“When I need a car,” I told him, “I buy one. And when I need an electric razor, I can buy one of those, too. What I can’t understand is how someone who wanted one could wind up with the other.”

No doubt the mayor endured a week of such witty observations, and yet he came away a believer in the vehicles.

“I was a skeptic when I started driving it,” he said. “But after a week, I’m impressed.”

Actually, my guess is Coppola already had a soft spot in his heart for EVs, given that he announced back in July the city was working with a major auto manufacturer to obtain grant funding that would allow Port Orchard to construct electric vehicle recharging stations at several of its municipal parking lots.

“(EVs) are coming — whether you like it, agree with the concept, or not,” Coppola said. “The Seattle metropolitan area is one of the largest pre-sale areas in the nation for EVs.”

Frankly, as one who’s frequently been horrified over the years by what our neighbors across the water think and say, I wouldn’t necessarily cite the buying habits of a few widgets over there as indicative of what the market at large will do.

At the same time, at least Coppola’s interest in green technology is predicated on the question of what his constituents can get out of it rather than using their money to subsidize what he believes is the environmentally responsible thing to do.

And that’s an important distinction.

Speaking for myself, I trust capitalism, not agenda-driven politcians.

And when the free market tells me electric cars are safe, practical and affordable, I might consider buying one.

Like Coppola, I’m all for figuring out where the market is headed and trying to get there first. What I can’t abide is government trying to tell the market where it should go rather than the other way around.

Although its true agenda is curiously mentioned nowhere in her agency’s title, KCCC coordinator Terry Schroeder was anything but mysterious about her goals.

“We want to establish at least two tent cities for the homeless in Kitsap County by the winter of 2010,” she said. “We’re asking city governments to evaluate their city ordinances and determine the permitting process for these tent cities by the end of August.”

To be clear, Schroeder and her group aren’t asking for city facilities. Rather, they envision churches and nonprofit agencies donating space and resources.
The city would merely sanction the program.

According to the Coalition, Kitsap County currently has a homeless population of around 3,000, less than 400 of whom are located in South Kitsap — although that number would presumably grow should ours be the community that rolls out the welcome mat.

Personally, I have a hard time seeing how a Port Orchard City Council that just a few weeks ago passed an ordinance banning billboard advertising on the basis of aesthetic and safety concerns could suddenly decide it has a duty to attract more transients.

On a human level, there are undoubtedly some heartbreaking stories among the county’s homeless. But by definition the city council is responsible for promoting the welfare of its residents, not those who would become residents — in tents and temporary encampments — if only Port Orchard made it hospitable to do so.

Quite simply, the city has enough problems of its own without inviting someone else’s to move here — along with the crime and drain on public resources that would surely follow.

As cold as it sounds, the first priority of the city council is to make Port Orchard a better place for those who live here, not for those who don’t live anywhere.

Instead, I’ll hand out a few awards of my own based on my impressions of the candidate forum hosted by the Senior Action Committee at Towne Square Port Orchard.

• Best Debut — Marty McClendon. I wasn’t expecting much from him, and heaven knows he’s got a steep hill to climb going up against Derek Kilmer for the 26th District state Senate seat.

But after a shaky start, he settled down and went toe to toe pretty well against a popular incumbent.

• Biggest Surprise — Jesse Young. Going up against longtime U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks in his first-ever try for office is an audacious move, he might not even make it out of the Republican primary against fellow Republican Doug Cloud.

But this is a smart young man who scored a lot of points with a crowd that, by and large, knew nothing about him going in.

• Most Popular — A tie between Kilmer and 26th District Rep. Jan Angel. In addition to being a likable young man, Kilmer regularly defies party labels to vote like a Republican, which endears him to independents while still protecting his Democratic base.

Meanwhile, Angel plays her Port Orchard audience like a Stradivarius. She isn’t just a politician in this town — she’s a friend.

• Most Disingenuous — Sumner Schoenike. Angel’s Democratic challenger had the gall to tell the crowd he was opposed to raising taxes and wanted to cut regulatory red tape so that small businesses could grow the economy.

But the Gig Harbor physician’s signature issue is universal health care, and by now next to no one is falling for the line that we can cover everyone without huge tax increases and adding to the regulatory burden faced by businesses.

• Most Brutally Honest — Larry Seaquist. Asked straight out if he’d take a pledge not to increase taxes or fees, the incumbent 26th District House representative said unequivocally he wouldn’t.

It wasn’t necessarily what the crowd wanted to hear, but at least he spoke his mind.

But his attempts to undermine the bidding process by which the Independent retained its status as the city’s newspaper of record was embarrassing even by his standards.

Both the Independent’s bid for the service and that of the Kitsap Sun were presented to the council at its June 21 meeting, and it was agreed a vote on the matter would be tabled until the dollar value of both could be ascertained.

The confusion stemmed from the fact that while the Sun’s bid of $2.85 per line to publish the city’s legal notices was 12 cents less than what the Independent bid, the Sun proposed to charge $7 per online posting, while we offered to publish online for free.

Once it became clear that the online charges made the Sun’s bid more expensive than ours, Chang apparently placed a call to the Sun and encouraged them to revise their offer.

Port Orchard Mayor Lary Coppola responded with a stern e-mail accusing Chang of undermining the bidding process and putting the city in a potentially difficult situation legally.

Obviously there’s a formal procedure to be followed in a public bidding process, and for Chang to unilaterally contact one party and suggest they revise their bid after the deadline had already passed was a pointless gesture at best and a dangerous one at worst.

Later, when it was suggested he recuse himself from voting on the matter, Chang said he would — if any of the other council members asked him to.

Huh? Either you do what’s right or you don’t, but asking for a show of hands about it just underscores your own ethical ambiguity.

Since the Independent ultimately won the bid by a vote of 5-2, we’re prepared to be big about the whole thing — even if that means ignoring the preening and pettifogging of Port Orchard’s most pretentious city council member.

I can live with the rain and I can tolerate the fact that no one out here makes really authentic pizza. I’ve even gotten used to football games starting at 10 in the morning.

But I don’t think I’ll ever understand the fascination with fireworks.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of Independence Day and I love celebrating it with a good fireworks display.

But when I say a “good fireworks display,” I don’t mean my neighbors setting off M80’s or hurling tennis balls stuffed with gun powder.

Having spent my first 25 years in a community where tribal reservations can’t sell weapons-grade explosives to people with no training and little of no regulation regarding their use, I guess I’m just out of touch.

When I think of fireworks, I think of safe and spectacular exhibitions like Fathoms o’Fun — which I never miss. What other people think of, apparently, is inviting friends and relatives over to knock back a few beers laugh as you risk blowing your fingers off.

Yes, I know there are laws limiting what you can shoot off and when you can start, but there’s simply no way those laws can be enforced when so many simply ignore them.

In unincorporated Kitsap County, for example, fireworks can only be discharged from noon until 11 p.m. on July 4. Is that how it worked in your neighborhood?

In mine, the fusillade started on Friday night and extended well into Monday — at which point the fireworks stands were presumably clearing out their stocks for half price.

By this week, the streets are littered with the detritis of all this revelry. But of course if you’ve already ignored laws restricting what night you can celebrate, it just naturally follows that cleaning up after yourself is too much to ask.

This is how we celebrate independence, with third-degree burns, brush fires, disrespect for the law and mountains of garbage?

I repeat, I don’t get it.

If you’ve ever showed up at the courthouse on a Friday to renew your license tabs — as I have — only to find the building closed, you get the idea.

In addition, the county has imposed staffing cuts, furloughs and whatever other means it can to make sure things are running lean.

Even so, Kitsap County is facing a shortfall of up to $5.7 million next year based mainly on a nationwide recession that limits how much consumers can purchase — and how much the county can skim off in sales taxes.

Predictably, the Kitsap commissioners seem to think a tax increase is in order. Unfortunately (for them, at least), they can’t hike property taxes by more than 1 percent a year without the voters’ approval. So they’re contemplating asking you to do so.

Care to predict how that vote will turn out?

“At some point, you need to go back and ask the people, ‘What do you want?’” North Kitsap Commissioner Steve Bauer explained. “You can’t just continue to cut year after year.”

No, but instead of cutting thinner slices of a shrinking pie, why not work harder at growing the pie?

Yes, I understand attracting business development is tough under the best of circumstances and next to impossible in a struggling economy. But can anyone say with a straight face Kitsap County is doing everything it can in that regard?

Can anyone look at the current lineup of commissioners and suggest they’d move heaven and earth to bring in an employer who needed to cut down a tree or put up a smokestack?

We hear a lot of talk about preserving the quality of life here, as though trees were the first thing an employer looks for in a new location.

Those things are important, but so are lower taxes, fewer regulations and a local government that sees you as something more than a necessary evil from whom you can wring tax dollars.

