Looking Back at Our 2017 Predictions

by Lin McNulty and Margie Doyle —

As we look back on 2017, locally we did our best to resist national efforts to undermine immigrant rights, environmental protections and government-corporate venality. We did good, shepherding our medical providers, protecting our neighborhoods, building and remodeling facilities, giving to the needy and defending our environment.

Making predictions is fun; and it may be they direct our everyday work. Here’s how we did on our prophecies for 2017:

1. Orcas Medical Center will receive the necessary donations by the January 15 date to proceed with the agreement with University of Washington Neighborhood Clinics to assume operations at OMC. Bingo on this one. University of Washington Neighborhood Clinics began management of the Orcas Medical Center this last fall.
2. Growlers will soon be practicing landings on the numerous oil tankers puffing their way through Puget Sound. This was a horrid image that, thankfully, has not (yet) come to fruition.
3. Hillary Clinton will soon make a visit to Orcas Island, following in the footsteps of Al Gore following his defeat on 2000, despite winning the popular vote. Unless she snuck in when no one was watching, the Hillary Clinton visit to Orcas was a pipe dream.
4. Members of the Orcas Senior Center will mobilize “the silver tsunami” and be a decisive force in moving our medical care situation forward. They might not be calling themselves the “silver tsunami,” but new management and an island-wide survey are showing indications that our Senior Center will become an even bigger part of our Orcas community as our aging populace increases.
5. Salish Sea Stands and FRIENDS of the San Juans will jointly and successfully play an essential role in blocking the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Despite an explosion on a Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline that killed two people and injured two others on December 5, 2017 in Lee County, Illinois, despite the disapproval of numerous communities across the country and Canada, Canada’s National Energy Board ruled that the company could proceed with construction on the Trans Mountain project in Burnaby, British Columbia, without complying with two sections of the city’s bylaws. The ruling boosted confidence that the federal government, which has approved the pipeline’s expansion, will help the company prevail over local opposition that had threatened to bog down the work. Sigh…
6. Orcas Island and the San Juans will be hit with a record-breaking snowstorm before this winter season is over. It might not have been record-breaking, but we did get a somewhat unique snowstorm in the San Juans in February, referred to, in some circles, as Snowmageddon. We’ve had worse.
7. The Exchange will finally open and become a model for the rest of the country, prompting eco-tourists from far and wide. We hit this one right on the nose, but of course we had inside information and awareness of how diligently the ORS Team has been working at this. Our beloved Exchange is back — and better than ever.
8. The county-wide Trades Jobs program, under the sponsorship of the County Economic Development Council, will be flooded with applicants.The verdict is still out on this one, as the ECD is starting new trades programs.
9. The Hiyu will return to San Juan County as a floating hotel in Doe Bay, says Margie, while Lin predicts the Hiyu will instead be operated as a private ferry to Waldron, with hundreds of riders every day. Alas, the Hiyu will forever remain a treasured San Juans’ memory; it was sold last February for $150,000 to company called Menagerie Inc., which ntends to make the 50-year–old ferry a floating entertainment venue on Lake Union.
   Another beloved ferry, the Evergreen State, also sold in 2017. The 63-year-old ferry sold for $300,000 to Jones Broadcasting, LLC. The new owners plan to use it for active ferry service in the protected waters of the southern Caribbean.
10. In response to the Supreme Court McCleary mandate, the State Legislature will set up a sub-department to discuss disbursement of funds following their passage of the budget. The Legislature passed, and the Supreme Court approved the plan to increase property taxes and revise regulations to fund Basic Education.
11. The Funhouse remodel will uncover another archeological artifact, the likes of which have never been seen before, prompting hundreds of scientists and geneticists to flock to the island to discover more remnants from a previously-unknown Paleolithic Age. The specimen is still there, waiting to be uncovered. Really. It’s just a matter of time before this prediction comes to fruition.
12. The Eastsound Visioning Project will reveal a previously-untapped level of creativity and commitment from our Millenials and Gen-Xers. It may be too soon to have final results on this one, but with targeted outreach to the larger community through the recent survey, it’s beginning to happen.

Tune in tomorrow to see our predictions for 2018!