REPORTER CENTRAL KITSAP
GO HAWKS! Pullout Poster
Inside Kitsap Week!
FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2015 | Vol. 30, No. 14 | WWW.CENTRALKITSAPREPORTER.COM | 50¢
Silverdale’s bumpy roads to get smoother in time
Chris Tucker / staff photo
Asphalt patches cover parts of the intersection of Silverdale Way and Anderson Hill Road on Jan. 6. BY CHRIS TUCKER CTUCKER@CENTRALKITSAPREPORTER.COM
Some of Silverdale’s main roads have been a bit bumpy lately as Silverdale Water District installed new water mains under them. But road conditions should improve this spring as work finishes up. The Central Kitsap Community Council queried Kitsap County officials and the SWD manager at a recent meeting about the roads. SWD general manager Morgan Johnson said all of the new pipes will be installed and connected along Silverdale Way, Bucklin Hill Road, Anderson Hill Road, Randall Way and Old Frontier Road around the end of January. But road work still remains to be done. “It’s rough but it’s drivable,” Johnson said of the roads. The road work is not yet complete and workers often have to dig into a road more than once as part of the construction process, and thus they have not yet finalized the roads. The roads should be “permanently” patched by March. Johnson said water mains, pipes for reclaimed water and electrical conduit totaling around 40,000 feet in length would be installed when the project is complete. “I think it’s one of the largest utility projects that has taken place in replacing pipe in Kitsap County. It’s a lot of work,” Johnson said. The new mains replace aging, failure-prone asbestos-and-concrete mains, Johnson said. Tina Nelson with Kitsap County Public Works said the roads were in
good structural shape but won’t be “pretty” because of all the patches. At some point the road will need to be completely reconstructed. But until then construction crews are using temporary patches to keep the roads serviceable. Better weather is needed for a more permanent application of asphalt. “It’s not going to be perfect until we’ve got good weather,” Nelson said, noting that the water district wanted to do the work right. “If we try to do something permanent now it isn’t going to be good: it’s cold, it’s wet, it’s dark, you’re just not going to get a very good product. “We’re checking that (road quality) is maintained to a reasonable level, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to find potholes.” The standard, Nelson said, was that the road should have a smooth, level finish that supports the speed limit of the roadway. Johnson said wintertime was not the best time for laying down asphalt. “You cannot just start up an asphalt plant and start producing asphalt. They have to have a demand. It’s expensive to start up an asphalt plant,” Johnson said. The contractor has been trucking asphalt from Port Angeles and Tacoma, and the asphalt cools during the trip which makes it less effective when applied to the road. In response to a question posed by someone at the meeting, Jon Brand with Kitsap County said area roads were not at all like the high-quality Autobahn in Germany. “Here in Kitsap County a lot of the roads that you drive on were originally built in like the 1800s. They’re territorial roads and they just kind of grow over time,” Brand said. “Sometimes we dig into those roads and there’s no telling what you might find. There may be old stumps … or when they built the roads they went through wet spots so they would just fill the wet spots with logs and then build the road over it. So it’s not like an Autobahn.” Old building foundations have been found incorporated into county roads before, Johnson said. Grander issues than road repairs will be discussed at the next Central Kitsap Community Council meeting when the council looks at the Silverdale Sub-Area Plan. That meeting is Thursday, Jan. 15 from 7-9 p.m. at the Silverdale Beach Hotel, 3073 NW Bucklin Hill Road.
MARINER MOOSE TELLS KIDS TO ‘DREAM’
Chris Tucker / staff photo
Mariner Moose, Mariners broadcaster Rick Rizzs, former Mariners catcher and current manager of the Everett Aquasox Dave Valle and Mariners pitcher Charlie Furbush, from left, chat with children at Silverdale Elementary School on Jan. 6 as part of the Mariner Moose DREAM Team school program. They told kids about the importance of the DREAM Team principles: staying Drug-free, Respect for yourself and others, Education through reading, Attitude, and Motivation. “Find out what you like to do,” Rizzs advised the children. “What are you good at? ... Find out what that is and make a career out of it. Why? Because you’re going to like it, you’re going to be good at it and you’ll be doing something that you enjoy as you get older ... give yourself an opportunity to succeed. Don’t be afraid to fail. Because even if you do you learn from that experience. Be motivated to get up in the morning and be happy ... challenge yourself every day to learn something every day … read books and that will open up different worlds for you.” Furbush told the kids to study hard: “When I was your age when I was going to school and I was doing my homework even though I didn’t really want to do it my mom and dad made me do it because they knew it was the foundation for what could happen. The platform for all the opportunities that you have in your lives,” Furbush said.
Former colleague looking to find a lost friend BY LESLIE KELLY LKELLY@SOUNDPUBLISHING.COM
It’s a simple photo of a young boy fishing with his father. And Jeff Ellis wants to give it to them. But the problem is, he doesn’t know where Chuck Ireland and his son, Charlie, are. Ellis, who now lives in Rainier, Oregon, had become friends with Ireland in the 1980s when he worked
in Tacoma at Thermal Supply. Ireland owned his own heating and air conditioning repair business in Silverdale and came to Thermal Supply to buy parts. The two men struck up a friendship and on a hot summer day in about 1985 or 1986, they went fishing on the Nisqually River. They took Ireland’s then 10-year-old son Charlie along with them. “It was a beautiful summer day,”
Ellis said. “We had pretty good luck that day and we took some pictures with the fish we caught. I have one of Chuck and Charlie with a big fish that’s just really cute. I’d always meant to give it to him, but just never did.” Then, a few years later, Ellis moved to Yakima with Thermal Supply where he lived for several years before going to work for the post SEE FRIEND, A9
Council sees need for community center BY CHRIS TUCKER CTUCKER@CENTRALKITSAPREPORTER.COM
Although a portion of the Silverdale Community Center has been closed due to the building’s poor condition, Central Kitsap Community Council members said some kind of alternative was needed to make up for the lost space.
Exactly how that might be done, however, was not known. The Kitsap County parks department is working with individual groups that have used the center to help them find new places to meet. Angie Silva, senior policy analyst for the Kitsap County commissioners office, said they would try and use the rest of the center for as long as pos-
sible. Safety was the county’s concern, she said, and there was no timeline for how to deal with the building. “There’s very limited funding in terms of making improvements that will make that portion of the building last longer,” Silva said. Council member Rob MacDermid SEE COMMUNITY, A9