As someone who sat in that courtroom for a full hour and a half after Coppola left and watched how the same judge handled something like 12 to 15 other DUI cases, however, I’m here to tell you that’s a lot of bunk.

For starters, neither the judge nor the prosecutor who accepted the diversion agreement knew Coppola from Adam.

The only difference between his outcome and that of the others was that Coppola was proactive and, on his lawyer’s advice, completed the necessary requirements — including a substance assessment, an alcohol information school, a victim panel and a voluntary defensive driver course — by the time he showed up for his arraignment.

The next step for the other offenders is a pre-trial hearing, during which most — if not all — will negotiate their sentences down just as Coppola did.

It only looks like he got a better deal than they did because he started working to mitigate his sentence from the outset and they didn’t.

I also dispute the assertion that pleading not-guilty amounts to not taking responsibility for his actions. Appearances aside, the plea is simply a formality.

Even judges discourage a guilty plea because it halts the proceedings right there, depriving the defendant of any chance to have the court consider such factors as it being his first offense.

Lastly, don’t forget that the settlement is contingent on his continuing to meet certain terms for two full years. If he screws up, the original charge will be reinstated and the judge will impose the maximum sentence.

Despite the burning desire of people who don’t like Lary Coppola anyway to see him crucified for this, there is simply no indication that his response was anything less than appropriate or that he got any more or less consideration than you or I would in similar circumstances.

Nor do I ever expect to.

But I’d be very surprised if someone whose hand was at the other end of my purse string didn’t. Which is why I think the initiative being championed by Bill Gates, Sr., to impose a 5 percent surcharge on those in a higher bracket than you and I will ever be is a pretty silly idea.

With all due respect, my guess is that anyone who supports this half-baked measure falls into one of two categories — either they’re far below the threshold and bitter about it or so far above it that, like Mr. Gates, they wouldn’t miss 5 percent one way or the other.

The problem is, there’s a third classification — those earning more than $200,000 who’d rather pack up and move than continue to do business in a state that looks upon success as something to be penalized.

It’s a little like taxing liquor or cigarettes. On paper, it looks like a fine idea because you can calculate how much was consumed last year and pencil in 5 percent of that total in additional revenues for next year.

Better yet, the people you’re socking it to don’t seem terribly sympathetic in the abstract.

Unfortunately for this sort of accounting, however, there’s an old saying that the best way to assure less of any behavior is to start taxing it.

Sin taxes never seem to generate as much money as they’re supposed to because people wind up smoking and drinking less rather than paying more. But at least you can argue there’s some benefit to that.

On the other hand, I can’t quite see how anyone benefits by driving the most successful among us —those most likely to invest in the businesses that employ everyone else — out of the state.

Cathartic as it might be for the 97 percent of us who won’t be affected to pick the pockets of the 3 percent who will, we’d do well to remember that not every wealthy person feels as guilty about his millions as Mr. Gates, and most are a lot more reluctant to hand them over without a fight.

But it’s pretty obvious what’s going on.

Clearly they have indications that someone — or several someones — want to erect a slew of new billboards around town and the council members are working feverishly to rewrite Port Orchard’s sign code in order to prevent what they fear will be visual clutter.

And you may think that’s a great thing.

I know I’m no particular fan of billboard advertising, but I recognize there’s something even more important at stake here than my own selfish desires — namely the concept of property rights.

This may sound like a radical concept in the current environment, but I cling to the quaint notion that people who invest their hard-earned money to buy land should be the ones to decide how that land is to be used — perhaps earning a return on that investment even though it may offend my tender sensibilities.

I’m not suggesting there shouldn’t be limits, of course.

You’re not entitled to build your own dam or store toxic wastes, for example.

But there’s a monumental difference between things that materially affect the property values and quality of life of those around us and the purely subjective matter of what is or isn’t attractive.

Like a lawsuit, where you have to prove actual damages in order to prevail, I think the burden of proof should be on the city to prove that new billboards could potentially impose a measurable cost on those who live here.

And if the best you can come up with is, “I don’t think they’re pretty,” you simply haven’t reached the threshold necessary to take money out of the pockets of property owners who stand to profit by leasing out space to advertisers.

I’m all for beauty, I just don’t see anything beautiful in essentially stealing someone else’s property by telling him he can’t use it in a manner that in no way, shape or form hurts me.

As one who lives here and follows local government fairly closely, however, I’m also gratified the effort is grounded in realism.

There’s nothing wrong, for example, with trying to save paper by conducting as much city business online as possible.

If the city is anything like the office I work in, though, I doubt if the results will be terribly encouraging, since there seems to be no shortage of clutter on my desk despite our corporate commitment to going paperless.

Still, I suppose the question is how much worse things would look if we weren’t trying.

Of much more practical nature is the city’s on-again, off-again love affair with hybrid vehicles.

Despite a stated goal of adding electric-gasoline cars to Port Orchard’s rolling stock, the city leaders have been reluctant to pull the trigger on such purchases given that the price tag for these vehicles is routinely $10,000 more than for an old-fashioned gas-guzzler.

I guess maybe I’m just being my environmentally insentive self here, but I’ve never quite understood the apppeal of hybrids in the first place.

It’s true you don’t spend as much at the gas pump when you own one, but it’s not like they’re giving electricity away, either.

Even more surprising, I would assume, to most of the tree-huggers who drive them is that the power that flows from your outlet into your Prius is likely to be generated almost exclusively by coal or hydroelectric dams, depending on where you live. This is better for the environment?

Ultimately, what a person drives or doesn’t drive comes down to a personal choice, and personally, I couldn’t care less what others do.

I do care what the city of Port Orchard buys with its taxpayer dollars, though. And to that end, I applaud the city for not being stampeded into making pointless, expensive decisions based on nothing more than political correctness.

Naturally that became the topic of conversation du jour, and it quickly evolved into a game of “Can You Top This?” as each caller tried to express more grief than his or her predecessor did.

Within an hour, it had reached the point where people were throwing around the term “hero” for someone whose accomplishment had been to contract an incurable disease by having promiscuous, unprotected sex in defiance of every possible warning we’d all heard about for a decade.

But that’s how mobs are; once one gets on a roll, it’s hard to stop it.

I was thinking about this phenomenon over the past week as I’ve watched many of our readers one after the other try to express more righteous indignation about Mayor Lary Coppola’s recent DUI arrest than everyone else.

It’s now reached the point where people are seriously suggesting he resign from office — along with other public officials who were rumored to have been with the mayor earlier in the evening when, presumably, the liquor in question was consumed.

I’d be the last to soft-peddle drinking and driving, but I think we’re getting way, way ahead of ourselves here.

First of all, where Coppola is concerned, I’m pretty sure we haven’t even heard his side of the story yet. But given that he’s hired an attorney, whose job is to either disprove the charges entirely or at least offer mitigating evidence in order to reduce the charge, it follows that there just might be more here than meets the eye.

More importantly, lynch mob mentality notwithstanding, there’s such a thing as due process in this country, and the mayor is entitled to make his case in court. Until he does, no one can possibly state with any certainty what he did or didn’t do.

And that goes double for someone who might or might not have been with him but hasn’t so much as been accused of any wrongdoing, let alone convicted.

Exhibit A would be U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, the Bainbridge Island Democrat who this week was among the enthusiastic sponsors of a House Bill that would hold oil companies more accountable for the effects of devastating spills such as the one currently threatening Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Where the companies had previously been responsible for damages up to $75 million, the new bill would raise the cap to a bankrupting $10 billion.

“This legislation,” Inslee brayed, “will ensure BP and other corporations are held responsible for paying their fair share of the damages caused by oil spills.”

Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? I mean, why should the taxpayers pick up the tab for BP’s mistake?

The problem, as anyone with a room-temperature IQ can plainly see, is that we’ll pick up the tab one way or the other anyway. Which makes bills like this one symbolic at best.

Since BP doesn’t print its own money, it has two basic choices — pass along the cleanup costs to the public in the form of higher gas prices or file Chapter 7.

If the latter happens, BP’s creditors and liability insurers will be left holding the bag, and they, too, will either have to raise their prices or go belly up.

Meanwhile, thousands of BP employees would be thrown out of work and the market would be left with just that much less competition in an industry already dominated by a relative handful of major players.

In the real world, that’s how economies work — nothing happens in a vacuum because everything is intertwined with everything else.

Inslee presumably knows this, and if he were a little more honest and a lot less self-serving, he’d admit his legislation will do nothing but pass the buck around a bit while giving an army of federal regulators a mountain of paper to shuffle.

But why be honest when you can look like a tough guy to your more gullible constituents?

“I don’t think the city could do better by going on its own,” Brody said.

That’s reasonable enough.

In a separate response to columnist Bob Meadows’ comments about the library, however, Brody concedes, “communities will take their turn in getting major capital improvements.”

