Here's a few more details about an event that I briefed in the paper version of The News Tribune earlier this week:

Organizers are hoping 1,500 volunteers young and old will show up to tidy up Tacoma’s Eastside this Saturday (May 2).

Already, 1,200 students, families and other community members have signed up to clean around schools and along safe walking routes to schools from 9 a.m. to noon in the 2009 Eastside Clean Sweep project, according to a Tacoma School District news release.

Four St. Vincent DePaul trucks will be stationed throughout the Eastside community to collect used furniture and other salvageable donations. After the clean-up, Clean Sweep participants can enjoy a free barbeque, family activities and entertainment at a community celebration and awards ceremony 12:30 to 2 p.m. at Stewart Middle School, 5010 Pacific Ave.

Schools participating in the clean-up include: Boze, Blix, Fawcett, Lister, Lyon, McKinley, Roosevelt and Sheridan elementary schools; Gault, McIlvaigh and Stewart middle schools and Lincoln High School.

A high school student from the Division 34 Kiwanis and Key Club has collected nearly 2,000 children books that will be distributed at the event.

The Clean Sweep planning committee includes the Tacoma Public Schools, First Creek Neighbors, Tacoma Police Department, Tacoma Housing Authority, City of Tacoma, Boys and Girls Club, Kids at Hope, Safe Streets and the Puyallup Tribe.

The clean-up is supported with a $5,000 grant from the Eastside Neighborhood Advisory Council (ENACT) and another $5,000 from the Puyallup Tribe. For more information or to volunteer, contact Kate Frazier at 253-571-1347.

Debby Abe, The News Tribune

The Federal Aviation Adimistration just released its database on bird strikes.

Washington saw more than 1,400 since 1990. There were 134 last year.

The FAA cautions, however, that they think only about 20 percent are being reported.

That would mean there were really about 7,000 in the last 19 years.

Addendum:

Another reporter on a listserv for computer-geek journalists spotted this description deep in the national data:

"Gotta love the 5 green iguana strikes, like INDEX_ID=114998: “REPTD BY PILOT WHO WAS NOT INVOLVED IN STRIKE. BUT RAN OVER THE CARCASS”."

The ivy trembled before them.

The ratty recliners bade goodbye to their alley homes.

The creatures living under scores of spare tires found themselves homeless.

If it was blight on First Creek or McKinley Hill, 100 volunteers put it in peril Saturday, thanks to two work parties, the Puyallup Tribe and the city of Tacoma.

Joyce Glass reported that the Dome Top Clean Up crew saturated the neighborhood around Gault Middle School and sent four truckloads of junk to the dump. Allyson Griffith of the Tacoma's Community Based Services program provided safety vests, gloves, garbage bags and the coveted dump passes.

DomeToppers distributed 240 door hangers inviting neighbors to join the group. The also made a list of neighbors who need help with maintenance, abatement or getting rid of gang tagging.

Space is cheap on the internet. Let's name the local heroes: Matthew Williams, Joyce Glass, Bill Mattox, Vern Freeman, John Culhane, Jonathan Zold, Mike, Michael and Jennie Agnew, Lynnette and Larry Scheidt, Marcus Mulligan, Chris Skelton, Kali Kucera, and Mary Young and her grandson.

Joyce sent special thanks to the crew from The Crossing Church, who arrived in their distinctive green bus and pitched in: Brenda Bacon, Dennis Stewart, Paul Bergin, Jim Oliver, Scott Murray, Ruth Beard, Ellen and Vincent Prather, Nikki Nicholson and John Sparks.

Down the hill, Dan Fear deployed two teams to attack trash and invasive plants in the First Creek Watershed. People,including kids fresh for the World Vision egg hunt, dropped in to help, so there were likes more than the 53 volunteers who signed in. I'll get that list from Dan, and add those folks to the blog.

One group started just above the Emerald Queen, hauling out junk that generations of the environmentally unaware have tossed over the creek banks. They specialized in rescuing trees engulfed by ivy. The trick is to cut the ivy vines as high as you can reach up the trunk, peel them down to the ground and then roll them away from the tree. All the ivy up the tree starves to death. The stuff on the ground lives, but doesn't produce seeds for a while.

The second team rescued the sidewalk over the creek's culvert on Fairbanks Street. It was twice as wide as anyone thought, and the overgrowth concealed an intriguing array of bottles.

Quote of the site: "There's nothing easy about ivy," David Whited.

