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Mount Si honors departing longtime coach Page 7
Your locally owned newspaper, serving North Bend and Snoqualmie, Washington October 2, 2015
Mill Creek man falls to death while hiking near North Bend
A 58-year-old Mill Creek man fell to his death Sept. 27 while hiking in Twin Falls State Park near North Bend. Around 3:50 p.m. witnesses saw the victim hiking a trail in the park with his dog. The victim was seen walking past a “trail closed” sign and a short time later the witnesses heard a dog yelping. The witnesses went to investigate and saw the dog was on a cliff halfway down the mountain. The victim was not seen. Eastside Fire & Rescue arrived on the scene and were able to spot the victim about 100 feet down the mountain. When rescue units got to him, he was found to have died from the fall. The dog was rescued from the cliff and was not injured. The victim’s name is being withheld pending identification and notification of family.
By Rusty Rae/www.photobyrustyrae.com
Blood moon rising The ‘Blood Moon’ over Mount Si shot from Snoqualmie Point Park, where an estimated more than 500 people gathered for the event. Such a moon is a combination of a total eclipse of the moon and a ‘super moon’ — when the moon is closest to the Earth and therefore appears the largest to the eye. The image was taken with a Nikon D3, 70-200mm zoom lens, and the exposure was three seconds @f/7.1 and ISO 1250 with post processing in Adobe Photoshop.
Council adopts impact fees, marijuana moratorium By Dylan Chaffin dchaffin@snovalleystar.com The Snoqualmie City Council passed two new ordinances and imposed a sixmonth moratorium on establishing, operating or licensing of marijuana growers, retailers, producers or retail gardens at its Sept. 28 meeting. The council adopted an ordinance to update the city’s school impact fees, which will raise the fee for multifamily homes by $150. Single-family homes will experience an increase of about $2,200 said Ryan Stokes, business services director for the Snoqualmie
Valley School District. He told the council that the formula for updating the impact fees is complicated, but mostly depend on something called a “student generation rate,” which provides a number of students for each new structure built. Stokes added that singlefamily homes in the district are providing one student per two households and multifamily homes are only providing one student per every five households. District officials mostly took into account the neighboring school districts of Issaquah and Lake Washington when looking at what similar
demographics charge multifamily and single-family homes, he said. “That’s the hardest part, because you see more of these inconsistencies based on what the district sees, and it’s heavily based on economy,” Stokes said when asked about the large discrepancy by Councilman Charles Peterson. Stokes also said that the impact fees don’t actually pay for the schools themselves. As part of the district’s goals, class sizes for the K-3 grade bracket will decrease from 25 students per teacher to only 17. “Without any growth, that’s a 30 percent increase in needs
for classrooms, which is a new school in and of itself,” he told the council. He added that the state’s legislative decision to decrease class sizes also doesn’t account for how many teachers would need to be hired, nor does it account for where the money would come from, because the state Legislature hasn’t funded the capital side, yet. The council’s decision to adopt the ordinance was unanimous. The second ordinance council passed regarded adopting a new chapter to the See COUNCIL, Page 5
New hotel nears end of phase one By Dylan Chaffin dchaffin@snovalleystar.com North Bend will soon be home to a well-known four-star hotel chain, slated to open for business in the spring of 2017. Developers broke ground on the 9-acre site that stands at the intersection of Bendigo Boulevard and South Fork Avenue Southwest in August 2014, and are now nearing completion of Phase One development. See HOTEL, Page 5 Prsrt Std U.S. Postage PAID Kent, WA Permit No. 71 POSTAL CUSTOMER