Helen Meredith Community Service Award Recipient 2021—Beth Berglund

Beth likes to say that she’s been dabbling locally since finishing grad school in 2016. But that doesn’t begin to describe her contributions to the community. She’s been leading and participating on key community organizations and local non-profit boards, volunteering at the community center and with the local tax aide program, milking goats for local farmers, and just recently started fostering kittens for PAWS.

Beth moved to Kingston in 2008 to live within walking distance of her sister, brother-in-law, and future niece or nephew while continuing to work remotely for the pharmaceutical company, Merck. Seven years later, she resigned from Merck’s corporate environmental organization after 25 years of service and turned her focus from global corporate work to the greater Kingston community.

She’s been on the Kingston 4th of July Celebration planning committee for the last 4 years -- first as the vendor coordinator and then as the parade coordinator. She just recently turned the parade reins back to the planning committee as she looks forward to new opportunities aligned with her interests. Beth has been an active volunteer for the Village Green since shortly after it opened and just accepted a position on the Village Green Foundation Board. You’ll see her there behind the front desk on Tuesday mornings and supporting the AARP Tax Aide program which offers free tax preparation services during the late winter and spring.

The Kingston Citizens Advisory Council became re-energized under Beth’s leadership. The Council has several committees actively engaged in addressing community interests from transportation and trails to affordable housing. In addition, she represents the KCAC on the Kingston Stakeholders, a citizens economic development group formerly associated with the Kingston Chamber, focusing on the SR 104 traffic issues. Together with the Transportation Committee and others, she has worked with the Stakeholders and SR104 Working Group to find a solution to the traffic issues in Kingston.

Since 2016 Beth has also served as Board Secretary for Stillwaters, a Kingston-based environmental organization focused on healthy Puget Sound lowland streams and estuaries. She also wrote a monthly column for Stillwaters that ran in the Kingston Community News for the last few years. In 2018 she joined eight others on a Kingston UVC Workgroup chartered by Commissioner Gelder to review the applicable policies, codes, and standards and recommend changes associated with Kingston’s Comprehensive Plan that guide development in the downtown core. The work group drove adoption of significant changes that will positively impact our ability to attract businesses to Kingston.

Beth does not spend all of her volunteer time on computers or in meetings. She milks goats for local farmers 3 mornings a week and covers for them as needed so they can step away from their farm from time to time. She is a certified milk tester and has her own chickens and ducks. Rumor has it she makes a mean maple custard from the bounty of goat milk and duck eggs that she passes out when thanks are due.

Learning to fish and forage in the pacific northwest is also a passion of Beth’s. She is increasing her boat handling skills as a member of the Puget Sound chapter of the Freedom Boat Club.

It is with great pleasure that we present the Helen Meredith Community Service Award to Beth Berglund.