10/07/05 Apple in quarters?

It may come as no surprise that of the five finalists for Washington State's commemorative quarter, two contain the image of that noted state agricultural landmark & the apple. One image contains an apple in front of a state outline, while a second image combines the apple with two other symbols&Mount Rainer, and a salmon, with the state outline as a background. Mark Gerth of the Washington State Arts Commission and among those participating with the State Quarter Advisory Committee says public input was instrumental in the chosen designs. GERTH: Mount Rainier was the most suggested image by far. But then the next two were the Space Needle and apples. And so with that in mind, that's why apples made it on to two of the suggestions as they were one of the more common suggestions, and obviously apples have a great deal of meaning to Washington State. So what will be the next steps be in adopting a Washington State commemorative quarter in 2007? GERTH: What will happen is a fair bit of give and take between the State Quarter Advisory Commission and the U.S. Mint over the next couple of months. They'll probably send back anywhere between twenty five and thirty preliminary draft designs in December. What we anticipate is that we will have three to five final design options, that we will put up on the Governor's web site next spring and do a public opinion poll. And it will be the results of that on-line poll that the Governor will use to make a final decision on the commemorative quarter design.