Common sense should tell you as much.

In other words, if Port Orchard is getting a nearly 300 percent return on its investment, it follows that some other community isn’t getting its money’s worth.

The catch is, next year it could be Port Orchard’s turn to pay more than it gets back from the library system.

On paper, that may sound like an equitable solution. But the fundamental flaw is that it’s KRL, and not the Port Orchard taxpayers, who decide in any given year whether we get what we pay for.

Yes, we could have a say in those decisions by voting to annex into the library system rather than contracting for services as we are now. But we’d still be just one small voice that could be outvoted by our more numerous neighbors to the north.

So why even bother if it’s control over your fate you seek?

I have no idea whether Mr. Mezzanotte’s suggestion of going it alone would make financial sense or whether by participating in KRL we already enjoy economies of scale that can’t be duplicated.

But all things being equal, I do know it’s always much better to make your own decisions than beg for crumbs — especially from your own table.

At the same time, I get the distinct impression the agency’s April 28 “Jobs Initiative” luncheon had more sizzle than steak to it.

Asked to describe the purpose of the event, Port CEO Cary Bozeman explained, “We would like to engage people in our effort to bring new jobs to Kitsap County by having a conversation around the issue of how we can effectively recruit new companies to the county.”

Port Commissioner Larry Stokes was even more succinct. “The Jobs Initiative was an idea the CEO came up with and he and staff have put together,” he said. “My hope for it is that it helps to let the area know more about the port and our mission.”

In other words, the luncheon wasn’t about the complicated business of attracting employers to the port’s all-too-empty facilities. It was about reassuring the voting public that something was being done.

And just to further drive home that message, one of the two keynote speakers for the occasion was Brett Phillips, sustainability project manager at Unico Properties, who discoursed on sustainability, green initiatives, alternative energy and all sorts of environmental mumbo-jumbo.

If one didn’t know better, you’d almost swear that SEED, the port’s ill-fated effort to create a green-technology incubator with public money, was still on the table over there.

How many times must we go through this?

Kitsap County needs jobs, not political correctness. And at this point, we shouldn’t care a jot whether prospective employers increase our carbon footprint as long as they’re bringing in living-wage, private-sector jobs.

Last but not least, the port doesn’t have a perception problem. It has a reality problem, and an aggressive public relations strategy isn’t going to change that.

If good things were actually happening there, we’d already know it without having to dream up clever ways to cover up the fact that they’re not.

Danny was a great guy, and he had one of those fathers who believed in doing everything the way the parenting books said. Consequently, he never missed attending a game or even a practice.

Oh, how I pitied Danny.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great when a parent wants to be supportive.

On the other hand, who wants your dad’s eyes on the back of your neck when you’re learning to field grounders and the first hot one trickles right between your legs?

Heck, poor Danny couldn’t even swear without feeling guilty about it, and — with the possible exceptions of spitting and scratching — what’s more fundamental to baseball than that?

At some point, your best intentions and inclinations to be an involved, caring parent have to take a backseat to just letting kids be kids.

I was thinking of Danny last week as I was listening to the various sides discussing/debating/arguing about the future of the Givens Playfields and whether Pee Wee football and Little League baseball could peacefully co-exist on the facility.

Personally, I’m just a bystander on this one. But from where I sit, I find myself wondering whether the parents and adult organizers on both sides — despite their best intentions — are projecting their own feelings and emotions into this situation.

I understand football is harder on grass than baseball, and for safety’s sake, I agree every effort should be made to maintain the fields so both sports can be played there.

At the same time, I vividly remember playing games as a kid on fields that had little if any grass at all — and enjoying it no less than if we’d been at Fenway Park.

Kids aren’t into the trappings nearly as adults to begin with — and they’re certainly not served when the adults get into a turf battle about who gets what and who’s sneaking around behind whose back.

Just a guess here, but I’m thinking the kids would probably like nothing more than for the adults to just shut up while they choose up sides and play.

And aren’t they what this is supposed to be about?

And predictably, Sen. Derek Kilmer (D-Gig Harbor) responded within moments of the commission’s decision by circulating a press release congratulating himself — and only himself — for his role in the process.

Politics being what it is, it’s just as predictable Rep. Jan Angel (R-Port Orchard) will be vilified in the November election for her nuanced vote against the measure.
Her critics will almost certainly ignore the fact that she worked every bit as hard as Kilmer and her House colleague, Rep. Larry Seaquist (D-Gig Harbor), to keep tolls down.

The problem with the plan that passed, however, was that it included provisions that would replace the existing toll plaza with a high-speed camera system that records the license number of every vehicle that doesn’t have a Good to Go sticker on its windshield and sends its owner a bill in the mail.

On paper, such a system sounds perfectly elegant. But in practice, it would require creating a decidedly inelegant bureaucracy to handle the billing and collections functions, and we’d expressed our own reservations about the plan in an earlier editorial.

Angel also voiced concern that by avoiding a modest toll increase this year, we might just be setting ourselves up for a back-breaker next year.

The point is, it would have been far easier to vote — and take credit for — a bill that kept tolls at their present levels until after the election. But Angel deserves credit for doing the right thing instead of what was politcally expedient.

You might want to keep that in mind next fall when her vote is being deliberately mischaracterized.

As of last year, the committee that oversees the pageant for South Kitsap’s annual celebration opted to eliminate the distinction of having one queen, and at the time that decision made some sense.

After all, only two girls competed last year for the honor — and the scholarship money that goes with it — and that doesn’t make for much of a competition. Under the circumstances, a certain “everybody wins” philosophy probably made sense.

“We’ve seen quite a few communities going with ambassadors instead of crowning a queen, king or having princesses,” explained Kim Martin, who directs the pageant, last year.

“That way,” she said, “they maintain the same status and that puts them on equal footing.”

Why exactly is that a good thing?

I grant you this isn’t a heavyweight championship fight — or at least it shouldn’t be — and no one is suggesting transforming the Fathoms o’Fun pageant into a no-holds-barred affair.

At the same time, what’s wrong with one person winning and another losing? Why are we so afraid of rewarding exceptionalism?

Isn’t the alternative reinforcing mediocrity?

This year there were actually four girls in the running, and all four were named ambassadors — albeit at differing levels of scholarship reward.

Would singling out one as the queen have been so devastating to all the others?
Port Orchard has had a Fathoms o’Fun pageant since 1968, and it stands to reason there have been a lot more losers than winners in that time, and as far as anyone can tell, they’ve managed to cope with the disappointment.

Evidently pageant contestants were made of sterner stuff in the old days than they are now.

But from where I sit, it sounds like the folks out there don’t want the county cutting a swath through their property to create 11-foot traffic lanes and four-foot medians on either side that can be used by bicyclists and walkers.

And frankly, I can’t say as I blame them. Had I invested substantially in waterfront property, I’d be every bit as resentful as they at the notion of the county helping itself to it without my consent — regardless of whether I was being “fairly” compensated or not.

The only difference is that I’d object on a property rights basis rather ginning up yet another dubious environmental crisis.

Rebecca McCoy, who lives on one of the 17 plots affected by the county’s plan, hopes to speak with the commissioners soon in an effort to delay or scuttle the plan based on her contention that adding more pavement will mean more stormwater running off into Puget Sound rather than seeping into the ground.

“This is a really bad plan for anyone that is not a commuter,” she said.

By a striking coincidence, however, it turns out that pretty much everyone is a commuter — except the owners of the land the county plans to seize in order to widen the road, which makes their objections sound rather more personal than altruistic.

And honestly, I’m OK with that, because I understand that tomorrow it could be something of mine Big Brother wants.

In the meantime, though, I guess you have to cater to your audience. And if McCoy and her neighbors think playing the “green” card will get better traction with the commissioners, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were right.

They’ve always been more worried about carbon footprints and such than property rights anyway.

“Did you complain similarly,” she asked, “when the two initiatives (I-728 and I-732) to lower class sizes and increase teacher salaries were also set aside?”

It’s a provocative question, but one she helpfully answers herself when she later points out that while the education initiatives “passed by much bigger majorities … they were unfunded.”

Exactly right.

Otto von Bismarck famously described politics as “the art of the possible,” and it’s my contention that it’s appropriate to disregard the other two initiatives because they asked the Legislature to do the impossible, while I-960 didn’t.

It’s one thing for the lawmakers in Olympia to realize there’s no way they could comply with a pair of vaguely worded ballot measures that required them to hire more teachers and pay them more but made no provision whatever for funding this largesse.

It’s something else entirely to decide you no longer wish to be constrained by laws that limit your ability to take money from the pockets of those who sign the checks in the first place.

Frankly, the Legislature was sent contradictory messages. On the one hand, it was told to spend more on education. On the other, it was told in no uncertain terms by I-960 and an alphabet soup of other ballot measures that tax increases were off the table.

