CURLING ROYALTY
KIDS ‘N’ PETS ON PARADE
Klahanie man wins unlikely gold — Page 9
Community celebrates Down Home Fourth — Page 6
The IssaquahPress
Issaquah’s only locally owned newspaper
www.issaquahpress.com
Thursday, July 9, 2015
City plans to build new Confluence Park for salmon as well as humans By Tom Corrigan tcorrigan@isspress.com While it might have made great farmland in its day, the property that now makes up Confluence Park does not, in its present condition, make for very good parkland or, probably more importantly, a very good habitat for local salmon. The first step toward changing that is removal of 8,000 cubic feet of soil that fills what used to be part of the flood plain for Issaquah Creek, said Kerry Ritland, surface water manager for the city. That excavation work is underway and the city also will remove rocks used to shore up the creek side, rocks that again don’t help create an environment conducive to salmon. Confluence Park, at 695 Rainier Blvd. N., consists of three contiguous parks: Tolle Anderson, Cybil-Madeline and Issaquah Creek. These undeveloped parks, totaling 15.5 acres, meet at the confluence of the East Fork and main stem of Issaquah Creek. The city is using $900,000 from
a voter-approved 2006 park bond sale to fund the transformation of the property into environmentally sound parkland. Ritland said the city plans to revamp the water channel, creating narrow steps for fish and meandering the waterway to create more length. That work will be most concentrated in the East Fork of the creek near the existing picnic shelter. Near the southern border of the park, plans call for reconstruction of about 500 feet of waterway that is little more than a ditch right now, Ritland said. Further, logs will be moved into the waterway to help create fish habitats, places for them to hide and feed. Ritland noted most of the water work would be done in the next month as the city only has so much of a window to work on fish-bearing streams. On dry land around the creek, plans are in place to replant several acres with native species. Issaquah See PARK, Page 2
July fundraiser helps families find a home By Christina Corrales-Toy newcastle@isspress.com
MERRY CHRISTMAS ISSAQUAH IN JULY
Imagine an Issaquah winter. It’s cold, rainy and windy, and snow is certainly not out of the question during this dreary time period. Now, imagine enduring this winter when the place you call home is just a truck. That was Sarah, Stephen and the couple’s 2-year-old son Alex’s reality last winter, according to Rebecca Rayner, program coordinator and case manager at the Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank. Sarah, Stephen and Alex’s last name is omitted to protect their privacy. “Stephen was working full time and Sarah was looking for work, but they just could not get ahead enough to afford an apartment,” Rayner said. “Making their situation even more difficult, their credit wasn’t great after being homeless for several months, so getting an apartment was even more difficult.” After struggling to make ends meet, Sarah and Stephen turned to Issaquah Community Services, a nonprofit that offers emergency financial aid to residents of the Issaquah School District. ICS gave the family a gas voucher and a referral to the Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank for food, clothing, diapers and toiletries, Rayner said. A food bank case manager then connected them with the Landlord Liaison Project, a program that helps families find apartments willing to look past poor credit or past evictions, Rayner said. Sarah, Stephen and Alex moved into their new apartment last February, Rayner said. “Sarah found a part-time job and while things still aren’t easy, they are making it,” she said. “Their apartment has changed their lives dramatically for the better, and they have been able to start moving past the hard times last winter in their truck.” Last year, ICS launched a pilot program in partnership with the Issaquah Food & Clothing Bank to address the need for families’
2015 FUND DRIVE
GET INVOLVED Merry Christmas Issaquah in July
July 2015 goal: $25,000
HOW TO HELP Help by making a tax-deductible donation to Issaquah Community Services. The organization is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Send donations to Issaquah Community Services, P.O. Box 669, Issaquah, WA 98027. You can also donate to the cause using PayPal on the ICS website, www.issaquahcommunityservices.org. The names of donors — but not amounts — are published in The Press unless anonymity is requested. Call ICS at 837-3125 for more information. relocation to affordable housing. The organizations helped five families relocate to homes with more manageable rents. ICS wanted to do more, though, and the demand was there, ICS Board President Lori Birrell said. “Our funds were exhausted,” she said. “We had many others waiting in the wings.” See FUND, Page 2
By Tom Corrigan
Workers from the Swedish Issaquah Campus picket July 1 outside the healthcare facility seeking improvements in staffing levels and supplies.
