Charlie's Angles

Local Democrats met this week to select a replacement for Kitsap County Treasurer Barbara Stephenson, and made their choice based more on qualifications than politics. Perhaps it is a reflection on the general partisan atmosphere that such action would be a surprise in the first place.
The party became responsible for the selection of Stephenson’s replacement when she resigned before the end of her term. Even though the treasurer’s job is more administrative than political in the first place, two of the four hopefuls came from a political background. And both of them lost mayoral elections in 2009; Kathryn Quade in Poulsbo and Daryl Daugs in Bremerton.
In the beginning of what promises to be a politically partisan year, cynics would expect these two to prevail and for the untested candidates to be eliminated. Instead, the untested Meredith Green earned an immediate majority for her credentials and experience, while first time hopeful Isaac Delgado edged a third place slot, for which he was appropriately grateful.
For that, he needs to thank Daugs. Few in the room could figure out what the whole “I didn’t fire my campaign manager because he went through my daughter’s private things or because he kicked my dog” had to do with being the county’s financial manager. And none of them, even if they were committed Democrats, were moved by the fact that Daugs’ party loyalty extended back to his kindergarten days.
Quade supporters said that it was her name recognition and electability that spoke the loudest for her selection. Here, even those of us who are supposed to stay objective wonder why knowing the treasurer’s name matters. The most important questions are “what are her qualifications” and “can she manage our money?”
There was also an elephant in the room named Debbie Broughton. A former Kitsap County administrative services director who sat out the political process, she has promised to take her case directly to the people and run a primary challenge against whomever the commissioners select.
In any case, there will be a debate as to who can best serve as the next treasurer. Stephenson was elected by acclamation in 2006, and stood a chance of repeating that accomplishment this year. Instead, we will have the benefit of hearing Broughton debate county finance with whomever the party chooses, and the person who prevails will then argue the point with the best available Republican. This can only be good news for the taxpayers.

Last year, freshman Rep. Jan Angel (R-Port Orchard) introduced a ”respectful language” bill that when passed required the state to replace the harsh “mentally retarded” label with the less insulting “intellectual disability” designation. She is following up this year with an effort to broaden its scope, and recently issued a statement encouraging the U.S. Congress to enact a similar change.
There was a bit of grumbling at the time, even from some Angel supporters, that choosing such a lightweight topic as the subject of her first bill wasn’t a great move. First impressions, after all, are important.
But right now Angel looks pretty smart, because she latched on to an issue a year before it became national news.
Last month, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel apologized for the use of the R-word (incidentally in concert with the F-word) to describe a political opponent, and he then apologized to the head of the Special Olympics and promised to never do it again.
Sarah Palin jumped in, turning it into a personal battle because of her own mentally challenged child. The battle goes on, and could have an impact on this year’s elections.
If Angel’s bill was law it would not have forbidden Emanuel’s tirade. After all, the bill stipulates that an offensive term be removed from statutory language to cause a long term attitude change. Forbidding highly-placed political operatives to throw nasty names at people they don’t like is pretty much unenforceable.
Appropriate language is a moving target, having to do with which terms are deemed offensive at that particular time. Today, just uttering certain words in the workplace will get you fired, regardless of intent. This isn’t always fair, since Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) was roundly criticized and could even lose his seat for using a word—Negro—that was acceptable in his youth.
Angel’s bill won’t change anything right away. It will take years to remove the word “retarded” from the law books, and it can never disappear from those already published. It will be around forever, as a potent insult.
And even if the bill gets people to stop saying ”retarded,” those who are likely to hurl insults will find some other word that hurts as much. It’s not really the words themselves that cause pain, but what the speaker means when the word is said.
Or more specifically, Words don’t hurt people. People hurt people.

