I returned to Green River Community College to honor retiring President Richard Rutkowski on Wednesday. He holds a special kind of tenure that has been rightly renewed, again and again, by the GRCC Board of Trustees.
Four members of the County Council are balking at putting a sales tax boost on the August ballot.
For graffiti artists, the writing is on the wall.
Responding to a widespread community problem, the Auburn Police Department and City officials are putting graffiti “taggers” back to work – not with a defacing can of spray paint, but with a paint roller.
Washington has been a leader in early learning for years. The Department of Early Learning provides excellent preschool for many low-income children through the Early Learning Childhood Assistance Program. And the statewide Early Learning Advisory Council has also contributed greatly to the state’s success in this policy area.
It seems like only yesteryear that we said goodbye to classmates, teachers, Principal McCurdy and the beautiful red brick building on Main Street that was our Auburn High School.
With Democrats very much in control in Olympia, and Republicans on the sidelines, one would expect the Legislature to close this year’s looming $2.8 billion budget gap with orderly dispatch.
The 2009-11 supplemental budget recently enacted by the state Legislature, which increases taxes by $800 million, does not deal a fatal blow to any particular industry. Instead, legislators this year decided on the “death by a thousand cuts” approach to raising taxes. Unfortunately, much of the tax increase falls directly on consumers and the business community, big and small.
As the daughter of a disabled World War II veteran, I grew up knowing the sacrifice our veterans and their families make for our country firsthand. And today, those who have served us in Iraq and Afghanistan are returning from service to a particularly difficult job market. These brave men and women were the first to stand up and say, “I want to serve,” but they are often times the last to find employment when they return home.
Effective programming for special-needs students is nothing new to the Auburn School District. But now the learning community has brought something new to its educational landscape with one TAP of ingenuity.
King County may ask us to OK a sales tax hike to pay for public safety. It’s always interesting that we’re never asked to pay more taxes to keep county office assistants, public relations departments or other miscellaneous staff on the payroll in tough times. It’s always public safety.
Forty years ago, when the first Earth Day was organized to draw attention to the serious environmental problems created by decades of thoughtless development and industrialization, few Americans realized the extent to which we had deforested our wild places, strip mined our mountains, and carelessly polluted our air and water.
Here we go again.
Green River Community College has once more forgotten what the third word of their name means.
When facing tough times, most Americans turn to the arts. We crank up our favorite songs on the radio, go to a movie, or settle in for an evening of “Dancing with the Stars.” And yet as our country struggles through one of its worst economic periods, our leaders seem oblivious to the pivotal role the arts can play in our recovery.
The furor over the national National Health Care Reform Act has got to stop. Next-to-nothing has been implemented yet and parts of the bill are being challenged by attorney generals from a number of states. Yet, things are getting out of hand.
After a year of fierce debate and wrangling, Congress has finally done something that many of the people who cover politics for a living in New York and Washington, D.C. have been telling the country had little chance of happening: it sent the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act to President Obama’s desk to be signed into law.
All children deserve to be safe in their own home. When we are worried about a child, we call on Child Protective Services (CPS) for help. We count on child welfare workers to intervene and to keep that child safe. And, we count on the agency they work for to give them the training and tools they need to do this well. Children’s lives depend on it.
