This morning the commissioners will read an Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation that no one requested, and that last year no one showed up to receive. A counter-proclamation sent September 9 is still unanswered. The reading shames the taxpayers who fund it, then clears the ground for the grants and land deals that follow.

Nobody asked

County Administrator Todd Mielke explained the rule a month ago. Proclamations get on the agenda because somebody asks. A club. A nonprofit. County employees who want a diaper drive. Staff writes it up and puts it on the calendar.

Asked at a commissioners’ forum where this one came from, Mark Ozias said he did not know if anyone requested it, and he did not recall how it began. He has been on the board eleven years. What he did recall is why he supports it. He “personally believes” the public needs a lesson in systemic discrimination, and that residents who say they had nothing to do with colonization hundreds of years ago have missed the point.

That is the origin story. Not a request. A commissioner using county letterhead for his own theory of inherited guilt. He said it is not a performance. A proclamation nobody requested, delivered to a room that nobody showed up to receive last year, is indeed a performance.

Commissioner Mike French agreed and said Ozias had explained it very well. He added a headcount: four federally recognized tribes have territory here. He also did not know how the proclamation got started.

Randy Johnson’s name is on the signature block with theirs. Three commissioners. None of them are tribal members. Salaries on the order of $118,000, paid for by taxpayers. Don’t forget, the second installment of your property taxes is due at the end of this month regardless of your ancestry, unless the land is held in exempt tribal status.

What they will not say

The proclamation does not say tribal people once lived here. It says the borders “encompass Tribal ancestral land” and that they have lived here “since time immemorial.” That is the phrase in the League of Women Voters textbooks given to third, fourth, and fifth-graders in this county.

A courtesy resolution does not rewrite a property deed. But it puts the sentence on county letterhead, so the next time a shoreline permit, a refuge handover, or Towne Road comes up, “ancestral land” is already baked into the county’s own language.

Leaving out the part that doesn’t fit

In 1847, about 150 Klallam warriors joined Suquamish fighters under Chief Seattle in an attack Suquamish oral history called a war of extermination against the Chemakum. Men were slaughtered. Women and children were taken as slaves. Klallam people then occupied that region, including today’s Port Townsend.

On May 8, 1792, Peter Puget, ashore with Vancouver’s expedition near present-day Port Townsend, found three poles topped with human skulls.

Before dawn on September 21, 1868, S’Klallam men led by Lame Jack killed seventeen Tsimshian tribal members camped on Dungeness Spit, including five women and two children. The party was resting before continuing to British Columbia. Jamestown’s own history page says captive-taking was common. Attacks, genocide, and extermination of rival tribes did a lot of damage to Indigenous peoples. The proclamation mentions none of it.

Watch the other account

Matt Walsh’s The Real History of the American Indians runs about 65 minutes, free on YouTube as What Schools Don’t Teach You About American Indians. Snow White, Cinderella, and smallpox blankets, he says, have one thing in common. They are fairy tales.

Walsh explains that raiding, scalping, and captive-taking were ordinary intertribal war practices long before Europeans arrived. The phrase "Trail of Tears" came later, after the event (many of the Indians owned black slaves who also made the journey). “Stolen land” works as a slogan, similar to the impulse behind a land acknowledgment.

Walsh’s point is simpler than the proclamation. When the United States won, it sent many of the defeated tribes to reserved land. A victorious tribe on this coast usually killed the men and took the women and children. The film is worthwhile. It is still a harder account than the “whereas” clauses in a proclamation that Mike French praises Mark Ozias for.

What the reading buys

No county money moves this morning. The vocabulary does all the work.

French chairs Recompete, the $35.6 million federal grant he is running on. One slice buys Jamestown a hydroseeder and a mini excavator so a tribal enterprise can enter a business local contractors already do. Jamestown has a budget of over $100 million, with about 213 members living in the area. The same premise of repairing historical injustices nearly led the commissioners to give Towne Road to the Jamestown corporation. The same proclamation underpins a current proposal to hand two national wildlife refuges to the Jamestown tribal government, which also runs commercial seafood harvest operations. The proclamation does not transfer the land. It tells the public the transfer would be justice.

This board let the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th arrive with no proclamation until the morning of. Shaming colonizers, with no one in the room, is a yearly ritual.

The one they ignored

On September 9, I emailed the commissioners and Administrator Mielke. I asked who requested this proclamation. I also asked that a second one be read beside it: residents of every background pay the taxes, no culture is innocent, and inherited guilt is not a governing program.

Under Mielke’s rule, a request plus draft language gets you on the calendar. Diaper-awareness week made it. Food waste made it. Dark skies made it. This proclamation did not. Nobody replied.

This was my proposed proclamation:

WHEREAS, the residents of Clallam County—of every background and ancestry—work, pay taxes, and sustain the government that serves them; and

WHEREAS, history shows that no culture or nation is without conflict or harm, and that the story of humanity is one of migration, struggle, and survival, not moral perfection; and

WHEREAS, people first arrived on this continent by migration thousands of years ago, long before modern borders existed, and all who live here today share the same earth and the same duty to treat one another with respect; and

WHEREAS, using history as a tool to divide present-day citizens or to assign inherited guilt risks deepening resentment rather than healing it; and

WHEREAS, working families in Clallam County already shoulder heavy burdens—rising costs, limited opportunities, and repeated calls to raise their own property taxes—while county funds often go to symbolic or politically fashionable projects instead of core needs such as infrastructure, public safety, and housing people can actually afford; and

WHEREAS, proclamations that emphasize virtue-signaling rather than measurable improvement distract from accountability and good government; and

WHEREAS, public officials are elected to represent all citizens equally, not to advance the interests of select organizations or donors; and

WHEREAS, lasting progress comes not from guilt or grievance, but from ensuring that every resident—regardless of ancestry—has the same chance to succeed through effort, education, and enterprise;

NOW, THEREFORE, we, the citizens of Clallam County, proclaim that unity, fairness, and shared responsibility are the foundation of a healthy community.

We call on our elected leaders to pursue fiscal responsibility, transparency, and equal respect for all taxpayers; to focus on opportunity rather than division; and to remember that the strength of this county lies not in rewriting the past, but in building a fair future together.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, we dedicate this day to the residents of Clallam County—those who keep its lights on, its roads repaired, and its spirit alive.

This morning

The board meets at 10 a.m. in the commissioners’ boardroom at the Clallam County Courthouse. The first public comment can address an agenda item, such as the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Proclamation. Remote comment is available via Zoom (click here for instructions). If you cannot be there, email all three commissioners at the Clerk of the Board: loni.gores@clallamcountywa.gov.

Comment as neighbors, not as categories. Everyone in that room is a Clallam County resident, and the outcomes worth arguing over are the same ones: roads, housing, public safety, and a tax bill that buys something real. Tell the commissioners the shaming is finished. Ancestry is not a debt, and genetics are not a governing program. Ask them who requested the proclamation. Then ask them to represent the county, and all the people who live in it.

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PABA Seegers / French forum this morning

The forum will be broadcast live on PABA’s Facebook page.

Todd Ortloff Show: Seegers / French conversation

Today – Candidate forum for Clallam County Commissioner District 3 with incumbent Mike French and challenger Jake Seegers. 1 pm on 1450AM, 101.7 (Port Angeles), 101.3 (Sequim), or listen online.

Sequim comprehenisve plan

The City of Sequim’s Planning Commission will be holding a Continued Public Hearing on the Draft 2025 Comprehensive Plan and Draft Title 18 Proposed Revisions today, Tuesday, October 6. The meeting will begin promptly at 5:30 p.m. PDT at the Sequim Civic Center (152 W Cedar St.) in the Council Chambers.

For more information, you can visit the Comprehensive Plan Page or view the meeting agenda.

Forks Seegers / French candidate forum Wednesday morning

Jake Seegers and Mike French will be in Forks on Wednesday for the Chamber of Commerce meeting for a Candidate Forum! Wednesday, October 7, Blakeslee's Bar & Grill 1222 S. Forks Ave 11:30 am - 1 pm.

Teresa Fox Town Hall Wednesday

Wednesday, October 7, 2026, 6:00 p.m., Sequim Prairie Grange at 290 Macleay Rd. She will open, then turn it over to the room. Incumbent Emily Randall is invited. Fox’s case is that Randall has been missing local forums while campaigning for candidates outside the state, and that the district deserves someone who shows up. She is running as a business professional and emergency manager, not a career politician. Details at foxforwa.com or info@foxforwa.com.

At a Sequim Rotary forum, Commissioner Mike French said Clallam County expanded harm reduction after the Jamestown Healing Clinic opened, so the program could “leverage that connection” and send active users to treatment. The county health officer who oversees that program also works at the clinic. Last year the Harm Reduction Health Center logged about 12,000 encounters and 27 on-site treatment assessments.

Much of the District 3 commissioners’ race has narrowed to one argument the public will not drop: harm reduction.

Incumbent Mike French, who also chairs the Board of Health, defends the Harm Reduction Health Center as an evidence-based program the county should stand by. Independent challenger Jake Seegers says the county should count how many people leave addiction, go back to a one-for-one needle exchange, keep naloxone available, and stop handing out smoking kits, foil, straws, and rectal “boofing” supplies.

A month before the election, Peninsula Daily News published the county’s preferred version of that argument.

The paper that cleaned it up

The October 2 piece, “Health program addresses perception,” quotes French as a supporter of best practices and Seegers as the man who says the program enables addiction. It then hands the rest of the column to Health and Human Services Deputy Director Jenny Oppelt and HRHC coordinator Lari Karan.

Oppelt walks readers through the origin story. In 2000, the Board of Health started a needle exchange. “One syringe comes in, and one syringe goes out.” Then the drug supply changed, the exchange became a syringe service program, and in 2023 it was renamed the Harm Reduction Health Center.

What the article does not say is that the county no longer runs an exchange. Participants are not required to return a used syringe. The 2025 county report lists 137,499 sterile syringes distributed and 67,244 sharps returned by participants. The same report lists 20,848 sterile pipe kits and 4,274 “other injection alternatives.” The offering includes foil, straws, and boofing kits. The old program and the current one share a building and a press release. They are not the same policy.

“We do not provide substances,” Oppelt stated in the article, which only means the county does not hand out drugs. But in 2023, it tried to. Jake Seegers reported that commissioners approved a plan to take illegal drugs from addicts, test them, and give those same drugs back. A county risk manager stopped it over legal and financial liability, so the program never launched. The county did not try to supply the substance. It did try to accept it, test it, and return it for use. That is more than the paper admits.

Then the success story. Oppelt says Clallam had 46 overdose deaths in 2023, the most on record, and 22 accidental drug overdose deaths in 2025, about a 51 percent drop. The next sentence in the Peninsula Daily News story is a tell: “Harm reduction is not the only reason for that increase.” They meant decrease. But the slip fits the argument. The paper treats the drop in deaths as the center’s success, then concedes that the Jamestown clinic and other outreach did much of the work.

Port Angeles Fire Department has already claimed a large share of that decline for Operation Shielding Hope, the community-paramedic response that started engaging overdose survivors who used to walk away.

The Jamestown clinic, which opened in 2022 and operates a mobile unit dosing clinic in Clallam Bay since March 2024, belongs in the picture too. So does the national fall in overdose deaths after fentanyl’s peak. Seegers has also pointed at the longer curve: from the year Allison Berry became health officer, 2018, through the local peak, Clallam’s overdose deaths rose far faster than Washington’s or the nation’s. A two-year drop after a record year is not a reason to hand out unlimited supplies.

The client spotlight does the rest of the work. Kristyn Milom, who does not use drugs, says she goes for nutrition drinks, cold compresses, and tampons, and that staff sees her as a human being.

Hygiene items and a clothing closet are real needs. Serenity House, TAFY, food banks, and a long list of other providers also offer them. Seven pages of free-food options in this county do not require a stop at the syringe counter. Using a homeless woman who needs tampons to soften a debate about meth pipes is your local government and legacy media colluding to propagandize.

What French said when the paper was not writing it

Last week, at the Sequim Rotary candidate forum, French said he wanted to clear up misconceptions.

“So, the first thing is, yes, Clallam County had an expansion of harm reduction a few years ago. A lot of that was response to, again, the Jamestown Healing Center opening, and harm reduction being a way to create a connection with active drug users so that you can leverage that connection to get them to go to treatment. So that’s the desire behind that expansion.”

That is the bluntest public explanation yet of why the program grew. The MAT Clinic opened in Sequim in 2022. The county renamed and broadened the program in 2023. French’s own account ties the expansion to the clinic: meet users with supplies, then move them to Medication-Assisted Treatment.

Jamestown is not a volunteer booth. The tribe runs the Healing Clinic as part of a profitable health enterprise. CC Watchdog has already reported the scale of that billing. By Mike French’s own account at the Sequim Rotary forum, the county expanded its taxpayer-funded supply program after the Jamestown Healing Clinic opened, specifically to create a connection with active users and move them into that clinic.

In his rebuttal to French, Jake Seegers did not argue about how many supplies went out. He argued about what happened next: 27 on-site treatment assessments out of about 12,000 encounters last year. “That’s a terrible conversion rate,” he said. “We are not actually pushing people to the treatment and the help that they need at harm reduction. We’re giving them drug use supplies.” If the expansion was about treatment, the county’s own tally, as Seegers read it, says it failed.

Health Officer Allison Berry oversees this arrangement. The Board of Health appointed her (then Allison Berry Unthank) on September 4, 2018. She already worked at Jamestown Family Health Clinic. She is now also health officer for Jefferson County, and the state Board of Health bio lists her part-time work in primary care and substance-use treatment at the Jamestown Healing Clinic. One of Berry’s employers, the County, writes the harm-reduction policy. The other employer, Jamestown, treats the patients that policy is supposed to produce, and gets paid for the visits. French chairs the board that keeps her in the first job. Nobody at Peninsula Daily News thought that was worth mentioning.

The Indiana story, and the budget cut he wants credit for

French then told the room the county has since cut the harm reduction program. He said he talked to Jamestown, Peninsula Behavioral Health, community paramedics, and 4PA. Joe DeScala of 4PA, French said, told him about half the supplies recovered on cleanups were unused. Staffing at the HRHC was reduced. Supplies were scaled back. Told that way, it sounds like a commissioner who heard the public and trimmed the waste.

Seegers answered with the other half of the story. The reduction followed the loss of state grant funding. The board didn't discover restraint after years of complaints. Full-time employees and drug-use supplies came down because the money dried up. French called it a course correction. Seegers called it a hole in the budget.

French closed with rural Indiana. He called the current local program evidence-based, and warned what happens if services like these are removed.

Scott County, Indiana, experienced a real outbreak in 2014 and 2015. About 215 HIV infections were eventually tied to it, in a town of roughly 4,200, almost all from injecting drugs with shared equipment. The county had about five HIV diagnoses in the prior decade. Indiana banned syringe sales without a prescription and did not allow needle exchanges. Possession could be a felony. The governor authorized a temporary exchange in 2015 after dozens of cases were already confirmed. Sharing then fell sharply. One study of participants found about an 88 percent drop in syringe sharing.

That is an argument for sterile syringes in a place that had none, during an injection outbreak of HIV. It is not an argument for Clallam County in 2026.

Clallam has had a syringe program since 2000. It is not facing a Scott County-style HIV cluster. The Indiana emergency program was a restricted exchange plus testing, contact tracing, and treatment. It was not a service desk for meth pipes, foil, straws, and boofing kits, and it was not needs-based distribution of hundreds of syringes with no return required.

Researchers credited sterile syringes, not a wider selection of crack pipes to choose from. Austin, Indiana, was an injection-driven HIV outbreak. The intervention tied to the drop in sharing and new infections was a syringe-services program: sterile needles, a place to return used ones, and a link to testing and treatment. That finding does not cover pipes, foils, or the rest of a safer-use menu.

Clallam County’s Harm Reduction Health Center does both. It runs syringe services and also hands out safer-smoking supplies, along with naloxone, test strips, wound care, and referrals. Using Indiana to defend the whole center treats evidence for one tool as evidence for the entire package.

Just like a seatbelt study can justify using seatbelts. It cannot justify handing out the rest of the car.

French wants both sides at once. The harm reduction program had to grow to feed Jamestown’s clinic. The program also had to be cut because unused supplies were piling up in cleanups. And the cut program is still the evidence-based model that stands between Clallam County and an HIV outbreak from a state that outlawed syringes. Those claims do not survive contact with each other.

The choice on the ballot

Seegers is not proposing to take naloxone away. He is proposing to measure the thing French says the expansion was for. How many people leave addiction. He would return syringe access to a one-for-one exchange, which is how this county ran the program for years, and drop the county-issued kits for smoking and rectal use. French has now said, in front of a Rotary club, that the broader program was built to move people into the Jamestown’s clinic. The county’s report says 27 assessments came out the other end.

Peninsula Daily News had the interviews, the website, and the death counts. It did not have the Rotary quote, Berry’s dual jobs, the 27 referrals, or the difference between an exchange and a supply desk. Readers can decide whether that was an oversight or another reason local papers are in decline. The timing, a month before the election, does not make the omission look accidental.

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PABA Seegers / French Forum on Tuesday

The forum will be broadcast live on PABA’s Facebook page.

Todd Ortloff Show: Seegers / French conversation

Tuesday – Candidate forum for Clallam County Commissioner District 3 with incumbent Mike French and challenger Jake Seegers. 1 pm on 1450AM, 101.7 (Port Angeles), 101.3 (Sequim), or listen online.

Teresa Fox Town Hall Wednesday

Wednesday, October 7, 2026, 6:00 p.m., Sequim Prairie Grange at 290 Macleay Rd. She will open, then turn it over to the room. Incumbent Emily Randall is invited. Fox’s case is that Randall has been missing local forums while campaigning for candidates outside the state, and that the district deserves someone who shows up. She is running as a business professional and emergency manager, not a career politician. Details at foxforwa.com or info@foxforwa.com.

In this Sundays With Seegers, commissioner candidate Jake Seegers addresses a rumor head-on. Everyone has heard the stories: people struggling with addiction and homelessness are being transported to Port Angeles from communities across Washington. Public records show that, at least in the treatment system, transportation from outside the county is not a rumor—it happens. The more important question is what happens after people arrive.

The Question Residents Keep Asking

During an April Public Safety Town Hall, Mike French was asked whether Clallam County’s homelessness and harm-reduction services are drawing people from outside the area. He said he does not have definitive data. His answer was still “generally no.”

He offered remoteness instead. Someone with a warrant elsewhere, he suggested, might head for a place less connected to the community they are trying to leave. He also warned against blaming outsiders. “The focus right now is on finger-pointing,” he said, and treating arrivals as “not our community” would be “an abdication of our responsibility.”

That does not answer the question residents were asking. If remoteness is the main draw, why are so many people concentrated exactly where the services are? And it does not address a narrower claim: that public agencies, hospitals, courts, and treatment systems are moving vulnerable people from elsewhere in Washington to Port Angeles. They are, and the history of a treatment facility at Fifth and Race shows how that happens.

French returned to the subject in a later debate, after he and Jake Seegers were asked about homeless, addicted, and mentally ill people being bused to Port Angeles. French said:

“This is something that obviously, like, I’ve heard since I’ve been in public office from individuals. People have the right to move around the country; that’s how America works. So, people move around. People come here, people leave here, there’s nothing we can do to stop that.”

On the constitutional point, he is right. Americans can move where they choose, and government should not decide where someone is allowed to live. Choosing to travel here is not the same thing as a hospital, court, or treatment system sending someone here.

A $450,000 State Grant

The story begins in 2014 with the former Port Angeles Care Center at 825 E. Fifth Street.