When I was interviewing Olalla writer Gregg Olsen earlier this month I positioned myself as a crime fiction gourmet, who reads a lot of mysteries that are rife with murder and deceit. I told him I could stomach all varieties of literary brutality, but cannot tolerate when a mystery writer “kills” an innocent dog. Humans are at least responsible for their deaths, even if it just the decision to be where lightning strikes.
At the time Olsen didn’t react to my little monologue, and we now know why. On p. 273 of his new locally situated serial killer novel Victim Six a doberman dies violently. The local twist comes from finding the dog in a posh McCormick Woods house.
I didn’t recognize the house, but there were plenty other landmarks described in the book that were familiar enough. The description evoked the town, and the restaurants had the same names as in real life. (except Olsen accidentally placed an Azteca restaurant in town, instead of Puerto Vallarta).
Debbie Macomber, the “other” local bestseller, take a different approach, attempting to juxtapose imagination and reality to present a vision of Port Orchard (called Cedar Cove). Even as Macomber deliberately blurs the lines between fact and fiction, locals will find that reading Victim Six is a more unsettling experience. Macomber fans are known to seek out familiar landmarks from her books, and the new management of Gino’s restaurant adopted the name of its Cedar Cove counterpart.
On the other hand, no one is going to seek out the location in Sunnyslope where the first victim was abducted, or drive out to Little Clam Bay to see where a subsequent victim was found floating in the weeds.
Halfway into Victim Six it was clear I was reading it differently than a book set in an unfamiliar locale. I don’t actually live in Port Orchard, but was taking a lot of the details very personally. Olsen’s acerbic take on some of the local quirks were accurate enough, but I wondered if some of those described would be more than just a little offended. My feeling was any offended people should just live with it, “man up,” but all doubt disappeared when the serial killer kidnapped and tortured the Fathoms O’Fun princess. If she dies, I then concluded, Olsen will not be able show his face in this town again.
She escapes. If this offends anyone who thinks I blew the story, I am doing it for Olsen’s own good. He’ll thank me later, when he’s not forced to do all of his shopping in Gorst.
Olsen and Macomber’s readerships don’t overlap, but the two best-selling New York Times authors living in our midst have some things in common: They both love their home town and are ultimately accessible. You would expect people who had sold that many books and are fussed over worldwide to be, well, jerks.
The difference is that Macomber seems to have stepped right out of her books, while Olsen leaves the true-crime/serial-killer world on the page. He bubbles with pride over his family, and shudders as he discusses the most horrific experience of his own life–when a fox got into his chicken coop and he had to clean up the blood.
Victim Six is a pretty good tale, predictable and surprising in a the right places. On the other hand, in a choice to live in share either Macomber’s or Olsen’s depiction of Port Orchard I’d take Debbie’s in a heartbeat.

We all get those annoying taped calls, trying to sell us something or get us to give money to one charity or another. Most times, I’ll reflexively break the connection at the first indication that the voice on the other end of the line isn’t live.
I almost did so on Thursday when a robot called, informing me that a representative with an unfamiliar name I had never heard of was holding a town meeting and was patching me in right now. Modern technology allows this kind of direct interaction between representatives and the public without the interference of the press. As a member of the press I encourage such open communication, since it often leads to interchanges worth reporting. Members of the public, also, are allowed to be less restrained and civil than what the reporter’s code of conduct requires.
So I decided to use technology, and play along. First, I searched for an approximation of the legislator’s name, and came up with Rep. Ruth Kagi (D-Shoreline). This was a little puzzling, since this I don’t live in her district, and have no idea why I got this call.
Still playing along, I followed instructions to dial *-3 in order to ask a question, intending to ask how she got my number. By the time the operator answered I decided to not squander this opportunity and ask something that I didn’t get to squeeze in during a meeting with our own legislators: As the state is looking for ways to save money, why can’t it cut all salaries for state workers by ten percent or so?
A rude question, perhaps. But Rep. Kagi, you called my house at dinnertime. So I don’t have to be polite.
The operator came on the line, requesting my question and hometown. This has to be screened after all. I provided the information, aware that she wouldn’t need any technology to determine that I did not live in the district and send me to the back of the line.
Still, I was determined to use all my resources to ask the most intelligent, informed question. Still on hold, I searched for “Washington State Salaries” and found a link for how much they all make, learning that while all the top officials didn’t get a raise this year, they are still earning hefty chunks of change–especially from a view from those of us making south of $50,000 a year.
I sat on hold, and speakerphone, listening to questions far less articulate than my own. Those speaking were smart enough, and had a true curiosity. But they did not have access to the technology that would allow them to ask the detailed questions that will result in the most thorough answers.
I received a non-technological signal, known as intuition, that I would get to ask my question in moments. The subsequent squawk on the line was not the operator, but the battery dying. The line went dead, and I lost my place.
So as technology gives, it then takes away.
But it wasn’t a total loss. I got the opportunity to refine my question, so I can get a response the next time a legislator crosses my path. And I posted it here, just in case you see them first.

