In honor of National Trails Day, Newcastle Trails and a slew of local organizations are hosting a unique geocaching event across the city’s trail network June 6.

Part scavenger hunt, part exploration, geocaching sends participants on a quest to different waypoints, where they will usually find a small prize or object.

In this case, the “prize” waiting at each waypoint is education.

“It will have information about where they are standing, the history of the place and so on,” said Troop 499 Scoutmaster Bill Burris, who’s helping with the event’s organization.

Check-in is at Lake Boren Park, 13058 S.E. 84th Way, where participants will receive the coordinates for the first waypoint and a passport book to record information found at the eight other waypoints.

A GPS is most commonly used when geocaching, but Newcastle Trails will offer maps for those who prefer it, Burris said. Most smart phones have free GPS apps to download, he added.

At each waypoint you will find information about that waypoint’s location and coordinates to take you to the next stop.

The one-day, multicache event takes you on a 2.5-mile hike through the Newcastle trail system. Burris estimated it would take the average person a couple of hours to hit all the waypoints, so adventurers are invited to start anytime between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Newcastle Trails will wrap up the event at about 3 p.m.

Newcastle Trails will offer snacks and water for what it is expected to be a sunny, 80-degree day. Participants should wear sturdy walking shoes.

The event is coordinated by Newcastle Trails, Boy Scout Troop 499, Weed Warriors and the city’s Community Activities Commission.

Learn more about the Newcastle trail system at newcastletrails.org.

The city of Newcastle honored a group Feb. 26 that far too often goes unnoticed — volunteers.

Each year, volunteers devote countless hours to city events. It is volunteers that help plan summer activities, care and advocate for the city’s vast trail network and protect Newcastle’s history.

About 50 volunteers and summer event sponsor representatives gathered at The Golf Club at Newcastle Feb. 26, where they were treated to snacks, an orchestra and a personal thank you from Newcastle Mayor Steve Buri and City Manager Rob Wyman.

Volunteerism is a big part of what makes Newcastle one of the best small cities in the country. So, here’s a special shout out to some of the groups and people that willingly offer their time to better the city:

• Community Activities Commission — Diane Lewis, Linda Newing, Zaquis Ross, Russ Segner, Jim Price and Victoria Sandoval, and past members Angela Ursino and Victoria Hupf
• Planning Commission — Karin Blakely, Elizabeth Thompson, Orville McDonald, Jon Simpson, Rob Lemmon, Allen Dauterman and Thomas Magers
• Boy Scout Troops 499, 577 and 626
• Student volunteers from Hazen High, Liberty High, Maywood Middle and McKnight Middle schools
• Newcastle Trails — Garry Kampen, Peggy Price
• Newcastle Weed Warriors — Grace Stiller
• Newcastle Historical Society
• Little Rhody Park neighborhood group
• Newcastle Days car show planning committee
• Earth Day planning committee
• Newcastle Chamber of Commerce Board

The event also honored the following sponsors that contributed to city events over the summer:

• AvalonBay — Brian Fritz
• Waste Management — David Della
• Regency Newcastle — John Kotalick
• The Golf Club at Newcastle — David Uchida
• Coal Creek Family YMCA — Sara Biancofiori
• Boeing Employees Credit Union — Molly Andrews
• AT&T — Carol Tagayun
• UW/Valley Medical Center — Liz Nolan
• Animal Hospital of Newport Hills — Kent Thomazin
• HomeStreet Bank – Travis Monen
• KeyBank — Jimmy Ng
• Apple Physical Therapy — Randy Johnson

Newcastle Trails’ annual meeting is set for 7 p.m. Feb. 23 at the Newcastle Library.

The public meeting is open to all. It begins with a social hour at 6:30 p.m. with refreshments, maps and handouts.

The official meeting starts at 7 p.m. The group will discuss its 2014 accomplishments and goals for the upcoming year.

Lorrie Peterson, program manager for Bellevue’s Parks and Community Services Department will be the guest speaker.

Peterson will talk about Bellevue’s greatly improved Coal Creek Trail, which now has better connections to Newcastle.

The group will also elect officers and hold an open discussion. 

Newcastle Trails is a volunteer organization focused on the preservation, expansion and maintenance of the city’s trails. Learn more at www.newcastletrails.org.

Anyone who has given his or her time to the city of Newcastle, whether it be volunteering at a summer event or helping with various trail projects, is invited.

Volunteers from Newcastle Trails, the Newcastle Historical Society, Weed Warriors, the Planning and Community Activities commissions, and local Boy Scout troops will be among those honored at the celebration.