Something had to give, and it did.

Because lawmakers are supposed to work for their constituents, the best way to summarize all of this is with a workplace analogy.

Suppose you, as a supervisor, told one of your employees his or her department needed to produce twice what it was currently producing but you weren’t giving them any more resources to do it with. How angry could you be if they came back after a few weeks and admitted they had fallen short because you were asking them to do the impossible?

On the other hand, suppose you told the same department head that from now on their budget would have to be checked by a co-worker before any new expenditures were approved. Think you’d be pretty upset if they flatly refused?

You bet you would.

The same principle applies here. You can’t fairly criticize the Legislature for failing to do the impossible. But Initiative 960 wasn’t impossible, nor was there any contradiction in its message.

Somehow it doesn’t seem terribly unreasonable to be critical of the Legislature for applying an identical standard to ballot measures it can’t comply with as it does to those it simply doesn’t feel like complying with.

Or afterwards, come to think of it.

In fact, I can only think of one time when Lary Coppola has shared secrets of state with me, and that was right after he was elected a few years ago, when he confided that there was a movement in the works to form a separate South Kitsap port district and secede from the Bremerton port district.

I guess somehow he got the idea I didn’t think we were being well-represented by the port commissioners, despite the fact that two of the three are elected from South Kitsap.

Anyway, I told Lary I thought it was a fabulous idea, but he asked that we not publish anything about it until the plan was a little further down the road.

I guess the cat’s out of the bag now, because the mayor addressed the issue in an online comment to one of our stories last week.

He noted, “After having an attorney look into this, the problem they found is that there is no current law governing leaving port districts to form new ones — only joining them. For that to happen, it would require new law being brought forward to the Legislature, and the Legislature passing it. However, on the surface, all things considered, I don’t think you’d find many people in SK that wouldn’t vote for forming a new port district if it were put on the ballot.”

I suspect he’s right about that, assuming they understood the choice was between continuing to pay two-thirds of the cost of Bremerton’s port and forming our own district that would use South Kitsap dollars to support South Kitsap facilities.

My guess is, they’d be even more enthusiastic about supporting no port district at all, but that option was never on the table.

How typical of the “Alice in Wonderland” world of government, though, that the law has no problem with SK residents being taxed for someone else’s benefit but makes no provision whatsoever for the idea of people actually taking care of themselves.

As of this week, Stephenson will be stepping down as Kitsap County treasurer to take a similar position in Mayor Patty Lent’s administration with the city of Bremerton.

Of the two, Stephenson’s abdication more closely resembles that of Endresen, who left her post in 2007 to accept a job as Washington state liaison for U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, than it does Flynn, who retired in 2008.

Either way, I have a problem with it.

First and foremost, I cling to the naïve belief that public servants should be held to a higher standard than a normal private-sector employee.

If you or I get a better job offer, we’re free to leave our current position and accept it no questions asked — unless we have a contract, that is.

I guess my point is that I think an elected official has a contract — a moral one — with his or her constituents. It isn’t written down on paper, but it should be every bit as binding.

When you stand before the voters and ask for their support, I believe you’re making a commitment to serve out your entire term.

If you think otherwise, imagine how many votes a candidate would attract if they honestly conceded on the campaign trail that they’d leave in a heartbeat if their newly won office suddenly qualified them for a better-paying position elsewhere. (Or in Flynn’s case, if she suggested to the voters she might soon trade the the rigors of her office for the quiet comforts of retirement.)

Beyond that, there are also the political considerations, since it’s up to the county party apparatchiks to find a replacement for an elected official of that same party who leaves in mid-term.

Having a year or two to settle in and run as an incumbent is a big advantage for the appointee, and the whole process smacks of cronyism.

The simple solution is, if you run for an office with a four-year term, plan on staying four years.

Commissioner Bill Mahan, whose disconnect with reality appears to grow wider by the day, was the most vocal advocate for hiring a marketing/communications director — at an annual salary of $65,000 plus $15,000 in benefits.

“I feel this position is crucial to the effectiveness of the port and for letting people know what the port is doing,” he said. “I don’t want to tell the public, ‘We wanted to be more transparent, but we didn’t want to put more money toward it.’”

Which prompts two responses.

First, there already exists a vehicle for telling the public what the port is up to. It’s called the media.

Port Orchard Independent reporter Justine Frederiksen attends virtually every Port of Bremerton meeting and her subsequent stories are shared among all five Sound Publishing newspapers in Kitsap County. The Kitsap Sun also routinely covers port commissioner meetings and, like us, finds no end of newsworthy material in their antics.

So what exactly is Mahan’s point? That the stories currently appearing in all of our newspapers are inaccurate simply because they report the news rather than spouting the approved party line?

If so, precisely how does the port’s newly hired, handsomely compensated marketing/communications person plan to change what’s being written?

Do Mahan and Port CEO Cary Bozeman, who also pushed hard for the new position, expect to go over our heads directly to the public via the port’s Web site and that people will take at face value what their flack reports?

Good luck with that.

Even more fundamentally, while I wholeheartedly agree that the port suffers from a serious credibility gap, it isn’t because the public doesn’t know what the commissioners are doing.

It’s because it does.

The voters, as Commissioner Mahan will discover in November should he be brazen enough to seek re-election, are still seething over the board’s decision in 2006 to raise local property taxes in order to fund massive upgrades to the Bremerton Marina.

No, it didn’t help that the decision was deliberately made with little or no public input, but it isn’t as though the voters would have been any happier had the commissioners approved the increase in the light of day.

If the Port of Bremerton wants to rehabilitate its tarnished image with the public, “transparency” is only a small part of the problem. The real issue is substance, not style.

Rather than worrying about whether its expensive, irresponsible decisions were made out in the open or behind closed doors, how about simply not making expensive, irresponsible decisions?

Instead of hiring a shill to rationalize the money they’re wasting, wouldn’t it make a little more sense to simply stop wasting the money in the first place?

The port doesn’t need a full-time employee to tell its story.

What it desperately needs is a better story to tell.

Debating the question of whether to raise revenue by selling advertising space in the district’s buses, Simpson, who serves as president of the school board, opined that, “I think (advertising is) a bad idea in terms of student safety.”

Safety? Is she worried one of the placards will fall on someone’s head?

Dialing back Simpson’s hyperbole a few notches, I gather what she actually means is that it’s unhealthy for children to be exposed to advertising messages. But I have a number of reactions to that conclusion, none of which could be confused with agreement.

For starters, depending on which study one listens to and how one defines advertising, the average American is exposed to anywhere from 600 to 3,000 advertising messages a day, and youngsters tend to be on the upper end of that scale. I’m not suggesting it’s always a great thing, but at this point it does kind of seem as though that train has left the station.

Either advertising isn’t quite as harmful as Simpson fears or our kids are already too far gone to worry about, but one way or the other I can’t see how a few additional messages on the wall of their school bus will push them over the edge.

That’s particularly true since the district would obviously control who advertised and who didn’t. Just because advertising was allowed doesn’t mean the district would be compelled to festoon its buses with images of Joe Camel or satanic pentagrams.

Maybe it’s just me, but I actually think a billboard from the Washington Milk Council or Colgate Toothpaste would be better for kids than looking at an unadorned yellow bulkhead.

But Simpson wasn’t finished. She also made it known that she would be “very apprehensive about advertising on the inside of our buses from Corporate America.”

Again, huh? In my world, “Corporate America” is a euphemism for the private sector — you know, the folks who voluntarily invest capital to create a good or service the market will hopefully desire enough to trade its hard-earned dollars for. In the process, “Corporate America” generates the wealth and provides the jobs needed to fund the private sector — for example schools.

This is the horror we need to shield our kids from?

I’m not saying the program wouldn’t require a certain amount of oversight or that every conceivable ad would be appropriate for consideration. I’m just saying that in the version of English I speak, being asked to drink Ovaltine doesn’t put anyone’s safety at risk, and “Corporate America” is the place Mommy and Daddy go every morning to earn the paycheck that keeps a roof over our heads.

No reasonable person would disagree with their objection to the state Treasurer’s stated intention to raise Tacoma Narrows Bridge tolls to unrealistic levels.

What I don’t agree with is that only Kilmer and Seaquist’s bylines are on the opinion.

What about Rep. Jan Angel, the third member of the 26th Distrct delegation and, by a strange coincidence, the only Republican (as well as the only Port Orchard resident)?

One assumes Kilmer and Seaquist’s argument would have carried more weight if it had come with the unanimous and bipartisan endorsement of all three members of the delegation.

And Angel would have signed it, too, had she been asked. But according to her, Seaquist and Kilmer never bothered to show it to her.

