South Sound avoids school strikes
YAY: SCHOOL’S IN SESSION
South Sound schools reopened last week without the labor strife seen in Seattle and other jurisdictions — at least so far.
Walkouts by teachers are symptomatic of a larger school financing ill. The Legislature needs to take over the payment of basic education costs including salaries. Statewide bargaining on pay would end the practice of tax-rich districts giving more to their staffers than poor ones, which often leads to these last-minute wage fights.
The onus belongs on legislators to approve a fair wage.
BOO: REFUGEE CRISIS
The strife in Syria has left some 4 million people seeking shelter in neighboring countries. European nations and the U.S. are finally beginning to step up and offer to resettle this veritable flood of desperate people in a destabilized corner of the world.
President Barack Obama said the U.S. would resettle up to 10,000 more Syrians next year, and leaders in Europe also have agreed to resettle relatively small numbers of refugees.
YAY: HARBOR DAYS GENEROSITY
Harbor Days’ celebration of South Sound maritime history gave us another year of tug boat races over Labor Day weekend. It also revealed a generous spirit of sportsmanship among tug pilots.
Maggie B, which was running first in the small-tug race Sept. 6 suddenly had smoke coming out of its engine room.
Pilots of two rival boats, Cedar King and Atka, stopped to help it, according to Chuck Fowler, a maritime historian and longtime event volunteer. Once things were back under control, the rivals waited for Maggie B to be towed across the finish line — first.
This was a fitting tribute to Mike Buse, whose family owned Maggie B. The 66-year-old suffered a stroke in Gig Harbor a few days before the 2014 races and died on that Labor Day, which denied him the win he’d been angling for.
BOO: BROKEN FISH LADDER
Once again, the fish ladder at the dam separating Capitol Lake and Budd Inlet is broken, and once again Rognlin’s Inc. of Aberdeen has been hired to fix it. The cause was not immediately determined but might be due to a log that passed through the channel.
The fish ladder was installed in the 1990s and is a series of 11 cells or pools that ascend from inlet to lake. The state Department of Enterprise Services manages the dam at the north end of the man-made lake, and initial repairs have been completed despite complications from fall fish migrations.
The agency also is exploring ways to install a boom or log diverter on the lake side of the dam, which could block stray materials that may be causing the damage.
That sounds like a good, overdue idea.
YAY: BACKPAGE RULING
The state Supreme Court ruled that Backpage.com can be sued over personal ads it hosts, which include ads for prostitution services. The 6-to-3 ruling is a step toward reining in the exploitation of children, including three Pierce County girls who sued.
The court said Backpage is not immune under the federal Communications Decency Act of 1986, under which Web providers are shielded from liability for content that others develop. The justices found Backpage had a hand in producing the illegal content, therefore could be liable.
This story was originally published September 13, 2015 at 5:01 PM with the headline "South Sound avoids school strikes."