Letters to the editor | Sept. 1 edition
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, August 30, 2022
School District
Thanks to Matt Sullivan
I want to express my gratitude and appreciation to Matt Sullivan, Vashon Island School District’s (VISD) executive director of business and operations, who departed last week to accept a wonderful opportunity in the same role for the Mercer Island School District (MISD).
I worked 20 years in MISD and I know that his expertise, competence, innovation, problem-solving, and great personality will be honored and appreciated there.
Thank you Matt, for being my partner for five years. Your solid leadership led the way to fiscal stability, impeccable financial accountability, balanced budgets, minimum 5% fund balances, and eight years of clean audits. Further, your direct supervision of our transportation, food services, and maintenance operations provided stable performance, and innovative practices, and created a culture of commitment, pride, and enjoyment among employees.
I am grateful for your management of our capital projects to ensure that we delivered on time and on budget — you helped us keep our promises to the Vashon community who entrusted us with their tax dollars. You are respected by all for your courage, ethics, honesty, and personal commitment to make our district better.
While Matt’s move to Mercer Island is that district’s gain, his departure leaves a significant void in VISD’s financial management and operations. Current plans to submit a bond levy to the voters soon along with operating budget challenges may leave the district fiscally vulnerable. Securing an individual that matches Matt’s competence must be a priority.
Best to you Matt Sullivan – thank you so much for your service.
Michael Soltman, former VISD superintendent
Arts Scene
Gather Vashon was a gift
There will soon be a hole in the heart of Vashon Island.
I am referring to Gather, the gallery at the heart of Vashon. Owners Kathy Raines and Whitney Rose set out to provide a beautiful space to honor and exhibit our many talented local artists. They also fulfilled their dream and their gallery name by creating a space for classes, meetings, concerts, and yes, gatherings.
On a given day, you could find a group of children learning a craft, women writing postcards to our congresspeople or a fundraiser featuring glass candles. Their big front window enticed us with humor, grace and allure. And their smiles and greetings let you know that they would help you find a treasure made by artisans they knew personally.
Gather contributed in more ways than Kathy and Whitney will ever know. But artists and patrons know. The Chamber knows. The community knows. As a past gallery owner, I know. They, and their Gather, were a gift to us all.
Margaret Heffelfinger
Drama Dock
“Winghaven Park” is a must-see
Wow! I said it at intermission and at the end – what a show, Drama Dock!
“Winghaven Park” is about many things – war, human misunderstandings, ambition, an abandoned child, a lost and found love, the cruelty of America’s WWII incarceration of Japanese-American citizens, the warmth and tensions of neighborhood life, and much else – but it is at bottom a thrilling example of the creativity in humanity, the ability to write book/music/lyrics that carry such a humane and stirring message.
Winghaven Park is a Vashon Island neighborhood, where the musical begins; its writer – Lisa Peretti – is herself a resident of the island. Her work touches the heart, and beyond the story itself, for me, personally, it brought back memories of our own family in wartime, of the terrible cost of human conflict – a fatal disease of our species we cannot seem to overcome. But this musical is also about the triumphs and humanity that still give us hope.
Don’t miss it — get on a boat and make a date to see “Winghaven Park,” to take the journey that unfolds on stage, with rousing and original music and a cast of singers that give the story unforgettable life.
Wow, again!
Mike James
Labor Day
Thanks to the workers of the world
Someone once said, “It is not those who run the world that I admire, it is those who make the world run.”
So, a thank you to the clerks, nurses, teachers, electricians, gardeners and all the rest who keep our world running so that we can continue to function in it.
Happy Labor Day Holiday.
Jean Ameluxen
Automobiles
Cars can be lethal
Over 42,000 people were killed in auto accidents in the U.S. last year.
Once again we have a pedestrian on the island being struck down by a car. The driver fled. Is that, as they say, the new normal? As a bicyclist on the island, I’ve had several close calls with motorists. I used to be one, but sold my last car in 1992.
Not having a car has enriched my life in so many ways. Of course, that doesn’t include encounters with motorists.
It’s time we call out the automobile for what it is — a device that kills, maims, pollutes, and in so many ways drains your wallet. It turns normally polite people into bullies and monsters. Who are these hit-and-run drivers? Are they normal people gone bad or were they evil from birth?
It’s time to stop thinking of the car as being the first of all forms of transportation. It is a three to five-thousand-pound, fifty-mile-an-hour lethal weapon that humans are often incapable of controlling. Every time you drive your car, there is a chance, that you and/or others will become casualties.
If you think driving is having a good time, your focus is wrong. Try thinking of the pain being endured by the family of the man who died.
My condolences to them.
Shelley Simon
