A word of warning, this is going to be lengthy; so settle back with a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and have a look.
In scrounging through my stack of Mirror papers, I felt a recap of 2018 was appropriate. I will give credit where credit is due, but will also take a potshot at issues that fell way short in my opinion. Let’s start off start off with the resonating issues thusly.
1. Homelessness, which has been a tremendous issue for the past couple of years. In response, the mayor launched a homelessness committee. The report was released recently. I think a bag of hot air has more substance than what was published in the report. Full of nothing except the request to hire yet another city employee and support staff. Buried in the report was the nugget that indicated the city has no mullah for such activity. All this effort and that’s the solution offered.
a. By my estimation, there are 20 churches. With that kind of religious manpower, all kinds of solutions could be provided, not only with feet on the ground, opportunities for shelter, proper nutrition, and most of all appropriate shelter, aka housing.
b. On the issue of churches, how about the depraved behavior being disclosed at the mega church Christian Faith Center, kind of shakes one’s beliefs a little bit.
2. The Federal Way City budget crisis. Obviously, council members don’t understand the law and mandates imposed on all cities to produce a budget in a prescribed manner with mandatory due dates on the process. Here they were at the day of the vote to approve the budget, arguing over elements over said budget wishing to have a redo! Utter disbelieve in the room — yikes.
a. Another astonishing component of said budget was the movement of money allocated to the police department into what can only be described as self-fulling social projects money. While the projects might be interesting and helpful to a select group of people, our police department is lagging behind target of patrol officers as promised by the mayor. Shame on them. Our city is becoming infested with gangs, drugs and other illegal activities. A healthy operating police department is needed now, not in some promise for tomorrow.
3. Federal Way Public Schools. While I am very happy seeing our schools getting the funding needed to rebuild infrastructure and hopefully raises for the teachers, I am dismayed over the issue that has bubbled to the surface related to FWPS students are suing the school district as well as former students, and the fact that the basketball program maintained silence over sexual abuse.
a. It seems while we can build new cool buildings, our students are coming into them unprepared in how to treat one another.There is a parental responsibility that is missing on the issue of how to respect one another and proper public behavior. There is no one who should be held to this standard more than the superintendent of FWPS. To say there is no responsibility on that office, then I predict we will see more of this in the future. On situations like this, policy is set from the top down.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. Happy New Year!
Norma Blanchard
Federal Way