CRALI Properties, associated with Craig Phillips of American Behavioral Health Systems (ABHS), purchased the former nursing home for $175,000. Phillips told the Peninsula Daily News that Specialty Services, a business under the ABHS umbrella, had received a $450,000 grant from the Washington Department of Social and Health Services to purchase the building, remodel it, and establish treatment there. The money was part of a $2.6 million legislative appropriation intended to establish eight 16-bed inpatient treatment centers around Washington.

But Specialty Services was not simply opening another business.

Operating a residential chemical-dependency treatment facility at that location required a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) from the City of Port Angeles, and the proposal sparked significant debate among neighbors. The initial plan called for a 16-bed inpatient treatment center, with an additional 16-bed detoxification center proposed for the same building if funding could be secured.

Supporters argued that people struggling with addiction were safer in treatment than on the streets.

Danetta Rutten, a former Clallam County probation officer who lived in the neighborhood, told the Peninsula Daily News that there was “nothing to fear” from the treatment center.

“And I live in this neighborhood, too,” Rutten said.

“We have more to fear about what’s on the corner and what’s walking the street not in treatment than we have to fear with people that are in treatment.”

But some neighbors raised a concern that would become particularly relevant in the years ahead: What would happen when patients brought to Port Angeles from elsewhere left the facility or completed treatment?

Pamela Blakeman put the concern bluntly:

“If the clinic is approved, the town needs to be ready to absorb more needy people.”

Other residents raised concerns about transportation and whether people brought to Port Angeles from other parts of the state would actually return home—or remain in the community.

Many of those concerns sound remarkably familiar today.

ABHS representatives attempted to address them.

The proposed facility would provide residential treatment for people requiring short-term detoxification or longer-term substance-abuse treatment.

ABHS representatives sought to reassure neighbors that patients would be supervised while in treatment and that the facility would not simply release people into the surrounding neighborhood.

And there was another important assurance:

Clallam County residents would be prioritized.

As reported by Peninsula Daily News, Sally Beaven, then director of Specialty Services, promised:

“We’ve come to fill a need.”

Craig Phillips echoed,

“I know from 30 years of experience that if there’s no inpatient treatment on the Peninsula, then the 16 beds will be full all the time.”

The Promise to Prioritize Locals

That wasn’t merely a talking point; it became a condition of the permit.

When the Planning Commission approved the conditional use permit, it imposed five conditions. Condition No. 4 stated plainly:

“The applicants will prioritize occupancy for Clallam County residents.”

The permit was initially approved for twelve months, through June 11, 2015. Continued operation beyond that date was subject to review based on compliance with the CUP conditions.

When the City conducted that review in 2015, Assistant Planner Scott Johns recommended extending the permit indefinitely, stating:

“All 5 original conditions of approval have been met by the applicant.”

But the City’s justification for determining that the local-priority requirement had been satisfied is revealing.

Immediately beneath the requirement that Specialty Services “prioritize occupancy for Clallam County Residents,” the City’s review stated:

“SSII (Specialty Services 2) has remained inclusive of all counties in the State of Washington, including Clallam County.”

Those are not the same standard.

Prioritizing Clallam County residents means giving Clallam County residents preference.

Being inclusive of all counties means treating Clallam County as one county among 39.

Yet City staff concluded that all five conditions had been satisfied and recommended extending the permit indefinitely.

Nathan West, then Port Angeles’ Director of Community and Economic Development and now City Manager, approved the extension.

A treatment facility established in Port Angeles with state funding had been permitted with an explicit requirement to prioritize Clallam County residents. Yet when the City later reviewed compliance with that requirement, it apparently treated serving patients from throughout Washington as sufficient.

Then City Council Erased the CUP

Even a weak condition is still a condition—until the code changes.

Six years later, that is exactly what happened.

In December 2021, the Port Angeles City Council adopted Ordinance 3688 as part of a broader effort to increase residential building capacity, provide greater flexibility for housing development, and remove regulatory barriers to new housing.

Mike French was serving on the Port Angeles City Council at the time. He has since pointed to those housing reforms as contributing to the multifamily, duplex, and ADU development now occurring in Port Angeles.

“On housing, eight or nine years ago, when I was at the city, I was one of the people advocating for some common-sense reforms to make it so that we have more housing options and types available. We did regulatory reforms to make sure that we weren’t putting up barriers in front of housing developers and increasing costs for no reason. We had zoning reform, including setbacks, minimum lot sizes, things like that, and then adding incentives. We added a multifamily housing tax exemption so that people who wanted to build four units or larger could get a small property tax break, or, if they promised affordability, a larger property tax break. And then I would say that, eight or nine years later, you can walk around Port Angeles and see those housing types being constructed. You can see, probably two or three blocks away, a duplex being built across from Hamilton. Go up to 14th and E, a couple blocks off 14th, and you can see a whole neighborhood of duplexes being built… Those duplexes that you can walk around and see being built, or a lot of times some of the ADUs, they were illegal to build eight years ago. So we made the changes”

But the sweeping zoning changes had another consequence.

They made treatment facilities an outright permitted use. Specialty Services therefore no longer needed the Conditional Use Permit that had governed the facility—including its explicit requirement that “the applicants will prioritize occupancy for Clallam County Residents.”

In response to a public-records request asking the City for the current Conditional Use Permit governing Specialty Services, City Clerk Kari Martinez-Bailey confirmed that the old CUP no longer governed the use:

“Council made the use permitted out right in December 2021 with Ordinance 3688, therefore the CUP we provided has been non-applicable for at least five years.”

In other words, the zoning change eliminated the need for the conditional-use approval that had contained the local-priority requirement.

The original local guarantee and the leverage to enforce it disappeared with Ordinance 3688, passed by Mike French.

No Longer Local

Local leaders did not hold ABHS to the requirement to prioritize Clallam County residents. Eventually, that requirement disappeared altogether.

Specialty Services once offered both detoxification and inpatient treatment for men and women. Its Conditional Use Permit also explicitly required the facility to prioritize Clallam County residents.

Without that mandate, the model changed dramatically.

Specialty Services II now operates as an inpatient treatment center for men only. Detoxification is no longer offered. That represents the loss of a critical component of local recovery services. For someone dependent on fentanyl and ready to enter recovery, detox may be necessary before transitioning into residential inpatient treatment.

Specialty Services is no longer required to prioritize Clallam County residents and provide the same spectrum of treatment services originally envisioned for the local community.

After repeated attempts to reach Specialty Services management to arrange a sit-down meeting were unsuccessful, I began speaking with current and former employees.

What they told me deserves attention.

The employees I spoke with estimated that a large majority of the patients they encounter come from outside Clallam County. One estimated the number could be as high as 90%.

Those are employee estimates, not independently verified patient data. But they raise an important question: How did a treatment facility established with public funding and originally permitted with an explicit requirement to prioritize Clallam County residents evolve into one that primarily serves patients brought in from elsewhere?

A Statewide Pipeline

Parent company American Behavioral Health Systems (ABHS) does not exclusively serve Clallam County.

The organization has a longstanding relationship with the Washington Department of Corrections to provide residential substance-use treatment for people involved with the criminal-justice system. That includes participants in Washington’s Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative, or DOSA.

DOSA allows eligible individuals to receive substance-use treatment as part of an alternative criminal sentence. But placement in residential treatment is not the same as incarceration.

ABHS is not a jail. A DOSA participant can physically walk away at any time.

That does not mean leaving is permitted under the terms of the person’s sentence or that there are no consequences. Walking away from required treatment can constitute a DOSA violation and result in DOC or court action.

But ABHS employees are treatment providers, not correctional officers. They do not operate a secure correctional facility designed to physically prevent a patient from leaving.

That distinction is important.

It means someone involved with the criminal-justice system can be transported from another Washington community to an ABHS treatment facility and then leave before completing treatment. Once outside the facility, the treatment provider cannot simply detain that person as a correctional institution could.

And that possibility is not merely hypothetical.

There are documented cases elsewhere in Washington involving DOSA participants or other justice-involved individuals who entered ABHS treatment, left or failed to complete the program, and were subsequently implicated in serious criminal incidents in the communities where they had been placed.

What Can Happen When Someone Walks Away

In March of this year, police in Chehalis arrested Moises Castillo Flores, a Walla Walla man who prosecutors said was supposed to be serving a residential DOSA at ABHS.

According to The Chronicle, Castillo Flores had recently abandoned treatment. Police subsequently arrested him for allegedly breaking into Mint City Coffee Roasting. He also had an active warrant from Walla Walla County.

That doesn’t mean everyone who leaves treatment commits a crime. But it demonstrates something important:

An out-of-county DOSA participant can be placed at an ABHS treatment center, leave treatment, and remain in the community where that facility is located.

An older, far more serious example exists.

In 2012, convicted felon Charles Wallace was released from the Spokane County Jail into the care of ABHS for inpatient drug treatment. According to a timeline later released by the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, Wallace left treatment within days.

Weeks later, Wallace shot Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputies Matt Spink and Mike Northway during a traffic stop before ultimately killing himself following a pursuit.

That makes the transportation and discharge process especially important.

The Transportation Disconnect

I have spoken with local law-enforcement officers, service providers, and people actively using drugs who describe the same troubling pattern: people are transported to Port Angeles from outside Clallam County for treatment at Specialty Services, then complete treatment or leave the program early and remain in the community.

Current and former employees described efforts to arrange transportation when patients leave. But they also said patients are not necessarily escorted to the bus station or placed aboard transportation that will actually take them home.

That is a far cry from what Specialty Services’ director told the community in 2014.

At the time, residents were assured that patients simply wanted to get better and return home—and that those leaving the facility would be provided return bus tickets, with a service provider making sure they actually got on the bus home.

Despite her support for the facility, Kathy Wahto, then executive director of Serenity House, offered a warning that now sounds remarkably visionary:

“Local people must currently go out-of-area for inpatient treatment. Too many never return home safely. Exiting treatment into a strange community without the support of a caring family often reverts in immediate reversion to addiction.”

That was the danger she identified in 2014: sending vulnerable people into treatment far from their homes and support networks can leave them stranded in an unfamiliar community when treatment ends or fails.

More than a decade later, the concern has been reversed.

Instead of Clallam County residents being sent elsewhere and potentially stranded there, employees, service providers, law enforcement, and people living within the local drug culture describe patients being transported here from communities across Washington—and some remaining here after their treatment ends.

The original CUP attempted to provide at least one safeguard by requiring Specialty Services to prioritize Clallam County residents. That condition is gone. The detox program is gone. And the assurances about transportation home deserve renewed scrutiny.

Local leaders helped create Clallam County’s own Hotel California for patients brought here from across the state:

They can check out any time they like—but they may never leave.

Then I Heard From Leia

After I began talking publicly about this issue, I heard from a former driver for Dungeness Line.

Her name is Leia.

She described driving the shuttle route between SeaTac, Seattle hospitals, and Port Angeles.

She said she began noticing a pattern.

Several times a week, she recalled picking up passengers at Virginia Mason Medical Center who were headed to Port Angeles. According to Leia, passengers openly discussed detox, treatment, homelessness, and addiction. They had been instructed to travel to the treatment facility near Fifth and Race.

But the shuttle did not take them there. Its final stop was Gateway Transit Center in downtown Port Angeles. And, according to Leia, nobody was waiting for them.

“When the shuttle pulled into the Gateway Transit Center, there was no one there to meet them.”

She says they dropped the passengers downtown and told them which city bus to take to reach the treatment facility.

One passenger particularly stuck with her.

He told Leia that he had just spent several days detoxing at Virginia Mason. While he was there, his boyfriend had died from an overdose. He described homelessness, addiction, and an estranged family.

When the shuttle reached Port Angeles, Leia asked whether somebody from the treatment center was meeting him.

According to her account, nobody was.

He and another passenger told her they had simply been given directions for the city bus that would take them to treatment.

Leia is careful about what she is—and isn’t—claiming.

She does not blame Dungeness Line. The shuttle company was simply providing transportation. And she does not claim that these passengers necessarily failed to reach treatment.

Her concern is the gap:

“It seems risky to discharge people directly from detox, transport them to a different community, and then expect them to find their own way across town using public transportation without anyone meeting them.”

Her proposed solution is remarkably simple: communication between the sending hospital and receiving treatment center so somebody can meet vulnerable patients and ensure they actually arrive.

And then: make sure that they get home.

So are People Being Bussed Here?

For treatment, yes—evidence shows people are transported to Port Angeles from elsewhere in Washington.

That statement should not be stretched beyond what the evidence establishes.

The documents do not prove that every out-of-county patient becomes homeless here. Leia’s account does not establish how many transported patients fail to reach Specialty Services. Nor have I found public data showing how many Specialty Services patients originate in Clallam County versus elsewhere.

Those numbers should be made public.

But we don’t need speculation to identify the policy questions.

The original Port Angeles treatment facility was established with a $450,000 state grant. Its CUP required prioritizing Clallam County residents. The City’s own 2015 review acknowledged admissions from throughout Washington while nevertheless concluding that the permit conditions had been satisfied. Later zoning changes made the CUP itself inapplicable.

Meanwhile, ABHS participates in statewide treatment systems, including DOC-funded treatment, and firsthand testimony describes people traveling from Seattle-area hospitals to downtown Port Angeles before navigating the final leg to treatment on their own.

Those are facts worth examining.

Treatment Itself Isn’t the Problem

This is where an important distinction matters.

I support local treatment.

People battling fentanyl, methamphetamine, and alcohol addiction need somewhere to go when they decide they want help.

I want capacity for both men and women.

Port Angeles once had co-ed residential treatment and withdrawal management/detoxification at the same Fifth Street location with a mandate to treat locals first.

Today, this ABHS location provides inpatient treatment to men only.

I have met people trapped in addiction and living outside who are waiting for treatment. I have asked them: Why not ABHS?

The answers are often the same:

They don’t offer detox.
They don’t treat women.

I want detox back at Specialty Services.

I want a written protocol that Clallam residents are first in line for scarce beds, and that no one is discharged into our parks and public spaces after they are brought here from other communities.

It’s time to work with our local treatment provider — the one that promised to “come fill a [local] need” — to make these changes.

Treatment is not the enemy.

An unlocked statewide funnel with no local duty is.

Leadership Had a Tool

The 2014 CUP required local priority and a one-year look-back. Staff converted “prioritize” into “include.”

Then, in 2021, the City Council—with Mike French serving as a councilmember—changed the zoning and made the treatment use permitted outright. According to the City Clerk, that made the old CUP “non-applicable.”

With it went the condition requiring local priority.

ABHS switched gears and transformed into a statewide pipeline — including DOC and hospital discharge desks — into our community.

We keep hearing that services are not a magnet.
We keep seeing otherwise.

Our treatment slots, outreach hours, jail beds, and sidewalks are finite. When they are consumed by people sent here for a program that they can walk away from, Clallam residents wait longer for the help we were promised ABHS would deliver.

The history of Specialty Services shows how a program originally presented as a local resource can evolve into part of a statewide system.

The next step is not to demonize treatment or the people who need it.

It is to insist on transparent numbers, reliable transportation protocols, clear responsibility when somebody leaves treatment, and an honest accounting of whether the system is meeting the needs of the community in which it operates.

That is a conversation that Clallam County, Port Angeles, and ABHS must be willing to have.

What Can You Do?

Clallam County once had a local detox and residential program for men and women, with a permit condition that locals come first. Detox is gone. The women’s beds are gone. The local-priority rule is gone.

Email the Clallam County commissioners at loni.gores@clallamcountywa.gov and the Port Angeles City Council at council@cityofpa.us. Ask for a local detox facility that accepts both men and women and puts Clallam County residents first in line for scarce beds. Ask that no one brought here from another community be discharged onto our sidewalks, parks, or transit center.

A short note is enough. Say you live here, and say what you want back.

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This article was approved by Jake Seegers for Commissioner (IND), 131 East First Street, Port Angeles, WA 98362.

If you only scroll the official pages, Clallam County looks like a calm place of pamphlets, collaboratives, and “no stigma.” Read the fine print and it looks like something else: a health department telling children they can get pregnancy care without a parent, a city that treats a harbor dump as an “oopsie”, and a Democratic headquarters willing to host the people who want to ruin the economy. This week’s Social Media Saturday is anything but subtle.

A brochure for kids, and a bypass for parents

The Clallam County Health Department was handing out the usual freebies at this year’s fair — foam balls, stickers and a brochure that says to “talk to someone you trust.” Fair enough. Then it listed places to get an abortion and reminded fairgoers that “no matter your age, you can make your own decisions about pregnancy and care. Anyone, at any age, can make their own decision and get care confidentially.”

That is not a vague slogan. Washington law lets a minor of any age consent to contraception and abortion without a parent. So yes: a 12-year-old can walk into the system, get birth control, and be connected to an abortion provider, and the household that is raising her does not have to be told. Is that really the county health department’s job — to route minors around the parents who still have to live with the result? If you are a parent, would you want to know if your daughter was pregnant and weighing an abortion, or if your minor son was seeking birth control? The county’s brochure already answered that question for you.

Sexual Health Awareness, brought to you by “she/they”

The same department is out with a new Facebook campaign. September was Sexual Health Awareness Month. The post says sexual health is physical, emotional, and mental health, healthy relationships, and mutual respect, then asks the county to “break the silence”: routine STI testing, prevention, consent, and open talk with partners and providers. “No stigma. Just education, prevention, and empowerment.”

Remember who is steering this. County health officer Allison Berry has publicly treated “she” and “they” as interchangeable. That is the office offering to teach kids about empowering their sexual health. Parents can decide whether that is the messenger they want.

The emperor has no clothes

Jake Seegers posted that he had just read The Emperor’s New Clothes with his daughter Lux. Two fraudsters sell the emperor a suit no one unfit or stupid can see. There is no suit. Everyone pretends, until a child says what is obvious.

Seegers’ version of the parade: Housing First, harm reduction, and “compassion” that tolerates outdoor living and open drug use; an economy relying on government and NGO jobs paid for with grants and taxes. He argues those policies have cost public safety, opportunity, affordability, and freedom, that current leadership will not admit the failure, and that leaders who still cannot see it will be replaced. Change, he wrote, is coming.

Another collaborative, same saturated county

The Sequim Gazette reports that the Sequim Health & Housing Collaborative, formed in 2018 because city leaders wanted agencies to share a limited pot of legally restricted money for “the poor and infirm,” is still meeting twice a month and still centered on food insecurity. Core funded partners include the usual list of NGOs dependent on taxpayer funding.

So we have another NGO coordinating social services provided by NGOs. How is this different from Olympic Community of Health, which is already taking Recompete federal dollars to “connect people” to NGOs? It is another layer in a county already saturated with NGOs, nonprofits, grants, and meetings. Coordination is not the same thing as results.

Your local Democrats, now with socialism

Mitch Zenobi noted that the local Democratic Socialists of America were scheduled to present at Clallam County Democrats headquarters.

Hopefully the slideshow included the parts that never make the flyer. Socialism has a record, and it is not theoretical:

• Shortages, because prices are no longer allowed to tell anyone what is scarce.

• Inflation, because the state prints or borrows what it will not produce.

• Bread lines and empty shelves beside official claims of abundance.

• Black markets, the only place the real price still exists.

• Collapsing productivity once the reward for working harder is taken away.

• Political repression, because a system that cannot deliver has to punish the people who say so.

That is the local Democratic Party platforming socialism. Where is the moderate middle of Clallam County? It might be worth 24 minutes with John Stossel’s The Complete Guide to Socialism vs Capitalism.

Hand the refuge to a sovereign nation, then try to sue

Al Bergstein of People for Protection Island and Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge pointed readers to the Capital Press and a live fight in Snohomish County Superior Court between a farmer and the Stillaguamish Tribe. His point was simple: if Protection Island and Dungeness are turned over to a tribe, every later dispute over access, management, or neighboring land can land in the same place.

