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Posts published in “Day: July 15, 2007”

Friendly advice

July 15, 2007

Washington gubernatorial maybe-candidate Dino Rossi is taking some bruising over the Forward Washington foundation, which is in essence a campaign front - something the state's disclosure commission is looking into.

Its benefit was supposed to be the development of useful ideas for governing Washington. Problem for Rossi, his second big one in connection with this project, is that the ideas generated have some, ah, problems attached.

One of the key people on the foundation's "idea bank" group is Lou Guzzo, a former journalist for both Seattle dailies and a staffer long ago for former Washington Governor Dixie Lee Ray. This video of Guzzo has been posted (at the Slog and Horse's Ass, among other places) as a shot at Rossi (who is in it). It may hit its mark.

So often in politics, it's your friends who kill you.

Zero to 40,000

July 15, 2007
 

 

Above, Twin Falls's busiest, Blue Lakes Boulevard, a century ago/TF Library via Times News; below, Blue Lakes now

Twin Falls is taking some note, amid its substantial growth, of a population mark estimates now project: It is over 40,000 people. The Times News there is reflecting a little on that - is it good or bad, and does it make the community more a large small town or a smallish city?

What it is, of course, is a regional center - the main economic, cultural and governmental center of a large area, dominant about half way to Boise to west or Pocatello to the east - each of those cities being more than 100 miles away. It is, in other words, the center of the Magic Valley, the closest thing to an urban hub. It fits much the same role as a number of mostly larger cities around the Northwest - Yakima, Wenatchee, Idaho Falls, and maybe Bend or Walla Walla come to mind.

Some other parts of the Magic Valley haven't been growing so much, and Twin Falls has been pulling from them - places like Gooding, Wendell, Shoshone, Buhl, and a string of smaller towns. While Twin Falls' Blue Lakes Boulevard is as busy and franchise-full as comparable retail streets in much larger urban areas, many of the satellite small communities have been struggling. Some of those may look at the shot of Blue Lakes Boulevard from a century ago, and shudder rather than smile.