Swedish workers picket to protest understaffing, supplies, health care By Tom Corrigan tcorrigan@isspress.com Carrying signs and chanting, about 100 nurses, technicians and service workers took to the street in front of the Swedish Issaquah Campus on July 1 demanding better supplies, staffing and employee health care. “Our goal is to get Swedish back to where it was,” said ICU nurse Deanna Tregoning, adding that where it was, was one of the premier medical centers in the area. Now, she said Swedish’s hospitals and facilities are seriously understaffed. “Patient care is everything,” Tregoning said, adding her contention that Swedish’s various facilities are down some 1,600 staffers. She said the changes began to take place when Swedish became affiliated with Providence Medical Group roughly three years ago. “Through the affiliation, which went into effect in February 2012, the two organizations work together to assure continued access to high quality care in a sustainable, cost-efficient delivery system and to successfully achieve the
goals of the Affordable Care Act,” Mary Beth Lowell, external communications director for Swedish, said in an email. “We are investing heavily in staff and actively hiring 1,600 new permanent staff this year to support current teams, ensure a strong future for our organization and get ahead of the nursing shortage, which is expected to hit in 2020,” June Altaras, Swedish acute care chief executive, said in a press release. According to another picketer, Darlene Johansen, Swedish is investing in contract nurses who are on staff for a short time and then leave. “It’s just a temporary fix,” she added. Johansen is a member of the environmental service team at Swedish Issaquah. In terms of employee health care, Tregoning said there are some 300 union employees in collections for health care bills despite the fact they work for a hospital system that earned $110 million last year. Hospital administrators asked the union to supply more information about employees in collections, Lowell said, but
claimed officials never received any response. “We would love to get that additional information,” she said. Picketers were scheduled to march in front of every Swedish campus July 1. They then were slated to join together for one big rally in downtown Seattle. Tregoning said staffers have been in contract negotiations with management since April. Their contracts expired June 30. Swedish officials say they are in contract talks with SEIU 1199NW, the union that represents approximately 6,800 nurses, technicians and service workers. The administration emphasized the picketing was not the sign of a strike and that patient care should not have been impacted. In Issaquah, picketers said they were working, but hitting the picket line during breaks and lunch hours. “Though SEIU is picketing our hospitals today and has a right to do so,” Altaras said, “it is time to start seriously negotiating a deal that supports our caregivers and the communities we serve. Contracts need to be bargained at the table, not in the streets.”
New designation should mean dollars, development for area By Tom Corrigan tcorrigan@isspress.com Its new designation as a regional growth center means the Central Issaquah Plan area is eligible for at least a portion of the approximately $200 million in grant money given out annually by the Puget Sound Regional Council. PSRC’s executive board named the plan a growth center June 25. Hoping to gain access to additional grant dollars, the city applied for the designation in March. Regional growth centers are a key piece of the PSRC’s Vision 2040 plan and its strategy for accommodating regional growth, said Christen Leeson, a senior planner in Issaquah’s Development Services Department. “As a regional growth center, the city is eligible to apply for federal highway and transit dollars formerly not available to us,” Leeson said in an email. “We also now have increased status when applying for other
state and regional grants.” That status also notably should spread to development circles, Leeson added. Centers receive priority for funding passed out by the PSRC, said Rick Olson, director of communications for the council. “That’s just a long-standing policy,” he said. The city had to meet certain criteria to even be considered as a growth center. That included ensuring certain economic and other activity levels were in line with population levels. There must be sufficient zoned capacity to accommodate future growth. The city also must show a commitment to meeting the planned growth of the given area. Olson said the PSRC already has selected projects through fiscal year 2018. Monies are handed out in specific categories, such as mass transit, dollars that mostly go to King County Metro Transit and some to Sound Transit. Issaquah could be eligible for funds for transit-
related projects, such as transit centers. While the federal mass-transit dollars represent what Olson called by far the largest pool of PSRC dollars, other areas include air quality-improvement projects and surface-transportation programs. The latter might be the main target area for Issaquah planners. Judging from the list of growth centers provided, downtown Bellevue appears to be the closest designated growth center outside of Issaquah. Other Eastside centers include downtown Redmond and Redmond Overlake, as well as Bothell’s Canyon Park area. Beyond the Eastside, centers include several Seattle neighborhoods and portions of Lynnwood, Renton and Everett. Adopted in late 2012, the Central Issaquah Plan has been described as a long-term vision for the city that would bring about a dense urban core, a mix of residential and commercial development.
How to Protect Yourself and Your Money from $cams and $chemes Thursday, July 16 at 2 pm • University House Issaquah 22975 SE Black Nugget Rd, Issaquah, WA 98029 • (425) 200-0331
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