Sovereign nations can claim sovereign immunity. That does not make every tribal government wrong. It does make a legal challenge slower, harder, and far more expensive once the transfer is done. Ask the questions before our elected leaders sign off on it, not after.

Upcoming public Seegers/French forum

This will also be streamed live on PABA’s Facebook page.

Your septic is a crime scene. The city’s is a weather event.

Clallam County Environmental Health put out a no-contact advisory for Port Angeles Harbor from September 25 through September 28 after two treatment bypasses: 3,655 gallons and 4,200 gallons. Untreated or partially treated wastewater, including sewage, went into the harbor. The public was told not to swim, wade, or get the water in the mouth, nose, or eyes.

Now run the same facts through a private septic. A minor leak, and code enforcement shows up. The house can be red-tagged. Repairs and fines run into the tens of thousands. Port Angeles gets a little rain, sewage hits the harbor, and the paperwork calls it a bypass. Meanwhile the city and county just added a 36-unit “luxury” homeless project called North View, and Commissioner Mike French, who calls himself an urbanist, wants more density in the cities — that’s adding more strain to a system that can’t handle an autumn rain storm. When it rains in the rural parts of the county, sewage does not go into the bay. It is only fine when the government does the polluting.

Fox wants the conversation Randall has been skipping

Teresa Fox, the Republican candidate for U.S. House in Washington’s 6th District, is holding a town hall on public safety and the transfer of public lands.

Wednesday, October 7, 2026, 6:00 p.m., Sequim Prairie Grange at 290 Macleay Rd. She will open, then turn it over to the room. Incumbent Emily Randall is invited. Fox’s case is that Randall has been missing local forums while campaigning for candidates outside the state, and that the district deserves someone who shows up. She is running as a business professional and emergency manager, not a career politician. Details at foxforwa.com or info@foxforwa.com.

The jail is short. The pipe kit is not.

The Sheriff’s Office says Animal Control Deputy Ed Bauck, a corrections deputy, has been pulled back to the jail through January 1, 2027, because staffing there is critical. Animal calls will still be taken by patrol.

Bauck is doing what a short-handed department asks. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could fully fund and staff the sheriff’s office instead of making sure every drug user in Clallam County had a clean meth pipe and a boofing kit?

A permit to fish a navigable river

The Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation are requiring non-tribal anglers to buy a permit on about 10 miles of the Chehalis River between Oakville and Helsing Junction: $45 to fish from the bank, $500 from a boat. The tribe has said it will cite people who do not pay, and gear or boats can be seized. WDFW disputes the claim.

The stretch is a federally navigable waterway, state law generally protects public use below the ordinary high-water mark, and obstructing lawful fishing is itself a crime. The department is talking to the tribe, the attorney general, and local law enforcement, and for now is telling anglers to avoid the section or float through without anchoring, wading, or fishing from shore. There is no reason this fight stays in Grays Harbor. The same theory can be tried on rivers in Clallam County.

Keep the sidewalk clear, and smile

The weekly Friday Indivisible protests in downtown Sequim are wearing on locals and on the businesses that have to live with them. Internal notes show members asking protesters not to block the sidewalk, and reminding each other to stick to “positive messages instead of more hateful, negative ones.”

If the organizers already know the tone is the problem, the sidewalk is not the only thing that needs clearing.

“Generic,” says the man who wants residents evicted

Indivisible has put Jake Seegers under the microscope for supposedly not supporting public schools.

Alan Clark — Commissioner Mike French’s appointee to the Marine Resources Committee, and a voice for evicting residents from the Three Crabs neighborhood — calls Seegers’ answer “generic” and blames a “lack of experience with public schools.”

A generic answer is not the same thing as a wrong one. And a coastal eviction advocate is an odd choice for arbiter of who cares about local kids.

Also, Jake Seegers is no stranger to public schools.

Inclusive, except for you

Indivisible’s mission statement promises “a real democracy” that is “inclusive, responsive, open, and respectful,” where the rule of law beats any one person’s whim and where “caring, compassion, and common decency” guide officials. Note the word inclusive. The same group posted “Vote Clallam Local, not Texas Local,” a slap at Jake Seegers.

So inclusive does not mean actually including people. Got it.

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The League of Women Voters spent September saying Jake Seegers and Virginia Shogren would not show up. The emails show both were willing to face voters. What they refused was the League’s control of the format, control of the recording, and control of the story.

On September 6, the League of Women Voters of the United States told voters that trusted information is “the ultimate form of inoculation against disinformation,” and offered itself as the trusted messenger.

The same week, the Clallam chapter and its political neighbors were already spreading their own misinformation: the candidates bailed.

The rumor was a campaign ad

A post on Indivislbe — a partisan group that the local League promotes — said Seegers “bailed” on the September 28 League of Women Voters forum with Mike French. Comments on social media echoed that narrative.

Then the poster. Red type: “Jake Seegers Bails On The September 28 Forum.” An empty chair on a laptop accusing him of denying voters a conversation unless it was on his terms. The bottom line was the tell: “Vote Mike French.”

“Conditions attached” means they asked a question

On September 8, voter services chair Deb Cannon canceled both the September 28 County Commissioner forum and the October 1 County Auditor forum. The notices used the same sentence. Policy “requires at least two candidates participating on the terms outlined in the Candidate Forum invitation — a forum cannot proceed with an empty chair or with conditions attached.”

The forums weren’t cancelled because candidates refused to appear, but because candidates had “attached conditions.”

Shogren’s mistake: asking questions of the question askers

On August 28, auditor candidate Virginia Shogren said she would answer voters, but not before the League answered her questions. A forum works only if the host is, and is reasonably seen to be, a neutral referee.

Lwv Forum Inquiry Fas Fae 8 28 26

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She asked which tax-exempt entity would sponsor and brand the forum, and for the current nonpartisan policy. She asked how publishing a condemnation of a sitting presidential administration is issue advocacy rather than opposition to a candidate or party.

She asked for the chapter’s relationship with Indivisible Sequim, Indivisible Port Angeles, and any other group endorsing Clallam candidates: joint events, shared tables, rallies, and use of the League name, logo, or shirts since January 1, 2025.

She asked why members in League identification at “No Kings” and “Resist” rallies should be treated as separate from those organizers’ endorsements.

She asked what role the chapter played in the 2024, 2025, and 2026 Clallam Conservation District supervisor elections, and whether that role was observation or handling ballots.

She cited a December 2025 Thurston County Superior Court ruling that voided the District’s 2024 election for unauthorized procedure. She asked for a written commitment that the chapter will not process ballots in a race where a partner group has endorsed a candidate, and will not appear at partisan rallies under the League name while recruiting for its forums.

On September 6, Cannon sent the waiver, the forum policy, orientation slides, and tabling guidance. The slides call the League a “nonpartisan, political organization.”

The tabling sheet is blunter: “The League is not neutral.” Shogren had asked for a list of joint events with Indivisible and similar groups, a dated account of any ballot handling in Conservation District elections, and the name of the tax-exempt entity that would host this forum. None of the attachments supplies any of these.

Shogren said stock materials are not numbered answers. She would not sign the release. She also refused a rule that converts a demand for answers into a public claim that she canceled voter education. Answer the August 28 letter, she told the League, and she would reconsider.

The next morning the forum was canceled. Best of luck in your campaign.

The waiver is the point

The form is one page. The candidate grants the League permission to record the forum. The next paragraph takes that recording away: the content “is the property of the League of Women Voters of Clallam County and cannot be rebroadcast or used by anyone else WITHOUT SPECIFIC WRITTEN LEAGUE PERMISSION.” The candidate also releases the League and everyone involved from liability for taking, publishing, and using the recordings.

The League screens the questions, runs the clock, keeps the only official tape, owns the answers, and decides who else may use them. A candidate who will not sign does not get the stage. A candidate who signs does not get the recording.

Seegers offered to show up

On August 23, Cannon said policy calls for Zoom only forums due to access, a bigger audience, equal time, and a recording. Candidates had been held to that format for six years. She thanked French for agreeing. A footnote admitted they had recently edited out a “pornographic zoom bomber” and switched to a webinar.

On August 24, Seegers did not refuse. He asked for an in-person forum with Zoom access, the way county meetings already run. “It would be a pleasure to participate if LWV reconsiders and offers an in-person or hybrid forum.”

Cannon’s reply rewrote the offer as a no. “We wish you were flexible to try something different, but respect your choice to not participate.” On September 8 the forum was canceled for lack of two candidates “on the terms outlined.” French had accepted. Seegers had asked to be in the room. Under League rules, that is an empty chair.

Four years ago, French debated Bill Peach in a virtual-only League format. Peach cut out. His face would not show. The glitches devoured the exchange.

Zoom also lets the League collect questions by email and curate which ones to ask, possibly altering questions and feeding them in advance to candidates. When done live, in the same room, that is harder. Seegers’s recent interview with Jesse Charles shows what the League format avoids. Two people who disagree sat in the same room, had respectful dialogue, and found common ground. A webinar with screened questions cannot do that.

Defending the format, not the voters

The League of Women Voters tabling guidance says the organization will never support or oppose a candidate or party. It also says nonpartisan does not mean non-political: “The League is not neutral.”

In the League’s telling, it may advocate on issues its members have adopted, because issues are not partisan.

A civics referee like the LWV who wanted that distinction believed would have answered the questions that test it. This local chapter did not. Shogren asked about joint events with Indivisible and about who touched Conservation District ballots. She got orientation slides and a release. Seegers asked for the hybrid option that county meetings and the Calico Cat Club already use. The chapter called that inflexibility, canceled the forum, and left the preferred candidate’s allies free to print “he bailed.”

It is the same habit voters watched last year, when League secretary Susan Fisch chaired the Charter Review Commission. Robert’s Rules of Order were set aside. Agenda items moved only with her consent. League members in the audience passed her signals on how to run the meeting and Fisch turned the 2025 Charter Review into a mockery of the democratic process. That is not a civic club looking for dialogue. It is a circle that already knows the outcome and treats procedure as the obstacle.

On September 6 the national League asked voters where they were getting their information. Start with these emails. Seegers and Shogren were willing to face the public. The Clallam chapter canceled both forums rather than answer a question or share a room, then stood inside a brand that says it is defending democracy.

The League was not defending democracy. It was defending its grip on the stage, the recording, and the narrative.

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Tabling Guidelines Final 8 28 26 (1)

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Lwv Orientation Ppt 2025

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Jake Seegers told the Board of Commissioners that the Climate Element portion of the Comprehensive Plan is written for government, nonprofits, and activists — not for the people who own the land. Then Futurewise attorney Brooke Frickleton asked them not to adopt it, called the vulnerability study only “one step,” and cited the group’s new Thurston County win: planning without hard, action-forcing policies is not enough. That was a preview of a lawsuit coming to Clallam County.

Who Futurewise is

Brooke Frickleton spoke to the commissioners on Tuesday via Zoom. She works for Futurewise, a Seattle land-use group that polices the Growth Management Act. The Futurewise method is simple: comment on a Comp Plan, then sue the county before the Growth Management Hearings Board if the language isn't strict enough.

In a normal year, Futurewise runs 15 to 20 active appeals. It advertises that it wins about 70 percent of them. This statewide Comp Plan cycle, it expected that caseload to triple.

What they want is not another study. They want action-forcing policies — timelines, named departments, measurable targets, and “shall” instead of “encourage.” Thurston County already learned that. Futurewise challenged its climate element. The Hearings Board called the county “clearly erroneous.” Frickleton brought that ruling into Clallam’s chambers as the new standard.

Someone did the job the Commissioners would not

House Bill 1181 requires fully planning counties, including Clallam, to add a climate resilience section to the Comp Plan. It does not require Clallam to pay for a Climate Vulnerability Assessment, lock the most aggressive temperature forecasts into the plan, or turn soft words like “promote,” “encourage,” and “explore” into a 20-year enforcement manual.

The County’s own draft Climate Element admits Clallam “is not required to address” the greenhouse-gas reduction section.

Then it brags that staff “exceeded the minimum requirements of HB 1181.” That is not compliance. That is a choice.

Jake Seegers named the funding source during his public comment: Climate Commitment Act funds. He named the consultant: Cascadia Consulting. He named the product: the most extreme climate story they could write and still call it science.

The Climate Vulnerability Assessment (CVA) cover page even carries the CCA logo. The acknowledgements list Diane Harvey first, then Bruce Emery and Tim Havel, then Cascadia’s Mary Ann Rozance, Abigail Lambert, Alyssa Rodriguez, Meg Horst, and Sebastian Espinosa. This is not a mystery document. These are the authors.

After the hearing, Jake put it in writing to the commissioners and Director Emery:

Commissioners and Director Emery,

It was a mistake to undertake a Climate Vulnerability Assessment built around extreme assumptions and to have the process spearheaded by activists already committed to a particular climate-policy perspective.

You have now provided Futurewise with ammunition to demand additional restrictions on Clallam County property owners for years to come.

The CVA should be rewritten using reasonable assumptions, clearly stated uncertainties, and a balanced assessment of risks before the Comprehensive Plan is finalized.

The people of Clallam County will not be intimidated or directed by threats from Futurewise.

I hope that you won’t be either.

Kind regards,

Jake Seegers

That is what a constituent sounds like when he still thinks the Board represents him.

The study picked the hottest numbers, then treated them as fact

Clallam Climate Vulnerability

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Open page 14 of the assessment Jake marked up.

NOAA: “Since 1895, Clallam’s average annual temperature is up 1.4°F.” That is 130 years of actual record.

Next sentence: “By the end of the century, average summer maximum temperatures are projected to rise 9°F from a historical baseline of 68.4°F.” The source is Abatzoglou and Brown, 2012 — MACA, a method more than a decade old. Jake’s note on the page is the whole argument: MACA is a computer method that takes big global climate models and paints them onto a local map. “Highest end of predictions” means they did not use a middle forecast. They used the hottest example in that stack.

The next line — that this warming “will bring significant consequences” — cites the North Olympic Development Council, the NGO on whose board Commissioner Mark Ozias sits. The county farms the science to an NGO behind closed doors. A sitting commissioner presides over that NGO. The same man then votes on the plan when it comes back to the dais. That is not independent analysis. That is a glaring conflict of interest.

Page 15 then admits the CVA “primarily uses” RCP 8.5. That is the “business-as-usual,” highest-emissions pathway. It projects about 4.3°C (7.7°F) of global warming by 2100. That is not a middle estimate. That is the top of the stack used as if it were the county thermometer.

Page 14: “The rate of human-induced climate change far outpaces natural variability (Perlwitz, 2017).”

Jake told the Board: go look it up. The paper is a chapter on large-scale circulation and climate variability. It does not carry the slogan the way the CVA uses it. That slogan is now in a land-use document. Once the Comp Plan adopts it, staff will not have to re-prove the science every time they touch your file. A wider buffer, a climate overlay, a well restriction, a denied bulkhead, a “managed retreat” line — each one can be sold as consistency with the plan the County already chose. “We’re just following the science” will mean: we locked the hottest assumption into the bible, and now we are enforcing the bible.

The assessment even photographs the target. Pages 7–8 show 3 Crabs Road under king-tide water and treat the pictures as proof that climate planning must swallow shoreline property.

The Comp Plan draft already points toward overlays, high-risk zoning, climate language on property, and “long-term visioning” that includes managed retreat. The Marine Resources Committee told Commissioner Mark Ozias to change “should” to “shall,” treat climate forecasts as binding, and put a biologist on Critical Areas and shoreline files. Tribal trust land is exempt; your property is not.

Deaths, “especially Tribal elders,” and two sets of rules

Page 24 of the CVA leans on the 2021 heat dome: 126 official heat-related deaths statewide, then “441 more people died during this period than expected.” Jake’s margin note: There were a lot of excess deaths in 2021, not just heat.

Overdose deaths in this county were part of that year. Heat was real. Turning a contested statewide number into Comp Plan gospel is how you manufacture urgency and then regulate against it.

Then comes the sorting of people. Same page: “vulnerable groups like older adults, especially Tribal elders, and those with chronic health conditions.” Jake asked an honest question: why are tribal elders “especially” compared with every other older adult in Clallam County? Heat does not check tribal enrollment. Policy does.

Page 17 lists “frontline communities”: seniors, mobile-home residents, the chronically ill, low-income households, Tribal communities, seasonal visitors, outdoor workers.

Workshop notes from the County’s own process said the same thing: “older adults, especially for Tribal elders.” The draft Climate Element repeats the same thing. Food banks and a list of NGOs get listed as “climate resilience.” The property owner trying to take care of a parcel gets listed as something to regulate.

Jake named the two-tier county out loud. Nonprofits stay “safely above the fray,” he said, “despite their contribution to the environmental catastrophe on Tumwater Creek.” Property owners keep losing. The fix?: Meet House Bill 1181 only; do not exceed it. And if the Board actually worked for the people, it would stop treating a house and a parcel as a problem and start treating them as this county’s greatest private asset—including common-sense room for vacation rentals and short-term uses —instead of another round of bans.

On trust land, the Jamestown Tribe runs its own environmental process under TEPA. County Critical Areas Code does not apply the way it does on a private tax parcel.

CC Watchdog documented the Tribe’s TEPA notice to expand the driving range at Cedars at Dungeness: grade the site and fill part of a Class III wetland. Once that course went into trust, it left the county rulebook that still governs your buffers, wells, and shoreline work.

Same watershed. Rural well owners get lectured on every gallon. The CVA writes “especially Tribal elders” into the climate study. An 18-hole, water-heavy golf course does not sit under the same county code. That is not one environmental standard. That is two sets of rules.

Harvey, Cascadia, and the office that wrote the record

Diane Harvey, Code Enforcement and Special Projects Manager, is listed as project lead on the CVA. This site has already shown her asking the Planning Commission for more enforcement fees, more discretion, and mass notices that make people “fold” once they see the Hearing Examiner. The same office that wants a thicker whip is helping write the climate chapter that will justify the next round of “violations.”

Cascadia Consulting is the hired pen. The County paired the Hazard Mitigation Plan with the Climate Element and paid Cascadia hundreds of thousands to do both. Cascadia has also worked with the North Olympic Development Council and the Jamestown Tribe. CC Watchdog has reported Cascadia’s use of ICLEI tools. ICLEI is the German-based network that sells local governments software, methods, and a global “movement” vocabulary. The NODC — the nonprofit Commissioner Ozias has led — recruited local governments toward ICLEI membership and even offered to help pay dues. NODC and the Tribe have been ICLEI members. That is not a planning department finding science in a file cabinet. That is a consultant-nonprofit-tribal circuit writing the assumptions, then sending them to the dais for a vote.

Bruce Emery is the DCD director. The Climate Element is his department’s product. The Planning Commission is only advisory. Jake said it: you three make the call. You own every sentence and every restriction that follows. He told the commissioners, you are responsible for this.

The Board’s pattern is not courage. It is delay until the activist draft is the only draft left, then a shrug that the State or Futurewise “made us.” Secure entry at the courthouse sat unfinished for years after a 2017 mandate, as Jake noted, while this 600-plus-page Comp Plan is being rushed as if the people were the problem. Waiting on a luggage scanner took nearly a decade. Waiting for property owners is treated as heresy.

A Comp Plan is not a brochure. It is the 20-year instruction book for Critical Areas, shoreline rules, housing, wells, rentals, and what “climate risk” means when you want to pull a permit. Extreme assumptions in, extreme code out. Futurewise does not need to invent a record. Harvey, Cascadia, and CCA dollars already typed it.

Jake asked for leaders who will take a risk for the people, not for the government. This Board has shown the opposite habit: protect the process, protect the nonprofits, protect the consultants, and tell the owner to wait his three minutes and thank them for their comment.

How threats of a lawsuit work — and why the Washington State Association of Counties, led by Clallam’s own commissioners, will not stand in the way — is the next story. Stay tuned for Part II.

