We’re not certain whose bright idea it has been to start charging an arm and a leg for family fun events in North Kitsap but the decline in crowds will eventually do the talking. Port Gamble seems to be the big infractor right now, what with skyrocketing costs at Medieval Faire three weeks ago (up from $3 per carload in 2006 to $5 per person this year) and now the Civil War Reenactment following suit by charging a whopping $7 a head.
We figure everyone else is asking the question, so why not your local newspaper? After all, we’ve watched you grow up, too. We’ve been there as you’ve completed unique class projects, acted in plays, took field trips, taken the WASL, taken to the streets with your school bands, scored the winning touchdown or goal, broke school records in track … and basically given you as much deserving ink as we were able to.
We all make mistakes, it’s human nature to sometimes pick the worst decision available to us. That haircut in seventh grade? Best burn the pictures still hanging around in Mom’s and Dad’s basement. The blind date set up for Friday night? It might be better to take a raincheck and spend the evening with Ben and Jerry.
Parking in downtown Poulsbo has been an airless tire in need of a permanent patch for years. To be sure, it’s gotten plenty of hot air blown into it over this time frame. Plenty. But no one solution has been followed through to completion since downtown business owners began griping about it — sometime in the Jurassic Period.
There’s nothing like it. Walking over the hillside in an already historic town and walking smack dab into the Middle Ages. It’s quite a shock, but in the best possible way, of course. And as the Society for Creative Anachronism’s 25th anniversary gets underway with everything from archery and heavy armor combat to rapier swordplay and jousting, we’d like to welcome every lord, lady, knight, damsel, lass and lad back to Port Gamble.
The old out-of-towners are the root of all evil schtick just doesn’t stick in Hansville. After months of planning ways to slow down those who speed along the North End community’s highways and byways and pointing the finger at those darned “summer folk,” members of the Greater Hansville Area Advisory Committee and the Road Safety Advisory Committee discovered that those who exceed the posted limits are actually their friends and neighbors. OK, not all of them.
I’ll be the first one to admit that I was more than just a little skeptical when I received the first of what has become many e-mails from Senior Airman Jarred Taylor on May 15. I was looking for a local link to Iraq for a Memorial Day story, and I couldn’t believe that Taylor was totally legit.
A ferry commuters comment on those who make the last-minute dash to board the ferry.
Why is it that whenever a community pours its heart and soul into an event, a few individuals see the need to go out of their ways to tarnish it for everyone? North Kitsap has seen it happen again and again through the senseless act of vandalism to places the entire citizenry is meant to enjoy.
Entering its 39th year yesterday, Viking Fest has stood the test of time in Poulsbo due to several factors, the biggest one being the town’s deep Norwegian roots. It’s doubtful that tree will ever fall and seeing that the annual festival is tied into Syttende Mai (Norwegian Constitution Day), it will likely continue to branch out and bloom each spring.
Being on deadline all week and having to get both the North Kitsap Herald and the What’s Up entertainment section to press on time, I tend to procrastinate a tad in other aspects of my life. I see it as a way of balancing things out to some degree.
Giving a yin a yang and whatnot. (Yeah, right.)
Before the five development teams submitted their proposals for the latest round of “Pin the City Hall somewhere in Little Norway” everyone knew the rules, especially when it came to the contentious issue of parking in the city’s historic downtown core.
And so the Kitsap Regional Library system and the Poulsbo Fire Department are seeking their respective lid lifts as they struggle in the wake of Initiative 747. KRL seeks an additional 18 cents per $1,000 assessed property valuation, the PFD 49 cents more per $1,000 valuation.
The Herald has endorsed both.
It’s 11 p.m. on a Saturday night, do you know where your teenagers are, and what they’re doing? If you answer this query with “I think…” you might want to re-evaluate your relationship with them a bit.
The question is do you know?
Lions will be on the prowl starting Friday morning and Saturday great strides will be made for cystic fibrosis research in the North End, giving residents two opportunities to make a difference in the world around them.
Feeling sluggish?
It seems like, “There’s nothing to do in North Kitsap” is an all too common lament among youth here. Yeah, all this wide open space, ballfield accessibility, woods and water, what the heck’s fun about any of that? But adult residents can only take so much of the “are we there yet?” attitude before they feel the need to reply, or as the case may be, do something about it.
I usually don’t get too excited about pageants. Beautiful, talented girls take the stage, one wins a crown, right? Call it being a guy or what you like, that’s just the way it is for me. Do I feel a sense of pride when I see Miss Poulsbo, Miss Viking Fest or Miss Kitsap at a parade? You bet. As a member of the community, I feel this should come naturally.
Pride in the accomplishments of one’s neighbors, that is.
Once in 55 years. That was the closing thought Kitsap Regional Library Director Jill Jean left members of the North Kitsap Herald Advisory Board with Monday night. She was talking about a levy lift for the library system, which has seen its usage here bloom and revenues wilt since Initiative 747 took hold across Washington.
There wasn’t a whole lot of discussion Monday night after members of the North Kitsap Herald Advisory Board met with proponents of the Poulsbo Fire Department levy lift. It wasn’t needed.
PFD Chief Jim Shields and commissioners Jim Ingalls and Conrad Green stated their case for a 49 cent increase — bringing the fire tax Poulsbo residents pay from 80 cents in 2008 to $1.29 per $1,000 assessed property valuation — to a T.