In fact, when I contacted her office on Monday just an hour after receiving the op-ed from her colleagues, Angel said she hadn’t even heard about it.
“I see what’s going on,” she said. “My Democratic opponent is trying to build the case that Derek and Larry are representing the district but I’m not. I share their concerns, and we’ve all talked to the treasurer together. But leaving my name off the letter is just their way of making it look like I’m not engaged with this issue.”

Kilmer and Seaquist, of course, were under no obligation to include Angel. But again, the letter would have commanded more credibility if they had.

All of which does sort of beg the question of which is more important to them — actually thwarting a toll hike or creating the misleading impression that they care about the tollpayers and Angel doesn’t?

Maybe it isn’t a big deal, but you might want to keep that in mind next time either Kilmer or Seaquist earnestly assures you that petty partisanship has no place in the legislative process.

By this, one can only assume he actually meant opposition to the virtual single-party governance currently on display in Washington state, because the words were no sooner out of his mouth than he launched into a poisonous, partisan attack of his own.

Calling his Republican opponent a “weak leader,” Schoenike concluded that “Jan Angel hasn’t done anything of consequence during her first term.”

He continued, “She gives the impression she is working hard, but the public has a hard time figuring out what she is really doing.”

In fact, as a freshman lawmaker Angel has actually enjoyed about as productive a term as could be expected under the circumstances. But one shouldn’t overlook — as Schoenike hopes you will — that she has not only served only one of her alloted two sessions in the Legislature, but as a member of a severely outmanned minority party.

Consequently, much of what has had to pass for actual accomplishment consisted of pointing out the excesses of the party in power.

As a freshman, neither Angel nor Schoenike could be expected to author and pass sweeping legislation. And as a Republican, Angel faced even more daunting odds.

But we knew that going in, and yet she managed to earn her seat by a comfortable margin in a year when just having a “D” behind your name on the ballot should have been worth at least 50 percent of the vote.

The point is, just because Angel didn’t flood Olympia with a blizzard of legislation during her first year in office doesn’t mean she didn’t serve her constituents well by pointing out the flaws in the bills others were passing.

Just as we expected she would when we elected her.

And that’s all the more true if it’s by no means clear the commissioners understand the subject any better than you do.

Audrey Graf, whose husband Michael faces the prospect of being laid off from his job as a corrections officer at the Kitsap County Jail because of the county’s persistent budget problems, last week informed the commissioners that, “If my husband loses his job, we will no longer be able to afford daycare. The daycare workers will lose income and will no longer be able to pay for their haircuts. There is a trickle-down effect that happens when you pass a budget that lays off needed personnel.”

Um, no.

In point of fact, as a public employee, Mr. Graf’s salary is paid by the taxpayers. Which means that if he isn’t receiving it, there’s simply more left in our pockets to pay for our own daycare and haircuts — or whatever else we might choose.

From the Grafs’ perspective, it may seem as though those dollars disappeared from the local economy. But the truth is, they’re just being spent by someone else.

That’s not to say Mr. Graf doesn’t perform an important function. Many — though certainly not all — public servants do, which explains why we willingly employ millions of them despite the fact that their salaries show up firmly on the debit side of the ledger.

To state what should be obvious, government by itself produces neither wealth nor employment.

Zip. Zero. Nada.

At best, government merely confiscates resources from productive workers in the private sector and use them to fund services society as a whole requires. Where to draw the line regarding which services actually warrant funding is the essence of political debate. But that doesn’t alter the fact that it’s the private sector that underwrites the public sector, not the other way around.

With all due respect to Mrs. Graf, one can make a reasonable argument that her husband’s continued employment as a corrections officer is important in terms of public safety. But to suggest that paying his salary benefits all of us because he, in turn, will re-spend it is to completely misunderstand the whole concept behind a market-based economy.

When a private-sector worker creates something of value where previously nothing existed, the resulting new dollars inevitably trickle down to others through the goods and services he or she buys. But when a public-sector job is created, it simply means existing dollars trickle from the person who earned them to someone else — usually someone a politician considers more deserving.

The point is, there’s a huge difference between “trickle-down” economics and “trickle-around” economics, if you will.

As I say, it’s frustrating though predictable that someone whose grasp of economics is confined to her own circumstances should make the mistake of believing government can actually improve the economy by redistributing someone else’s wealth.

But the real danger comes when those in government start believing it, too.

To be clear, it wasn’t intended as a criticism of the concept so much as its execution. But that didn’t keep me from looking like Port Orchard’s resident Grinch.

Chimes & Lights made a modest debut in 1999 as a way to show off the new City Hall’s carillon and draw Christmas shoppers downtown, and organizers were pleasantly surprised when thousands of people showed up.

Quick to recognize the community had a potential hit on its hands, the event was expanded in its second year to include music, hayrides, a theater troupe and other holiday fare.

The result, as I famously chronicled, was a comedy of errors that included a free-for-all each time the hayride wagon returned to the curb for another load of youngsters, the bells interrupting Mayor Jay Weatherill’s welcoming speech, the unfortunate placement of a children’s choir in a location that prevented anyone from hearing them, and much more.

I pointed out the flaws in the program not to embarrass or hurt anyone’s feelings. Rather, I simply wanted to challenge Chimes & Lights organizers to iron out the problems before they killed an otherwise promising event.

On the festival’s 10th anniversary, I should belatedly point out that they’ve done just that, and what started out shakily has evolved into a cherished holiday tradition for all of South Kitsap.

Even better, Chimes & Lights appears to be attracting visitors from surrounding communities who come to soak in the festivities and, not coincidentally, leave a little money behind.

People of my generation and older remember when a community was almost expected to host this sort of holiday celebration, and it’s a nostalgic experience for us, as well as a treat for our children and grandchildren.

There simply aren’t enough Chimes & Lights in the world these days, which explains why Port Orchard’s has become so irreplaceable in 10 short years.

County Prosecutor Russ Hauge, whose office has been instructed to slash $800,000 from its budget, has been emphatic for months that the cutbacks threaten public safety by forcing him to drop charges against offenders who might otherwise have been successfully prosecuted.

“Currently we have two serious homicides charged,” Hauge recently told the Kitsap commissioners. “There are at least two more under investigation, and a potential two-count vehicular homicide to deal with. Each serious case needs the constant attention of at least two lawyers and one legal assistant. And along the way, all members of the Criminal Division management team will be engaged.”

With so much manpower tied up handling these more serious cases, Hauge says his office simply can’t afford to pursue all the lesser offenses that need attention, which could result in dangerous criminals being left on the street rather than behind bars.

In some ways the Lakewood tragedy bears this out. The prime suspect in the killings, Maurice Clemmons, has an extensive criminal history including at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and eight or more felony charges in Washington.

Most disturbingly, he’s repeatedly been released from custody over the objections of those who recognized the threat he posed.

Clemmons, in fact, had been released from jail, apparently with a grudge against law enforcement, after being arrested on a charge of raping a 12-year-old just six days before the shooting. Which raises the specter of such a person falling through the cracks in Kitsap County if they can’t be prosecuted or incarcerated for budgetary reasons.

At the same time, the fact that Clemmons was repeatedly paroled, commuted and otherwise overlooked sounds more like a case of gross incompetence, poor judgment and outright stupidity than anything else — which shouldn’t happen here or anywhere else regardless of budget constraints.

Clemmons’ most recent discharge from custody in Pierce County, for example, had nothing to do with that community’s inability or unwillingness to prosecute him. It was the fault of a judge who set bail so low that Clemmons was able to afford it despite a list of prior convictions that stretched into double digits. While out on bail, he was ordered to wear an electronic ankle bracelet — which he proceeded to cut off almost immediately and go on his merry way.

Make no mistake: Maurice Clemmons is an animal who long ago forfeited the right to live in a free society, and anyone with a scintilla of intelligence recognized it long before his evil manifested itself on Sunday morning. That he was allowed to roam free stalking police officers instead of making brooms in a state prison can be laid at the feet of a procession of law enforcement officials incapable of doing the job for which they were hired or elected, not a shortage of resources. And presumably we’re not making the same mistake here in Kitsap County with similarly dangerous felons.

But if we are, budget cuts won’t excuse it.

I mention this only because, had it not been for the Port of Bremerton’s protracted decision this past summer to abandon its Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) project, South Kitsap residents would now be very heavily (and perhaps irretrievably) invested in precisely the sort of companies he’s referring to.

In case you missed it, the international scandal, which the Melbourne (Australia) Herald-Sun describes as “the greatest in modern science,” involves computer hackers who broke into the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit database and made public scores of e-mails between the CRU and (formerly) prominent scientists from all over the world revealing a systematic campaign to misreport the dangers of man-made global warming — and, in fact, perpetrate a massive hoax.

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline,” reads one such e-mail, detailing how researchers whose data actually showed the earth was in the midst of a cooling trend routinely phonied up the evidence to make it appear we were on the verge of being burnt to a cinder.

