REVIEW BAINBRIDGE ISLAND
Friday, October 23, 2015 | Vol. 90, No. 43 | WWW.BAINBRIDGEREVIEW.COM | 75¢
INSIDE: ‘Rockaway’ is ready to roll, A7
State rejects campaign complaint against city
A THOUSAND-PLUS POUNDS OF PUMPKIN
BY BRIAN KELLY
Bainbridge Island Review
Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review
Joel Holland, a Puyallup-based farmer specializing in giant pumpkins, sits with his latest gigantic gourd Monday, before delivering it to the Johansson Clark Real Estate office for their annual holiday display. Below, the pumpkin, with police escort and hauled by a forklift driver from the ferry shipyard, arrives.
Serious squash returns to downtown Winslow BY LUCIANO MARANO Bainbridge Island Review
“You waiting for Linus?” asked a passerby in the parking lot of Town & Country Market. “Yeah,” Joel Holland laughed, sitting on the bed of his truck next to his latest agricultural behemoth — a giant pumpkin that tipped the scales at 1,030 pounds. “We’ve got the great pumpkin, now we just need the rest of the characters. “Everyone likes the big pumpkins,” he chuckled. Holland, a retired firefighter, is a Puyallup-based farmer who specializes in giant pumpkins. He’s had his weighty wares purchased for display by major league sports teams, Paul Allen, the restaurant atop the Space Needle, Elysian Brewery in Seattle and Johansson Clark Real Estate, who have made the nearly annual arrival of the great gourd to their downtown
Bainbridge city officials did not cross the line while sharing information with the public about the city’s upcoming $15 million bond measure, a state agency has found. Bainbridge hopes to build a combination municipal court/police station on land north of city hall, and voters will decide Nov. 3 if the property purchase and construction of the new building should be funded through a 20-year bond sale that will raise property taxes on the island. City officials have been talking about a new police station for years and decided in July to ask voters for funding for it in November’s General Election. But in September, Bainbridge activist Chris Van Dyk filed a complaint with the Public Disclosure Commission, the state agency that serves as a watchdog on campaigns and campaign financing, that alleged city officials had used public resources to promote the proposal. The Public Disclosure Commission notified Van Dyk, and the city, last week
More election coverage inside Election letters: A4-5 District 4 BI School Board race: A14 that the agency had found the city had not violated any state campaign finance laws. City officials were not surprised by the state’s decision last week to not launch a more intensive review of the complaint. “Throughout this election season, city elected officials, appointed officials and staff have been very cautious to make sure that while fulfilling our obligation to provide important factual information to residents we did not cross the line into advocating for Proposition 1,” said City Manager Doug Schulze. “In fact, training was provided to city staff regarding what can and cannot be done under Public Disclosure Commission rules. The ruling by the PDC was as we expected it would be, and affirms the commitment of city officials to perform our TURN TO CITY | A14
Plea deal still in the works for former teacher TRIAL PUSHED BACK BY JESSICA SHELTON Bainbridge Island Review
Winslow office a much-loved community tradition. So it was again this year that, just before lunch time Monday, with the assistance of a forklift driver from the ferry shipyard and a police escort, this year’s sizable squash came to Bainbridge. Holland said that, despite the record-setting dry summer, “It was a good growing season.” Giant pumpkins, he explained,
actually do better in the hot weather, though a bit more rain would have been nice. At the peak of their growth cycle, Holland said his largest pumpkins can gain 30 to 40 pounds a day for as long as two weeks. The average pie, he added, contains about two pounds of pumpkin, meaning the giant outside Johansson Clark Real Estate could make about 515 pies.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys continue to hammer out details for a possible plea bargain in the case of Jessica Marie Fuchs, the former Bainbridge High teacher who was arrested in May for allegedly having sex with a student. Fuchs, who had previously pleaded “not guilty” at her arraignment in May, was expected to change her plea late last week in an appear-
ance before Kitsap County Superior Court Judge Sally Olsen. However, with the parties still in discussion, Deputy Prosecutor John Purves confirmed that they would be requesting a set-over of four weeks, at which point he expected Fuchs to officially change her plea. He would not say what Fuchs’ new plea would be. Fuchs was arrested in early May at her Bainbridge home and charged with two felonies — first-degree TURN TO TEACHER | A6