WSP Trooper Paul Johnson

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Snoqualmie Tribe woodcarver puts finishing touches on canoe

Final cut of Dwight Bunn’s video by Sebastian. from Sebastian Moraga on Vimeo.

King County Elections employees review a ballot in the hand recount for the Snoqualmie Valley School District bond proposal from the Feb. 8 election. (By Katie Gilliam)

It took less than two hours for eight 2-person teams of King County Elections employees to finish a hand recount of more than 9,200 ballots cast in the Feb. 8 election by Snoqualmie Valley School District voters. At issue is the district’s $56 million bond to build a new middle school.

The department’s Canvassing Board will meet at 2 p.m. Friday to decide on three contested ballots. The voter’s intent is not clear on one ballot. The other two ballots could be counted if the board verifies the voters’ signatures on them. To conceal how those voters filled out their ballots, they will be mixed in with about 600 ballots that have not been examined in the recount. 

The recounts final results will then be posted online.

The bond measure lost by a single vote. Within hours of the results being certified, supporters of the bond had raised the $2,650 needed to pay for a hand recount. 

Employees pulled and sorted by precinct the 9,980 ballots cast in the election. Ballots were stored in sealed cardboard boxes on shelves in an open room in the basement of the Elections’ building. Each precinct had its own box.

A runner would then deliver a box to a team. The counters would then break the seal and start sorting the ballots — approved, rejected or no vote. Both team members had to confer on each ballot.

“Number one, we’re just checking the accuracy of our results,” checking the automated process, said Katie Gilliam, a spokeswoman for King County Elections.

Readers' pics from Snow-qualmie Valley

KingCo Conference Tournament 2011

Best photos of 2010 from the SnoValley Star

King County and the union representing its sheriff’s deputies are back to square one on wage negotiations after the county rejected a proposal that would have cost more than it saved despite a small pay cut to deputies.

The lowest pay rate for deputies is comparable to other Eastside police departments, but they have a much higher ceiling, according to an analysis of negotiated pay rates among local police departments by the SnoValley Star.

Deputies’ pay has climbed faster than other departments and will likely pull ahead of most departments in 2011 and 2012, according to the analysis.

Concern about the deputies’ rising wages remains part of the reason the North Bend City Council is considering ending its contract for police services with the King County Sheriff’s Office and instead partnering with Snoqualmie.

Deputies are in line to receive 5 percent wages in 2011 and 2012.Their proposal would have cut next year’s raise to 3 percent, which would have saved the county $1.3 million. But the proposal also stipulated that the county could not layoff any deputies and it extended their contract to 2013 with a 2 percent raise that year.

King County Executive Dow Constantine rejected the offer, saying it would ultimately cost the county $2.5 million. Layoffs are currently scheduled for January due to budget cuts. Further cuts are scheduled for June when several unincorporated areas patrolled by deputies will be annexed into Kirkland.

Constantine has asked the King County Police Officers’ Guild, which represents the deputies, to discuss other options, according to his spokesman, Frank Abe.

Defenders of the deputies’ contract say the wage increases are bringing their wages up to the middle of the field. Critics say it has  become too expensive given current economic reality.

The proposed concession would have meant some savings for North Bend, but City Administrator Duncan Wilson said he expects it to be less than $10,000.

The proposal does not do enough in 2012 and 2013 to reduce the city administration’s concerns about the rising cost of its contract for police services.

“We still have not reached a point where it’s sustainable,” Wilson said.

The guild did not reply to requests for comment.

Comparing costs

By the time the contract expires, the lowest pay rate for deputies will have gone from about $47,200 to $60,273. In 2010, the lowest rate is $54,671.

These wages are not that far from the median pay rates for Eastside police departments in 2008-2010.

The highest rate for patrol officers will similarly have climbed from about $66,450 to just under $84,400. In 2010, it is $76,551. These rates have consistently been well above the median high rate for the area, which is $73,482 in 2010.

Higher-ranking officers, such as sergeants and lieutenants, are paid more. It is difficult to compare pay for these officers due to differences in command structures and responsibilities between departments.

Most of the Eastside police departments are in the process of negotiating new labor contracts. Three cities have contracts with their police officers unions through 2011; no city has a contract for 2012.

Contracts negotiated in the midst of an economic recession tend to use deferred compensation rather than wage increases, according to Ken Smith, a labor specialist and professor at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Administration.

Comparing pay rates offers a limited view, because salary is only one part of an employee’s overall compensation, Smith said.