And this isn’t just a few isolated eggheads we’re talking about. The CRU is the lead agency compiling data for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose projections are cited as gospel when global warming alarmists push for things like cap-and-trade legislation.

Closer to home, the 2009 Washington State Legislature directed the departments of Agriculture (WSDA), Commerce, Ecology, Fish and Wildlife, Natural Resources and Transportation to develop a comprehensive (read: expensive) strategy regarding climate change by Dec. 1, 2011.

Of course that was before a smoking gun was produced that shows global warming isn’t happening.

Not that anyone should expect the bureaucrats at these agencies to acknowledge the Climategate revelations.

They, like the fraudulent scientists caught red-handed, have too great a stake in perpetuating a con game that expands their own power bases.

But it won’t wash this time.

According to a Rasmussen Poll that came out even before Climategate broke, 47 percent of Americans believe any warming of the environment is due to natural factors, compared to 37 percent who believe it’s otherwise. This is a 10 percent swing in just the past year and a half — and remember, it came before people realized the earth wasn’t warming in the first place.

Which brings us back to SEED, whose backers earnestly assured us a green-technology business park would be a shrewd investment for the Port of Bremerton as the threat of global warming stampeded the world’s population toward environmentally friendly technologies.

It won’t happen — nor should it.

Thankfully, the powers-that-be at the port dodged a bullet by reluctantly yielding to common sense rather than hucksterism masquerading as science.

Instead, the port will now presumably develop an industrial park based on sound business practices rather than a political agenda whose whole premise has been exposed as a lie.

I’d feel a lot better if the port’s leaders had recognized they were building their tax-subsidized house on a foundation of sand at the time rather than simply bowing to public opinion in killing SEED. But sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

With all due respect, why?

Grennan said many of the administrative changes — things like consolidating services, travel cutbacks and the like — will likely remain in effect even when the current economic climate improves.

Again, when it comes to spending our tax dollars, shouldn’t government always be in crisis mode?

In my household — like most others, I assume — we have good months and bad months. When things are bad, we’re looking to squeeze a dime out of every nickel. When things are good, relatively speaking, we’re somewhat less diligent.

But at least we’re spending our own money, not someone else’s.

In any case, I can’t say I’m as gratified as I might be to hear the county has suddenly discovered bold and innovative ways to save money. Instead of praising them for their new-found creativity, I find myself asking why it took until now to get serious about economizing.

How come when the county is raking in more than it needs, life is good, but when it has to live within its means, that’s a crisis? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

My particular favorite budget-reducing technique is the plan to pay the incoming administrative services director $15,000 less than Shawn Gabriel, who announced his resignation last month, was making. It begs the question, if you can find a qualified applicant willing to work for the lower figure, weren’t you overpaying the incumbent?

In layman’s terms, this new strategy is known as capitalism, and it works pretty darned well in the private sector, where people are paid according to what they’re willing to work for rather than simply picking a nice, round figure out of thin air.

And frankly, if forcing government to actually embrace supply and demand and work a little harder to make sure it’s not wasting our hard-earned tax dollars constititutes a crisis, I’m all for making sure this one lingers a while longer.

There weren’t too many highlights for the home team in South Kitsap’s 63-14 loss to Skyline on Saturday night in the opening round of the state 4A football playoffs, so I found myself looking for opportunities to be creative while standing around on the sideline shooting pictures.

The game was played at Mount Tahoma High School in Tacoma and I couldn’t help noticing there was a church right next door with a lighted cross. I made a mental note to see if I could incorporate the image in a photo if the two teams ever got down to the appropriate yard line, and in the second quarter  they finally did.

This is the shot I came up with while I was arguing with the referee about how close to the sidelines I could stand. I call it “Fourth Down and a Prayer” — kind of an apt metaphor for the kind of night the Wolves had.

I can’t think of anyplace to publish the picture in the paper, but I think it’s kind of neat under the circumstances.

This week, for example, the football team’s victory on Saturday over Heritage, as well as a preview of tomorrow night’s game with Skyline, warranted two full pages, while the soccer team’s win over Kamiak was given less than one. And frankly, I was surprised no soccer moms have called to demand equal time.

Pre-emptively, let me point out that the soccer game was played on Tuesday night and the paper was built on Wednesday, which by definition gives our small staff a lot less time to write, analyze and design pages than we had for the football game, which took place on Saturday night.

Beyond that, as laudable as the soccer team’s accomplishments are, they simply don’t generate  as much interest as the football team. If you doubt that, try counting those in attendance at a soccer game compared to a football game.

You may argue it shouldn’t be that way — and you’ll have many passionate soccer fans who agree with you. But as a newspaper, our job is to reflect how things actually are, not someone’s idea of how they ought to be.

On an individual basis, we’ll be just as proud of the girls if they ultimately win a state title as we were when then boys’ soccer team did last spring. And if they do so while the football team is eliminated, we’ll probably give more ink to the soccer team. Everyone loves a winner, after all.

But everything else being equal — which is to say, with both teams winning — don’t be surprised if we continue to lean in the direction of what more of our readers seem to care about.

While Horton outpolled Zabinski 49 percent to 29 in the August primary, during which only residents of the Central Kitsap district Zabinski will be representing could vote, the outcome on Tuesday was markedly different.

In the general election, seats on the board are voted on by everyone living in the Port of Bremerton taxing district — two-thirds of whom are South Kitsap residents. And while CK voters were obviously comfortable with Horton — the former mayor of Bremerton — South Kitsap voters clearly weren’t, as evidenced by Zabinski’s 54-45 win.

As if voters on this side of Sinclair Inlet weren’t suspicious enough of Horton, the current commissioners did her no favors this summer by tapping sitting Bremerton Mayor Cary Bozeman as the port’s new CEO.

For South Kitsap residents still smarting from the board’s decision in 2006 to raise their property taxes in order to give Bremerton’s marina a $22 million facelift, the prospect of one former Bremerton mayor already entrenched as the port’s CEO and another joining the team as a commissioner was at least one too many.

Ironically, her Bremerton connections notwithstanding, I suspect Horton would probably have governed in a manner somewhat more in keeping with South Kitsap’s wishes than what Zabinski has in mind.

Whatever her personal inclinations may be, Horton is first and foremost a politician who more than likely would have played it safe enough to hopefully get herself re-elected in four years.

Zabinski, on the other hand, was an outspoken supporter of the port’s Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) project until it became clear the concept was wildly unpopular with voters. Even so, he’s been known to suggest that the problem with SEED was its execution more than the basic concept — which sounds a little like code for, “We’ll try again as soon as the coast is clear.”

Simply put, I suspect that beneath Zabinski’s wonkish exterior beats the heart of an ideologue whose goals do not completely coincide with those of the South Kitsap voters who made his election possible.

The good news is, a year from now it won’t matter much anyway because by then current South Kitsap Commissioner Bill Mahan will either have voluntarily stepped down from the board or been unceremoniously retired by the voters.

Either way, my guess is his replacement will more closely resemble SK’s other commissioner — pragmatic, penurious Larry Stokes — than what Bremerton would prefer, thus giving South Kitsap and common sense a majority of votes on the board regardless of which direction Zabinski might want to take it.

But even to my arithmetically challenged brain, the deal negotiated this week to lease space in the Port of Bremerton’s Olympic View Business Park to General Dynamics seems more about PR than profit.

If I understand correctly, the port is leasing the company 9,000 square feet in its Salo Building — or Building No. 1, if you prefer — for $7,648 a month. And considering the facility has been completely vacant for the past 20 months, costing the port about $21,000 a month in lost rents, you might say the lease with General Dynamics is a great deal because it gets you about a third of the way there.

In fact, the port is saying just that.

“We couldn’t ask for a better start than having a nationally known company of General Dynamics’ stature choose the port to be the Kitsap County home for its Electric Boat subsidiary,” said Port Commissioner Cheryl Kincer in a news release this week announcing the deal.

Well, yes and no.

Yes, it’s nice having a prestigious company like General Dynamics in the park. But no, it isn’t the best possible scenario for either the port or the taxpayers.

In order to lure the Groton, Conn.-based contractor to Kitsap, the port agreed to provide an estimated $90,000 worth of upgrades to Building No. 1. In addition, the port paid a 4 percent commission to the Boston real estate broker who put the deal together.

At $7,648 a month, Port Real Estate Director Tim Thomson said the agency expects to recoup its outlay “over the first six years of the lease through revenue from the above-market office rate.”

The problem is, the lease is only for three years. General Dynamics does have a pair of options that could extend the deal to as much as eight years, but you have to wonder why the company would exercise such an option at “above-market” rates.

Which means there’s no guarantee the port won’t spend more than $100,000 of the taxpayers’ money only to see its tenant relocate to a more favorable site before even half of our investment is repaid.

