County saves money with used furniture

Furnishing a new King County office building will cost $5.2 million — a savings of $1.6 million — because the county was able to buy most of the furniture used.

King County Executive Ron Sims originally had asked the Metropolitan King County Council for $6.8 million, the cost of buying all new furniture, adding that he planned to research the used furniture market.

The council's Capital Budget Committee approved $3 million initially, and made the rest of the money Sims requested contingent on first searching the used-furniture market.

An earlier council staff report had indicated that the county could save $2.8 million by buying used. After finding that a large amount of office furniture was being sold by Safeco, the county was able to save $1.6 million.

The new $100 million county office building in downtown Seattle will house 1,500 employees and is expected to open in June.

Olympia

State finds tugboat to post at Neah Bay

The state has found a tugboat to be stationed at Neah Bay to protect the Washington Coast and the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca from straying ships this winter, the state Department of Ecology announced Wednesday.

The state will pay Crowley Maritime $8,500 a day, plus roughly $1,000 a day in fuel costs, to station the tug at the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula. The decision allays concerns that arose when another tugboat company, Foss Maritime, withdrew from a contract to put a tugboat at Neah Bay through the winter, when storms batter coastal waters.

The new contract is more expensive than the earlier deal with Foss, which cost the state $6,000 a day. Even with the added cost, Ecology figured it needed the boat there, said agency spokesman Curt Hart. "If we have a boat that's in trouble, we could be facing millions of dollars in cleanup," he said.

The state has paid to put a tugboat there every winter since 1999 to address worries that a ship could run aground and cause a major oil spill.

Yakima

2 arrested in theft of war memorial

Two men have been arrested for allegedly stealing a 3-foot bronze statue, dedicated in July in the city's downtown as a memorial for the war on terrorism.

The statue, known as a Battle Cross, features a soldier's boots, rifle and helmet in bronze atop a granite base. All that remained was the base.

The memorial was in a small park downtown, in full view of the U.S. District Court. Police suspected the theft was the work of scrap-metal thieves, who have repeatedly stolen overhanging copper wire that powers the historic Yakima trolley and scoured farms for brass sprinklers and irrigation pumps.

Officers got a solid break in the case after locating surveillance video from a business that had been the victim of an overnight theft, Lt. Nolan Wentz said. The video shows the memorial sitting in the back of a small pickup.

Police arrested two men, but they had not been charged as of Wednesday.

Times staff and news services