Nonetheless, Snoqualmie’s preliminary cost estimate of a joint police force was about $250,000 less than North Bend’s current contract with King County, according to North Bend officials.

This year, the lowest negotiated rate for Snoqualmie police officers is $52,584 and the highest rate is $70,284.

“We’re certainly going to look at what Snoqualmie has to offer,” North Bend Councilman Chris Garcia said.

Some city officials have expressed frustration with their lack of influence on the deputies’ contract negotiations, which are handled by the county and the deputies’ union.

“It’s a big part of it,” North Bend Councilwoman Jeanne Pettersen said. “Personnel costs are one of the highest costs in your budget.”

Currently, the city is considering layoffs or furloughs to close a $100,000 budget shortfall.

More than money

Money isn’t all that matters, though. Benefits, opportunities for advancement, personal fulfillment and other factors all influence a person’s decision to take a job.

“Salary is not the most important factor for most employees,” Smith said.

Police Chief Mark Toner agreed.

“If money were the big issue, I’d go be a doctor,” he said.

He took a pay cut when he left his career as a machinist to join the sheriff’s office. Like the rest of North Bend’s police force, Toner is a sheriff’s deputy. His assignment is acting chief of police for the former logging town.

When he applied, Toner also applied to work for a smaller department, which offered better pay, but he was attracted to the diverse assignments available with the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office also offers more opportunity for advancement than smaller departments.

In his more than 25 years as a deputy, Toner has worked in rural assignments (including North Bend), urban settings, as a SWAT member and in the department’s Major Crimes Unit.

“Show me another job where you can have such a huge impact just by being there,” Toner said.

Hard pill to swallow

Eliminating the increase would encourage North Bend to stay with the sheriff’s office for police services, city officials said.

As it is, the contract’s rising costs are a “hard pill to swallow,” North Bend Mayor Ken Hearing said at a county budget hearing in October. “We need to take a hard look at police services.”

The city told the county later that month it is considering other options and might want to end the contract, an 18-month process.

The county came back by lowering the cost of the proposed 2011 contract by nearly $200,000. The savings will come from different service levels and the county picking up part of the North Bend police chief’s salary.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Garcia said.

The contract’s cost will still continue to rise in 2012, because of wage increases and North Bend’s annexation of the Tanner area, which means more ground to patrol.

Dan Catchpole: 392-6434, ext. 246, or editor@snovalleystar.com. Comment at www.snovalleystar.com.

Denise Paulette brings to life the tortured psyche of Zelda Fitzgerald in "Zelda," a one-woman play about the wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Photo by Dan Catchpole)

Alone, Denise Paulette steps onto the small stage lit with 100-watt light bulbs in front of about 20 theatergoers at a coffee shop in downtown Snoqualmie.

For 90 minutes, Paulette takes the audience on a frenetic tour of Zelda Fitzgerald’s overtaxed psyche in “Zelda,” a one-person play by William Luce.

Hospitalized due to her deteriorated mental state, Zelda is trying to make sense of her life that took her from being the belle of Montgomery, Ala., to fighting for recognition as an artist overshadowed by her more famous husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The one-woman show is the result of Paulette’s own struggles as an artist. She’s poured her life into acting, but never managed to get her “big break.” Tired of waiting for the right part to come along, she decided to find it. That is how she met Zelda Fitzgerald.

The role drew in Paulette, who identified with Zelda’s struggles to find success as an artist. 

Big part on a small stage

Isadora’s Café is not Seattle’s ACT Theater, and it certainly isn’t Broadway. But to Paulette, it’s all the same: stage, lights, audience, story.

Before the audience arrives, she arranges the stage props — a desk, some chairs, a couple of lamps, end tables, a rug. In this one-person production, Paulette is everything from stage hand to star.

She does have some help: A friend turns on the lights at the beginning and end of the show, and Isadora’s owner, Jody Sands cues the intro music. They help her arrange chairs for the audience.

In her preparations, Paulette moves with an excited energy. Performing thrills her.

Acting has gripped Paulette since she was a child. At age 2, she was putting on performances for her family. She studied drama at the University of Washington, but really learned the craft from a couple who ran a local acting studio.

Since then, she has enjoyed minor triumphs and setbacks along the way. It is a harsh, unforgiving industry that takes what it wants and rarely repays hard work with financial or even critical success.

And yet, for people like Paulette, it is a refuge, a temple where they become free of life’s pedestrian bounds.