Those of us who think of elections in the same way as a spectator sport were thrilled by the Port Orchard City Council race between incumbent Carolyn Powers and her relentless challenger, Cindy Lucarelli.
In an era where we know most of the winners at 8:10 on election night, this little nail-biter provided a rare off-year thrill. After a month Powers emerged as the victor, by just twelve votes. Last week she was sworn in for another term in a seat she has held since 1988 while acquiring a new nickname, “Landslide” Powers.
This narrow margin of victory was almost as close as it gets. A few more votes for Lucarelli would have prompted a hand recount, which could have made it closer still. All this turns democracy into an exciting game.
But not everyone is playing. The Kitsap County Auditor reported 289 ”undervotes,” people who were registered and voted but failed to cast a ballot in this particular contest. Additionally, 18 people cast write-in ballots, and four of these voting for “Donald Duck,” or something equally ridiculous.
So I’m all for a good prank, but if a fraction of these 300 slackers showed a preference the results would have changed. Lucarelli might have won, or Powers could have increased her margin. More to the point in these days of governmental financial crisis we would have been saved the expense of a recount.
(This is not to suggest that saving money is more important than running clean elections or keeping the democracy machine tuned. But avoiding wasted effort and expense is always a good thing.)
2009 wasn’t a big election year, but quite a few important offices are at stake in 2010. For this reason, I suggest that everyone should color between the lines when it comes to voting, especially since whomever you elect will probably have a direct effect on your life before the year is out.
Or to put it another way, I can’t find fault with someone who votes ”wrong;” for someone that I do not support. But please don’t vote ”stupid.” If you don’t like the candidates, recruit a better one or run yourself. But these “protest votes” for a cartoon character are just ridiculous.
I have believed in the ”every vote counts” concept since childhood, and eagerly approached my first election, in 1972, with optimism and vigor. I carried signs for my candidate, and was convinced he would win if I could just convert a dozen people, who could convince a dozen more.
But my guy got creamed, and ”every vote counts” became an abstract argument. It even evolved into the useless “don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy” school of thought. That has changed, starting with the 2000 presidential election and extending to every one since.
Not every election will be as close as the race between Powers and Lucarelli. However, any Port Orchard resident who did not vote in this election and takes issue with Powers’ governance needs to participate from here on in.

When you find yourself at a holiday party and the conversation stalls try this: Ask the person next to you to name all the people on the city council, or the winners of the last three Super Bowls. Then see how most members of the public fill their heads with sports trivia rather than attempting to remember the names of those elected to represent them.
They might believe that local government has nothing to do with their lives as they keep a sharply-focused eye on national politics. They analyze the president’s every move, but can’t even name the mayor.
In fact, local officials not only make decisions affect you directly, you can confront them with your well-thought opinions face to face–often in the pastry aisle of your local supermarket.
Can you name any of the members of the county commission? This is even harder for some people, especially those who don’t know the difference between city and county government. (Quick lesson: A city usually sits inside a county, and the county has some governance over all, but more so over the areas outside the city limits depending on where you live. Neither board really does all that much, aside from deciding how land gets used and tax money spent.)
Can you name your state legislators? This always stumps people. Governor, and senators? That gets higher supermarket recognition around here, maybe because these three local leaders are all women and provide rich inspiration for the average shopper. Either that, or these particular elected officials are magnets for anger about higher taxes and failed campaign promises.
One more: Did you vote in this year’s local election? Kitsap County has about 120,000 registered voters, but is lucky to get half that number during off-year elections. As a comparison, we drew an impressive 86 percent for last year’s presidential contest. Admittedly, local elections are non-partisan, which makes you have to think about whom to support, rather than choosing a knee-jerk D or R. People always vote for the wrong reasons, but in a local election you can meet the candidate and decide for yourself.
For extra credit: If you wanted to talk to the president, or meet him personally, what would you do? Few people get this one, but not for lack of trying. There is a huge fence around the White House, and tons of security. Besides, we never get to DC and the president hasn’t been here since the campaign. Many folks know his e-mail address, president@whitehouse.gov.
How about talking to the mayor? He was here a minute ago, pushing a shopping cart with his grandson riding shotgun. I think you can catch him. He’s probably just outside, loading his groceries.

