Thank you for your provocative editorial (Dec. 28) regarding pedestrian incidents in Poulsbo and the city’s priorities — or lack thereof — in addressing them.

It’s easy to dismiss these as random, tragic events and move on, but they must be piercing canaries in our civic coal mine that lead to action.

Recent campaigns for city office touted the need for Poulsbo to become this or that type of boutique city. While these are worthy visions, the wellbeing of Poulsbo’s citizens should be — first and foremost —the foundation of every civic decision.

In my own neighborhood, we’ve begged the city for years to help us with traffic-calming measures with only frequent, gauzy promises to show. School bus stops, blind driveways and pedestrians old and young — with no sidewalks — are a recipe for disaster when thoughtless drivers blast a shortcut though our 15-mph family neighborhood at 35-40 mph. As our neighborhood’s volunteer HOA president, I regularly have trembling, teary residents contact me about near misses and plead for something to be done.

In this, I’m sure we’re not alone. You better have angels on your shoulder if you try to cross Lincoln Road at one of its poorly marked, faded cross walks. The heavily used street’s 25 mph speed limit is a farce to those who thoughtlessly sail through at 50 mph.

There are issues like this across the city.

Before another several hundred homes land on our shores and strain our “Little Norway” infrastructure even more — or we spend a couple million to rosy up a park for fish — these tragedies shout that it’s time to reassess our civic priorities.

While worthy feel-good projects are laudable, the city must realistically address its critical safety and infrastructure issues first.

E.A. Wright
Poulsbo