INSIDE | Auburn, Sumner to make boundary adjustment [8]
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Sports | Return to 3A pays dividends for 11-1 Raven girls basketball [14]
FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2015
City pulling plug on red-light cameras Crews are removing red light photo-enforced camera equipment at Auburn intersections.
BY ROBERT WHALE
rwhale@auburn-reporter.com
Those cameras had kept an eye on key Auburn intersections rain or shine, ever since June 2006, clicking photos, making short video clips of red-light runners. For those who ran afoul of the
REPORTER PHOTO
law, there were fines, even court dates. Many praised the red-light photo enforcement system, and many loathed it, deriding it as government overreach and, at base, a ploy to fatten the City’s coffers. But last week, Redflex Traffic Systems began removing all of
its above-ground equipment in Auburn, starting at the intersection of Auburn Way South and 4th Street Southeast, at Harvey Road and 8th Street Northeast, and in the various school zones. A contractor working for Redflex [ more CAMERAS page 7 ]
Man charged with ‘horrific abuse’ of boy BY ROBERT WHALE rwhale@auburn-reporter.com
STEP TO IT Gil Bortleson leads his tai chi class at the Auburn Senior Activity Center last Monday evening. The class is one of many offered through the Kent Parks, Arts and Recreation Department. For a complete listing of exercise classes,
activities and other recreational programming for all ages, call City Parks at 253-931-3043, or visit www.auburnwa.gov. RACHEL CIAMPI, Auburn Reporter
[ more ABUSE page 8 ]
Pacific leaders to host hearing on marijuana businesses BY SHAWN SKAGER sskager@auburn-reporter.com
At a public hearing hosted by the Pacific City Council at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, city residents once
again get to speak their minds on the future of marijuana businesses in the city. Because while the state may have legalized the recreational sale of marijuana via a voter initiative
more than a year ago, how cities deal with pot’s potential pitfalls is still uncharted territory, said Councilmember Clint Steiger. “At this point right now it’s a real cloudy and vague issue,”
Steiger said. “Our small town of 6,000 residents is not prepared to handle any kind of marijuana businesses, whether it’s sales, [ more POT page 7 ]
Tickets: www.auburnwa.gov/arts | 253-931-3043 January Comedy at the Ave | January 16, 7:30 p.m. | $17/$15 | Auburn Ave. Theater
AveKids: Owl & Pussycat | January 17, 2 p.m. | $8 | Auburn Ave. Theater Borrowed Time, Styx Tribute | January 17, 7:30 p.m. | $20/$18 | Auburn Ave. Theater
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Five months of “horrific abuse” inflicted upon a minor. Those are the blunt words King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Mary Barbosa used in court to describe what 42-year-old Matthew Christenson of Auburn is alleged to have done to the 15-year-old son of the woman with whom he was living for eight months in 2014. Indeed, the official account of what happened in that one Highline-area apartment paints a terrible picture of wanton acts of malignant cruelty, including all-night ice baths, forced marches in the apartment building’s stairwell that lasted for hours and forcing the boy to live in the bathroom and sleep on the floor there. Acts that “by design did cause such pain and agony as to be the equivalent of that produced by torture,” according to prosecutors.
INSIDE Meet this year’s contestants in the Miss Auburn and Miss Auburn’s Outstanding Teen pageants. The scholarship pageant takes center stage Jan. 23-24 at Green River Community College. Page 3