Tuesday, October 13, 10:30 a.m. — pack the room

Do not send one polite email and stay home. Sit where they have to see you.

Tell them to rewrite the CVA with reasonable assumptions and stated uncertainty — not RCP 8.5 dressed up as destiny, not “especially Tribal elders,” not 441 excess deaths treated as a local land-use finding. Tell them to meet HB 1181 only. Tell them Futurewise does not get a veto. Tell them property owners are not the climate problem.

Write all three commissioners through Clerk Loni Gores at loni.gores@clallamcountywa.gov and write DCD Director Bruce Emery at Bruce.Emery@clallamcountywa.gov.

If they will not serve the people in the room, they should not be shocked when the room stops treating them as a government.

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This article and podcast were delayed due to a power outage.

If you want a snapshot of Clallam County right now, skip the official talking points. Look at the boycott threats, the “voter-approved” fee voters never approved, the homeless-voting flyer that treats ID as optional, and the grant money that chases addiction as if the shortage of counselors is the main problem. This week’s potpourri is not one story. It is a pattern.

Don’t Sit With Us at Lunch

The commissioner race has two camps, and neither is “pro Mike French.” It is pro-Seegers or anti-Seegers. Indivisible activists, backed by the League of Women Voters, now have a message for businesses that stand with Jake Seegers: drop him, or lose customers.

One Facebook post put it bluntly: “Don’t they know they’re going to lose like 50% of their customers if they do that? Smart business owners are going to say ‘no.’”

That is not civic engagement. It is the grade school version of politics: “Sit with us cool girls, or you are not invited to my birthday party.” These groups have already floated boycotts of businesses tied to Seegers and CC Watchdog. The tactic is intimidation dressed up as virtue.

Maybe “smart” business owners are tired of clearing tents and sleeping bags off their stoops before opening. Maybe they are tired of fentanyl foil and washing human waste out of their alleyways. Or maybe they are just tired of rising taxes that fund commissioner pet projects, poet laureate included.

Listen: Virginia Shogren on Clallamity Jen

Play the Clallamity Jen interview with county auditor candidate Virginia Shogren. The interesting part is not the position. It is the evolution: a progressive Democrat who started asking different questions about her political identity.

Clallamity Jen

A Real Candidate Conversation with Virginia Shogren

Thank you, Virginia, for taking the time to make this podcast…

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10 days ago · 15 likes · 19 comments · Clallamity Jen

Shogren is running to restore trust in elections and watch the money. She wants paper ballots you can see and count, processes the public can oversee, and an auditor’s office that treats waste as the enemy. Washington already mails ballots. The question she raises is whether voters still have real oversight, or whether software and untraceable steps have replaced it.

If you care who runs elections and who watches the books, listen to the interview before you decide.

Sequim This Week

Here is a snapshot of Sequim. A person sitting in the middle of JCPenney Plaza, belongings piled around them, a blanket draped over their head.

A few blocks away, laundry day on Washington Street: an entire line of clothes drying on the bushes at one of the main entrances to town, in the commercial hub of a small city that still likes to call itself charming.

This county is teeming with NGOs surviving off your taxes, and the list of programs for homelessness, addiction, and mental health keeps growing. So ask the only questions that matter:

Is it getting better?
Is this the hometown you remember?
The town you moved to a year ago?
The place you want your grandchildren to see when they visit the town you chose for retirement?

Are you embarrassed? And if you are, are you ready for change?

No ID? No Address? No Problem!

From the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence comes a flyer that should stop you cold:

• “WE WANT YOU TO VOTE IF YOU WANT TO!”

• “You do not need a picture ID or proof of address to register to vote in Washington.”

• If you are homeless, you can still register. Give a location you consider home—a shelter, park, motor home, intersection—and a mailing address so the ballot can find you: a P.O. box, a friend’s house, a shelter, or general delivery.

That is state law. It also invites you to treat the most basic check—who is this person, and where do they live?—as optional. Advocates can walk people through the county auditor’s office process. The rest of the county is supposed to trust the result.

$800,000 Goes Back—After Years of Controversy

Habitat for Humanity of Clallam County has told the commissioners it will not take the $800,000 Opportunity Fund award for Lyon’s Landing. In an August 20 memo, Board President Danny Steiger and CEO Colleen Robinson said the organization has not drawn a dollar of the grant. After a board review and a capital-campaign feasibility study, Habitat will sequence its two big projects: finish the roughly 48-home Sequim Avenue development first, and pause active work on the 45-home Carlsborg site. They will not pursue the extension they asked for days earlier. The county can send the money to other eligible projects. Any future ask, they note, would be a brand-new application.

That is the polite version. The long version has been on CC Watchdog for years.

Habitat first tried to move Lyon’s Landing with a no-bid arrangement with the Jamestown Corporation—an estimated $2.6 million slice of site work—while arguing that, as a nonprofit not yet using state or federal dollars, it did not have to run a formal bid. The Jamestown Tribe had also given Habitat $50,000 and the NGO hired a Native American Housing Liaison. County legal staff then spent months asking whether public Opportunity Funds turned the job into a public work under state law and county code. Commissioners still awarded the $800,000 with a “must meet all legal requirements” caveat. Then came the shovels-in-the-dirt photo behind Sunny Farms.

Then, for a long stretch, nothing.

Now Habitat says it cannot confidently spend the award in the extension window and is stepping back. Call it stewardship if you want. Call it the end of a deal that never should have been structured that way. Either way, the land off Mill Road is still waiting, and $800,000 in sales-tax money is finally free to be treated like public money again.

Harvest of Hope Raises $469,500—and a Familiar Line About Taxes

The Peninsula Daily News covered a real local success: Olympic Medical Center Foundation’s 24th Harvest of Hope gala raised a record $469,500 for local cancer care.

The Jamestown Tribe received the Rick Kaps Award. Then came the line worth remembering. Chairman Ron Allen said the tribe “started with zero” in the 1970s without federal recognition. Then, “Our tax base is our businesses.”

How convenient that the tribe’s tax base is its businesses. Everyone else’s tax base is the property-tax bill that pays for roads, schools, and fire departments. The tribe bought the land for its family clinic from your public hospital, Olympic Medical Center, for $1.00. Allen called the tribes’ endeavors “inclusive.” Try using the tribe’s beach, pavilion, or gym when the signs say tribal members only, and see how inclusive it is. Or try getting hired by the county’s second largest employer when you are more qualified but not a tribal member.

Celebrate the cancer money. Do not pretend the tax story is the same for everyone.

$10,000 to Redesign Addiction Studies

Molina Healthcare gave the Peninsula College Foundation $10,000 to redesign the addiction-studies curriculum and tighten the path into the bachelor of applied science in behavioral health.

Read it another way: addiction is also a jobs program and a degree track. As long as the crisis stays large, there is curriculum to write, grants to chase, and a pipeline to feed. The college says it will align coursework with employer needs and state rules. Fair enough. Just notice what never gets treated as the goal: fewer addicts, not more certified staff managing them.

You Don’t Need a Crystal Ball. Watch these Cities.

You do not need tarot cards to see where Housing First and harm reduction lead. You need Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Watch Nick Shirley’s video investigating the fentanyl crisis across those cities and see how much they have in common with Clallam County.

Watch the addicts in that video and ask the question officials keep dodging: Is what they need a $350,000 luxury apartment with a dog-wash station and a harbor view? Is one more clean crack pipe the thing that finally makes them ready for recovery? Clallam is not inventing a new model. It is importing one that already has a body count. This is a drug crisis, not a housing shortage. Our streets have become asylums for the addicted and mentally ill. A county cannot solve a problem it refuses to name. These conditions are the squalor that members of the League of Women Voters, Indivisible, and the Democratic Socialists are pushing the county’s Board of Health to maintain.

Does this look like compassion to you?

“Voter Approved” — Except the Voters Didn’t Approve It

Four years ago, Mike French made Conservation District funding part of his campaign. Last year he backed a parcel fee, then flipped to “no” at the last minute when the other two commissioners were clearly going to pass it. He got to be the “good guy” and look more moderate after three years of pushing for tax hikes. The fee was unpopular. It still passed without a public vote.

Now look at your property-tax statement. The fee is listed as a “voter approved” tax.

Jake Seegers independently submitted 1,032 signatures against it. History got rewritten on the bill. A commissioner-only passage became “the voters said yes.”

Listen: Antonio Price on Clallamity Jen

Assessor candidate Antonio Price sat down with Clallamity Jen. Start there if you want to understand the person, not just the office: fair booth, high-school diploma, how long he has lived here, why he is running now, and whether he wants voters focused on party or on the job.

Clallamity Jen

A Real Candidate Conversation with Antonio Price

Intro Haiku…

Listen now

7 days ago · 14 likes · 5 comments · Clallamity Jen

Jen did something useful before the policy questions. She separated the elected assessor from the myths. The assessor values property. The Legislature writes the tax laws. The treasurer collects the money. Taxing districts set their levies. Staff does the technical appraisal work. The Department of Revenue still owns pieces of the system.

Then the real questions: Should property photos stay online 24/7, or should owners with safety concerns get more control? How does a newly elected official oversee an existing department without pretending to be the appraiser? And if voters do not understand how a levy hits their bill, whose job is it to close that gap?

Listen to the answers and decide if the Price is right.

Read the Strait Shooter: The Harm Capsule

Do not skip this week’s satirical Strait Shooter, “Know Your Community: The Harm Capsule.” Imagine the county’s 2026 time capsule packed with the artifacts that actually define the era: Narcan, needles, boofing kits, shower vouchers, and grant paperwork.

That is the snapshot they would bury. Read it. Then look around and ask whether they are joking.

The Strait Shooter

The Tuesday Twist

Salsa School Of Investigation Issues Breakthrough After Finding A Dotted Line…

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6 days ago · 15 likes · 10 comments · The Strait Shooter

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Olympic Community of Health spent a year and a fortune “connecting people so they could thrive,” then published an annual report with almost no jobs, no cost per person, and no hard outcomes. Recompete was sold as a way to close the prime-age employment gap. The paperwork reads like a social-services slush fund on federal letterhead. Commissioner Mike French chairs the coalition, is running for reelection on the grant, and should start addressing legitimate concerns, not just accepting the applause.

A nonprofit, not a jobs creator

Olympic Community of Health is not a state agency. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (NGO)—an Accountable Community of Health—created to convene partners and “tackle health issues that no single sector or Tribe can tackle alone.”

Olympic Connect is not a separate agency. It is OCH’s program: the community care hub that OCH built, governs, and funds. Recompete’s barrier-removal award of about $9.8 million — over a quarter of the $35 million total — went to OCH. Olympic Connect is the storefront of that nearly $10 million.

OCH’s own About page is a stack of mission language: bridges, person-centered care, equity, determinants of health. It does not say how many people got jobs, how much it costs per client, or what “thrive” means in dollars.

French sold jobs. The hub sells wraparound.

Recompete is a U.S. Economic Development Administration program. Clallam County is the lead applicant. French chairs the North Olympic Peninsula Recompete Coalition and has made the award the centerpiece of his second-term pitch: tens of millions to create good jobs and connect residents to living-wage work.

The original sales number floated around 900 placements in five years. Recent reporting dropped the new target to 603. Two years in, the public story is still “implementation.” The fine print shows a bulk of the money going to NGOs, wraparound services, and administration.

The June 2025 scope of work is not a jobs plan. It is a contracting plan. Recruit and onboard staff. Note that other funding already covers an additional 7.0 full-time positions. Train current staff. Release funding opportunities. Monitor contracts. Execute more contracts. Build a subawardee management plan. Hire a data vendor. Hire a pre-marketing contractor. Plan sustainability in 2026–2027. Jobs are the pitch. Payroll at OCH is the product.

Och Scope Of Work June 2025

187KB ∙ PDF file

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Gas, car repairs, and “trauma-informed workplaces”

The partner scopes make the point. The Olympic Peninsula YMCA contract is supposed to help clients with childcare, basic needs, gas, and car repairs.

First Step gets more hours and pop-up sites.

Transit authorities get expanded rides and “alignment with hub technology.”

Discovery Behavioral Healthcare and Peninsula Behavioral Health get money to support clients and employers around behavioral health and “trauma-informed workplaces.”

Community-based workforce contractors will “remove barriers.”

Short-term training is a plan to create a system to create a plan. This is not a mill, a factory, or a plant hiring on Monday. It is a referral desk with a grant.

Then there is the pre-marketing contract. OCH will run focus groups so staff can understand why some people “will be hesitant to ask for help,” organized around “stages of change” theory, so marketing will “resonate and lead to action.”

Flyers and ads come from other funding. The federal grant pays for focus groups on why people don’t want jobs. That is research into reluctance—not a count of people hired.

The annual report: activity without a bottom line

Incoming funds: $7,664,699. Most of it from the Washington State Health Care Authority ($6,475,257) and the Department of Health ($975,000). U.S. EDA: $214,442 in the year they chose to display. Funds sent “directly to partners”: $2,417,545. Of that, $1,460,120 went to 12 Olympic Connect care-coordination partners so “trusted helpers” could connect people to resources. Another $819,400 went to seven partners for food, housing, and substance-use infrastructure. The board sent $138,025 to 11 food banks. Food banks here are open to everyone, regardless of income. That is a money transfer, not proof of job growth.

What did the public get as proof?

• Over 1,300 people “enrolled” and “got connected to resources and services so they could thrive.” Thrive is not a metric.

• Over 700 resources added to a directory. A list is not a paycheck.

• A “regional health needs assessment” that “synthesized the findings from recent partner-led community assessments and highlighted health needs.” That sentence is a report about other reports.

• A Google Search campaign: 35,507 impressions, 3,562 website visits. For a multi-million-dollar hub, that is a marketing footnote dressed as impact.

• 138 re-entry clients referred from Clallam and Kitsap jails. Referred is not housed, hired, or sober.

• 27 “learnings and convenings.” OCH’s own IRS language is that it hosts learnings and convenings to foster relationship building. Meetings about meetings.

• 1,959 “partner network relationships.”

• 95 percent satisfaction among Olympic Connect clients upon discharge. Satisfaction with a referral is not employment.

Word salad from the top

Miranda Burger, interim executive director: proud of growth, partners “leaned into innovation launching the hub,” “lessons learned,” “strong and positive path looking toward sustainability,” excited to develop the next strategic plan and “understand what is important to our partners.”

Heidi Anderson, board president: continued strengthening of partnerships, shared accountability, innovation, community-centered solutions, barriers to care, align resources. Paragraphs of verbs. No cost per placement. No jobs retained at 90 days. No comparison to the $26-an-hour wage talk French used when the grant was still a press release.

A private sector company’s annual report would show income quality, debts, and risks. OCH published kayaks, sunbursts, circular quotes, and a land acknowledgment: humility toward Coast Salish peoples on whose sacred land “we live, work, and play.”

The treasurer slot is tied to Jamestown Tribe / Jamestown Family Health Clinic.

None of that answers the only question Recompete was sold on: how many prime-age adults are on a payroll who were not before?

Credit and the record travel together

French does not run OCH day to day. He does chair the coalition that routes federal money into this model, claims the $35 million as leadership, and is asking Clallam County for another term. If the grant is his proof of economic development, the annual report and the scope of work are the audit. They show administration, trusted helpers, gas cards, trauma-informed workplaces, focus groups for the hesitant, and food-bank checks. They do not show a jobs machine.

What does OCH do? It convenes. It contracts. It refers. It writes “thrive.” Taxpayers fund the rest. Credit for the grant includes credit for what it actually bought. It’s time for Commissioner French to explain how Recompete is really performing.

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Candidate Conversation This Morning!

Port Angeles’ deputy mayor just told council that “respect and decorum” are artifacts of a white male heterosexual society. The commissioner whose campaign she runs says his most important job is building trust with tribes—then steers federal money toward an enterprise that already spends half a million a year on holiday lights. The guilt is the point. It never gets paid off. It only gets converted into the next grant.

Decorum, recoded

On September 15, Port Angeles Deputy Mayor Navarra Carr was not talking about potholes. She was talking about who is allowed to define manners.

Council was discussing respect and decorum. Carr said the city probably does not want people whose “backgrounds… would be not in line with city values.” Then she explained whose values she meant:

“A lot of times the words respect and decorum come at the expense of… cultural norms and a lot of times the people who are left out of those conversations about what constitutes respect and decorum are people of color, queer people, women… I want to make sure that when we’re talking about those things that we’re not unintentionally creating an environment that limits people’s freedom of speech… and ability to adequately serve based on sort of artificial norms that really come out of a very white male heterosexual centered society.”

She added that “disrespect” is subjective, that court cases protect the public’s right to curse at council, and that she is “concerned” about councilmembers “limiting our own ability to speak freely to one another.”

So: norms of courtesy are coded as white, male, and straight. Objecting to that framing is the problem. The solution is to treat those norms as optional “guidelines.”

The campaign manager is not a side character

Carr is not a random commenter. She is Mike French’s campaign manager. French is running for a second term as Clallam County commissioner. In 2022, his campaign’s largest expenditure was $3,000 to Carr for “management and consulting.” He later put her in charge of the reelection. He was one of the biggest donors to her city council run, donating $1,000. When Carr calls “respect and decorum” a product of a “white male heterosexual centered society,” she is not freelancing. She is French’s campaign manager, speaking from the deputy mayor’s chair.

Trust the tribes. Charge the taxpayer.

French’s own answer to that charge is not to reject racial scorekeeping. It is to keep the books.

At a Clallam County Democrats debate with Jake Seegers, French said elected officials must think about “the broad spectrum of our community,” and pointed to Recompete: a project “to serve our underserved regions… rural areas like tribal areas.” French added, “I’m a white man in modern America that has had a very blessed life.”

At the Calico Cat Club forum, he went further:

“The most important thing I think for the board of commissioners is for us to build trust with our tribes.”

Not the most important thing for public safety. Not roads, not the jail, not the budget. Trust with tribes. The vehicle to build that trust is Recompete, the $35.6 million federal grant whose coalition he chairs. One tangible way trust gets built is through purchasing machinery: a hydroseeder and a mini excavator for the Jamestown Tribe so it can expand enterprises that already run on more than $100 million a year.

That is the conversion. White privilege, once confessed, becomes a white savior. The term is not a slur invented on this site. It is the name for the move: the guilty party purchases moral credit by delivering other people’s money to the approved identity.

Half a million in lights, then a grant for a hydroseeder

The lights tell you the scale of the need.

Right now the Jamestown Corporation and 7 Cedars are hanging the annual display—three to four million LED lights across Blyn, the campus, the clinic, the golf course, the Railroad Bridge. Jerry Allen and local press have put the budget at about $400,000 to $500,000 a year. Crews start in the fall. Installation alone is thousands of man-hours.

An organization that can spend half a million dollars every winter wrapping birch trees in LEDs is not too poor to buy a hydroseeder. It is too well-positioned to let a commissioner who needs to “build trust” charge the federal taxpayer for the next piece of the white guilt starter kit. French does not have to write a personal check. He chairs the coalition. The guilt does the rest.

The local dialect

The supporting chorus is not subtle.

Rae Hesselbach, French’s appointee to the Developmental Disabilities Advisory Committee and an Indivisible regular, told the public that “we all need to be vigilant because the wealthiest white men are a greater threat to safety than the unhoused.”

Paula Allen, listed as Director of Leadership at 7 Cedars, posted that “white people are a problem” and that they think they are “superior to the bottom of my shoe.”

Former Sequim Councilmember and Jamestown descendant Vicki Lowe told colleagues that the phrase “high quality” is “a dog whistle for white people.”

Charter Review Commissioner Nina Sarmiento, wordsmithing a Water Steward problem statement, said the county had been managing water “ever since white people set foot on this land.”

A Jefferson County Conservation District interview asked a resident how she would “deal with privileged white males.”