“That’s the first part of it — where can I take the audience?” she said. “And the second half of this is that I get to go with them, because I adore playing somebody else.”

Hoping the part, production grows

Paulette poured herself into the role of Zelda. She is trying to take the show to Seattle, where she has previewed it a few times. She has also performed the show at the Valley Center Stage in North Bend and could be performing it in Carnation early next year.

Most of the play is taken from Zelda’s own words. But it is the space between that defines the performance.

“The really critical part of the work is between the lines,” Paulette said. “The more an actor understands their own body, their own thoughts, how they feel about life or their emotional access is a pretty critical piece. Then, that’s when you can really engage your character and have the ability to release yourself, so that you can go to the work.”

In theater, especially in intimate settings such as Isadora’s, an actor must use his or her entire body, she said.

Paulette has worked in theater and film, but theater is her love. The immediate response of the audience is exciting, she said.

Theater also offers a flexibility that film doesn’t. In film, an actor’s performance is captured and frozen. But in live theater, it is constantly evolving. That is especially true in a one-person production.

“I could literally start all over tomorrow if I wanted,” Paulette said, because she doesn’t have to rely on any other actors.

Paulette took on producing a one-person show because she wanted to find the right role. “Zelda” was the second script she read, and she felt an instant connection, she said.

To help refine her performance, she enlisted the help of local actor Vince Balestri as director. Balestri wrote, produced and starred in “Kerouac: The Essence of Jack,” which toured the U.S. for 17 years. Recently, he appeared in the independent film “Beat Angel.”

‘Zelda’ can teach women about themselves

Producing a one-person show is an act of love and dedication. For Paulette, it was long nights of rehearsal that culminated in a handful of performances.

Of course, she hopes to turn those performances into more. As part of her effort to perform in Seattle, she is approaching women’s groups about performing at their meetings in lieu of a speaker.

“Zelda” could be a surprising choice for women’s groups. Her husband called her the “first flapper” and she spent much of her life overshadowed by his success.

At one point in the show, Zelda says, “I should’ve loved the artist in myself.”

That is why Paulette thinks she is appealing for women.

“There’re a lot of women in a lot of situations that can relate to that statement: that we tend to put it all into the relationship, and put who we are and what our true self is second,” she said.

After deciding to produce “Zelda,” Paulette pored over her life. To prepare for the role, she became intimately familiar with Zelda, a woman diagnosed with schizophrenia trapped in an increasingly bitter marriage and yearning for the happy, promise-filled days of her youth.

“I feel like I am walking a tightrope,” Zelda says.

And for 90 minutes, Paulette takes the audience on that tightrope with her.

Dan Catchpole: 392-6434, ext. 246, or editor@snovalleystar.com.

Mount Si vs Glacier Peak, playoff game, Nov. 5

Meg Wolf reached through the green leaves toward a plump blueberry at Bybee Blueberry Farm, looking for the perfect berry to fill the cobblers at her wedding.

“I look for big, firm blueberries,” Wolf said. “You don’t want it to be too mushy.”

She and her fiancé Seamus Kelly had recruited 20 of their wedding guests to come to the North Bend blueberry farm to pick blueberries for cobblers that would feed 125 people.

Like many Bybee pickers, the Seattle couple had made a tradition of blueberry season.

“We come out here every year,” Kelly said. “Picking blueberries is one of our favorite things. We’ll keep picking until our fingers turn blue.”

Bybee Blueberry Farms attracts thousands of sweet- and tart-toothed people every summer. The family that owns the farm has roots as deep as their blueberry bushes. Steve Bybee’s father bought the property in 1946, two years before Steve’s birth. Steve and his sister purchased it from their parents in 1980, and Steve bought his sister’s portion from her this year.

“Dad was going to sell it and move away. When we bought it, he got to live here and not do any of the work,” Steve said, laughing.

Nowadays, he manages the farm with his wife, Jayne. After graduating from Mount Si High School, Steve served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. He met Jayne when he returned to the Valley, cruising from one end of North Bend to the other in his Volkswagen Beetle.

“We’d graduated and he had already been in the service and back,” said Jayne, who was 17 when she met her 20-year-old beau. 

Plants almost care for themselves

Now, the Bybees tend to their farm, and the Valley has a number of elements that help the blueberries flourish. The bushes thrive in the acidic soil, the high water table means they don’t need a sprinkler system and mulch from the grass and plants fertilize them.

