PATRIOT BREMERTON
IN THIS EDITION Veterans Life and the Fall Home Guide
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2014 | Vol. 17, No. 32 | WWW.BREMERTONPATRIOT.COM | 50¢
IN THE PATRIOT
Ferry wasn’t actually too full BY KEVAN MOORE KMOORE@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM
IN THE YARD: PSNS & IMF gets top safety recognition — Page 12
BUSINESS Design firm is back downtown — Page 8
An internal Washington State Ferries investigation into an August 15 sailing of the Cathlamet from Bremerton to Seattle, which was called back in order to unload 484 passengers, reveals that the boat wasn’t actually over capacity. Todd Dowler, a WSF labor relations manager, was tasked with investigating the incident on August 25 by WSDOT Deputy Secretary Cam Gilmour. A Sept. 11 memo by Dowler, citing interviews with WSF employees, other witnesses and video surveillance, explains that the Cathlamet was not overloaded and there were approximately 1,073 passengers onboard when the ferry sailed from Bremerton at 4:23 p.m. Just over four minutes later, though, the boat had returned to the dock and 484 passengers were unloaded, with assistance from the Washington State Patrol. The boat finally left for Seattle just seconds shy of 5 p.m. The Aug. 15 foul-up came at a particularly bad time. Hempfest got underway in Seattle that day at noon and a Seahawks game kicked off that night at 7 p.m. Passengers returning from Seattle that night got free rides home, but the incident added fodder to an ongoing series of WSF blunders this summer and fall. Those missteps include a power failure on the Tacoma that left it disabled just off Bainbridge Island run, a Labor Day fuel spill in Kingston, suspension of the agency’s operations director for disrespect-
Street to be re-named after Dr. King BY KEVAN MOORE KMOORE@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM
es indicate the number of passengers waiting to board the 4:20 p.m sailing were about the same as the number of passengers that waited to board the 3 p.m. sailing,” Dowler wrote. “The 3 p.m. sailing was at 86 percent capacity (1,033 passengers onboard).” A ferry worker who regularly commutes between Bremerton and Seattle told Dowler that she walked off the vessel and saw the crowd waiting to board. She described the crowd as being a “fairly decent load, but seemed very
The Bremerton City Council voted unanimously last week in favor of re-naming Seventh Street, between Warren and Pacific Avenues, to “Dr ML King Way.” The abbreviation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was made in order to fit on new street signs. Last week’s vote by the council comes more than a year after a group of supporters approached the city requesting that the street honor Dr. King, especially because of its proximity to Opal Robertson Youth and Teen Center, New Life Community Development, the 100-year-old Ebenezer AME Church, the YWCA and the future home of the Marvin Williams Community Center. Bremerton native Jules Shepherd Sampson, who has lived in the city since her birth in 1980, was one of several residents to support the name change on Seventh.
SEE WSF, A10
SEE MLK, A10
Kevan Moore/staff photo
Hundreds of passengers were kicked off the Cathlamet on August 15 and had to wait for the next sailing. ing Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson and a less-than-smooth hiring process for a new ferries director. The maximum number of passengers that may be transported aboard the Cathlamet and the Sealth, the other boat being used on Aug. 15, is 1,200 people per a Certificate of Inspection from the United States Coast Guard. According to Dowler’s investigation, witnesses and ferries workers said nothing seemed amiss on the day of the incident. “Statements from multiple witness-
Kitsap schools discuss the McCleary decision BY RICHARD D. OXLEY
ENVIRONMENT DNR will take out toxic pilings here in Kitsap
ROXLEY@CENTRALKITSAPREPORTER.COM
— Page 11
OPINION Washington State will lead on gun control — Page 4
Richard D. Oxley/staff photo
Tom Ahearne speaks to a crowd at Bremerton High School. He was lead counsel in the McCleary case against the state.
It wasn’t just about the headlines that Washington education has been making in the courts, it was also an honest, frank discussion about the state of Kitsap’s schools, and the battle to fund them. A crowd of nearly 50 people gathered at the Bremerton High School performance center on Sept. 17 to hear an overview of Washington Supreme Court developments — particularly the McCleary decision — which affects funding for all state K-12
public schools. The event, hosted by the Kitsap League of Women Voters featured Tom Ahearne with the law firm Foster Pepper. Ahearne was lead counsel in the case against the state. It was also an opportunity to hear from Kitsap’s five school district superintendents and discuss the challenges each district faces. “This is the good, the bad and the ugly about this process,” said Dr. Aaron Leavell, superintendent of the Bremerton School District. “In Bremerton, we saw an increase of $45 per student heading into this school year,” Leavell
said as an example. “It’s a total of $225,000. It is wonderful and we appreciate it, but it’s not enough to cover the material costs that we are going to be faced with.” “When the state gave us a little more money, the bad news was that pension and benefits also increased so it was kind of a wash,” he said. Funding compounds other challenges, such as meeting reduced class size standards. “Heading into next year, if we fully carry out what the class size reduction is, we will be short SEE MCCLEARY, A10
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