The event is from 6:30-8 p.m. in The Golf Club at Newcastle’s Prestwick Terrace. It will start with a social, featuring free desserts and beverages, followed by a speaking program headlined by Newcastle Mayor Steve Buri.

Newcastle relies on volunteers to support its summer events lineup and keep its trail system, one of the community’s most significant commodities, in top condition.

The city will also honor summer event financial sponsors such as The Golf Club at Newcastle, Waste Management, Regency Newcastle, the Coal Creek Family YMCA and more, at the Feb. 26 celebration.

Want to get involved in your city? Contact Newcastle’s community activities liaison Wendy Kirchner at wendyk@ci.newcastle.wa.us or 649-4444, ext. 142.

The public meeting is open to all. It begins with a social hour at 6:30 p.m. with refreshments, maps and handouts.

The official meeting starts at 7 p.m. The group will discuss its 2014 accomplishments and goals for the upcoming year.

Lorrie Peterson, program manager for Bellevue’s Parks and Community Services Department will be the guest speaker.

Peterson will talk about Bellevue’s greatly improved Coal Creek Trail, which now has better connections to Newcastle.

The group will also elect officers and hold an open discussion.

Newcastle Trails is a volunteer organization focused on the preservation, expansion and maintenance of the city’s trails. Learn more at www.newcastletrails.org.

Garry Kampen

This year is the 20th anniversary of Newcastle, a small city that ranks high in livability, and the 15th anniversary of Newcastle Trails, a nonprofit citizens group that has worked for parks, trails and open space, in close cooperation with the city, since 1999.

I’m writing to celebrate Newcastle’s amazing and still-growing trail system, and to encourage you to explore it and enjoy it. Check NT’s website, www.newcastletrails.org; download our latest map and trail guide; join NT by emailing info@newcastletrails.org (for trail news, no dues); attend our Oct. 6 board meeting (7 p.m. at Regency Newcastle); and consider volunteering for the board, or lending a hand with trail work, computer work (GIS, web, writing), lobbying, fundraising — whatever you’d like to do.

Newcastle’s trails are part of a regional network used by walkers, joggers, cyclists and equestrians. The city lies within a Grand Loop, a triangle of trail corridors with its base on the existing Lake Washington Trail (future Eastside Rail Trail) and its apex in Cougar Mountain.

The sides of the triangle are the May Creek Greenway (mostly in Newcastle) and the Coal Creek section of the Mountains to Sound Greenway (mostly in Bellevue). The triangle is crossed north-to-south by Coal Creek Parkway (continuous sidewalks) and the heavily used Waterline Trail (few sidewalks, many trees), with downtown Newcastle and Lake Boren Park sandwiched between.

You can walk the loop and its cross-trails now, with two exceptions: Renton’s May Creek Trail (partly complete, bridge needed), and the parkway underpass for the Coal Creek Trail (due soon). The Grand Loop is mostly wooded nature trails: The May Creek and Coal Creek trails include creeks, waterfalls, bridges, historic sites and sections of an old railroad; the Terrace Trail has switchbacks, lovely rock steps, views, fallen trees and giant moss-covered boulders. The Marshall’s Hill and Red Town trails (in Cougar Mountain Wilderness Park) link wilderness trails with the remains of Old Newcastle and its coal mines.

The west-to-east CrossTown Trail is Newcastle’s major urban trail (nature trails and sidewalks), a central connector linking schools, parks, neighborhoods and north-south trails. It starts near 116th Avenue Southeast and Newcastle Way, and winds past or through Hazelwood Elementary School, Hazelwood Park, Donegal Park, the historic Newcastle Cemetery and Lake Boren Park, continuing on sidewalks to Beit Tikvah and, after a gap, southeast along the DeLeo Wall (woods, views) from Newcastle Vista to Cougar Mountain.

Fall projects include new trail signs citywide, and changes to the CrossTown Trail: rerouting it at the new middle school and the planned Renton School District Newcastle development (between Olympus and Hazelwood), and rebuilding sections of trail between Newcastle Vista and Cougar Mountain.

Newcastle’s trail system has benefited from the cooperation of many groups, including Renton, Bellevue, King County and the Issaquah Alps Trails Club (check their websites for trail maps and guided walks). Volunteers were also essential. Much of the trail work was done by Boy Scouts, and parents, from Newcastle’s Hazelwood Troop, and other troops from Bellevue, Kirkland and Renton.

You can find longtime Newcastle residents Jim and Peggy Price on the trails in rain or shine, though.

The husband-and-wife team is very active when it comes to preserving and expanding Newcastle’s walking trails. They were among the founders of the Newcastle Trails organization and continue to remain deeply involved in the nonprofit.