“We haven’t fertilized in 20 years,” Steve said. “If you just let these plants exist, they take care of themselves.”

They do take one precaution: spraying the twigs and ground to prevent fungus. The mummy berry fungus makes the berries look like white mummies, ghosts of their blue selves. One year, the Bybees lost three-fourths of their crop because they didn’t spray, a mistake they don’t plan to make again.

Some plants are 60 years old and still generate blueberries. Steve called pruning the secret to blueberry longevity, cutting old branches and encouraging new growth.

In the winter, the bushes are bare, making them easier to prune. By early spring, the bushes blossom and then ripen into blueberries by summer, if the weather permits. The Bybees have opened their farm as early as July 7 and as late as Aug. 1, depending on the weather. One year, they stayed open until Oct. 14.

On a cloudy day in August, Kristen Gehrett, of Sammamish, asked Steve where she could find the best berries.

“Go to the middle of the row,” Steve said.

Pickers tend to start at the entry point and work their way to the end, but they should venture further into the rows, where six varieties of blueberries dangle in the breeze.

“Dig in,” Steve said.

“You really have to spread the branches apart or just get low,” Jayne said.

The Bybees said blueberry pickers serve another purpose, in addition to buying their crop, “the more where people go, the more they scare the birds,” Steve said, asking people to shield his bushes from starlings, crows and robins.

Less bird interference means more berries for pickers. The little blue fruit is full of vitamin C and E, and antioxidants, which destroy free radicals.

While the Bybees built a fence to keep out bears and elk, they do welcome bees. Honeybees are poor pollinators, but mason and bumblebees get the job done, buzzing toward flowers, spreading pollen in their wake.

Katherine Staberow, of Monroe, visited the farm with her infant son, Kelton. She planned to puree her blueberries into baby food. Her mother, Debbie Cernick, of Cle Elum, had other plans.

“I like a real strong flavor,” Cernick said. “I like to freeze them and eat them like marbles.”

New growth

The Bybees have more than blueberries on their plate. In 2008, they built a wedding venue, so lovebirds could get married at the base of Mount Si, amid sweet smelling fruit. In 2010, 15 couples got married there. Wedding season ends in mid-September, before the weather turns.

“To make a living farming, you have to have something else besides crop,” Steve said.

The family also plans to start a vineyard, planting grapes in their acidic soil. If all goes well, they could produce pinot noir.

Some changes are less welcome. Jayne’s father, Bob Vezzoni, known for playing loud Italian music for the blueberry pickers, died in May. Almost every day, people ask Jayne about his whereabouts.

“It’s been tough,” she said. “I think next summer will maybe be better.”

The Bybees have two daughters — Michelle, a nurse, and Kelli, who plans to take over the farm when her parents retire. Their daughters help them pick custom orders, which they fill at the beginning of the season when the blueberries are more plentiful.

Meanwhile, as the wedding party concluded its picking for its cobblers, Aidan Kelly, father-of-the-groom, gazed beyond the blueberries at Mount Si.

“It’s just amazing with the background,” he said. “We don’t have anything like this in Iowa.”

Laura Geggel: 392-6434, ext. 241, or lgeggel@isspress.com.

Touching the edge

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Brian Perkins kicks up spray while taking a test run during Seafair. (Photo by Dan Catchpole)

In hydroplane racing, the start is everything.

Drivers have five minutes to get from the docks to the start line. They jockey for position, trying to time it so they cross the start line at full power when the green flag goes up.

Cross too soon and get penalized. Cross too late, and you’re already out of the race.

“Most of the actual competition happens before the start. The rest — you’re just going for a ride,” Kayleigh Perkins-Mallory said.

It was a bad start that did in the North Bend driver in the final heat for the unlimited light hydroplanes Aug. 8 at Seafair on Lake Washington. Driving the UL-72 Foster Care-Triad Racing Technologies, she crossed the start line in fifth place.

Even so, Perkins-Mallory, who won last year’s race, roared back to finish in second place, less than a boat length behind the leader, Paul Becker.

She took the loss in stride. Becker dedicated his win to his brother, who died in June.

“For anything to lose to, it was an OK loss by me,” Perkins-Mallory said.

The 22-year-old driver is currently in third place in the national standings.

Breaking barriers

Despite her young age, Perkins-Mallory has already made a big impact in unlimited lights. She has been the national champion every year since she began in 2007, when she won the Rookie of the Year award.

