Let me tell you the story of the “Kenmore Citizen and the Three Disingenuous Bears.”

One day, the Citizen went out into the wilds of Kenmore. The Citizen happened upon Three Disingenuous Bears. There was a Baby Bear, a Papa Bear and a Big Ole Mama Bear.

The Kenmore Citizen was first approached by the Baby Disingenuous Bear (Ostroms). The Baby Bear pointed up to his new readerboard. He stood with pride when the sign read “We don’t sell tobacco. We care about your health.” Funny that. He made no mention, though, of how the inside of his store abounds with candy treats. He will even sell you greeting cards that glorify chocolate. Not to be discouraged though, the Baby Disingenuous Bear will happily help you with all your diabetic testing supplies and medications related to your obesity.

The Citizen bid Baby Bear adieu and next found the Papa Disingenuous Bear (Mayor David Baker) talking to the paper again. Papa Bear was in the middle of explaining how the city’s street budget is underfunded and has been for some time. Papa Bear went on to say that a supplemental levy is needed to make up the shortfall. Funny that. Wasn’t it just the other side of the last election cycle that Papa Bear was in the paper talking about how the award the city had won for its liveability was based on its sound financial condition? At the time, Papa Bear even repudiated Councilman Hendrickson who was calling attention to shortfalls in the city’s budget.

Now the Citizen listened on as Papa Bear explained further that a supplemental levy to fund Kenmore’s streets would only happen if it was approved by a vote of all the citizens of Kenmore. Funny that. All the millions of dollars that went into building the new City Hall, those millions of dollars that made up all that used to exist of the city’s reserve funds, those millions of dollars that had been painstakingly saved up in years when the city’s general budget actually ran at a surplus, those millions of dollars that could have funded the street budget for many years. Well, no vote of the citizens apparently was needed then as Papa Disingenuous Bear and friends committed those millions of dollars on a place for bears to be comfortable in through wet winters.

With head spinning, the Citizen turned away from Papa Bear, who kept right on talking anyway. Wanting a rest, the Citizen looked for a quiet spot, but instead found the Big Ole Mama Disingenuous Bear (the Northshore School District) who was looking to feed again. Funny that. Did you know that the technology levy that we recently passed contained a pay raise for teachers? Now, to be fair, Mama Bear called it “training.” Funny that. Well, more than one-third ($9 million of $24 million) of that technology levy is going to teachers’ salaries. Mama Bear made a deal with the teachers’ union to take money from the technology levy to keep the teachers from striking. Mama Bear did this long before she tasked an advisory board with the job of prioritizing the technology needs in the district.

That $9 million pays for all those days where our students stay home, but the teachers report to work. Does Mama Bear really expect us to believe that the teachers will spend all that time “in training to incorporate technology into classroom instruction”? Did you not know that? Mama Bear did disclose it in the informational flier mailed to all the citizens. Funny that. It was listed after “maintain a five-student-to-one-computer ratio” in the flier. In fact the teachers will get more than double the money spent on student computers. That is like listing the ingredients in a marshmallow and leaving sugar for last — and replacing the word “sugar” with “natural sweetener.”

But Mama Bear stood with pride and pointed to the tax levy rate. You know the tax levy rate. That infamous “dollars of tax per thousand dollars of appraised home value” number that Mama Bear is always happy to show you. Mama Bear is happy to show you that because Mama Bear will say that that rate has remained unchanged for many years. Funny that. It has remained unchanged for many years because the home values of the citizens of Kenmore have risen so nicely. But when this last technology levy came around, the levy rate was calculated by Mama Bear on the “conservative best guess” that the property values in Kenmore would not drop. This was despite the fact that at the time the levy was being prepared for Mama Bear’s approval, news reports had been in the Seattle Times for more than four months that King County property values had already dropped by an average of 11 percent — and were still dropping.

Please understand, as the Citizen’s home goes down in value, the debt to Mama Bear does not. Mama Bear did change her “conservative best guess” to a drop of 12 percent before the levy vote, but only after the Kenmore home market had fallen by 20 percent.

Knowing all this, the Kenmore Citizen fell back into the shadows to avoid the hungry Big Ole Mama Disingenuous Bear.

So you may ask, “What is the moral of the story?” Well, of course, that depends on whether you are a bear or a citizen. For a bear, the moral is “The forest that exists between truth and lies is dense. A clever bear can live in that forest for a long time and grow fat.” For a citizen, the moral is “never assume that bears have a full set of morals.”

David Barbe

Kenmore