At the last meeting of the Kitsap County commissioners one of the department heads referred to “ADA compliance” in a presentation, at which time South Kitsap Commissioner Charlotte Garrido stopped him and asked for clarification. He was, it turned out, referring to the American Disabilities Act.
The county has reduced a lot of service lately, but this exchange reminded us of another program that was eviscerated by budget woes: The informal fine for county employees who used acronyms without explaining them at their first mention.
The practice served a dual purpose, to clear up the foggy alphabet soup brewed at your average government meetings while raising a little money for charity. For approximately two years, the commissioners collected between $30 and $70 a month, giving the proceeds to a local charity that was designated at the beginning of the cycle.
Collecting the money was the responsibility of the PIO (the Public Information Officer) and was supervised by Terrie O’Neal, Lisa Holmer, PJ Ramos and Clarence Moriwaki. But when Moriwaki was laid off two years ago–one of the first employees to feel the budget axe–the program was abandoned.
With this, the county lost an important revenue stream; one that would have generated more than $1200 during this time period. If this wasn’t enough to support hiring another Sheriff’s Deputy, it would have financed enough donuts in order for deputies to feel better about doing their jobs.
This was actually a visionary policy, as it was implemented prior to the social networking practice of overusing notations like LOL in our communications. Imagine if there was a way to tax this jargon. Budgets would be healthier, and people would be smarter. Or at least easier to understand.
We hear a lot about “creative solutions.” This one’s as creative as it gets: Impose a county-wide fine on acronyms, and pump the money into the general fund.
Got a better idea? Contact your leaders, or post here for suggestions how to SOS before we’re SOL.

A lot of normal people don’t “get” the idea of how journalism is evolving. Rather than another attempt at explanation here is a short demonstration of how it really works:
At 9:21 a.m. Tuesday Nov 10, Port Orchard Mayor Lary Coppola posted an election analysis on his personal web log (blog, to you hipsters) that offered a pretty candid assessment of the results. It was newsworthy because he “came clean” about his support of Amy Igloi-Matsuno, stating that he did not actively endorse her during the campaign because he wanted her to win on her own merits. This is more or less what we expected, since it also seemed that Coppola’s support could be a negative for some voters.
I had asked Coppola twice to provide an election quote for the POI’s coverage but he declined, saying that he was going to save his observations for his own blog. I thought he would alert me when it was posted but he neglected to do so. Probably because being mayor leaves him less time to coddle the press. Or maybe he was just testing, to see if I was paying attention.
4:44 p.m. Tuesday Nov 11 Chris Henry of the Kitsap Sun didn’t need any coddling, since she saw Coppola’s blog and posted a story that picked out the most newsworthy bits and fleshed them out with some questions of her own. Actually it wasn’t a story but a blog entry. The Sun doesn’t share its strategy with me, but the move makes sense; providing online content that is more detailed and personal than what is in the printed product. Henry added value with a question about why Coppola endorsed a candidate in one race but stayed neutral in another where he had a strong preference. The answer? Amy was a political neophyte, and therefore needed to stand on her own.
So we have one a news source posting a blog that was picked up and expanded by another blog. The news turned its first cycle, that was accomplished in a paperless, eco-friendly way.
But it gets better. Here, at 9:44 p.m. Tuesday Nov 11 I posted this piece; actually a blog entry about another blog entry that was originally about a third post. Each one of us adds some value, or tries to. (If this were a real post I would add such value here, but it is only a demonstration.)
Additionally, the social networking site Facebook bracketed the proceedings. I first learned of Coppola’s post through a post by a Feline Facebook Friend named Squirte Jackson, who opined that Coppola had eaten a bit too much catnip. And after I finish this entry I will certainly link it to my own Facebook page.
And we are all better off. An interesting story that would usually get buried on page A13 gets passed around from one expert to another, where each adds another perspective. Comments can also provide an added dimension, where a controversial story stimulates a public dialogue at each step. There might be a lot of yelling and screaming along the way, but the end result is that you end up being exposed to many points of view, instead of a cursory account of an incident that is limited to the time allocated for reporting and the space available in that day’s newspaper.
Any questions?