The day before the final heat, Perkins-Mallory became the first woman since 1982 to drive an unlimited hydroplane, when she took two-time defending national champion U-1 Oh Boy! Oberto out for test laps.

As defending national champion for unlimited light hydroplanes, Kayleigh Perkins-Mallory has plenty to smile about. She rewrote history at Seafair when she took practice laps in the U-1 Oh Boy! Oberto behind her. She is the first woman since 1982 to drive an unlimited. By Dan Catchpole

It was a big step up from unlimited lights, which weigh half as much as the turbine-powered unlimited hydros. Perkins-Mallory had been lifting weights for months to build her upper body strength that’s critical for pulling the big boats out of turns.

“You could feel the weight on the turns,” Perkins-Mallory said.

She hit 175 mph, with an average of 147 mph.

Despite a sore neck, she said she’s looking forward to getting out again.

Some people think skittering across the water’s surface at speeds approaching 200 mph is dangerous.

It doesn’t have to be, Perkins-Mallory said.

“I’ve seen a lot of friends get hurt driving these,” she said.

But by driving smart, a racer can avoid most crashes.

Perkins-Mallory has never had a bad crash herself, but, she said, she has learned from other drivers’ mistakes while watching on the dock.

Her older brother, Brian Perkins, got her into racing. Before her first race in a 2.5-liter stock hydroplane when she was 16, Perkins-Mallory had been into ballet.

But she and her brother grew up around hydroplane racing. Her family has supported Seafair for decades. As children, she and her brother hung around the boat pits, “sitting in every boat that the crew would let us,” she said.

Today, Perkins-Mallory is a role model for young fans, especially girls.

Before one practice session, two young girls in braces asked if she would pose with them for a picture.

“Of course!” she said.

On the edge

Brian Perkins has also had a strong career so far. He is making a name for himself as the driver for Go Fast Turn Left Racing Inc., which owns U-21 Miss Albert Lee.

Perkins finished third in the final heat for the Albert Lee Cup at Seafair. He is in fourth place in the national standings.

Like his sister, Perkins loves boat racing, and he is in his element in the boat pit.

“I love the sights, the sounds, the smells, the people. There isn’t a thing about it I don’t love,” Perkins said.

So, what is it like to race an unlimited hydroplane?

“It’s absolutely amazing,” Perkins said, as his eyes sparked with adrenaline. “You’re literally flying over the water.”

Perkins-Mallory gives a slightly different take on it. It’s like “being in a small plane going down a road with a lot of potholes,” she said.

To win, a driver has to race on the edge, Perkins said. He has to know exactly how far he can push his boat.

Perkins said he is still learning what the edge feels like.

With a new boat, he and his crew are also still fine-tuning and squeezing every bit of speed out of it they can find.

After practice laps Aug. 6, the crew dismantled the U-21’s engine to tweak its gear combination in an effort to find a few more miles per hour.

Co-owner Brian O’Farrell said they plan to lighten the boat’s hull after this season to further increase its speed.

Fast doesn’t come cheap

But being fast in hydro racing isn’t cheap.

The parts are expensive — a propeller can cost upward of $15,000 — and money has become scarcer in the sport.

Several big sponsors — including Budweiser — have pulled out in recent years, leaving teams scrambling for new sponsors.

Very few teams have full-time members. For Perkins and Perkins-Mallory, driving is a part-time gig. They both work day jobs at Seattle-based Perkins Glass, which their family has owned for more than 100 years. Both dream of working full time as drivers one day, though.

O’Farrell is hopeful that hydroplane races will get national television coverage again in the next few years.

“Once we do that, there will be money back in it. Right now, there isn’t money,” he said.

He and his father Gregg co-own Go Fast Turn Left Racing Inc., a money loser for them. They support the team with their company, Lakeridge Paving Co.

The sport’s growing international audience could bring money back into it, too. The next — and last — scheduled race this year is in Qatar, Nov. 18-20.

There is talk of races being scheduled in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and even China, he said.

The growing overseas popularity of hydros was evident the next pit over, where the U-96 Spirit of Qatar was parked. The boat is driven by veteran star Dave Villwock, who finished a close second at Seafair.

It’s a death-defying sport with little financial gain.

But Perkins-Mallory wouldn’t do anything else.

“I make a lot better boat driver than a dancer,” she said.

Dan Catchpole: 392-6434, ext. 246, or editor@snovalleystar.com. Comment at www.snovalleystar.com.