide Show online Fathoms Queen Devenn Miller, top photo, contemplates whether or not to kiss the winner of the snake race held June 28 downtown at the Kitsap Bank drivein. A young boys sits on his mother’s shoulder to watch Saturday’s parade, which rolled through downtown Port Orchard on Bay Street. Dannie Oliveaux/ Staff Photos
South Kitsap’s Source for News & Information Since 1890
The buckets that line the rafters at Sidney Glen Elementary School soon will be cleared. That is because work began Monday to replace the school’s leaky roof. “That’s a project we’ve needed to do for a long time,” said Tom O’Brien, director of facilities and operations for the South Kitsap School District. “It was not uncommon to have very, very large leaks coming through the ceiling tiles into some of the offices along the main hallway. One of those was the principal’s office. There were days when he really couldn’t work in there.” SKSD is not the only district in the region to have issues with tile roofs. Bremerton High School is scheduled to put on a new roof next year and O’Brien said a Shelton school also is in the process of replacing one. O’Brien said there are a variety of reasons behind Sidney Glen’s issues, including tile not being “the right roof for this community and area.” But O’Brien, who noted that Hidden Creek and Mullenix Ridge elementary schools still has a tile roof, said there were other reasons behind the problems at Sidney Glen. “I think there were a variety of issues, probably first and foremost was the installation of the product,” he said. “We feel, anyway, it wasn’t lapped properly, which meant we had courses of tile that go across and they basically overlap each other.” O’Brien said that led to rain finding its way through gaps, particularly on windy days. He said there was a “felt system” that was designed to handle rain that penetrated through the roof, but that system became overwhelmed. “What we’ve found is that it has just deteriorated over the years to the point where that was no long water tight,” O’Brien said. SKSD now is in position to replace the roof, O’Brien said, because of revenue generated from the maintenance-and-operations levy passed last year. He said the project at Sidney Glen is much more extensive than the 2009 roof replacement at Orchard Heights Elementary School. O’Brien said the most significant issue at that school was replacing sheetrock with plywood under the roof there. At Sidney Glen, which is 54,378 square feet and opened in 1991, SEE ROOF, A31