None of that is hidden. It is the local dialect of a national script: one racial category is the original sin; every institution must perform repayment; the debt has no payoff date.

Wear orange. Don’t ask about the graves.

Wednesday, Peninsula College will host Orange Shirt Day on the Robins Green—remembrance of children taken to residential and boarding schools, co-sponsored by the First Nations Club and the House of Learning.

Wear orange if you want. The schools were real. The removals were real. The grief is real.

What is not proven is the 2021 Kamloops headline: 215 children in a secret mass grave. Radar found disturbed soil. No graves have been dug up to match the number.

The country still treated it as a closed case. Churches burned. Names came off buildings. Professors who asked for bones lost their jobs. The woman who inspired the orange shirt has told CBC that “denialism” should be written into the criminal code—so a T-shirt that says “dig deeper” is not an argument. It is a charge sheet.

The League already wrote the assignment

Washington’s League of Women Voters does not wait for a grave. Its land acknowledgment says the state sits on homelands of peoples who have “long resiliently resisted the ongoing harms of colonialism,” and that the League will “amplify the voices of Indigenous people,” partner with tribes on policy, and “respect the sovereignty of tribes.”

That is not a history footnote. It is a political instruction: one set of governments is owed perpetual deference; the rest of the public is the guest.

After the lights, the refuges

Where does it end?

It does not end at Christmas lights. It does not end at a hydroseeder. The Jamestown Corporation is now pursuing legislation to move Dungeness and Protection Island National Wildlife Refuges from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service management into tribal trust. Local and federal allies are working to make that transfer happen. After that there will be another one. There always is.

Ron Allen, longtime chair and CEO of the tribe, is three-quarters European by ancestry. The racial ledger still lists him on the creditor side. Carr still lists “white male heterosexual centered society” on the debtor side. French still lists Recompete as the payment plan.

A penance office with a till

Guilt works because it never closes. If “respect” is a white norm, then enforcing it is oppression. If a corporation can light half the highway and still qualify as underserved, then the grant is justice. If a county commissioner's most important job is tribal trust rather than the people who elect him, then the taxpayer is not a constituent. He is an ATM with a conscience.

The question is not whether history was ugly. It was. The question is whether Clallam County intends to run itself as a county—or as a penance office with a $35.6 million till and a $500,000 light bill.

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PABA Forum Tomorrow: District 24, Live at 7:30 a.m.

Port Angeles Business Association’s next meeting is tomorrow, September 29, 7:30–8:30 a.m. at Jazzy Joshua’s Restaurant & Lounge and is open to the public. The group is hosting a forum for 24th Legislative District candidates. Kaylee Kuehn and Marcia Kelbon will appear in person.

It contains explicit language. It also contains the kind of exchange that most campaigns never risk.

Jesse came with hard questions: the “skunk sermon,” an affirmative-action joke told in church, family-foundation donations to 4PA, appointing a young child as campaign manager, and ties to outspoken local activists. He pressed Seegers on tribal outreach, local service gaps, and whether a relative newcomer can represent a county with very different communities and perspectives.

Seegers answered. He discussed his family’s years in Mexico, why he is running as an independent, and what he meant by the skunk story. He explained his views on race, his conversations with Makah and Lower Elwha leadership, visits to Serenity House and the Olympic Peninsula Community Clinic (OPCC), and why he favors local detox, treatment paired with accountability, and greater budget discipline.

Seegers said that the conversation reaffirmed his belief that face-to-face conversations with people who disagree are always beneficial. He respects and appreciates Jesse’s willingness to meet in person and share his perspectives and experiences.

They did not leave agreeing on everything. They did not leave fully trusting each other. But they both left understanding more about the experiences and perspectives that shape their views — and recognizing that beneath significant disagreements are outcomes they both want for the community.

For Seegers, conversations like this offer reason to be optimistic about the future of Clallam County.

Those who only don’t listen will miss the most important part: two people who have publicly disagreed — sometimes sharply — sitting across from one another, asking difficult questions, listening to the answers, and finding some common ground.

Listen to the full conversation.

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This article was approved by Jake Seegers for Commissioner, 131 East First Street, Port Angeles, WA 98362.

Residents are showing up for a candidate on the River Road overpass while the same week shows open-air drug use a few blocks from the courthouse. Online, people are mapping who actually holds the seats, the boards, and the school curriculum — and who gets memorialized on a church sign. If you still think “compassion” is the only word that matters, this Social Media Saturday feed is a hard read.

Show Up on the Overpass

Today, Saturday, a rally for county commissioner candidate Jake Seegers runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the River Road Overpass in Sequim. Park across the street from Applebee’s. If you want a different direction for Clallam County, this is the simplest way to say so in public.

This Is the Fruit

Local League of Women Voters activists helped put a grades 3–5 textbook into schools that walks children toward protest — including joining a Black Lives Matter protest “which aims to prevent more police shootings of unarmed Black people and help our country overcome racism.”

Now look at the League’s harvest. A social-media photo showed Port Angeles High School students at a courthouse protest this year with signs that included “My future will not be dictated by Nazis,” “F**k ICE,” “one abortion could have saved democracy,” and “Nobody is illegal on stolen land.”

The League was founded to help voters understand government, not to draft third-graders into a faction. When a civic group becomes a pipeline for slogans, it stops being a league of voters and starts being a political machine that still gets to use the old stationery.

Who Is Actually Building Institutional Power?

A Facebook comment framed Seegers as part of a Christian Right plan to migrate into small towns, buy property, and build local theocracies.

The well-organized, well-funded operations that already dominate Clallam politics do not sound like Christian Nationalists. They sound like the Sequim Good Governance League, Indivisible, and the League of Women Voters.

How many people in those groups arrived from somewhere else, brought a ready-made ideology, and then ran for office? Look at the Sequim City Council. Count League members on the Sequim School Board. Count Indivisible members on the Charter Review Commission. Count how many Indivisible-aligned appointments Mike French has placed on advisory boards.

Seegers moved here, bought property, and put his name on a ballot. That is an election. The other side already holds the councils, the boards, the commissions, and the appointments. Don’t share the smear. Share the roster: who came from somewhere else, who ran, who got installed, and who already owns the seats that matter.

Remember What This Place Could Be

More people are posting that Clallam still has real potential. What they are tired of is this: question whether the current approach is working, and you are told you lack compassion.

Don’t give up. This county is worth saving.

Small Business Is Not a Prop

One owner said cleaning garbage left by trespassers off the storefront has become a daily chore.

If small businesses are the backbone of the local economy and the tax base for essential services, local government is not treating them like assets. It is treating them like janitors for a policy they did not vote for.

A Takedown on Peabody — and a Choice in November

People driving to Tuesday’s Board of Commissioners meeting watched a police takedown on Peabody Street, where an open-air drug encampment has spread across the sidewalk opposite the Salvation Army. Port Angeles police said a wanted fugitive fled on a bike with a dog in the trailer, crashed, injured the dog, and the dog bit an officer.

Unsanctioned camping on a sidewalk. Open-air drug use. Blocks from the courthouse and City Hall. A fugitive, an injured dog, and a bitten officer are not a surprise. They are the product.

In November, voters decide whether they want more of this.

Three Fingers Pointing Back

The county Health Department is back on the “myths and misinformation” circuit warning of cherry-picked data, emotional framing, and one study treated as scripture while a stack of other peer-reviewed work is ignored.

This is the same department whose health officer, Allison Berry, has called cleaning used needles from abandoned camps theft. It does not measure how many people actually leave addiction for recovery. And the harm-reduction model it sells still leans on a 26-year-old needle-exchange study that does not describe what Clallam is doing on the ground.

A reminder for Health and Human Services: every time you point at someone, three fingers point back at you.

PABA Forum: District 24, Live at 7:30 a.m.

Port Angeles Business Association’s next meeting is Tuesday, September 29, 7:30–8:30 a.m. at Jazzy Joshua’s Restaurant & Lounge and is open to the public. The group is hosting a forum for 24th Legislative District candidates. Kaylee Kuehn and Marcia Kelbon will appear in person.

Still Waiting on the Sign

It has been months. CC Watchdog is still looking for a straight answer to a simple question: What does this sign mean?

Jobs on the West End — Credit Fight Optional

Commissioner Mike French says the Riverside Mill is hiring because of Recompete. Mark Ozias’ NGO, the North Olympic Development Council, wants a piece of the credit too. The record shows the company moved from Canada to Forks because of tariffs. Either way, it is family-wage work for west-end locals. Show up Thursday for the hiring event.

Whose Names Go on the Board

A 2023 photo from Indivisible’s headquarters, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Sequim, shows the reader board memorializing George Floyd (Minneapolis), Breonna Taylor (Louisville), Ahmaud Arbery (Georgia), and Atatiana Jefferson (Fort Worth).

Did that readerboard carry the name of infant Otis — born with fentanyl in his system, then found dead in a car seat in the bushes at Kah Tai Park after his father hid the body? Did it name Ted Eastman of Port Angeles, found dead of a fentanyl overdose in his truck, two days after the family buried another brother lost to the same drug? Did it name Sequim artist Richard Madeo, fatally assaulted just blocks from that church by Aaron Fisher, later convicted of manslaughter?

Virtue signaling is easy when the names are national, and the cost is plastic letters. Local deaths require some uncomfortable accountability.

The Audit They Waited to Mention

A Facebook user asked why everyone has “conveniently forgotten” this: inadequate internal controls over financial and accounting reporting in 2022 and 2023; the public not told about the investigation until after the election; City Council members and commissioners, including Mike French, sat on that board knowing they themselves were under the auditor’s review; the matter still referred to a prosecutor and still unfinished.

The Peninsula Daily News story landed in November 2025, less than a week after voters had already been to the polls, and after a local blogger broke the story.

Pay attention to who sat on that board, who still sits there, and what they failed to fix for more than a decade to let this happen.

Read Clallamity Jen

Clallamity Jen’s latest on Substack, “Welcome to the Clallam Zone,” is worth a read. She takes the League of Women Voters apart on moral consistency — not as a civics club that stumbled, but as an ideological shop that will move the goalposts whenever the team needs a new position.

Read it, then ask whether “nonpartisan” still means anything in this county.

One Street, Two Rules

Rita on Facebook caught the Port Angeles split screen: on one side of Park Avenue, encampments along Peabody Creek are not allowed because the National Park Service owns the land. On the other side of Park Avenue, encampments spread because it is city property. The problem is not mysterious. It is unenforced. Port Angeles City Council: this is the part where you listen.

A Blast Near Tumwater Creek

A resident near the Tumwater Creek encampment heard something like a bomb. The explosion rolled across the city. Neighbors also report constant gunfire and fireworks.

Is this the “compassionate” model you are comfortable funding for “our most vulnerable”? Will it take a blast that takes out a council member’s windows? A firework that finds a commissioner’s roof? Until then, it is just another night in Port Angeles.

Help Wanted — Depending on Your Paperwork

The Jamestown Corporation is hiring. For the county’s second-largest employer, the posting is clear: “American Indian/Alaska Native preferences apply.”

That is not a level field. It is a racial screen for the county’s second-largest employer.

There are 17 openings: only seven full-time, five part-time, five per diem with no guaranteed hours. Transport driver (per diem) and peer support start at $20.91. Cedar Greens sales consultant starts at $17.50. The “living-wage jobs” that press releases advertise look a lot like this one: Addiction Medicine Executive Director at Jamestown Healing Clinic in Sequim, $239,937.50–$279,927.00.

“Lead with purpose. Make an impact. Enjoy balance.” That might be easy to do at a quarter million a year. The rest of the workforce is closer to minimum wage.

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Norma Turner wants Jake Seegers to settle 2020 before she will trust him with county roads, budgets, and parks. A longtime League of Women Voters leader spent her letter attacking a local challenger over a national question instead of defending Mike French’s record. If the League still claims to be nonpartisan, this is the moment members should ask whether the organization is serving voters or spreading misinformation.

A 50-year League résumé, and a letter that isn’t about Clallam

Norma Turner has spent more than five decades in the League of Women Voters, including multiple terms as president of a group that still markets itself as “nonpartisan.” Her Sept. 19 letter in the Peninsula Daily News is not an analysis of Clallam County government. It is a loyalty test.

She attended a candidate debate and faulted coverage for omitting answers to one question:

“Did Biden win the 2020 election?”

Mike French said yes. Jake Seegers called the question divisive and declined a yes-or-no answer. Turner’s letter then quoted Seegers’ written questionnaire answer: Candidates who give a simple yes or no risk alienating half the county when unity is needed to get things done.

She asked, “Unity around what? Misinformation?” and concluded that if he will not give “the actual answer,” voters cannot trust what he says is reality. She added that he declared nearly a year ago, yet when asked at a forum what his proposals would cost, he didn't even give a ballpark figure. “Is this a candidate who will be accountable?”

What Turner actually asked at the Calico Cat Club — and what both men said

That last charge is worth checking against the recording she was in the room for.

At the Calico Cat Club debate, Turner asked both men for dollar figures on “all the things you promise” — affordable housing for everyone who needs it, job training, immediate treatment, “all the stuff we’ve heard tonight.”

French spoke first. He called it a tough question, then described strategy rather than a total price tag: the county adopted a sales tax for affordable housing that brings in about $1.5 million a year as seed money for federal and state awards; 36 units coming online this month; 24 hoped for next year; a 60- or 70-unit senior project in a few years “if they can figure out that funding stack.” He said the local number does not have to be huge if the strategy multiplies it. Then he admitted, “I know it’s not exactly the answer, but that’s my attempt.”

Seegers answered next by saying he would “answer partially for my opponent.” His critique was not a spreadsheet of every wish list. It was a record:

• From 2018 to 2024, county revenues rose about 54%

• During that same time, the Bellevue Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 27.6%

• Grants jumped 125%

• Law enforcement lagged inflation

• The road fund declined

The pattern, he said, is always more — more grants, more tax, more government, more money to NGOs. He would not invent an exact number for an open-ended list of promises.

Jake Seegers’ ballpark figure was different:

• Do it inside the existing budget

• Stop raising taxes on people already carrying the load

• Treat public safety as the fiscal lever. Law and justice, he said, is about $33 million. Cut the costs tied to crime, homelessness, and substance abuse by 20 percent, and that is more than $6 million — enough, in his telling, to balance the budget and fund priorities without another tax hike.

Turner’s letter flattened that exchange into:

“He did not give even a ballpark figure.”

French also did not give a ballpark figure. He offered a housing tax stream and hoped grants would stack. Seegers offered growth-versus-inflation numbers and a 20 percent reduction target on a $33 million public-safety line. One answer assumes the solution is a larger funding stack. The other assumes the county already grew faster than inflation and still has a spending problem. Voters can prefer either theory. What they cannot honestly say is that only one man was asked for numbers and only one man failed.

Why 2020 is a screening device, not a job description

A county commissioner does not certify presidential elections or retry 2020 in the county’s district court. Asking every local candidate to relitigate a six-year-old national contest is not civic hygiene. It is a screening device. If the test is “will you say the sentence our side requires,” then the League is no longer measuring fitness for the Board of Commissioners. It is measuring membership in a political congregation.

Turner’s letter spends almost no space on why French deserves another term. It does not walk voters through the lagging Recompete grant’s results, multi-year budget strain, or the Shore Memorial Pool District — a board on which French serves while the State Auditor documented weak controls and a fraud investigation into credit-card and related spending.

Those are local files. They involve money, oversight, and public trust in this county. A 2020 talking point is easier to defend than them.

PDC filings show Turner putting $1,000 into French’s campaign. If the incumbent’s record is the argument, write that argument. Using a League elder’s byline to police a 2020 sound bite — and misrepresent the answer about costs that she herself asked for — is not accountability. It is a dodge.

Seegers declined the 2020 yes-or-no because a county race is not cable news. His voters want taxes, public-trust land, public safety, and whether spending works. Refusing the LWV ritual is not denying reality. It is refusing to be sorted.

The Rudersdorf video: a president, a lecture, and a one-way standard

The same pattern showed up in a recent video circulated under Erik Brihagen’s name but featuring Martha Rudersdorf — a prominent local League activist, Indivisible member, and retired Sequim teacher.

She opened with a “toxic president,” then said that same spirit of disrespect, lying, name-calling, and vitriol has reached Clallam elections. She treated Seegers’ recent apology as too little, too late, and praised French for saying leaders should calm rhetoric and bring people together.

Hold that standard up to the record the other side actually produced.

Lying. Rudersdorf’s Indivisible invited Seegers to answer its questionnaire, then published only French’s answers and presented Seegers’ responses as if they were the opposite of what he wrote. If “lying” is the charge, start with groups that solicit answers and then refuse to present them straight.

Name-calling. On the eve of Seegers’ first debate at Clallam County Democrats’ headquarters, the party’s official Facebook presence labeled him “Fake Jake.” That is not a voter in a comments section. That is an institutional tone-setter before the first joint appearance.

On the topic of name-calling, Rudersdorf’s husband, Dave LeRoux, just published a letter to the editor which insinuates Seegers is a Christian nationalist.

Vitriol. Replacing slashed, stolen, and spray-painted signs has cost the Seegers campaign about $1,000, plus boycott threats against businesses that host them. Slashed signs, blood-smeared anti-Seegers messages, and a Charlie Kirk comparison are not “robust debate.”

Recently, Seegers did something incumbents and activists in this race have not matched: he took the heat onto himself. He did not claim every ugly post came from the other side. He said the race turned toxic months ago, that both supporters and opponents had used name-calling, threats, and foul language — and that he had participated by staying silent until a friend called him on it. Then he asked the community to join him in setting a standard: attack policies, not people; don’t post anything you wouldn’t say to a friend; keep competing hard on public safety, affordability, and spending.

Rudersdorf treats the apology as a problem. It isn’t. Seegers drew a line between policy and personal attack, refused to smear French as a person, and asked the county to argue facts. That is adulthood. Calling it too late gives the LWV game away: French saying “rhetoric is bad” counts as leadership; Seegers asking people to stay on the issues does not. If that statement still isn’t good enough for the League, the standard was never civility. The only outcome that would have satisfied the lecture is Seegers losing.

Property destruction, missing local files, and the fading League brand

French’s own past comment on property destruction sits awkwardly next to lectures about civic tone. He has been quoted saying property destruction is “not only fine,” and is “usually the only way we’ve ever seen actual change happen.”

A commissioner who has normalized destruction as a tool of change is a weak messenger when the other campaign’s signs are being destroyed. Accountability, if it means anything, runs both directions.

The $118,000 safe-parking program is the kind of file a “nonpartisan” League should be worried about: county money sent by Commissioner French to a Sequim church, then paid out to OlyCAP, an NGO on whose board French serves. If League voices want to lecture about accountability, start there. A 2020 quiz is easier, but voters can tell the difference.

What has worn thin in Clallam County is the performance of neutrality. The League of Women Voters built a reputation on candidate forums, voter guides, and the idea that process matters more than team. A local chapter that treats a presidential-election catechism as the gateway to county office, while its most prominent members donate, endorse, and narrate for one Democrat-aligned incumbent, is not hiding its politics. It is advertising them.

Groupthink is comfortable. County government is not a congregation.

Groupthink never calls itself groupthink. It calls itself moral certainty: the answer is settled, and the offense is refusing to recite it. That may be comfortable, but it is a lousy way to choose a county commissioner.

Jake Seegers is running as an independent against an incumbent with a record voters can inspect without a 2020 decoder ring. At the forum that Turner attended, Seegers didn't price a wish list because he doesn't accept it. He said the county already outran inflation, backfilled with grants, and shorted core services — and that a 20 percent cut in the downstream cost of crime and addiction on a $33 million justice budget is the fiscal path that does not require another tax. French said strategy and seed money. Turner only heard what she wanted to.

