A group of Islanders is in the throes of deciding how Vashon High School should be set up if it’s remodeled, and they’re taking a non-traditional approach to the process.
Islanders will have a chance to meet and speak with high-ranking officials from Washington State Ferries at a May 5 community meeting.
Ferry staff plan to discuss issues currently facing the large transit agency, including new vessel construction, on-time boat departures, the vehicle reservation system and planning for emergencies.
Seven Vashon teachers could be laid off, bus service eliminated and funding for athletics axed, as Vashon Island School District officials grapple over the next two months with a $750,000 budget shortfall.
Some wondered if the meeting room would be large enough. Others were concerned about the location of the children’s section. A few wanted to know if the roof could support sod, making the renovated building one of the greenest on Vashon.
Vashon Rotarians are hoping to raise a few thousand dollars next weekend to help eradicate polio worldwide. They’re bringing an iron lung — a contraption once ubiquitous in the treatment of polio — to Vashon, hoping to inform the community about the nearly eliminated disease and raise funds in the fight against it.
If all goes according to plan, the Vashon Pool will open two weeks earlier this season, have longer open swim sessions and be locally controlled.
Vashon HouseHold has created the first apartment units on the Island permanently assigned to housing homeless families — five units at the organization’s newly refurbished Mukai Commons just west of the Post Office.
Families of children with special needs will now have more help on the Island with the launch of Community Inclusion and Educational Services.
Islanders will get another opportunity to weigh in on a proposed rebuild of Dockton Road next week when King County transportation officials visit Vashon and put forward five possible scenarios for the future of the aging mile-long span.
Gray whales and transient orca whales are continuing to visit the waters of Vashon Island, according to Ann Stateler, who runs the Vashon Hydrophone Project.
As of Friday, April 9, more than two-thirds of Island residences had returned their 2010 census questionnaires, approaching the Island’s final participation rate in the 2000 census, according to demographer Alice Larson.
The state, King County and a regional conservation organization are working to purchase Glacier Northwest’s 236-acre gravel mine on Maury Island and put the land into public ownership — a remarkable denouement, should it come to pass, to one of the region’s biggest environmental battles.
A proposed expansion of the Quartermaster Marina won preliminary approval from King County, which determined last week that the project complies with the state’s environmental requirements for shoreline development.