I understand the port’s mission is economic development and General Dynamics will bring an unspecified number of jobs to the region when it moves in by the first of the year.

But I also know Port of Bremerton CEO Cary Bozeman has made a point of promising the agency is on the road to operational self-sufficiency. If so, this potentially money-losing deal was definitely a detour.

Worse, it has the feel of something the port felt compelled to accept in order to squelch criticism from taxpayers wondering why it was taking so long to find a tenant for a building it constructed on spec.

Nothing like having to pay for a prom date just to avoid the embarrassment of admitting you didn’t have one.

By coincidence, Eyman happened to be doing a Google search that morning to see what newspapers around the state were saying about his latest tax-cutting measure. When he found the Guest Opinion we’d published in the same issue that was critical of I-1033, he fired off a quick e-mail wondering whether we’d consider publishing something that supported it.

But when he refreshed his page, he discovered we already had.

Unaccustomed to being taken seriously by newspapers, Eyman took the time to call and thank us personally, which I appreciated.

As for the measure itself, I continue to marvel that it’s even controversial.

Admittedly, I come at this from the perspective that government spends way too much money as it is — a view I think is shared by most people, except when it comes to what’s being spent on them.

In any case, contrary to what its opponents claim, I-1033 doesn’t cut money for anything. By design, the measure allows public revenue to increase — but only in direct proportion to inflation and population rather than the whims of politicians.

Any surplus would be returned to the taxpayers in the form of a property tax reduction.

And if the politicians want more, they can put the question to a vote of the people.

This is revolutionary?

Honestly, it all seems like pretty simple logic to me — which probably explains why I-1033 is comfortably ahead in most public opinion polls.

And it probably also explains why opponents would rather attack Eyman personally than address the specifics of his initiative.

When you look purely at the numbers, the only people who could possibly oppose the initiative are those who don’t care how deep in debt the state goes or how high someone else’s taxes are as long as their own special interest or public-sector salary continues to be funded.

You wouldn’t think someone like that would have the nerve to question anyone else’s motives, but desperate times call for irrational measures.

There are a variety of practical reasons for not doing endorsements. For one thing, what if you wind up endorsing the losing candidate? Then you (or to more specific, the poor reporter who handles the government beat) get to spend the next four years dealing with a public figure who feels no particular need to cooperate with you. And who exactly does that benefit? Certainly not the readers, which should be our primary concern.

Then too, there’s the fact that readers have a difficult enough time distinguishing between opinion pieces and news stories. Whenever they see us taking sides in an editorial, it tends to color their view of our news coverage even though the two things are completely unrelated. For that reason, I prefer to concentrate on specific issues when I’m editorializing rather than throwing a blanket label over a human being and proclaiming them unfit to decide something that hasn’t even happened yet.

And then to be even more brutally honest about it, there are also financial considerations. If I offend a politician by endorsing his or her rival, it follows that they’ll be a bit less enthusiastic about buying a campaign ad in this paper. I’m not suggesting for a moment that our allegiance can be bought, but when it comes to potentially taking the bread out of the mouths of the people you work with every day, you do have to ask yourself whether it’s worth it.

So rather than listing all the reasons why not endorsing candidates isn’t a bad thing, I find myself trying to come up with a compelling reason why we should. And I can’t come up with much.

Unlike editors who either endorse out of habit or because they believe it’s their responsibility to influence events, it’s always been my position that a newspaper can’t be a referee and a player at the same time. Which isn’t to say it should never express an opinion. But again, there’s an important distinction between making an observation about something that’s already happened and actively working to make it happen.

To coin a phrase, I’d rather report and let you decide.

My impression of Kitsap County is that it’s just the opposite — a great place to live, but facing some challenges in terms of attracting tourists.

Which is one reason I’m not wildly optimistic the new director of the county’s Visitor and Convention Bureau can be any more effective than her predecessors.

It’s also why all these conversations you hear about “branding” and other marketing buzz words don’t really resonate with me.

Call me crazy, but I’m convinced no amount of salesmanship can overcome the absence of a product.

Again, don’t misunderstand. I love Kitsap County. I’ve worked here for almost 15 years and my family and I live here.

Like I said, it’s a wonderful place to live and raise your kids.

From a tourist standpoint, however, what it lacks is a true signature attraction to bring in outsiders.

Yes, Poulsbo has a quaint downtown. But so do a lot of towns around the state.

The same could be said of Bremerton’s gussied-up marina; it’s very nice, but not completely unique in a region where pretty much every other community has a waterfront of its own.

Whenever you see Kitsap County sold to tourists, the pitch includes mention of its miles of shoreline and wonderful scenery — commodities we surely have in abundance. But unfortunately, we don’t have a patent on those things.

What Kitsap County desperately needs is a one-of-a-kind tourist draw — something no one around here else has.

We toyed with the idea of building a NASCAR track a few years back, and while that’s not a sport that necessarily screams Pacific Northwest, at least there isn’t an asphalt oval in every other Washington county.

But since the tree-huggers successfully scotched that plan, my suggestion as a starting point in isolating a potentially lucrative enterprise that sets Kitsap Count apart from its neighbors is … golf.

Speaking only for myself, I haven’t swung a club in anger for years. But I’m told by those familiar with such things that Kitsap County’s cluster of world-class facilities equals or surpasses those of any other spot in Washington.

Great. Let’s run with that.

I also know the local courses have worked on package deals including hotel rooms that enable visitors to come for the weekend and play several different venues.

Cool idea, but how aggressively are we marketing it?

My point is, success in any business means exploiting a narrow market niche, not trying to be all things to everyone. And just maybe our niche is to become the region’s premier golf destination rather than just one of hundreds of places with saltwater lapping up on its beaches.

Having already rejected the idea of becoming the next Daytona, my tourism suggestion — for what it’s worth — would be to focus like a laser beam on promoting Kitsap County as the Palm Springs of the Pacific Northwest.

It was my first face-to-face conversation him and he made a good first impression for the most part. I was a little taken aback, though, when I asked him whether the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) project was dead and buried or whether it could be resurrected at some point.

He responded immediately that it could absolutely resurface.

Given my longstanding and enthusiastic opposition to SEED, it was quite a blow to my ego that he didn’t even attempt to hedge on that point. Evidently he hasn’t read much of my work.

Bozeman went on to explain, however, that if SEED did return it would be without the sticking points I’ve always objected to — namely public funding for fledgling companies too risky to capitalize themselves in the traditional ways.

It’s true green-technology companies are an emerging market, and it’s also true a lot of these companies could wind up hitting the jackpot. But it’s also true that most won’t, and I’ve just never gotten my head around the idea of the port commissioners assuming they can pick winners — with someone else’s money, of course — better than venture capitalists who get paid millions of dollars to make those decisions.

Why not simply take our property taxes to Longacres and bet it all on longshots? Sooner or later one those is bound to pay off, too.

Bozeman said that isn’t how it’s going to work when and if SEED resurfaces. “The port is out of the incubator business,” he said, meaning it can’t afford to subsidize companies that can’t stand on their own two feet. If SEED — or more likely some re-christened derivation thereof — makes a comeback, it will be in the form of a redoubled effort to attract green-technology startups to locate in the port’s South Kitsap Industrial Area on their own nickel, more or less.

And honestly, I have no problem with that. By all means let’s encourage businesses to locate and grow here. Let’s help them with infrastructure, lower taxes and offer an excellent quality of life for their workers.

But let’s not pay them to like us and pretend this is anything but a sham wedding.

To the extent Bozeman is correct and the port only looks to recruit (not bankroll) these businesses, he’ll get no argument from me. But if all this talk of revising the SEED model is just a way to keep the concept alive until a different slate of commissioners can attempt what the current one did, the gloves will come off again.

As far as I can tell, no one is sure at this point how many people showed up for all or part of the four-day festival celebrating local author Debbie Macomber’s wildly successful Cedar Cove books, but my own estimate would be 2,000 or 3,000 turned up for Saturday night’s Character Parade and sock hop.

But getting back to Saturday morning, it’s not like Bay Street was clogged with people, but for one of the very few times I can remember in the 15 years I’ve been covering Port Orchard, the downtown looked like a downtown should look on a Saturday morning.

People were milling around on the corners chatting with one another, while others strolled up and down the street looking in store windows — and even going inside to buy things.

It didn’t feel like a festival crowd, with noise and a lot of congestion. It just felt … well, nice.

Like a lot of people my age, I grew up in a small town with a definable Main Street, which was where people generally congregated on a sunny Saturday morning to transact their business, visit with friends and do a little shopping. If only for a moment, Port Orchard had that kind of a feel.

And I liked it.

I don’t know whether you could say the Cedar Cove folks hit a home run this past weekend, but I’d say it was at least a ground-rule double. Which is a whole lot better than not even getting up to bat.

