Fircrest, the island-of-a-city known for ticketing speeders and fighting off Wal-Mart, must make another choice that could forever change its character.

The question: Should a coffee shop in the suburban city’s commercial core be allowed to operate a drive-through?

OK, it might not be on the same level as defeating a global retail giant, but Fircrest officials will discuss the request by Trans Pacific Properties Inc., starting with tonight’s planning commission meeting.

The Fife-based company that has an office in Fircrest owns the 40,000-square-foot Village Square complex, which it refers to as Town Center.

Property Manager Tyson Johnson said the company purchased and renovated the complex on Regents Boulevard more than a year ago. It also began to attract tenants, including a coffee shop.

He said the owners of the Greener Bean Coffee Company plan to open their business possibly by this month in a spot that used to be a bakery.

One of the reasons the coffee shop agreed to locate in Fircrest Town Center was Johnson’s willingness to offer drive-through service.

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For years, school officials have been lamenting the state's underfunding of transportation.

Without adequate funding from the state, they say, districts must devote more and more of their local levy dollars to get kids to school.

One of their loudest charges: the state doesn't reimburse districts for transporting students whose homes or daycares lie outside a one-mile radius from school. And instead of calculating the actual route mileage, the distance is measured as a direct line from school to home or daycare. Or, in the colloquial, "as the crow flies."

Actually, says Allan Jones with the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, the state does provide some money to bus kids within the one-mile radius. But not much.

Jones, director of pupil transportation, says the state gives districts some funding based on the total number of kids in kindergarten through through fifth grade within the one-mile radius.

The original intent was to help districts defray the cost of transporting youngsters who faced hazardous walking conditions, even though they lived close to school.

But it's a lower rate than what the state funds for students living outside the one-mile minimum. And the districts don't have to have hazardous walking conditions to get the money. They don't even have to use the money to transport kids within that radius.

Here's how Jones explains it, and the "crow flies" business in an e-mail to The News Tribune.

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Kevin Cavanagh with Pierce County Information Technology points out that the link we published in the printed paper for the weather tracker system left off one symbol.

The correct link is http://www.co.pierce.wa.us/PC/

If you can't bring it up, click here.

On the left side, it's titled "How hot is it?"

It's pretty cool. According to the site, "Eleven weather stations around the county record temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and more. Data is updated every 15 minutes."

For people who say their roughing it with this week's heat, try working Choon Kim's job.

The owner of Fircrest Cleaners not only has to deal with the heat from outside, but inside his business it's even hotter. The dry cleaning operation's pressers are steaming from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The usual reprieve from the heat is to open the windows or walk outside, but not this week.

"We always use fans and air conditioning, but it's not enough," Kim said around 11 a.m. today, when the mercury in his business' thermometer reached 94 degrees.

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Doris Jairala has been a faithful bus rider the past five years, taking the 53 route a few times a week to get to her housekeeping jobs.

Driving isn't an option for the 62-year-old University Place resident. She suffers from seizures and isn't allowed to get behind the wheel.

(To the left: Doris Jairala, of University Place, rides the Number 53 bus to her job as a housekeeper last month. The route will be eliminated in July as Pierce Transit reduces less-used routes such as hers. Joe Barrentine/The News Tribune)

So that means for her job, she hops on the bus to Lakewood, Steilacoom, UP and any other community in which her work takes her.

But she will be one of the thousands of riders who will have to find a new bus beginning July 12. Pierce Transit, squeezed by the economic downturn, opted to eliminate or reduce service on routes throughout the county that don't have a high ridership.

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Ross Harris and Aaron Johnson sat at a table designed to hold eight people at the Ale House Pub & Eatery near Fircrest.

A mistake? Think more like strategic placement: Less than 15 feet away sat one of the restaurant’s large-screen plasma television.

“Can’t complain about high-def,” Harris said.

The two Fircrest men ate lunch, watched the TV (at that moment, UNLV and Kent State were on the tube) and bantered in the early afternoon.

Harris gave Johnson some good-natured ribbing for being from Bellingham and enjoying hockey. (“He’s almost a Canadian,” Harris said.) Johnson, a firefighter, admitted that the college hoops season does at times interfere with hockey, but all is forgiven during the tournament.

Harris, who owns a plumbing company, admits he’s more of an NFL guy. But, he said, it’s tough not to get excited come tournament time.

“March Madness is way, way more exciting than the NBA,” he said. “During the season, yeah, it’s cool. But now? Almost nothing compares to it.”

About a dozen people sat in the bar shortly after 1 p.m. Most appeared to be watching basketball.

In the room closest to the entrance, one man was drinking a beer and putting money into a Golden Tee machine so he and his friend could play a round of virtual golf during commercial breaks.

Both men trying to keep a low profile.

“I’m supposed to be at work right now,” one of them said. “My boss would kill me if he knew I was here right now.”

Here's the link to an audio/photo slideshow of Buel Sever. You can hear from Sever and see some archive photos of the Nuremberg Trials.

For you war buffs out there, I've posted the half-hour-long interview, and you can download it here. It's a beefy file (about 23 megs), so I'd suggest downloading and saving it before opening it.

Buel Sever helped treat prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp. You can listen to him describing the scene here.