Kudos to Parks crews

As someone who used to do the job, I’d like to express thanks for the work done by the parks crews on Vashon, both those from King County Parks and from Vashon Park District. The people that use any of Vashon’s parks need to recognize the hard work done by those crews to keep the parks safe and accessible for everyone. It’s hard, manual labor – clearing trails, cutting downed trees and removal of dangerous overhanging branches, repairing and building trails, maintaining the shelters and cleaning up garbage. It can also be dangerous work — this year there have been multiple ground hornet nests that needed to be dealt with. Those hornets are hard to remove and nasty to deal with! So, next time you see a crew working hard in a Park, please take a minute to stop and thank them for all they do!

Craig Harmeling

Health Care District

In his September 11th letter, Steven Nourse correctly points out that as presented to the voters, the Vashon Health Care District was not created to expand health care on the island. Its purpose was to preserve what we had — a primary care clinic. I would like to thank Steven for bringing this up. it’s something that I’ve been concerned about, and I’m sure a number of others are as well.

I would also like to thank the commissioners. The Sea Mar clinic is up and running and they are building a new facility. This probably would not have happened without their hard work.

That being said, the question that no one seems to be asking is should we continue to fund the VHCD with our tax dollars? At the risk of stating the obvious, higher taxes make it more expensive to live here. This at a time when affordable housing is a serious issue on the island.

I doubt I’ll vote for either candidate in the upcoming election. What I would like is a healthy, adult debate on continued funding of the VHCD and the opportunity to cast my vote on this subject once I’ve heard and considered both sides of the debate.

Henry Perrin