I was arguing that our papers should never, ever include letters or Guest Opinions about national or international issues. She disagreed, saying local letter-writers have as much right to opine about the economy or the war in the Middle East as they do about what the Port Orchard City Council does, and we as newspapers have an obligation to air those opinions.

While I understand that argument, I still reject it.

Simply put, our aim is to make the Independent the single best source for local news and information you’ll find anywhere. And I don’t think that objective is served by diluting our local coverage with content you can find elsewhere.

That not to say national and international news stories aren’t important. But there are countless other newspapers and websites that carry those stories, and on which you can post your opinions or read those of others.

When you come to the Independent, though, you’re going to find something that’s all Port Orchard all the time.

At least that’s our aim.

If you’ve ever submitted a letter about global warming, the president, gas prices or any other subject that doesn’t include at least one clear reference to South Kitsap, now you know why it wasn’t published.

If you had asked me before Tuesday to predict the outcome, I would have guessed that Roger Zabinski would probably garner the most votes, followed by Gene Hart, with Lynne Horton trailing the field.

My reasoning would have been thus:

• Although he’s portraying himself as a fiscal conservative and SEED agnostic, Zabinski came into the race with the clear backing of state Reps. Larry Seaquist, Fred Finn and Kathy Haigh — Democrats all. He also reportedly spoke on behalf of SEED at a previous port board meeting representing the 35th District Democrats. While port commissioner is officially a nonpartisan post, one can’t expect board members to completely check their ideology at the door, and it’s pretty obvious which way Zabinski leans.

And since at least half the electorate leans in the same direction, I figured Zabinski was starting from a pretty good place.

• My impression in listening to her is that Horton probably tilts as far left as Zabinski, at least with respect to questions like SEED. But what I didn’t sense in her was any real passion for the job. A questioner at a recent public forum, for example, asked all three candidates how many port commissioner meetings they had attended in the year prior to filing for office, and Horton admitted she hadn’t been to any. To me, that sounds like a former Bremerton mayor who’s looking for some way to make herself relevant again and figures the port commissioner job is as likely a landing spot as any.

Ultimately, I figured she and Zabinski would split the liberal vote but Zabinski would poll a little better because he had more backing from the power brokers on that side of the aisle.

• Hart, on the other hand, positioned himself as the port’s “budget watchdog” and made no secret of his desire to kill SEED and clean up the financial mess the port has become. His campaign wasn’t terribly well organized and he came off like a grumpy old man, but I figured that approach might play well with the port’s critics — of whom there are many these days.

Admittedly the discontent is greater in South Kitsap, which holds two of the three seats on the port board, than in Central Kitsap, which has a spiffy, $22 million marina that voters on this side of the water are mostly paying for. And since the primary election only counts voters from the candidate’s home district, I didn’t anticipate that Hart would finish on top Tuesday.

But I still figured there were enough disenchanted voters over there that he’d finish in the top two. Then in the November general election, when residents from all three port districts can vote, I figured Hart would pick up the support of all the angry South Kitsap voters and make a much better showing.

Shows you how much I know.

On election night, Horton cruised to victory with nearly 50 percent of the vote, while Zabinski tallied 29 percent and Hart 20.

Without sounding cynical about it, my best explanation for the result is that name recognition trumped the issues.

Where I was assuming voters would understand where each candidate stood and how that meshed with their own views, I don’t think it would be a stretch to say there’s a limit to how much effort most people are willing to put into researching the candidates for port commissioner.

And in a lot of cases, it would seem, that limit was reached when voters opened their ballot and said, “Lynne Horton … Didn’t she used to be the mayor or something?”

It quickly became apparent they were hoping he might intercede on their behalf and spike my criticisms. Instead, he assured them I’m an agreeable chap by nature and suggested if they had a problem with something I’d written they might want to try the direct approach and ask me about it.

Not surprisingly, I never heard from them.

Now let’s fast-forward to last week when, on the advice of the port’s CEO, Cary Bozeman, the commissioners voted once and for all to pull the plug on SEED.

The vote was 2-1, with Mahan — whose commitment to the project can only be described as delusional — casting the dissenting vote.

For her part, however, Kincer finally embraced reality when she agreed with me — by way of Bozeman, of course — that SEED was a losing proposition.

Now in fairness, Bozeman didn’t suggest killing SEED for the same reasons I’ve been espousing all along. In my estimation, it’s simply irresponsible to gamble the taxpayers’ money on companies whose business plans couldn’t pass muster with people who know a whole lot more about the art of business investment than the port commissioners do.

Bozeman, meanwhile, said SEED was doomed by a lack of public confidence. He blamed a long history of questionable decisions made by the commissioners for eroding that confidence — and you won’t hear me disputing that point.

But however you slice it, Bozeman confirmed what’s been obvious to many of us for years: SEED isn’t a practical option now, nor was it back when the commissioners were more interested in torpedoing one of their critics than they were in taking an honest look at this boondoggle.

I’m just not sure which gives me greater vindication — the fact that Kincer finally saw things my way or the fact that Mahan still doesn’t.

Just to give you a close-to-home, recent example, we got a tip on Tuesday afternoon that South Kitsap Fire & Rescue officials were responding to a plane crash and water rescue incident at Long Lake. Reporter Justine Frederiksen called the fire district to confirm the report, and was told they were, in fact, en route to the scene.

Justine responded by racing to the crash site herself, while I pondered what I should do on this end.

In the normal order of things these days, a newspaper will first Tweet a sentence or so about a breaking news story like this, followed by a paragraph-long news story on its website, and then more Tweets and longer stories as developments warrant. And in this case that’s what I considered doing.

The problem, journalistically speaking, is that there never was a crash.

As far as we can tell, a float plane landed on the lake and a panicked bystander called it in as a crash. Consequently, I’m glad I never got around to Tweeting it.

But in the future, I can’t promise the same outcome because I may wind up pulling the trigger a little faster.

Traditionally, of course, a newspaper wouldn’t print a full-fledged story based on so little corroborating information. Then again, in the good, old print-journalism days, we ink-stained wretches almost always had hours — if not days — in which to verify what we had and write it up.

With the advent of websites, however, the margin to be first with breaking news was whittled down to a matter of minutes.

And now that we have Twitter, we’re talking about seconds.

In a case like the aforementioned plane-crash-that-wasn’t, the current protocol would be to issue a Tweet advising our followers that SKFR was responding to a report of an accident even before we could confirm there actually had been one.

And then if it turned out to be a false alarm, we would issue a follow-up Tweet and website news story to that effect.

Like I said, the landscape has changed. Journalistic standards still apply, but in our lightning-quick, Tweet-centric world,  you can almost certainly expect to see breaking news covered with shorter, less-detailed stories — some of which may alert you to something that never actually happened.

In this business — like many — the technology is changing faster than the rules that govern it.

Beyond that and a handful of other legitimate complaints, however, there was a persistent undercurrent of opposition to the project that had little or nothing to do with practical considerations and was all about hurt feelings.

How else to explain snarky complaints about the choice of colors, for example? While everyone has a favorite hue and others that don’t appeal to them, unless you’re partial to rust, mildew and whatever shades were flaking off the Bay Street buildings before Paint the Town, it’s difficult to see how anything wouldn’t have been an improvement.

Likewise, why the furor over Paint the Town organizer Delilah Rene’s description of downtown Port Orchard in its unattended state as “butt ugly?” The term may have been indelicate, but who could truthfully have denied that Bay Street had a face only a mother (or a downtown apologist) could love?

And no matter what insiders might have thought about its appearance, isn’t the whole idea to appeal to outsiders?

Lastly, there were those who vented their frustration by taking personal shots at Delilah — the Port Orchard resident and nationally syndicated radio personality whose only crime was ponying up thousands of her own dollars to help spruce up her adopted home town. This last group requires no thought or consideration whatsoever — except possibly a sincere apology from the rest of us for the ingratitude and poor manners of the least of us.

All of which begs the question: What do the naysayers have to say now? I recall at least one outspoken skeptic who said he’d be the first to admit he was wrong if Paint the Town turned out to be anything less than an unmitigated train wreck.

When last we looked, however, there was no train wreck. But there is a downtown core that looks as spiffy as it’s looked in decades. And yet we’re still waiting for any of the project’s critics to man (or in some cases woman) up and eat a little crow.

Not that we expected any different.

I don’t mean to say there was nothing going on. There was. Lots of people — though not yet the dozens organizers are hoping for — were already in place prepping, painting and generally making themselves useful. I had somehow expected a speech or two from Delilah or the mayor thanking people for turning out and motivating them to get to work.

But there was none of that. When the appointed hour arrived, Bay Street was blocked off but that was about it. The whole thing was very businesslike — which seems like the proper approach to me.

I’ll venture down later and blog again just to keep you updated. In the meantime, take my word for it — things are already starting to look better down there than I’ve seen them in a lot of years.