If League members still believe their organization is for voters rather than for a faction, the respectful move is simple: drop the national litmus test, put French’s local file on the table next to Seegers’ budget argument, and let Clallam County decide which one is actually accountable.

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This Saturday, the Jamestown Tribe will collect a healthcare award at its own resort. The same week, a new Substack author — the Grim Reporter — published the Ketchikan years of Brent Simcosky, CEO of Jamestown Healthcare, who oversees the MAT clinic and Salish Seasons. Read that piece, subscribe, and ask why Sequim is handing out praise before anyone here has examined the file.

On Saturday, the Olympic Medical Center Foundation will present the Rick Kaps Award to the Jamestown Tribe at Club NOVA — inside 7 Cedars. The Sequim Gazette is promoting tickets to celebrate a story of partnership: money for cancer patients at Olympic Medical Center, praise for the tribe’s clinics, and language about being “inclusive” and choosing “collaboration with other institutions rather than competition.”

Chairman/CEO Ron Allen said the honor “really goes to the team.” On that list he named Brent Simcosky, CEO of Jamestown Healthcare.

The optics are already strange. The recipient of the award is also hosting the banquet on its own resort property. Jerry Allen, CEO of 7 Cedars Resort Properties, is part of the same “team” the chairman wants credited; the Gazette notes he deferred to Simcosky for the interview. That does not make the fundraising illegitimate. It does mean Saturday is not a neutral room. It is the tribe’s stage, the tribe’s honor, and the tribe’s vocabulary.

But a new independent writer just published the part of the story Saturday is not built to tell. Read What Happened Under Brent Simcosky’s Watch? on The Grim Reporter Substack. Subscribe for free. The work is theirs. This is somethig no other local news outlet has touched.

The man on the program

Few people outside the MAT clinic fight can pick Simcosky out of a lineup. People who sat across from him during conversations about the MAT clinic remember a different temperature than the upcoming awards ceremony.

In April 2024, at the People’s Forum, Simcosky was asked about federal reimbursement rates at the MAT clinic. On the recording, at 1:24:00, he tells the room it is “none of your business,” says “you want to know, go look it up,” storms away from the table, and returns after being asked to calm down. [Listen here.] That was not a one-off. He has spent years batting the money question away. In 2020 he told legislators that critics’ dollar figures were overstated and that “any excess revenue will go back into health care.”

Others remember a heartfelt Q13 appearance in which Simcosky wept, saying he could take social-media attacks because he was “a big boy,” but that it bothered his family.

That is the contrast. At the People’s Forum he shut the money question down. On television he asked for sympathy. But neither appearance produced what happened years ago in Ketchikan.

What Grim Reporter reported

On Sept. 22, Grim Reporter published a documented account of Simcosky’s years as medical administrator at the Ketchikan Indian Community clinic — before Jamestown hired him as health services director.

The reporting, built from Alaska outlets and from Phoenix Johnson’s on-the-record interviews, is this:

In 2012, Johnson, a Tlingit and Haida lab technician and Air Force veteran, reported that her supervisor, Dr. Richard McGrath, had repeatedly touched her at work and slapped her buttocks. KIC human resources dismissed the complaint in a letter Johnson says Simcosky initialed and hand-delivered. She filed a grievance. Days later she was fired.

Eleven years later, McGrath pleaded guilty in Sitka to third-degree sexual assault after originally facing 13 felony counts involving female patients. He was sentenced to two years in prison. Those later crimes were in Sitka, not Ketchikan. Johnson’s argument, which Grim Reporter quotes at length, is that the 2012 complaint was treated as a misunderstanding — and that McGrath kept working in healthcare.

That is Johnson’s account and Grim Reporter’s article. It is not a court finding against Simcosky. There is no public Washington investigation of the 2012 HR letter. As of Grim Reporter’s publication, Simcosky has not addressed those questions in this state. Do not take CC Watchdog’s word for the documents. Open the Substack. Look at what they published. And subscribe so they can keep asking.

Grim Reporter

Why his title matters

Simcosky is not the nurse at the dosing window. He is the system executive.

He is the tribe’s longtime health services director and, in 2026 coverage, CEO of Jamestown HealthCARE — the enterprise that includes the Healing Campus. He led planning, partnerships, construction, and public messaging for the two buildings on South Ninth behind Costco.

Day-to-day operations are split. The Healing Clinic (the MAT program) has its own executive director. Salish Seasons, the 16-bed psychiatric evaluation-and-treatment facility, has another. Simcosky sits above both as CEO of Jamestown Healthcare. He is the official who said the tribe decided to own and operate Salish Seasons after an earlier plan to let Olympic Medical Center run it. Ron Allen sits above that structure as tribal chairman/CEO.

Salish Seasons is now taking voluntary referrals. The Healing Clinic treats hundreds of people for opioid use disorder. Those are high-risk populations. Grim Reporter’s question is the one the award ceremony will not ask: if someone reports misconduct inside those walls, what happens next, who decides, and what should our community expect?

The language of Saturday

The Gazette piece is the official script for Saturday.

Allen called Jamestown “an inclusive tribe.” He said the goal is “collaboration with other institutions rather than competition.” He and Simcosky both said the tribe aims to provide services “without duplicating efforts of other institutions.” Simcosky added, “We want to be part of the solution. We are all going to be stronger if we work together.”

That is the language of the award dinner. It is not the only language on file.

In public-records, Chairman Ron Allen has referred to local residents who raise questions as “complainers” and “whiners.”

Those emails do not prove anything about Ketchikan. They do show that “inclusive” is a stage word. People who ask how the clinics are paid or who runs them have not always been treated as partners.

The same gap appears outside the clinics. Allen and Simcosky say the tribe does not want to duplicate work other institutions already do. Recompete — the federal grant Commissioner Mike French chairs — is paying Jamestown’s JKT Development to buy a hydroseeder and a mini excavator and start a hydro-seeding business. Local contractors already do that work, on their own dime. That is not Phoenix Johnson’s story, but it proves a split: collaboration and a statement to not duplicate services is just a performance.

What this is not

This is not a finding that Simcosky committed a crime. It is not a finding that a Jamestown patient was mishandled. It is not a claim that the Sequim clinics have an open assault case. It is merely a pointer.

A new writer did the work Alaska reporters started this spring and Washington reporters did not. Grim Reporter put Simcosky’s name, the 2012 complaint, Johnson’s voice, and the Jamestown title in one place. That is a public service.

If the Rick Kaps Award is going to mean “part of the solution,” the health CEO’s unanswered Ketchikan file belongs in the same conversation as the wine dinner. Saturday is not built for that conversation. The Grim Reporter Substack is.

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Mike French’s camp has a talking skunk. A county-funded drop-in center has taken sides. A wildlife meeting is tonight, a Seegers rally is Saturday, and Tumwater Creek is still flushing tents, needles, and propane tanks into the harbor. This week’s potpourri is about who gets your money, who gets a pass, and who suddenly hates the idea of opening the books.

When the Skunk Becomes Official Opposition

Mike French supporters released a video urging voters to stick with the incumbent commissioner. The narrator is a skunk — the unofficial anti-Jake Seegers mascot.

They are not the only ones wearing the stripe. The Answer For Youth (TAFY), a Port Angeles NGO, has put skunk imagery on its official vehicle.

That is not a joke sticker on a private bumper. That is an organization that takes public homelessness money announcing which candidate it does not want.

TAFY is a drop-in center for homeless and at-risk people and their families. It defines “youth” as anyone under 35. It hands out food, hygiene items, clothing, tents, sleeping bags, and other survival gear — and does not hide it.

In January 2026, the Peninsula Daily News quoted executive director Susan Hillgren saying TAFY “provided 43 tents, supplied propane to 33 clients.” TAFY’s donation list asks for sleeping bags, tents, blankets, tarps, and gas/propane vouchers.

That is the record. The question is whether issuing camping gear and propane, then acting shocked when Tumwater Creek fills with abandoned bags, canisters, and fire risk, is charity — or a subsidy for the mess the rest of the county lives with.

Hillgren recently posted a Facebook photo of a skunk sticker defacing a local business, captioned “someone is spreading good thoughts!”

The sticker carried a QR code to a transcript of Jake Seegers’ 2024 church speech. So the director of a county-funded agency is amplifying vandalism aimed at a candidate who wants NGOs that take public money to show their books.

Why the heat? Because Clallam County awards public homelessness funds to TAFY. In 2025, the Homelessness Task Force recommended, and Mike French approved, awards that included $60,000 in operational funding for TAFY and $24,000 for TAFY’s STAR program — six-month housing for men coming from treatment or jail/prison. Later 2026 budget coverage listed the same two TAFY requests at the same recommended amounts.

Clallam County has become a gravy train for NGOs. Money goes out with thin metrics and thinner accountability. Seegers is running on a platform that would demand to see the books of organizations that take county funds. That threatens people who prefer the current arrangement, and an incumbent board that rubber-stamps requests and then acts surprised when another deficit year arrives.

Seegers is not running against a cartoon skunk. He is not even running against Mike French. He is running against a system that treats taxpayer money as a revolving donation plate with no receipt required.

Tonight: Dungeness and Protection Island

Wednesday, September 23, 2:45–4:00 p.m.
Cape George Clubhouse
44 Marina Drive, Cape George (Port Townsend)

6th District congressional staff will meet the public to discuss the future of Dungeness Wildlife Refuge and Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge, and plans to transfer them to the Jamestown Corporation. Show up, ask questions, and say whether these refuges should remain public wildlife land or slide into a transfer the public did not vote on.

Questions: Lorna Smith, 425-879-9708.

Saturday: Seegers Sign-Wave at River Road

Saturday, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., River Road overpass. Bring a sign. Stand for accountability and transparency. Tell the county it is not too late to demand change.

StreamFest by the Hall, Catastrophe by the Creek

Forever StreamFest drew a crowd in Port Angeles. The Peninsula Daily News ran a photo of Clallam Conservation District Supervisor WendyRae Johnson in an orca costume in front of Field Hall. The event’s mission is to connect families with groups working to preserve, protect, and restore North Olympic Peninsula resources.

The irony writes itself. Roughly a half mile away, salmon-bearing Tumwater Creek is an open-air dump: needles, human waste, tents, mylar blankets, and garbage flushing toward Port Angeles Harbor from homeless encampments. Volunteers try to keep up. County, city, and Conservation District leadership ignore it.

You can dress as an orca for a festival. The creek still has to carry what the camps leave behind.

The Pool Is Not a Harm-Reduction Annex

After a push by Commissioner Mike French and the Shore Pool board, people picking up free paraphernalia at the county’s Harm Reduction Health Center are again allowed to shower at the pool beside children and families.

Not everyone is charmed. One Yelp review described being “appalled at the fully dressed person in the hot tub picking and cleaning their feet for over a half hour.”

There are showers at sites that exist to serve unsheltered people. A public pool is a pool. If you want it to stay a family facility, say so and sign the petition.

Sign the Petition!

The Health Officer Who Called the Cops on Criticism

County Health Officer Allison Berry attended the last Board of Health meeting remotely after filing a police report because she felt threatened by criticism — speech that is First Amendment protected. During the meeting, her online profile listed her pronouns as “she/they.”

Clallam and Jefferson counties should expect a health officer who can tell criticism from a crime. Instead, they have a doctor running the show who apparently cannot decide what gender she is, or how many of her there are — then calls the police when someone uses their First Amendment rights.

Aloha Smoothies Still Pays for Supporting Seegers

Aloha Smoothies and Sweets keeps getting vandalized for backing Jake Seegers. That is the political climate: support the wrong candidate, get targeted.

Reward the business instead. The weather is cooling, and the menu is still built for year-round traffic: real-fruit smoothies (dairy- and gluten-free options), milkshakes, shave ice, boba, BBQ chicken, mac salad, Spam musubi, loco moco, Umami Ramen. Taste the islands in Port Angeles. Support local.

Aloha Smoothies is at 412 S Lincoln St in Port Angeles.

Comment Section: Dale vs. the Climate Veto

CCWD’s comment threads keep doing the work elected bodies will not. Dale answered MRC Chair LaTrisha Suggs’ claim that climate change should be a deciding factor in stripping property rights and making housing even less affordable. Read the thread. The people paying for it are done being lectured by the people designing the shortage.

Shoona Riggs and the SAVE Act Two-Step

County Auditor Shoona Riggs told the Port Angeles Business Association she would follow the SAVE Act if it became law. Then, after pressure from county commissioners, she signed a letter to Sen. Patty Murray asking her to oppose it.

So the official position is: fight it in Washington, obey it if it wins, and hope nobody notices the pivot.

Timothy Weller’s Memory of a County That Built Things

Longtime local Timothy Weller took CCWD readers back to a Clallam County where small businesses were numerous, celebrated, and central to prosperity — before grants, NGOs, and special interests ate local politics. That is not nostalgia for its own sake. It is a baseline. Measure today’s “partners” against a Main Street that used to stand on customers, not contracts.

East Sequim Reality Check

If you shop the east end — QFC and the businesses around it — look at the broken-down RV surrounded by garbage and ask whether that tableau would have been tolerated four years ago.

Decline has a look. It is sitting in the parking-lot ecosystem.

Peninsula College Cuts the Useful Classes, Keeps the Political Ones

The Peninsula Daily News reported Peninsula College beginning a term already carved up by budget cuts. The college removed 44 arts and science courses: 13 in communication studies, 11 in natural sciences, eight each in humanities and social sciences, two in math, and two elective health courses.

It kept 12 Klallam and Makah language courses, then moved them off the instructional budget and onto the Peninsula College Foundation.

President Suzy Ames said the college is “committed to offering the Native American languages that are represented on the Peninsula,” and that “you can’t substitute a Makah class for an English class and offer the same education.”

Then stop pretending a foundation slush fund for language courses is a substitute for the science, math, and communications seats students actually need. If those language classes are a tribal priority, the tribes can fund them. A college in financial trouble should not gut transferable academics to protect a political exhibit.

Sabor Opened. The Dignitaries Stayed Home.

The Sequim Gazette celebrated the opening of Sabor, a new juice bar. Look at the ribbon-cutting photo. Where is the city council? The mayor? The county commissioners?

If the tribe had cut a ribbon on another expansion, they would be there. If Habitat for Humanity were soaking up more public money, they would be there. They nearly trampled each other when Peninsula Behavioral Health used $4 million in county funds to open its new luxury homeless housing complex in Port Angeles.

A small business that will actually generate taxes? Crickets. Give it time. Recompete will fund a subsidized competitor and call it economic development. Then the dignitaries will be in the photo.

Don’t Miss Seegers at Deer Park

Been to Deer Park Cinema lately? Jake Seegers has an ad running before the feature.

Awards season is coming. If they handed out Oscars for “Best Candidate to Demand the Receipts,” he’d be in the envelope.

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This is no longer a debate about dignity. It is a debate about where Clallam County is taking people. One camp wants to keep expanding a two-decade harm-reduction project: sterile kits, pipes, test strips, naloxone kiosks, and a “non-judgmental” front door that treats continued use as an acceptable long-term condition. The other camp wants people out of tents, out of active addiction, into detox and recovery, and back into ordinary life. Last month’s Board of Health meeting put that fight on the record.

The official story arrives first

At last month's county Board of Health meeting, the first public-comment block was almost entirely about the 2025 harm-reduction presentation on the agenda. Supporters arrived with the same script: the program is “evidence-based,” critics are spreading “misinformation,” and questioning Health Officer Allison Berry is an attack on science itself.

Bonnie Bless-Boenish, a League of Women Voters activist, opened (00:03:03). She said she had read the packet and learned the program “does much more than handing out supplies.” She asked the board to “develop a plan” to take the day’s presentation into the community—libraries, nonprofits, medical offices—so the official story would travel faster than dissent.

League of Women Voters activist Stephanie Sherman of Port Angeles followed (00:03:41). Public health, she said, is usually uncontroversial: vaccines, WIC, food inspections. Harm reduction is the exception. Locking people up “doesn’t really solve the problem.” The humane path is “life-saving support,” relationships, and encouragement toward treatment. Dr. Allison Berry and her staff, she said, were implementing “research-based programs.”

Joyce Stewart of Carlsborg—a Homelessness Task Force member who has harm-reduction supplies shipped to her home for distribution at Jesse Webster Park— drew a sharper line (00:07:13). The Harm Reduction Health Center is not a treatment provider. No paid full-time SUD professionals are on staff. Medicaid covers 28 days of inpatient care and then, she said, people return to the street because housing and wraparound care do not exist.

Stuart explained that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took 12 years to leave heroin “with all the resources in the world.” Expecting homeless addicts in Clallam County to “get it together” on a shorter clock, she argued, is fantasy. Sweeping camps and “pitting capital expenditures against people who are homeless” would only exhaust the workers who still talk to them.

Indivisible member and former Charter Review Commissioner Paul Pickett (00:18:32) told the board to keep the categories separate: disease control is not the same as ending addiction.

Democratic Socialist Bradley “Nemo” Callaway (00:21:06) thanked staff “in the face of all of the hate and vitriol and misinformation” and pivoted to Medicare for All and the Washington Health Trust.

Tracy Abell (00:23:14) said public safety is not “more cops”; it is neighbors not overdosing.

Brenda McEllis (sp?) of Sequim (00:25:09) went further: “We do not have room in this county to question science. This is not a MAGA county. It never will be.”

That last line is the tell. The defense is no longer “here are the local outcomes.” The argument has morphed into identitarianism. Critics are not neighbors with a different point of view. They are MAGA people who are not welcome to live in this county.

Seegers puts the citation on the table

Then Jake Seegers took his three minutes (11:23).

He did not ask the board to feel more compassion. He asked it to stop repeating a statistic it cannot defend locally. Staff and commissioners have said participants in syringe programs are “five times more likely to seek treatment” and “three times as likely to stop using drugs.”

Board of Health Chair, Commissioner Mike French, laughed openly at Seegers.

Seegers named the source: a 2000 Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment paper by Holly Hagan and colleagues about Seattle injection drug users.

Read the paper itself. Do not take the slogan.

The “five times more likely” line is narrow. It compared people who just started using Seattle’s needle exchange with people who never used it. The “treatment” those new users entered was methadone, not a 28-day detox bed and a clean break from drugs.

The “stopped using” language is narrower still. Researchers asked former exchange users whether they had cut down on injecting or stopped injecting. That is not the same as “they got sober.” Someone can stop using needles and still smoke fentanyl.

None of that is a study of Clallam County. It is not a study of handing out boxes of syringes, foil, pipes, and boofing kits without a one-for-one swap. It was written in 2000, before fentanyl took over the street supply. It cannot tell this county whether today’s program is moving people into recovery.

The local funnel does not look like recovery

Seegers then put the local numbers on the table:

• About 1,000 participants a month last year

• 12,000 annual visits to the Harm Reduction Health Center

• 27 inpatient treatment assessments

• 48 warm handoffs

“That’s a terrible conversion rate,” Seegers said. “We are not actually pushing people to the treatment and the help that they need at harm reduction. We’re giving them drug use supplies.”

Staff later confirmed the shape of that funnel.

• July alone: 486 encounters

• 11 participant-reported overdose reversals

• 38 connections with partner services on site

• 22 wound-care visits

Dr. Berry’s reply was that the known handoffs are only “a subset,” because people who get sober often disappear without circling back. That may be true. It is also unmeasured. A program that cannot count its own recoveries should not lecture the public about “the science.”

Berry’s other move was to divert attention.

When the local numbers look bad, the argument leaves town. Staff stop talking about Clallam’s 12,000 visits and 27 inpatient assessments and start talking about “the literature”: paper after paper, they say, shows syringe programs do not raise crime or drug use and do send people into treatment. That may be a debate worth having in a journal. It is not an answer to Clallam County.

