By ED PENHALE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Mount Baker still has its problems. Some residents would put the annual Seafair hydroplane races in that category, because thousands of spectators converge to watch performances of the roaring Blue Angels over Lake Washington and the hydro races headquartered at the lake's Stan Sayres Memorial Hydroplane Pits.

"You love it or you hate it," Earl Richardson says about the way Mount Baker residents react to the summer extravaganza on and over the lake. But those who don't like it generally have made peace with the fact it's not going away.

A more serious problem has police and officials of the Mount Baker Community Club working together: illegal drug trafficking, fostered by absentee landlords who don't screen their tenants in the vicinity of Rainier Valley's Courtland Place South.

And then there's the controversy over location of the southern leg of the Regional Transit Authority's light-rail line, initially designated for Rainier Avenue. Richardson says it should be relocated, that there are route alternatives that must be considered to keep the line off Rainier Avenue.

"This neighborhood is still sensitive to development," he says about the part of Rainier Avenue running along Mount Baker's eastern reach. "If you do something wrong, we could lose the momentum we have. It's still a fragile neighborhood."