Whited works for the Puyallup Tribe, volunteers with the neighbors and organized the celebratory lunch for DomeTopper and First Creek teams at the Portland Avenue Community Center.

Dish of the lunch: Too Busy to Cook's baked beans with hamburger, adapted from a railroad man's recipe. It's worth a few hours of pulling ivy and hauling sofas to get a big helping of it to enjoy with equally muddy friends.

Remember summer?

Here's a chance to think back to a time when it didn't spit snot every other morning, and when white sails and cannon fire punctuated Commencement Bay.

Tall Ships Tacoma is hosting the theatrical premier of its official video with two gatherings at the Galaxy Theater Gig Harbor, 4649 Point Fosdick Drive N.W.

The events run from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, April 2, and Wednesday, April 8. Tickets are $20 a person, and the DVD sells for $15. You can order them at tallshipstacoma.com, or call (253)272-5650.

The evenings will begin with a reception with a cash bar, a welcome from Stan Selden, president of Tacoma Tall Ships Organization, and Les Bolton, executive director of Gray's Harbor Historical Seaport.

Expect Selden and Bolton to celebrate the fun, and the money, Tall Ships 2008 brought to Tacoma. The financial benefit includes $2.5 million in improvements to the Foss Waterway infrastructure, and the $20 million economic boost the festival generated in July.

Also expect Selden to encourage donations to cut the debt the festival still owes some of its vendors.

Call it a diamond in the rough.

Call it a hidden gem.

Call it a starter multi-use center.

The old Rogers Elementary School on McKinley Hill is all that. And now it's a bargain.

The stately school with the territorial view of the mountain and the port, has been on the market over a year. Now it's had its asking price reduced to $1,995,000, a bargain for a building with a new roof, not to mention a playground, auditorium, parking lot and commercial kitchen. And did we mention the dog park across the street?

It has one other big plus: Neighbors to want to see it transformed into a successful, even profitable, asset to the community

Those same neighbors objected to a church proposal to turn it into a service center for homeless people. The church bought the building at 1301 E. 34th St. from Tacoma School District for $1.6 million in 2007. Though it's convenient to McKinley Hill business district, it's a hike to bus lines, and the hillside below it would attract encampments.

Members of the church and the community worked their way through the disagreement, to the credit of both sides. Now the church is hoping to recoup its investment.

Members of DomeTop Neighborhood Alliance, which led the resistance to the social services center, have said they'd like to see the building converted to condos, or perhaps to a multi-use center with homes, a restaurant, possibly even a specialty grocery store.

Anyone interested in plunking down the earnest money should have a chat with the neighbors. They can be valuable allies, or formidable opponents.

The hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours South Sounders invested in Tacoma's 2008 Tall Ships Festival paid off for the second time Saturday.

Mike McLeod of Tall Ships Tacoma's Board of Directors, accepted the award at the International Sail Training and Tall Ships Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Tacoma has taken part in the festival only twice, in 2005 and 2008. Both times it has won Port of the Year. This year, it outdid the cities of Victoria and Port Alberni in British Columbia and San Francisco, Oxnard, Los Angeles, San Diego and Dana Point in California. In 2005, it also bested Vancouver, B.C.

The Tall Ships Challenge cycles between the east and west coasts and the Great Lakes each three years.

Captains and crew members have the biggest say in who wins Port of the Year.

It matters to them that the city of Tacoma arranged to have their bilges pumped, that union electrical workers had safe power strung to their ships and that volunteers kept crowds controlled and docks secure. It matters to them that shoreside folks welcome them with warm smiles, shopping specials, and free internet service.

McLeod believes that Youth on Board, a program pioneered by Tall Ships and Metro Parks, impressed ASTA and the skippers. That program trained young people in seamanship and placed them on Tall Ships for the sail from Victoria to Tacoma. Later in the summer, half a dozen of those young people went to California to sail aboard USCG Barque Eagle.

"We were one of the few ports that really embraced the sail training opportunity," McLeod said. "I'm told that ASTA is using the program we developed as a model."

While Port of the Year is an honor, the volunteers' first payoff was a well-run festival that drew crowds of 400,000 to the Foss in July.

Organizers estimated that 2,000 volunteers invested tens of thousands of hours in the festival. They built docks, gathered sponsors, picked up trash, directed crowds, catered to crews, and after all the ships had sailed, they left the Thea Foss Waterway with about $1.5 to $2 million worth of improvements.