Seegers’ point stands on its own. A 26-year-old Seattle methadone study cannot stand in for Clallam’s own ledger right now—how many encounters, how many kits, how many reversals, how much litter, and how few documented inpatient assessments. If the program works here, show it here.

Recovery versus a comfortable street

Teresa Miller of Sequim, 17 years sober, also spoke. (00:25:50 and again at 02:38:34). She did not deny suffering. She denied the strategy. “We can’t keep enabling people. We can’t keep coddling people.” She asked why the county outfits active users with kits while her son, after a DUI, lost his license with no comparable “wraparound.” Miller said, “Don’t create the problem just to create the solution.” In the later comment period, she put it more bluntly: “Why would anybody want to get sober in Clallam County?” Free supplies, test strips, wound care, food, a place to sleep—then surprise when the street still looks like the street.

Stacey (00:28:18) said the opposite from lived experience: inhalers and the center kept her alive; she is 10 months sober. That testimony matters. It does not answer Seegers’ ratio. Saving a life in crisis and building a system whose main output is supply volume are not the same policy.

Denise Lapio (00:15:59) asked a question the health department punted: the packet dates a “fentanyl explosion” around 2023. Who brought it, and how? Berry said that is “law enforcement space,” then noted Clallam was late to a national wave that displaced heroin. Fair enough as epidemiology. It is not an answer about local enforcement, trafficking, or whether a high-volume supply program is the right county response once the drug is already here.

The second hour: litter, curves, and definitions

In the second comment period, Seegers came back (02:30:12) with numbers the Board of Health does not like to claim. He dated the clock to 2018—the year Allison Berry became Clallam County’s health officer—and said overdose deaths here rose 538% to the local peak. Washington rose 207%. The nation rose 64%. Fentanyl hit everywhere. Clallam’s curve was worse. He described cleanup at Tumwater Creek: hundreds of syringes, unused bubble pipes, and Narcan. He estimated thousands of naloxone kits against a small number of reported reversals and called needs-based distribution a break from one-for-one exchange.

Staff later gave the standard literature claim: one-for-one may cut needle litter, but it still raises reuse and disease risk. That is a disease-control argument. It is not a recovery argument.

Berry, to her credit, said harm reduction is “one piece of the puzzle,” not the whole solution, and that housing, treatment, and interdiction all matter (00:30:33). She also said she does not control the budget. Both are convenient answers. The presentation still defined recovery as whatever the participant says it is—abstinence, “managed use,” or “positive health changes”—and stated that some people “may never stop using substances.” That is a moral framework wearing a lab coat. It tells a county it can keep people comfortable in addiction and call the result public health.

What the room actually revealed

The supporters in the room spoke the language of a political network that has treated harm reduction as settled doctrine: misinformation, MAGA, Medicare for All, “questioning science.” Whether each speaker carries a membership card to the Democratic Socialists, the League of Women Voters, or Indivisible matters less than the alignment. The same talking points show up whenever the program is threatened. The other side—Seegers, Miller, Lapio, and residents who clean the encampments—keeps asking for the thing the presentation never quite produces: how many people left the street, quit shooting up, and stayed off drugs.

That is the fracture. One Clallam County wants a permanent low-barrier station for active use, justified by 26-year-old studies and national talking points, with Health Officer Berry as the interpreter of which studies count and which to ignore. The other Clallam County wants the hard work of detox, recovery, housing with rules, and an end to the idea that dignity is a clean pipe and a creekside tent. Last month’s meeting did not resolve it. It made the choice impossible to miss.

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The Marine Resources Committee just told Commissioner Mark Ozias how to write Clallam County’s next 20 years: replace “should” with “shall,” treat climate forecasts as binding, and put a biologist on every Critical Areas and shoreline file. Chair LaTrisha Suggs signed the letter. Commissioners sell housing affordability while this blueprint makes property parcels, wells, and bulkheads cost more in consutlants and time — and leaves trust land, including the Tribe’s 122-acre golf course, off the same rulebook.

On September 17, 2026, the Clallam County Marine Resources Committee sent Commissioner Mark Ozias Recommended policy improvements for the Comprehensive Plan Update to inform updates to Critical Areas Code and Shoreline Master Program. The letter is not a mild suggestion. The intent is to hard-wire the 2026 Comp Plan so later codes have no room to dodge.

What the letter actually says

Suggs writes that the most important Comp Plan language is the recognition that climate change is creating “increasing risks to ecosystems, critical areas, salmon and shellfish habitat, water quality, and water availability,” including “reduced snowpack, drought, increased flooding, rising temperatures, sea-level rise, and saltwater intrusion.”

That language, the MRC says, “should provide a strong foundation for updating the Critical Areas Code.”

Then come the demands:

The Code should “Address cumulative impacts to wetlands, streams, riparian areas, marine shorelines, floodplains, and other critical areas—not just the impacts of an individual development proposal.” It should “Protect and maintain connected habitat corridors” from upland through marine environments. It should “Incorporate current climate information and best available science into critical-area designations, buffers, mitigation, and long-term management.”

And it should “Require consideration of both immediate and long-term impacts, including how development may affect ecological functions under future climate conditions.”

The MRC also wants the County to “use qualified biological expertise during implementation” and to put in the Critical Areas Code a requirement that “County planners coordinate with the County biologist or other qualified biological staff during permitting and development review when critical areas, habitat, or other environmental resources may be affected.”

For the Shoreline Master Program, the letter wants the SMP to “Address shoreline development in the context of cumulative impacts, rather than evaluating each proposal in isolation,” and to “Incorporate projected sea-level rise, coastal flooding, erosion, saltwater intrusion, and changing streamflows into shoreline planning and development standards.”

Six asks that turn guidance into code

The policy punch list is even plainer:

A. Use clear, enforceable policy language.

“Where protection is intended, the Plan should use direct language such as ‘shall’ rather than vague terms such as ‘should,’ ‘where feasible,’ or ‘where possible.’ The Plan should firmly establish no net loss of ecological functions as a minimum standard and identify opportunities for long-term ecological improvement.”

B. Add an explicit cumulative-impact policy covering development, infrastructure, shoreline modification, water withdrawals, habitat loss, and climate change “across watersheds and over time.”

C. Require biological coordination during permitting with the County biologist whenever critical areas, habitat, or water resources “may be affected.”

D. Strengthen water-resource planning and raise water supply from “moderate-to-high” to “high” climate risk. Distinguish existing water-system and water-right capacity from long-term surface and groundwater availability, aquifer recharge, future demand, instream needs, and “Climate-related changes in the timing and availability of water.”

E. Make the Climate Vulnerability Assessment “an implementation tool—not simply background information.”

F. Push hazards disclosure so real estate agents tell shoreline owners about sea-level rise and storm surge.

A footnote: “The MRC recommends that the County also recognize the changing role of the Olympic Mountains’ glaciers and perennial snowfields in the regional water cycle.” A 2022 JGR Earth Surface study is attached: Olympic glaciers lost about 45 percent of their area between 1980 and 2015 and “will largely disappear by 2070.”

The closer: “Overall, the MRC supports the direction of the draft 2026 Plan because its policies better incorporate the impacts of climate change. Our principal recommendation is that the Plan provide stronger, more specific direction so that the subsequent Critical Areas Code and SMP updates result in consistent, science-based protection of marine and freshwater resources.”

Signed, LaTrisha Suggs, Chair. Cc: DCD Director Bruce Emery.

Affordability speeches, consultant invoices

A Comp Plan is the 20-year constitution of county land use. “Should” is guidance. “Shall,” “no net loss,” mandatory climate projections, countywide cumulative-impact review, and a biologist on every file that “may” touch habitat are instructions to planners and hearing examiners.

That is not free housing policy. It is staff time, third-party biologists, hydrology memos, climate addenda, mitigation plans, and appeal insurance. Every extra sign-off is months and thousands of dollars on a house, a shop, a well, or a shoreline repair. County commissioners run the campaigns on “housing affordability,” but this letter is how you price the next generation out of the lot they already own.

Who is exempt

Land held in federal trust is not Clallam County’s Critical Areas Code and not the Shoreline Master Program in the same way your tax parcel is. Sovereign land does not sit in the same permit line. The letter never says that. It never has to. The two-tier system is already the law.

The Jamestown Tribe bought the 122-acre Dungeness Golf Course in 2007, renamed it Cedars at Dungeness, and placed the course in trust in 2012. It is a water-intensive 18-hole operation in the same Dungeness basin where private wells get mitigation fees, metering lectures, and drought sermons.

The MRC letter raises water supply to “high” climate risk and wants the County to plan around glaciers, seasonal availability, and instream needs. It does not mention the golf course. It does not ask whether a 122-acre irrigated landscape should face the same “shall” standard as a family well.

That is not science. That is favortism.

How the land moves

Make private property expensive to use. Layer “shall,” no-net-loss, future-climate findings, and paid experts onto every permit. People leave, downsize, or sell. A well-capitalized buyer with federal acquisition dollars and a published Land Consolidation Area can purchase fee land and petition to convert it to trust. Once it is trust land, the new owner does not live under the same county codes imposed on the seller. That is an economic advantage over every other resident and enterprise that still pays property tax and still needs a county permit.

The Jamestown Tribe has already mapped a Land Consolidation Area across portions of Clallam and Jefferson — described in its own planning documents as spanning tens of miles and hundreds of square miles, with a Service Area matching those boundaries, from the Port Angeles / Morse Creek side of the map toward Hood Canal and Brinnon. Comp Plan language does not have to say “land back.” It only has to make private parcels harder to keep and easier to acquire.

The 3 Crabs precedent they already set

This is the same MRC that previously urged commissioners to consider “retreat or removal” of roads and homes along Three Crabs Road. That letter blamed climate and sea-level rise. It did not mention that the County and the Tribe removed an armored dike that the project’s own materials described as the barrier separating the estuary from the neighborhood.

Residents documented worse flooding after that restoration. The MRC’s answer was not to restore the protection. It was to move the people.

Who is writing this

Suggs chairs the MRC. She is a Jamestown S’Klallam tribal member, a Port Angeles councilmember, and a public supporter of inserting U.N.-style Free, Prior and Informed Consent into the city’s 20-year plan.

The Jamestown Tribe funded more than half of Ozias’s last campaign.

Ann Soule serves on the MRC and is a prominent Clallam County League of Women Voters activist.

The state League’s land acknowledgment states that Washington “is on the homelands of Native peoples who have lived here from time immemorial,” pledges to “amplify the voices of Indigenous people,” “partner with tribes,” and “respect the sovereignty of tribes and their rights to self-determination.”

The creeks they are not “shall-ing”

Tumwater and Peabody are salmon-bearing streams that have already undergone expensive restoration. They are now choked with garbage, needles, Mylar blankets, tents, human waste, and supplies from the County’s harm-reduction health center.

Encampments on city and county land sit in the same salmon streams the MRC wants fenced with “shall,” buffers, and paid biologists — for taxpayers, not for the tents. The letter has no comparable emergency for those streams. The enforcement energy runs toward shoreline owners, water rights, and future climate maps — not toward the open-air landfills on restored habitat a stone’s throw from the courthouse.

Tonight

Clallam Marine Resources Committee
Monday, September 21, 2026
5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Hybrid: Board of County Commissioners Meeting Room, Clallam County Courthouse (after-hours entrance on 4th Street, left of the main doors). Click here for details.
Zoom Meeting ID: 837 6963 9254

Public comment is allowed.

Tell them “shall” is a cost.
Tell them a biologist on every file is not affordable housing.
Tell them trust land and a 122-acre irrigated golf course are the exemption that makes the rest of the letter a two-tier code.
Tell them 3 Crabs residents were told to retreat after a dike came out.
Tell them Tumwater and Peabody are still full of tents.

If you cannot be there, send it in writing to the county commissioners. All three can be reached by emailing the Clerk of the Board at loni.gores@clallamcountywa.gov. Include the Director of the Department of Community Development Bruce.Emery@clallamcountywa.gov.

The Plan sets the course for twenty years. The verbs decide who can still afford to stay.

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Last week in Excelsior, Minnesota, County Commissioner Candidate Jake Seegers found a waterfront town that looks a lot like Port Angeles—except the storefronts were full, the trails were spotless, and no one was camping, dealing, or using drugs in public. The difference wasn’t luck or isolation. It was rules that get enforced, services that aren’t concentrated in one small city, and residents who still expect parks to be parks. If Excelsior can sit 20 miles from Minneapolis and refuse to surrender its downtown, Sundays With Seegers argues Port Angeles can stop treating outdoor living and open addiction as the only compassionate option.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my youngest brother’s wedding in Minnesota.

My entire family made it—my parents, my sister, my six brothers, their spouses, and my nephews and niece. For a few days, we all stayed together in an old guest house in downtown Excelsior, Minnesota.

It was a wonderful week.

But as I walked, ran, ate, and shopped my way around Excelsior, I couldn’t stop thinking about home. In many ways, Excelsior reminded me of Port Angeles.

Two Waterfront Towns

Excelsior sits on the shore of Lake Minnetonka, less than half an hour from Minneapolis.

It is small—only about one square mile with roughly 2,300 residents—but its historic downtown serves as a commercial and recreational hub for the surrounding area. Its main commercial corridor is appropriately named Water Street.

Walk down Water Street toward the lake, and you find many of the same ingredients that should make Port Angeles thrive.

A boutique grocery store and small-business shopping center welcome shoppers downtown.

This reminded me of Country Aire and Armory Square.

There are local restaurants.

And coffee shops.

A brewery.

A pizza shop.

A little shop to grab charcuterie.

Specialty apparel stores.

Art galleries.

A toy and candy shop.

A bookstore.

A bike shop

The Lake Minnetonka Regional Trail, which runs directly through downtown, along the lake, through forests and across scenic bridges.

And, when you reach the waterfront, ice cream and kayak rentals.

Then there is The Commons—a beautiful waterfront park with a swimming beach, playground, a baseball field, picnic areas, and gathering spaces.

Excelsior is beautiful. It is walkable. It is surrounded by incredible nature. It attracts visitors who want to experience the waterfront and spend money at local businesses.

Sound familiar?

But there were also differences.

Empty storefronts - I didn’t see them.

Excelsior’s main commercial corridor appeared packed with attractive, thriving local businesses.

But that wasn’t the biggest difference.

Where were the encampments and open substance abuse?

What struck me most was what I didn’t see.

I didn’t see open drug use.
I didn’t see encampments.
I didn’t see people screaming obscenities at pedestrians.
I didn’t see piles of garbage accumulating along the waterfront.
I didn’t see syringes, foil, or human waste.
I didn’t see stolen shopping carts piled high with locally distributed freebies.
I didn’t see people openly dealing drugs.

Not once did I see a business owner who would need to remove a sleeping bag, trash, or an intoxicated individual from the doorstep of their storefront.

The early mornings were calm, peaceful, perfect.

For several mornings, I ran along the regional trail before sunrise. I would stop periodically in the dark for a set of burpees.

And I realized something that shouldn’t have been remarkable:

I wasn’t worried about what I might put my hands in.

The trail was spotless. That shouldn’t be shocking. But coming from Clallam County, it was.

So I started asking people a simple question:

Where is the homelessness and open drug use?

The answer I repeatedly received was essentially:

“That’s a Minneapolis problem. Not here.”

That made me even more curious. Excelsior isn’t some isolated rural town hundreds of miles from an urban center. Downtown Minneapolis is only 20 miles away.

So how does a beautiful waterfront community sitting on the doorstep of a major metropolitan area avoid many of the problems we have increasingly accepted as inevitable in Port Angeles?

Maybe Public Policy Matters

Excelsior has rules governing public spaces — rules that are enforced.

Excelsior’s city code generally prohibits drinking alcohol in its parks without a permit. Alcohol consumption on public sidewalks, streets, and parking lots is also prohibited without a permit.

Its public parks are closed between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. The ordinance specifically prohibits remaining in a park—or remaining in a vehicle on public park grounds—during those hours, with limited exceptions.

The city also prohibits overnight parking on Water Street from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m.

In other words, Excelsior has established an expectation that public spaces remain public spaces.

Several residents told me that outdoor camping simply isn’t tolerated. One woman put it this way:

“The police would have a dozen calls within the hour and would take care of it.”

That’s anecdotal, not a statistical study. But it speaks to something government policy can never completely manufacture:

Community expectations.

Residents expect their parks to remain parks.

Businesses expect sidewalks to remain sidewalks.

Families expect trails to remain trails.

And when something threatens those expectations, residents expect government to respond.

Then I Noticed Something Else

Another major difference existed between Excelsior and Port Angeles.

The service infrastructure.

I started looking.

Where was Excelsior’s equivalent of the Harm Reduction Health Center?
Where was its syringe exchange?
Where was its methadone clinic?
Where was its dedicated opioid treatment center?
Where was its crisis stabilization facility?
Where was the large behavioral-health infrastructure?
Where were the homelessness outreach programs?

I couldn’t find comparable facilities located in Excelsior.

That doesn’t mean Excelsior residents are denied treatment.

Far from it.

Excelsior is in Hennepin County, which has an extensive behavioral-health, addiction-treatment, and harm-reduction system. Residents have access to those services throughout the metropolitan area.

But much of the high-intensity infrastructure is located elsewhere—particularly Minneapolis and other larger population centers.

That’s very different from Port Angeles.

Here, an enormous amount of behavioral-health, homelessness, and addiction infrastructure is concentrated in one relatively small city.

We have methadone treatment.
Medication-assisted treatment.
Syringe and drug use supply distribution.
Homeless outreach.
Multi-million dollar behavioral-health enterprises.
Permanent supportive housing.
An inpatient treatment center with a Department of Corrections contract.
And millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars flowing through the system.

Some of these services undoubtedly help people.

But when a small community concentrates an extraordinary number of services for homelessness and active addiction while simultaneously tolerating outdoor living, open drug use, and the degradation of public spaces, it inadvertently creates a destination for the very problems it is trying to solve.

Compassion Without Accountability Isn’t Working

For years we have been told that enforcing laws against public camping is cruel. That removing encampments is criminalizing homelessness. That requiring accountability is stigmatizing addiction. That distributing more supplies for drug use is harm reduction. That permanent housing must come before expectations of sobriety or self-sufficiency.

Meanwhile, residents have watched public spaces deteriorate, and businesses have borne the consequences.

Taxpayers have spent more. And people struggling with addiction continue dying.

At some point, compassion has to be measured by results.

Are people graduating from addiction into recovery?
Are they moving from homelessness into self-sufficiency?
Are our public spaces getting safer?
Is our environment more protected?

If not, spending more money doing the same things isn’t a solution.

It’s a failure to change course.

Washington Cities Are Beginning to Change Course

Clallam County wouldn’t be alone if it chose to pivot.

Communities elsewhere in Washington are reconsidering policies that effectively surrendered public spaces to outdoor living.

In July, the Tukwila City Council voted to prohibit camping on city-owned property, including parks, sidewalks, rights-of-way, and environmentally sensitive areas. The ordinance gives police an enforcement mechanism, while city officials have described enforcement as a last resort.

Spokane has gone further.

In 2025, Spokane adopted a citywide ban on unauthorized camping as part of a broader strategy that combines engagement with enforcement. The city’s stated approach is to connect people to services first while maintaining a clear enforcement mechanism when people refuse to comply.

And Renton is considering a similar direction.

As of this writing, Renton’s proposed ordinance would prohibit camping and unauthorized storage of property on city property and establish stronger trespass provisions. The City Council considered the proposal on September 14 but sent it back to committee for further deliberation.

A community can offer compassion without surrendering its public spaces.

Treatment and accountability are not opposites.
Shelter and enforcement are not opposites.
Compassion and expectations are not opposites.

We can help someone while still telling them that living indefinitely in a park, using fentanyl on a sidewalk, or destroying a critical area isn’t acceptable.

Could Excelsior’s Story Be Ours?

