Almost daily, North Bend is visited by devotees of the ‘90s TV series “Twin Peaks,” but this weekend, about 200 of them will gather for the annual experience of Twin Peaks Fest.
“We used to joke that people take a pilgrimage to Mecca each year, and we go to North Bend,” said Rob Lindley, the new coordinator of the 21 year-old festival, along with his wife, Deanne.
“For the next 72 hours, you get the feel of actually being in Twin Peaks,” is how Lindley describes it.
Smoke gusts and curls along the trail and into my eyes as I work to keep up with DNR spokesperson Seth Barnes Sunday. We’re at the head of the fire, he says, walking along a steep trench that crews from the Department of Natural Resources, Eastside Fire & Rescue, and the Larch Corrections Center spent the last two mornings cutting into the hillside.
The flames are just small fingers here, where DNR helicopters dumped 270-gallon buckets of water throughout the day Saturday.
Only a few street projects, overlays and maybe a new stretch of sidewalk, are making North Bend’s to-do list this year, but 2014 is likely to be extremely busy for the city.
A million-dollar downtown plaza project tops the list of priorities in the 2014-19 Transportation Improvement Plan, as adopted by the North Bend City Council at its June 18 meeting. Next on the list are a right-turn lane for northbound traffic on Bendigo Boulevard at Park Street, reconstruction of the sidewalk on Second Street, a roundabout at the intersection of North Bend Way and Park Street, right-of-way acquisition for creation of a Tanner Trail, and construction of new sidewalk, curb and gutter, along with landscaping, on the north side of North Bend Way from Ballarat Avenue North to Downing Avenue North.
In the Snoqualmie Valley, it’s tough to find a development proposal that doesn’t raise objections among farmers. Everything from clearing the land to building the roads and infrastructure to support a new neighborhood can increase the flooding downstream. Knowing all that, though, the team behind a proposed 18-home neighborhood near Fall City really thought they had a winner.
“We’re only altering 22 acres of 200 acres of these lots,” for home construction, said Peter Hayes, consultant on a new housing and farming development on the former Tall Chief Golf Course.
Snoqualmie Valley voters will choose from four school board candidates in the Aug. 6 primary election. Two incumbents, Marci Busby and Scott Hodgins, are running against challengers Stephen Kangas and David Spring for the District 4 school board seat. Another board seat, District 1, will be on the November ballot, but not on the primary, since only one candidate, Tavish MacLean filed for the position.
The Record asked each of the candidates to state their position on some of the major issues coming before the board in the next term. Each candidate was asked four general questions, and one specific to their campaign message.
North Bend firefighters moved into the shiny new Station 87 last week and were happy to find they had lost some things in the move. No rat pictures hanging from the ceilings to indicate where the traps were, and no stairs anywhere in the building. No cramped quarters in the sleeping area, or in the equipment bays, and no more nagging worries about what an earthquake or flood might do to their station.
The feeling of the old station was missing, though, too.
It’s time to take action on a new school bond, said three Snoqualmie Valley School Board Directors, plus a handful of citizens at the group’s July 11 meeting. By the end of a 2.5-hour discussion, they had, unofficially.
Option A, the $200 million scenario that would build a new elementary school by September, 2015, and reconstruct the high school over the next seven years, was the winning choice, but only for further exploration. Board members informally agreed to add an action item to the agenda for their Aug. 15 meeting, calling for further ‘vetting’ of the proposal.
When adults were around, the three Kindergarten boys staring at the large aquarium outside the North Bend Elementary School office kept a respectful distance. They had permission to come look at the tank, they announced.
When they thought no one was watching, their little face were inches from the glass, their eyes wide.
A lot of people were asking a lot of questions at the June 24 work-study session of the North Bend City Council: Why not use the space on the roof? Have you thought about Si View? Where else could the police go? Would the historic district be preserved? How are we supposed to pay for this?
They all boiled down to the question that brought the 70-some citizens to the meeting in the first place, which is, what should North Bend do next?
Specifically, city staff and officials were asking citizens to think about whether or not to replace the aging City Hall building, and with what.
“We’ve heard from people who would like to see a real sense of place in the downtown,” said City Administrator Londi Lindell at the start of the meeting. “They’d like to see some public plazas, a downtown park or old-fashioned town square. So the first question we’re going to ask you is do we just keep it basic, city hall, or should we consider a civic center?”
Magic, monsters, castaways, laughter and drama await all who arrive on Prospero’s enchanted island, the setting of the Cascade Community Theatre’s summer production, “The Tempest.”
Called Shakespeare’s most magical play, the comedy, “The Tempest” features the powerful Prospero (played by Keith Frechette) who conjures the title storm to cause a shipwreck, and his beautiful daughter Miranda (Amy Frazier, Shaini Candland), who share the island with a magical spirit, a monster, and after the storm, quite a few castaways. While Prospero pursues an elaborate scheme to restore his good name in Italy, hilarious misadventures happen to all on the island.
In a polarizing debate over where—or if—to allow tattoo parlors in North Bend, the city council has reached a compromise. The businesses will be allowed near the Interstate-90 exits, but will be banned from operating as home-based businesses anywhere in the city.
The changes, approved at a June 18 council meeting, take effect next week, but for the one tattoo parlor already in the city, nothing will change.
Every school building in the Snoqualmie Valley School District wants to bump up its security levels these days. From a parent-funded electric door pilot project at Fall City Elementary to a proposed fence around the North Bend Elementary School playground, “We have requests from all of the buildings, for things they’d like to do to improve safety,” says district director of business services Ryan Stokes.
Granting the requests, though, is more complex than just finding the money.
Corporate life was fun for a while, says North Bend’s Jolene Kelly, and so were the Florida beaches. Neither, though, was quite what she was looking for out of life when she decided about 15 years ago that it was time to move ‘home.’
“I knew I wanted to move to Seattle,” says Kelly, who followed her gut feelings, more than any particular plan, when she made the move back to the area where her parents had grown up.
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