Peggy had a direct hand in designing, routing and building the Terrace Trail and the eastern portion of the May Creek Trail. She now spends a large portion of her weeks working on the CrossTown Trail, which will span from Coal Creek Parkway to Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park.

Many Eagle Scouts have her to thank for helping them complete their final projects while she dutifully supervised and assisted on their trail extensions.

You can’t talk about the Newcastle trails, without mentioning the Prices, but to them, their passion for the outdoors is just a way of life.

Peggy’s love of trails started early, thanks to annual family camping trips, while Jim picked his up as a boy growing up in Illinois.

The duo met as University of Washington students when Peggy joined Jim’s hiking club.

“After about four hikes, the club was down to two people — the ones who would hike and camp in the rain,” Peggy said.

The last ones standing eventually married a year and a half later, before relocating to Alaska, which features a playground of outdoor activities for the two. They moved to Newcastle in 1986.

The Newcastle Chamber of Commerce has already honored both with Diamond Awards, but with the work they do to promote and expand the city’s greatest recreational amenity, they could easily be nominated every year.

Up next, the Prices will continue their work on the city’s trails and take time to hike a newly rebuilt section of the Pacific Crest Trail near Glacier Peak this summer. The Pacific Crest Trail stretches from Canada to Mexico.

The trail will connect Coal Creek Parkway across from Lake Boren to Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. The group is essentially building the trail from scratch, so work will include clearing, culling the soil of organics and contouring the trail bed.

The work party starts sharply at 9 a.m. and goes until noon, though individuals can continue to work past that time, if they wish. The group meets along Southeast 81st Street, near an under-construction subdivision.

Learn more about Newcastle Trails, and get precise directions to the work-party site at www.newcastletrails.org.

Thanks for your first-rate coverage of the departure of Mark Rigos, Newcastle’s Public Works director. Mark is an extraordinary individual who made a huge positive impact on the city and its residents, especially in expanding and improving Newcastle’s trail system, as members of Newcastle Trails can attest.

Projects that had been deferred for years were completed during Mark’s three-year tenure, often on his initiative (without prodding from Newcastle Trails). These included easements for the Horse Trail, drainage on the Highlands Trail, and surveys that helped prevent encroachment on our parks and trails.

Mark played a major role in the completion of the May Creek Trail, and cooperated effectively with the city of Renton in planning a May Creek Greenway from Lake Washington to Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. His efforts have ensured the near-term completion of Newcastle’s part of the Greenway from Renton to Cougar Mountain. His support — with negotiations, logistics and materials — has been vital to our 2014 work in extending the CrossTown Trail Southeast from Newcastle Vista.

Mark accelerated trail construction and improvement by making effective use of city staff and outside agencies (like the Washington Conservation Corps) and working closely with Newcastle Trails and other trail supporters (including the Boy Scouts and Weed Warriors). He provided material support to volunteer work parties, and applied his engineering skills to construction problems on the May Creek Trail and elsewhere.

Mark is a great communicator, sometimes beyond any reasonable expectation. An email sent to him at 6 p.m. on a Friday might well get a clear, detailed reply a short time later. And be followed up by action. He was proactive: If something of interest to Newcastle Trails reached him, he’d send a message right away, with relevant documents attached.

Mark is a nice guy who finishes first, with a great work ethic and exceptional gifts in people skills, management ability and engineering expertise. We wish him well in his new job. The city hit a home run when they hired him: We hope our heavy hitters can score again with his successor.

Garry Kampen

President, Newcastle Trails

Other Energy Eastside options need to be studied independently

Puget Sound Energy’s Energize Eastside Community Advisory Group process is deeply flawed and does not represent the preferences of the neighborhoods. It is now well-acknowledged that the data collected is statistically invalid, as even PSE’s own CAG representative said it is “meaningless to the process of scoring neighborhood values for the purposes of determining a preferred route.”

PSE unilaterally eliminated several viable alternative solutions to support growth on the Eastside before it began the CAG process.

The neighborhood members of the CAG respectfully ask all five cities to formally notify PSE that the CAG process does not represent the will of the neighborhoods, that this project would significantly violate neighborhood character, and to either stop wasting time on it or restart it with other options for the CAG to consider.

There are too many non-neighborhood stakeholders on the CAG and not enough of the affected neighborhoods are represented, thus PSE stacked the deck against the neighborhoods. PSE and its consultant Enviroissues have purposely manipulated a process that is not fair, accurate, thorough or transparent.

The neighborhoods need the city of Bellevue (the lead agency) to have several other options independently studied prior to the Environmental Impact Statement and State Environmental Policy Act review process commencing.