I don’t pretend that Excelsior and Port Angeles are identical.

Excelsior is much smaller. It sits within a wealthy metropolitan region. Port Angeles is the governmental, medical, and commercial center of a huge rural county. We face geographic, economic, and social challenges that Excelsior doesn’t.

But dismissing the comparison because the communities aren’t identical would miss the point.

Excelsior reminded me what a waterfront town can feel like.

Safe.
Clean.
Active.
Beautiful.
Full of families.
Full of locally owned businesses.
Full of people enjoying public spaces for their intended purpose.

Port Angeles has every ingredient necessary to be that kind of community. Arguably, we have even more.

The Olympic Mountains rise behind us.
The Strait stretches out in front of us.
Olympic National Park brings the world to our doorstep.

We have incredible entrepreneurs, tradespeople, restaurant owners, artists, and small-business owners willing to risk their own money, time, and livelihoods to build something here.

What they need from government isn’t another strategic plan. They need a partner.

They need a local government that protects their investment by keeping public spaces safe and clean, removing unnecessary barriers to growth, and creating confidence that taking a risk in Clallam County is worth it.

Government should partner in their success—not stand in their way.

A Better Path

We can start with eight changes:

1. End outdoor living on public land by consistently enforcing existing laws.

2. Prioritize local housing resources for individuals currently residing in Clallam County.

3. Strengthen shelter policies so services are supportive, accountable, and attractive for those leaving outdoor living and pursuing recovery.

4. Expand transitional housing instead of relying primarily on costly permanent supportive housing that has run over $500,000/unit.

5. Reduce the cash flow that fuels addiction through clear anti-panhandling signage and public education.

6. Redirect funding from drug-use supplies to treatment programs with measurable outcomes. Re-establish local detox services.

7. Push back on laws that keep Law Enforcement from doing their job. Expand OPNET and programs like the community paramedics of Operation Shielding Hope.

8. Measure success by outcomes, not inputs—tracking how many individuals move from addiction to sobriety and from homelessness to self-sufficiency.

The choice should be simple: Shelter, treatment, and work training—or move along.

For those willing to participate, we should offer transitional housing with both support and accountability. To receive shelter, participants should commit to treatment, demonstrate progress toward sobriety, and engage in work training.

Living outside and using drugs in public spaces can no longer be treated as an acceptable option.

These aren’t radical ideas.
They are expectations most communities once considered normal.

There Is Always a Solution

Walking through Excelsior reminded me of something I believe deeply: There is always a solution.

Government doesn’t have to solve every human problem.

But it does have a responsibility to provide essential services, protect public spaces, enforce reasonable laws, and create an environment where communities and individuals can succeed.

• We don’t have to choose between helping people struggling with addiction and protecting families.

• We don’t have to choose between shelter and accountability.

• We don’t have to choose between compassion and public safety.

• And we certainly don’t have to accept the degradation of our parks, trails, waterways, and business districts as an inevitable consequence of homelessness.

Excelsior isn’t perfect. Neither will Port Angeles ever be. But for a few days in Minnesota, I was reminded of what a thriving waterfront community looks and feels like.

Clean public spaces. Thriving small businesses. Families enjoying parks. Tourists walking downtown. Residents who expect their community to remain safe and beautiful.

We already have the mountains.
We already have the waterfront.
We already have the entrepreneurs.
We already have the people.

Now we need the courage to change the policies that aren’t working.

Excelsior’s story can be our story.

This article was approved by Jake Seegers for Commissioner, 131 East First Street, Port Angeles, WA, 98362.

Indivisible and the League of Women Voters are grading commissioner candidates by vocabulary. Meanwhile taxpayers are being asked to fund $842,105 “homes,” a hospital under another audit warning, and a youth center with no price tag from a CEO who already out-earns the governor. Here’s the week’s receipts on Social Media Saturday.

“Complex” Is the Tell

With backing from the League of Women Voters, Indivisible has been posting side-by-side stances of County Commissioner candidates Mike French and Jake Seegers.

After reading their climate positions, Janine Blaeloch took issue with Seegers calling climate change a “complex issue.” She warned that when a politician says something is a “complex issue,” it’s usually a tell.

Fair enough. Let’s apply the same test to the incumbent.

French has used that language more than once.

• In a written reply to a constituent about public safety, homelessness, and related policy, he closed by saying he wanted to “move us toward solutions on these complex issues.”

• At a Port Angeles Business Association meeting, after a question about camping and downtown conditions, he answered, “It’s a complex issue,” then turned to legislative limits, jurisdiction, resources, and new revenue.

• The electmikefrench.com Issues page says the issues “are complex and interconnected.”

If Indivisible wants to start policing candidate language, they may be developing a complex of their own.

Clallamity Jen Solves a Mystery

Clallamity Jen started with a scathing Facebook post about a commissioner candidate and followed the trail until it stopped looking like grassroots outrage and started looking like an inside job.

Read “Cozy Connections & The Anatomy of an Inside Job” to find out which county employee the trail leads to. This is what Jake Seegers is up against: a county culture so used to protecting itself that it treats a candidate who might do things differently as a threat. The people who collect the salaries do not like being questioned by the people who actually pay them.

The Hospital Gets Another Warning

Anthony Tomashefsky at the Olympic Herald reports that the Washington State Auditor has again warned of financial risks at Olympic Medical Center. Declining condition, liquidity pressure, and the same pattern of “we’ll fix it later” that never quite arrives. Subscribe and read the article and audit here. Independent coverage of the county’s largest public employer should not be optional reading.

$842,105 for an Apartment in Sequim

When Mike French says he is bringing affordable housing to Sequim, this is what he means: bulldoze 17 apartment units, build 36, spend $16 million—mostly taxpayer money—and call it progress. Net gain: 19 units. Average cost: $842,105 per apartment. Permanent supportive housing for the homeless.

That number is not theoretical. Right now in Sequim, about $842,000 buys a comfortable, above-median single-family house: typically 3–5 bedrooms, 2,100–3,200 square feet, often single-level living, 3–4 baths, half an acre to an acre, frequently with mountain or water views.

Median sold prices in Sequim sit roughly in the $500k–$550k range. Zillow’s typical home value is around $563,000. So $842k is a nicer custom or well-updated house—not a studio with a case manager down the hall.

Nineteen net units. Sixteen million dollars. One house’s worth of public money, per door. Ridiculous is the polite word.

Read the article by Radio Pacific here.

Has Sequim Changed in the Past Four Years?

Dear League of Women Voters: Don’t Disenfranchise Me

Drop Box, Still “Too Late”

Mary Lewis posted the letter. Clallam County Auditor Shoona Riggs: ballot received too late for the April 2026 special and the August primary—either postmarked after Election Day or dropped after 8 p.m.

Lewis’s reply: she put it in the official box in the old JCPenney lot in Sequim well before the 8 p.m. cutoff. “Someone is messing up and it’s not me.”

The same letter admits the system is sloppy. USPS may haul ballots to a regional center outside the county before they are postmarked, so the stamp can land days after you mailed it. The Auditor’s fix is: use a drop box, or mail a week early, or beg a clerk to hand-stamp it.

That only works if a ballot in an official box before 8 p.m. is actually logged that way. Lewis says hers was. The county says it wasn’t counted. Voters are being told the law is simple and the failure is theirs. The letter on the kitchen table says the opposite.

Patrick Murphy: Port Angeles Is Not Safer

District Court judge candidate Patrick Murphy posted the numbers and then the view from the prosecutor’s table. Crimebycity.com, using FBI data through 2024, gives Port Angeles a safety score of 19/100. Total crime above the national average. Ranked 2,417 of 2,974 nationally. 19th percentile for safety—higher crime than 81% of U.S. cities. Rape at 2.6 times the national average. Property crime listed below the state average; murder and violent crime above it.

Murphy’s firsthand point matters more than the ranking fight: as a deputy prosecuting attorney, he says theft, trespass, and controlled-substance possession have skyrocketed, and violent crime is still trending up. Citizens of Clallam County are not safer than they were four years ago. Accountability is the campaign, not a slogan.

Closed for Thee, Open for Who?

A new video from Badger Fishing, posted yesterday, makes you wonder who “saving the salmon” is actually for.

Shot on the Quilcene River, it shows a tribal fishery in progress. The caption is blunt: this river was supposed to be closed for recreational and treaty fisheries.

Ballots That “Shouldn’t Have Been Late”

A couple received letters from the Clallam County Auditor: their April 2026 special-election ballot and 2026 primary ballots arrived late and were not counted. They say they fill out ballots within days of receiving them and drop them in official boxes or USPS immediately.

The Auditor’s office told them USPS sends ballots to Tacoma to be postmarked before they return to Clallam. County rules say a ballot counts if it is postmarked by Election Day 8 p.m. or in an official drop box. That is not what happened for them. A supervisor suggested signing up for the tracker at vote.wa.gov—text when the ballot is received; if no text within two days of dropping it, call.

They were also told late ballots in the August election jumped from a “normal” 60 to about 200. They had never had a late ballot before. Every vote is supposed to count. Check registration and turn on the tracker: vote.wa.gov. Then vote like the county has to prove that they received it.

PBH’s Next Feel-Good Project Has No Price

Peninsula Behavioral Health’s last big project—housing billed as help for the homeless and addicted—ran more than $12 million. Now comes a Youth and Family Services Center: 22 clinical offices, four group rooms, play, sensory, and art therapy, a family room, gathering space, outdoor rec. The pitch is healing and hope. The invoice is missing.

Remind yourself who is selling it. PBH CEO Wendy Sisk’s reported compensation has been in the high $200,000s—more than the governor of Washington. The last project was expensive. This one will be too. Ask what it costs before the ribbon-cutting language hardens into another taxpayer obligation.

Welcome to Port Angeles

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District 3 voted no. The rest of the county voted yes. That is how Mike French became commissioner, and that is how he is trying to keep the job. The League of Women Voters helped write the rules, Norma Turner helped bankroll the candidate, and the West End is still waiting for its own vote to count.

In July 2025, this site asked a simple question: Who speaks for the West End? The answer, a year later, is still not District 3.

A Charter Review survey that year found 74 percent of 1,457 respondents wanted to return to district-only voting for county commissioners. That would have meant the people who live in a district nominate and elect the person who represents them — the system Clallam used before a 2020 charter amendment.

Instead, the current hybrid lets District 3 pick two finalists in August, then hands the November decision to Sequim and the east side of Port Angeles.

The Commission asked the public. Then it sat on the results for nine days and released them hours before a meeting. That delay made it nearly impossible to move an amendment through the required steps in time for the November ballot. A majority-Democrat Charter Review Commission, 12 of 15 members endorsed by the Clallam County Democrats, never put restoration of district-only voting in front of voters. So why did they even ask the public to take the survey? They asked the public, then ran the year as if the answers didn’t matter.

Last year’s Commission was chaired by Susan Fisch, then secretary of the League of Women Voters of Clallam County. She received the most votes of any Charter Review commissioner and ran the process. Fisch ran the calendar like a private club. Items she opposed never got a meeting and objections to that practice became bylaw fights.

The League has had a grip on Charter Review for years. Last year was not an exception. It was the tradition.

The 2022 race was the proof of concept

In the August 2022 primary, only District 3 voted. Incumbent Bill Peach beat Mike French 53.34 percent to 46.44 percent.

In the general, the whole county voted. French won 51.52 percent to 48.32 percent.

If only District 3 had voted in November, Peach still would have won: 53.8 percent to 46.2 percent, even after a late DUI charge against Peach. District 3 preferred Peach in the primary and preferred Peach in the general. Voters in Districts 1 and 2 flipped the seat. That is not a theory. That is the certified count.

The amendment that made that possible was proposed by Norma Turner, former president of the League of Women Voters of Clallam County and a 50-year member.

It passed countywide 54.21 percent to 45.79 percent. Turner’s amendment gave Mike French his commissioner seat.

She did not stop at rewriting the rules. PDC records show Turner gave French $1,000 last month.

That is not the “nonpartisan” League writing a check. It is the person most identified with the local League writing the check after rewriting the map.

August 2026: District 3 spoke again

This August, District 3 voters chose Jake Seegers over French, 3,675 to 3,288 — 52.66 percent to 47.11 percent. Both names advance because the general is countywide. The district that has to live with the commissioner picked Seegers. The east end gets the last word. Again.

Imagine Washington’s 6th Congressional District narrowed the field to two people — say Emily Randall (D) and a local independent — and then the entire country picked the winner because “Congress votes on things that affect all Americans.” No one in this county would call that local control. County commissioners vote on roads, fees, health policy, and land use that hit Forks and Clallam Bay differently than they hit Sequim. The principle is the same. The people who live with the office should determine the election.

District 3 is the most rural, the poorest, and the most dependent on timber, trades, and distance. French’s record doesn't reflect that district. As chair of the Board of Health, he backs harm-reduction ideology. He has supported tighter rural burning rules through ORCAA. He supported the Cultural Access Tax, which commissioners could impose without a public vote. Four years ago, at a League forum against Peach, he asked why the county wasn't permanently funding the Conservation District. That idea later showed up as a parcel fee on property.

Why keep commissioners partisan — and only commissioners?

The local League has stated that all county elected officials should be nonpartisan except the commissioners. Not the auditor. Not the assessor. Not the sheriff. Not the prosecutor. Only the three people who set policy and pass budgets keep party labels.

That is not a small carve-out. Keep the party label on the commissioner and a local campaign becomes tied to the White House. The League never has to say this aloud, because it has Indivisible to do that.

The League’s own site still recites that it does not endorse candidates or parties. Its calendar and its company tell another story. It promotes and appears with Indivisible Sequim and Indivisible Port Angeles — groups that endorse candidates and publish partisan guides. League members have helped staff Conservation District elections in a race Indivisible had already picked a side in. The League has paid for newspaper ads attacking a sitting president.

Tomorrow the LWV Civics Education Committee is slated to staff a table and give a voting presentation at the Election Protection Fair — an RSVP-only Indivisible event at St. Luke’s in Sequim.

The same network put out an invitation with a skunk at the bottom, the image that has become shorthand for anti-Seegers messaging. That is not a League endorsement on letterhead. It is a platform, a table, and a brand loaned to a group that does the endorsing. Nonpartisan is the title. Indivisible is the hands.

National League materials are not written in Clallam County. They are written in the orbit of D.C.: democracy “under siege,” a DEI lens on every process, immigration, abortion access, climate, guns. Local chapters are mandated to follow. Clallam’s LWV chapter talks like a civic club but votes like a progressive ideological sect. Calling that nonpartisan does not make it so. It just keeps access to the forums, the ballots, and the Charter Review gavel.

Respect the neighbors

Four years ago District 3 rejected French when only District 3 voted, and it still preferred Peach when you isolate the general-election precincts. This August it chose Seegers. The League’s most prominent local figure helped change the rules so the east end could overrule the west. She helped fund the man who benefited. The Commission she and her network have shaped refused to let the public vote on putting the old rule back — after asking the public and getting a 74 percent answer.

Forks, Clallam Bay, Joyce, Beaver, Neah Bay, and La Push are not suburbs of Sequim. They are a third of the county with a different economy and a different vote. Countywide general elections for a “district” seat are how you keep that vote from mattering.

District 3 has said who it wants. The honest thing is to let that stand.

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At last month’s Calico Cat Club forum, resident Karen Parker asked what non-tribal taxpayers gain when public money subsidizes jobs and business growth for sovereign nations that don’t carry the same tax load—and how that stacks against lost local revenue. Mike French called the benefit “easy and obvious”: Jamestown Healthcare filled the hole Virginia Mason left, then added a healing center and a 16-bed psychiatric facility. Gaps filled, trust built, a rising tide. That’s one way to tell things, but it isn’t the whole story.

The clinic campus started with the public hospital

The Fifth Avenue clinic French treats as proof of rescue did not appear from nowhere. In 2007, Olympic Medical Center—the taxpayer-owned hospital district—announced the new Jamestown medical center would sit on 2.5 acres donated by OMC. The public hospital gave up the land. The tribe built a clinic open to the general public and grew it into a regional operation.

French is not wrong that access improved. He is incomplete when he stops there. The county’s largest employer helped plant a competitor that is now the county’s second-largest employer, while OMC spent the following years fighting for cash.

This is no longer a small tribal clinic

Jamestown’s own reports treat the clinics as enterprises, not a last-resort charity shop. The tribe has said for years that the Family Health and Dental clinics run on a business model: income has to cover costs.

By the 2024 report, that business was regional—about 18,000 Family Health Clinic patients, more than 65,000 visits, 131 employees, plus dental volume and more than 290 Healing Clinic patients, most of them Clallam residents. Those are the same people still underwriting OMC.

The payment rules are not the same. Jamestown has publicized Medicaid encounter rates in the mid-$600s and participates in the federal 340B drug program.

In the 2024 Report to Tribal Citizens, as reported by Clallam County Watchdog, the tribe listed $85.9 million in total revenue. A commenter itemizing that same report’s revenue table put “Charges for Services/340B” at $47.2 million—the largest line on that list. The published description does not split that amount among primary care, MAT, dental, and 340B pharmacy. Even without that breakout, health billing and 340B sit at the center of the year the tribe put on paper.

Same community. Different rulebook.

Salish Seasons: public dollars, tribal ribbon

French’s ribbon-cutting line skips the invoice. Jamestown Salish Seasons, the 16-bed psychiatric facility next to the Healing Clinic, is a needed service. It is also a publicly financed building the tribe will own and run.

Reported cost: about $31.25 million. State capital budgets put $13 million, then $15 million, toward the project—$28 million before other grants. Jamestown’s 2023 citizen report said the quiet part: the tribe was “in a unique position to manage the facility but is not funding it with Tribal dollars.”

A separate Commerce behavioral-health grant of about $3.2 million sits beside those appropriations. If it landed on the same project, the taxpayer contribution nearly equals the full construction cost.

The original plan was that the tribe would own the site and OMC would operate the unit. After the hospital’s finances collapsed, Jamestown took the operating role too.

French presents that as the tribe filling a gap. It is also a public hospital too weak to run a service it was supposed to run, while a state-built facility opened under a different set of reimbursement rules.

The hospital is not a side note

OMC remains the county’s largest employer. It has posted years of operating losses, watched reserves collapse, drawn auditor “going concern” warnings, and lost providers.

Jamestown did not single-handedly break a rural hospital. Medicare mix, labor, and management all matter. What French’s answer omits is the competitive reality that Karen Parker asked him to weigh: a large non-tribal patient base, encounter-rate Medicaid, 340B, grants, tax-exempt status, and a shared labor pool—on land the public hospital once donated.

“Build trust” is not an accounting entry

French said the commissioners’ most important job is to build trust with the tribes and let them fill gaps. Trust is a real governing task. It is not an answer to the tax question.

Jamestown already employs at scale, runs clinics as businesses, takes state capital money, and bids against local firms. Recompete has been used to buy the tribe a hydroseeder and excavator for a new commercial line. Contractors who paid for their own equipment get to watch “workforce” funds capitalize a competitor that does not sit on the same tax footing.

Parker asked about subsidy and lost revenue. French answered with a clinic tour.

The clinics are real. The access is real. So are the donated acres, the millions in taxpayer-funded state grants, the health-business surplus, and the hospital still asking this county to keep it alive. A rising tide is a nice phrase. It is not a ledger.

Tonight

Clallam County Watchdog’s Jeff Tozzer is the guest speaker at this month’s Republican Women of Clallam County meeting. Anyone is welcome — including non-Republicans (like me) and non-women (like me). If transparency in local government is important to you, come. I look forward to answering your questions.

Potluck tonight (Thursday) at 5:30. I speak at 6:00. It’s in Happy Valley, a few minutes south of downtown Sequim. For the address and to RSVP, email Tanya Unruh at tanyanewdesign@gmail.com.

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