Outside Looking In

Additional Column Posts (1 - 20 of 42) Next Page

• Money talks

  By Bill McElroy - Dec 02
  Over the last couple of years, I have noticed an increase in airline traffic above the Mill Creek area. Was it Paine Field? It wasn’t SeaTac air ...
  

• All's not well in Camelot

  By Bill McElroy - Nov 04
  Recently, I have had several people tell me that not all is well within the walls of the City Hall in Mill Creek. That there have been several ...
  
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  Some thoughts before taking leave of absence

  Jun 30
  It was just 35 years ago when my wife and I were getting ready to purchase a home in Mill Creek. Vine Maple was the newest subdivision to open, ...
  
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  Update: Local food banks can work together

  Jun 07
  In 2014, Snohomish County’s population was 735,351. What shocked me were some of the figures behind the census numbers – 26 percent of the ...
  
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  Pat head, rub tummy

  Apr 08
  Pat your head and rub your tummy. This seems like a simple test. Everyone has tried it, and almost everyone had problems doing it correctly, ...
  
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  Officials conflicted about Snohomish County growth

  Feb 09
  There are so many crosscurrents and conflicting communication coming out of the Snohomish County government and its elected officials. They want ...
  
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  Mill Creek missed its chance on annexation

  Jan 11
  Past decisions of not annexing areas around Mill Creek have more or less painted the city into a corner. On Dec. 8, the city of Mill Creek adopted ...
  

• Will expanded Paine Field provide insulation for homeowners?

  Dec 08
  There should be no debate about this, since Sea-Tac Airport and the Port of Seattle have already paved the way. I am just wondering when Snohomish ...
  

• Will Boeing leave Everett?

  Nov 23
  During a luncheon the other day listening to Dave Somers of the Snohomish County Council (now the county executive-elect) talk about the council’s ...
  

• Her passion: Drone bots collecting exhaled breath condensate

  Oct 22
  Mark Twain said there are no new ideas. I strongly disagree. I was talking with a mother the other day about what our children are doing after ...
  

• City has duty to investigate staff exits

  By Bill McElroy - Nov 20
  A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about ethics. Now I would like to focus my attention to government ethics, which refer to the unique set ...
  

• Ethics is about character

  By Bill McElroy - Oct 20
  The Snohomish County Ethics Commission receives complaints of ethics violations and administers the county’s Code of Ethics. I read recently that ...
  
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  Is county sales tax the result of wasted money on courthouse?

  Jun 20
  I have never heard anybody say they enjoy paying taxes. Taxes are imposed on people or property to raise money for public purposes. We rely on the ...
  
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  Mill Creek gets the food bank it deserves

  May 10
  The physical location that was the food bank the community rallied around is no longer there. The food bank was a direct result of a community ...
  
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  The Jet: Another watering hole going, going, gone

  By Bill McElroy/Outside ... - Feb 26
  It was sometime in the early ’90s. What usually took about 25 minutes was stretched to about 40. I was driving from my office in Seattle on the ...
  
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  Mill Creek absent on deciding Paine Field’s future

  Jan 25
  Where was Mill Creek? Why didn’t the city express its opinion on a subject that could have a profound effect to our community? According to recent ...
  
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  The falling Tooth Fairy price index

  Dec 21
  Remember when one of your baby teeth would start to fall out? How you’d wiggle it with your tongue during class, hoping to leave it for the tooth ...
  

• Paris, an inconvenient coincidence

  Dec 08
  The ISIS attack on Paris on Nov. 13 may rival dates in history associated with large-scale wars. Like so much of history, there is irony related ...
  

• Mill Creek, 98012

  Nov 10
  When I first moved here a little over 30 years ago, the only way to have packages delivered or picked up was to drive about an hour to and from ...
  

• We need fresh thinking in resolving traffic and housing problems

  Oct 06
  I believe there is something fundamentally wrong with the way our government (both locally and nationally) is trying to resolve traffic and ...