Thanks to community for support at OCS
Last week (Jan. 20-26) was National School Choice Week, the world’s largest annual celebration of opportunity in K-12 education.
In recognition of this, the team at Olympic Christian School is grateful to the parents who have chosen OCS for their children.
Every day, our teachers and school staff work collaboratively with students and their parents to provide a biblical, challenging, motivating, and inspirational education. National School Choice Week gives us a chance to celebrate their many achievements in a positive and fun way.
We are also grateful for the support of the Port Angeles and Sequim communities, and we encourage everyone to learn more about our school and the work of our students and teachers.
Tiffany Gillespie
Principal, Olympic Christian School
Proposed development doesn’t work in neighborhood
Unfortunately it again appears necessary to voice the most serious concerns that a heavy density housing development, such as the one proposed, would obviously bring to the entire neighborhood south of US Highway 101 and all along the Atterberry Road neighborhood.
Atterberry Road in fact serves our neighborhood well, by allowing the vast majority of traffic from the entire neighborhood to access US Highway 101 and points beyond in an orderly and efficient fashion.
To force the proposed housing development into that specific location will have a disastrous and completely anticipated effect on the traffic and traffic patterns of the entire neighborhood, much like a Domino effect. The Hooker Road and Atterberry Road intersection will of course become choked by the bottleneck of traffic, as the people of the neighborhood attempt to deal with what will many times be a high volume of traffic entering and leaving the proposed development.
Sooner or later there will have to be an additional stop light system at the intersection of Hooker Road and Atterberry Road, which will cause traffic to back up in all directions. Traffic does not do that presently.
Another completely anticipated result will be that more people will attempt to use the three very small roads that are the only other ways in and out of our immediate neighborhood, which are both dangerously narrow and not designed for volume traffic, in an attempt to avoid the increasing bottleneck at the Hooker Road and Atterberry Road intersection. It would also be expected an increase in traffic accidents on these small minor access roads including many animals. But the first human traffic fatality would be a cost too high for such an out of place and inappropriate, high density home development.
This proposed building project will of course also negatively impact US Highway 101, especially as people avoiding the Hooker/Atterberry intersection and who wish to travel west on the highway, will increase highway traffic — as opposed to using the traffic light regulated intersection of US Highway 101 and Hooker Road.
These roads are completely inadequate for an increase in volume that would be expected if the proposed high density housing project is allowed to be built in spite of the neighborhoods continuing common sense arguments against it.
Additionally, the watershed/stream that runs along the immediate subject property in question should be a wonderful and highly protected source of pride, and not an asset to be decided upon by the whims of government workers who have not demonstrated expertise or background in the related sciences.
The direct and foreseeable consequences of a government that has intentionally and most likely unconstitutionally restricted the development/building of single family homes, should not force the development of such high density housing projects upon the community that made the intentional choice to live in an area/market/neighborhood that has no such housing development projects.
It is blatantly unfair to negatively effect the very quality of life, let alone the real estate values, by forcing such an obviously unwanted housing project in a neighborhood full of people who live and invested in their properties specifically to get away from city life and the high density world!
Mike Heath
Sequim
True costs of wall
According to S&P, the shutdown took $24 billion out of the economy causing the estimated GDP to drop from 3 percent to 2.4 percent. Also, the deficit increased to $779 billion from 2017 to 2018 and is projected to reach $1 trillion in 2019 (swampland.time.com). Again so much for Republicans and Trump being deficit hawks and for Trump saving enough money to pay for the wall.
House democrats are completely in favor about funding more border patrol agents, more electronics and more barriers where needed … just not Trump’s wall. The portions of the wall being built now and claimed by Trump were started by the Obama administration back in 2009. In March of 2018, $1.6 billion was allocated for border security — just not for a wall (npr.org).
Read this link about crime, drugs and disease coming across the border claimed by Trump: www.theguardian.com/us-news/reality-check/2015/jul/07/fact-checking-donald-trump. More crimes are committed by white men than by migrants per population. Just look at the mass murders committed during the last week of the shutdown.
And read this link: www.snopes.com/fact-check/caravan-members-sick. Out of 6,000 migrants at the border there were only 11 cases of communicable disease confirmed.
There were more illegals coming from the south in 2000 (1.6 million) than in 2018: 400,000 (npr.org, the hill.com).
I suggest less listening to Fox (the real fake news) and more searching the internet to try and get the facts straight. It takes a lot more time and effort to research the facts and cull out the nonsense than its does to just spit out a quick letter to the editor.
Stan Riddle
Sequim