The PSE Community Advisory Group Members and/or Alternates signed below:

Steve O’Donnell, Somerset, Ruth Marsh, Somerset, John Merrill, Somerset, Norm Hansen, Bridle Trails, Warren Halverson, Bridle Trails, Lindy Bruce, Sunset Hills, Dick Morris, Sunset Hills, David T. Edmonds, Olympus, Sean McNamara, Olympus, Larry Johnson, Olympus, Jeff Dubois, Greenwich Crest, Scott Kaseburg, Lake Lanes, Donald Miller, Lake Lanes, Sally McCray, Lake Lanes, Dr. Richard Kaner, Lake Lanes, Darius Richards, Kennydale, Mark Hancock, Kennydale

By Christina Corrales-Toy
Mark Rigos, outgoing Newcastle Public Works director, with his son Alexander, speaks at the May Creek Trail ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 15.

Newcastle Public Works Director Mark Rigos has only worked with the city for three years, but his impact on the community is so great that when he announced his resignation, at least one resident became emotional at the thought of losing him.

“Honestly, I teared up a little bit,” Newcastle Trails representative Peggy Price said. “He’s been absolutely fabulous to Newcastle Trails. He’s proactive and he backs us up.”

Rigos announced in May that he will leave to become the public works director for the city of North Bend. His last day in Newcastle is June 13.

It wasn’t an easy decision to leave, Rigos said, especially since he has certainly grown to love Newcastle and its residents, but North Bend offers some new opportunities that Newcastle didn’t.

In North Bend, Rigos will manage the city’s water and sewer district, something he couldn’t do in Newcastle, because that falls under the Coal Creek Utility District’s purview. He’ll also get the chance to manage North Bend’s wastewater treatment facility.

“In the private sector, I’ve designed miles and miles of water mains and sewer mains, but I’ve never managed a full facility, a district, a fund, so that will be a new challenge for me that I just haven’t been exposed to yet,” Rigos said.

Rigos wore many different hats during his time in Newcastle. Sometimes, he was a trails manager. Other times, he was like a parks manager. But whatever he did, his constant dedication to customer service touched everyone that came into contact with him.

“He is a very humble leader and I liken him to a modern day Nehemiah, doing his best for others and the city with a sincere purpose and calling,” Newcastle Weed Warriors President Grace Stiller said.

Along with his staff, Rigos managed several sidewalk projects, oversaw a tricky landslide-stabilization project along Newcastle Golf Club Road, worked with Newcastle Trails to develop and acquire new trails, and guided the city through some major pavement rehabilitation projects in his three years.

His proudest accomplishment was the huge strides the city’s stormwater division made under his watch, he said. He credited surface water engineer Laura Frolich and infrastructure manager Brian Smith for making sure the city was dialed in on capital and maintenance needs.

“I’ve had a wonderful staff. There’s certainly no I in team,” Rigos said. “My staff has just been incredible in getting these projects done.”

Rigos is known for going the extra mile, City Manager Rob Wyman said. Whether it was finding a way to give west end residents their Little Rhody Park, even after the grant they applied for was denied, or bringing his son along to an off-hours May Creek Trail ribbon-cutting ceremony, Rigos always put in the extra effort to make something special.

“He was a true member of the community here,” Wyman said. “I’m going to personally miss him quite a bit, and going to miss all he’s done.”

Rigos has a long list of things he will miss about Newcastle, he said, among them, the people, the City Council, his staff and his city manager.

He doesn’t expect to stay a stranger, though. Rigos, an Issaquah resident, already has plans to attend the city’s Fourth of July event and maybe make it out for one of the city’s Concerts in the Park series.

“I’ll especially miss folks like Peggy Price, Garry Kampen, Grace Stiller and Lee Strom,” he said. “There are so many people that contribute in so many different ways to Newcastle, and that makes it a neat small town.”

Rigos joined the Newcastle staff in 2011. Prior to that, he spent 12 years as a senior project manager at Concept Engineering. He holds bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering and biology from Washington State University, and a master’s in business administration from Seattle University.

Wyman now has the arduous task of finding Rigos’ replacement. Whoever it is, he or she will certainly have some big shoes to fill.

“He’s not been a typical public works director,” Wyman said. “That’s the big challenge I have in trying to replace him.”

Rigos, who will start his new North Bend job June 16, does have some advice for the person that follows him, though.

“Public safety is always No. 1 in my mind, and as a civil engineer, it has to be, but almost equally important is excellent customer service,” he said. “Customer service is often overlooked in a public servant and I think it’s especially important in a small town like Newcastle.”