The author receives the offending apostrophe from About Floors' owner Mike Elhardt.

This week’s business story profiles About Floors, an independent flooring contractor that has operated in downtown Port Orchard for a decade. This is news because the store has moved, and has built a showroom designed to handle residential jobs. It follows the standard local business template, that it is sometimes a better choice to buy from an independent merchant you trust rather than a large chain store with no heart.
But there is another personal aspect to the story which requires full disclosure.
Upon opening the store ten years ago, proprietors Mike and Kathryn Elhardt were given a sign for their new business by a neighbor, who designed, cut and mounted the letters on the front of the building. The sign had a misplaced apostrophe (a possessive About Floor’s rather than the plural About Floors) which the Elhardts did not notice until it was later pointed out to them by a local English teacher. This was followed by my own ranting visit about two years ago, where I sputtered on about illiteracy and punctuation.
Kathryn Elhardt was unmoved by my little tantrum, and I pulled back a little bit. She knows her trade and runs a good business, where punctuation is not a prerequisite for success.
Any regular POI reader knows I make my share of mistake’s. Still, newspaper stories are ephemeral and the errors are soon forgotten. A sign on the street advertising a business is permanent, so a mistake is more egregious.
Still, as I have railed on about this situation, including a previous post on this blog, it became clear that no one else even noticed the stray apostrophe, and those who noticed didn’t care.
When the store moved and the sign came down I paid them a visit, asking for custody of the offending punctuation mark. The Elhardts cheerfully agreed, and presented me with the item when I visited today to shoot the picture for this week’s story.
The old sign will be used in the new location minus the apostrophe, which will hang in my new home–where it will provide grist for another few years of rants about how people these days can’t write or spell.

We all knew what a Port Orchard homeowner who had just lost his home to a fire meant when he blamed a “Chinese heater” for starting the blaze.
“Chinese” has now ethnic or cultural meaning here, but translates as “cheap.” That inexpensive components come from overseas is no longer the kiss of death, because something doesn’t need to be name-brand in order to work well. This particular heater malfunctioned and a family was unceremoniously evicted from a house that held five of its generations.
County assessment: $226,380. Real value: Priceless.
Heating costs have skyrocketed, so the property owner bought a cheap unit to help with the load. It was probably on sale, and in a nice box. The guy can be forgiven, because he is still living in a world where you buy things at a store and assume they won’t destroy you.
The economy gets scapgoated for everything, but this homeowner is one of its saddest victims. In an attempt to save a few dollars he ended up losing his house. Right now, he certainly wishes that he had chosen a more reliable (and expensive) product. But at the time, saving money seemed like a good idea. For every inexpensive item you buy there is more left to purchase other things. Like food. In this respect, it’s natural for us to select a $50 Chinese heater over the $500 Amish version if they appear to do more or less the same thing.
The current economy forces us to make decisions based on price. We buy what we can afford and save whenever possible. If a needed item is too expensive today we settle for something less so, and assume that it will suffice.
The system obviously doesn’t always work as it should. A parallel tragedy is how this has little chance of changing our behavior. We still need to pay for too many things, and with too little money.