City Hall

How much, exactly, is a study worth?

Have you ever wondered how much of your tax dollars the city of Poulsbo has spent on their studies? You could just about put a down payment on the city council’s new city hall.

I could never understand why the city has to have these studies done when in fact they have high rollers in key positions to make to make these studies.

If you’re interested in knowing how many thousands of dollars were spent over the years give the city a call.

David Applegate

Poulsbo

Ferries

A lesson in marketing 101

First… thank you Steve Kaczor for pointing out the obvious regarding WSF scheduling. Other common sense business marketing concepts for WSF to consider: First, WSF recognizes it is losing rider-ship because of increasing fares.

Second, WSF recognizes that decreased rider-ship adds to its revenue shortfall which has occurred in spite of increasing fares.

Third, WSF recognizes that it has ridership bubbles creating congestion at certain times of the day while other runs operate with very low passenger/car counts.

The WSF planning response to these problems is to punish ferry users by reducing service frequency and raising fares at peak rider-ship times … ideas which will only make using the ferries less desirable for riders and less profitable for WSF.

Here is what someone who understands marketing would do: Leave existing fare structures in place for peak ridership hours, keep all existing runs, but significantly reduce both walk-on and car fares on the less popular runs to attract (reward) riders for shifting their travel times from peak runs.

This will also make using the ferry system once again affordable for cross-sound leisure travel … further increasing overall ridership. Large vehicle fares should be signficantly raised at peak times from current fares to reduce congestion, but signficantly lowered from current fares at off-peak times.

Net outcome: a growing (instead of shrinking) number of walk-ons and cars paying fares, less congestion at peak times, a savings for prudent large vehicle ferry users, and a better bottom line at the end of each day’s operations.

Neal Kellner

Hansville

Downtown

Antique store affected by land sale

The recent article regarding the downtown block for sale in Poulsbo neglected to mention Victoria’s Antiques and Collectibles as one of the businesses affected by future development.

Victoria’s is one of the original antique shops in downtown Poulsbo and she has been in business at that corner site for nearly 10 years. As a local customer, I will miss the comfortable, old-fashioned atmosphere and the personal attention provided by Victoria.

I do hope she and the other downtown merchants have a profitable retail season in this challenging economy and I will support them by shopping locally.

Susan Metcalf

Poulsbo

NK Stadium

Is her stadium hers?

I would like to address what Mollie Poor said about the stadium.

Yes, when Kingston High School opened, we all knew that there would be no lights or scoreboard.

e all knew that our poor school district was in debt.

These are the reasons that the school district decided, long ago when the new school was just a design on paper, that the two schools would share sports facilities. In fact, they decided to share the pool and auditorium too.

Kingston’s Drama Club was lucky to get one performance at the auditorium, which is supposedly “shared,” that was difficult enough. The rest of the plays have been performed in the school’s cafeteria, which is also going to be the venue for the upcoming shows.

I know that we’re the new school on the block, and maybe we shouldn’t expect too much.

The drama club has found that the lunchroom is working as an alternative to an auditorium, but the sports teams are finding it hard to practice in the dark. As a student at Kingston High School, I hope that we can figure this whole thing out.

I hope that our school will have equal opportunities to use these facilities. The stadium can remain “Viking Stadium,” but in the end, it’s just a name.

David LeMay

Kingston