A court battle over open records and the company that operates the Northwest Detention Center has been avoided.

The GEO Group, which has operated the 1,030-bed Northwest Detention Center since 2004, filed a petition in Pierce County Superior Court last week to block the release of several documents requested through public-disclosure laws.

Here’s what happened:

Tim Smith of the Bill of Rights Defense League filed the request to obtain tax records from The GEO Group. He said he filed the records to “better understand the operations of the facility and current efforts to expand its operations.” The detention center will expand by 545 beds. The $40 million project should be completed by September 2009.

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The Tacoma Tall Ships Organization folks appeared before a Tacoma city council committee to discuss their economic impact statement.

Earlier this month, organizers released a study showing a $19.2 million impact. And that played well with the members of the economic development committee.

Councilman Rick Talbert seemed particularly impressed with the infrastructure improvements the festival brought to the Thea Foss Waterway. And, he added, "what isn't measurable is the positive impact for Tacoma and Pierce County from people who visited here."

A board member of the Tacoma Tall Ships Organization will head a resource action committee that will raise funds to pay down the deficit from July’s festival and collect donations toward the 2011 event. Already, one anonymous donor has stepped forward with a $100,000 pledge.

Mike McLeod, a commercial real estate developer, will work full-time for the nonprofit organization over the next two months, board members said Tuesday. Tall Ships ran a $500,000 deficit on a $2.5 million budget.

Thirty-five creditors – mostly smaller companies and individuals – have been paid, with 63 still outstanding, board co-chairman Stan Selden said. The organization still owes about $450,000, $50,000 less than the initial deficit organizers announced last month. The nonprofit has received additional payments and bills since then, Selden said.

McLeod was five weeks into a three-month vacation when he decided to return to Tacoma and work to pay down the deficit.

“Bottom line is I couldn’t relax,” he said. “I wasn’t comfortable. We cut the trip short by about a month to come back and work on it.”

McLeod will approach sponsors from this year’s event and ask them to sign up early for 2011. One such deal he’s proposing to sponsors is a four-year commitment: help toward the deficit this year, money toward organizational operations in 2009-10 and donations toward the event in 2011.

The nonprofit has already received one large gift: An anonymous woman gave $100,000 earmarked for The Pollard Group, the Tacoma printing firm.

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The Tall Ships Tacoma 2008 festival generated $19.2 million in economic impact, according to a study conducted by an outside company and released by event officials Friday.

And of the roughly 300,000 people attended this year’s event about 48,000 visitors came from more than 50 miles away. On average, they stayed 2.6 days and spent $88.09 per person per day.

Stan Selden, the co-chairman of the Tacoma Tall Ships Organization, hailed the report as good news several weeks after the nonprofit announced it ran the festival at a $500,000 deficit.

“It’s a very, very positive plus for all the efforts we all put into it,” he said. “It’s the rest of the story.”

The festival drew fewer visitors than organizers had hoped in part because of the constant threat of rain. Selden also believes the economy played a factor in how much people spent at the event.

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The City of Tacoma's expenses related to the Tall Ships Tacoma 2008 festival totaled $291,983.

The figure is lower than the $300,000 of in-kind services the city committed to the July event because lower attendance allowed the police department to reduce staffing, according to an internal memo released Tuesday.

Police services were estimated to cost about $250,000 but came in at $211,141.51. Other costs included staffing from the fire department, paramedics and public works employees.

The nonprofit Tacoma Tall Ships Organization will receive the remaining $8,017 in cash. The nonprofit is currently digging itself out of a $500,000 deficit that it ran during the event.

The Tacoma Tall Ships Organization is considering several ways to pay off its $500,000 deficit from last month’s festival but is also seeking input for ideas, festival co-chair Clare Petrich said.

“We are open to every idea from the community on how to raise these funds,” she said. “The ideas we have now are kind of the typical fundraising.”

Such ideas include selling the leftover merchandise from last month’s festival, initiating a membership drive and looking for an angel donor who would contribute a large sum or put up matching funds.

The event, which ran July 3-7 along the Thea Foss Waterway, attracted about 300,000 people. But organizers said last week that it ran at a $500,000 deficit because of several factors, the board of directors wrote to supports in an e-mail.

“This event renewed Tacoma’s pride in its maritime heritage,” the e-mail read. “Poor weather, a faltering economy and low ticket sales impacted us and we are investigating what we do differently next time.”

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