If the Everett School Board, during its superintendent search, did meet 30 times in executive session without first meeting publicly and taking a vote to go into executive session, someone should sue the board.
The penalty is small — $100 for each board member — but a suit would make the point that board members must operate within the law.
Need to preserve state parks
Proposed state budget cuts could mean closing a quarter of Washington’s state parks.
There’s been some talk of turning the parks over to the counties, but that won’t work because most counties have their own financial trouble.
Instead let’s turn some parks from places for active recreation, with swimming areas, playgrounds and ball fields, to places for passive recreation, such as hiking, that needs little supervision or maintenance. This would mean removing some amenities at these converted parks, but it would keep them for public use.
Remembering Bill O’Mara
When Bill O’Mara died a week and a half ago, the Seattle area lost its pioneer TV sportscaster.
O’Mara was the sports director at KING-TV when it was the only station in the area. He did a 10-minute sports program that followed the station’s 15-minute 6 p.m. newscast.
His broadcast was incredibly local, devoted to the Seattle Rainiers, the UW Huskies, the Seattle U Chieftains, the Buchan Bakers amateur basketball team, the string of Puget Sound area golf champions and, of course, the hydros.
In the 1950s, unlimited hydroplane racing was the major Seattle-area sport. O’Mara followed the hydros around the country, broadcasting races all season, culminating with the Gold Cup in the years Seattle boats had won the right to defend the Cup at home, or the Seafair Trophy Race in those years when Detroit stole the Cup.
On race day, he and partners from the news department would broadcast all day, keeping viewers informed of the point standings and of what pit crews were changing engines between heats.
His coverage was so complete that when KOMO-TV and KIRO-TV came along, they had to match it.
He treated local heroes, like driver Bill Muncey, with a sense of reverence.
His style was bland and predictable: “He’s at the thousand-foot buoy, 500 feet away; he’s over the line.”
After a decade, more modern sportscasters soon made his style seem old fashioned. He went to a smaller TV station, then to a series of small radio stations, finishing his career broadcasting high school games in Anacortes as he reached age 90.
His most memorable moment came at his first hydroplane race in 1951. A boat exploded, killing both drivers. As the camera turned away, he began reciting the Lord’s Prayer on the air.
Evan Smith can be reached at entopinion@heraldnet.com.
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