As Washington heads into another election season, Clallam County Auditor candidate and guest columnist Virginia Shogren argues that the state's election system is on a collision course with the proposed federal SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship and voter identification for federal elections. In the first installment of a new series, Shogren questions whether Washington is enforcing constitutional voter eligibility requirements and points to the ongoing legal battle between the U.S. Department of Justice and Washington State over voter registration records. She promises future columns examining local election administration and outlining what she believes constitutional elections should look like in Clallam County.

In the podcast: CC Watchdog is featured on 96.7 FM, plus highlights from the Sequim City Council meeting.

It is June 2026. Few have ventured to address the train wreck that fast approaches Washington State elections. Looming before us is a primary in August and a general election in November, both of which have a federal race on the ballot.

Most don’t realize that Washington State’s current election system is on a collision course with a major new federal law called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act introduced in January 2026.

Simply put: the SAVE Act will require voter identification, proof of citizenship with absentee mail-in ballots limited to Military, Illness, Disability, or Travel for federal races.

It represents the greatest existential threat to the elite power structure of Washington State of our lifetimes. That’s exactly why you barely hear a word about it in Olympia or from the Seattle media.

We are currently faced with a Gordian knot of epic proportions: how do we clean up our corrupt political landscape and associated bloated bureaucracy when we have yet to clean up elections, get rid of electronic voting machines, demand voter ID, and stop mail-in ballot stuffing?

The answer starts with the SAVE Act.

The SAVE Act is entirely consistent with our Washington State Constitution. Article VI clearly lays out who can vote:

• Must be 18 years or older

• Must be a U.S. citizen

• Must have lived in the state, county, and precinct at least 30 days before the election.

Yet none of the 38 county auditors (or the King County Director of Elections) are fully enforcing these basic requirements.

By state law, the county auditors are the ex officio supervisors of all elections. They are personally responsible for certifying the results. Yet they are not following the clear language of our constitution.

Our constitution says nothing about anonymous mail-in elections where we can’t verify citizenship, age, or a current address. Even worse, our state routinely condones the voter registration of ineligible persons (who are then granted the power of a mailed ballot).

As just one example: in 2024 alone, nearly half of all motor-voter registrations – almost 450,000 – were processed without documentary proof of citizenship.

Motor voter refers to voter registration that occurs through a driver’s license or state ID transaction, typically at the Department of Licensing (DOL).

Under the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (often called the “Motor Voter Act”), states are required to offer voter registration opportunities when people apply for, renew, or update a driver’s license or identification card.

In Washington, when someone interacts with the DOL, their information can be used to register them to vote or update their voter registration unless they decline. Critics argue the system relies heavily on self-attestation of citizenship, while supporters say it makes voter registration more accessible and convenient.

The Department of Justice has sued Washington State in order to obtain review of our state’s registration files (having offered up a sanitized version only).

In response to the lawsuit, instead of complying with federal law, our legislature quickly enacted (and Governor Ferguson signed) an emergency bill to criminalize the release of the database.

Washington State has not only failed to cooperate with federal law, but also has now criminalized the acts of anyone who would ‘dare’ to do so. All the while, our state assures us that our elections are ‘safe and secure’.

Citing the DOJ lawsuit, I asked Clallam County Auditor Shoona Riggs to provide the Department of Justice with the registration data for Clallam County.

She refused.

Once the SAVE Act becomes law, we must be ready to demand constitutional elections in Clallam County.

In Part II, I’ll lay out just how captured our local elections have become.

And in Part III, I’ll lay out exactly what a free and equal constitutional election in Clallam County will look like.

— Virginia Shogren

Virginia Shogren is running for Clallam County Auditor to restore trust in our elections and to make sure our tax dollars are spent wisely. Virginia believes in simple, honest government that works for the people—not special interests. She seeks accountability, lower costs, and real oversight of our elections and our money.

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See you Saturday in Clallam Bay!

A new $37 million bridge in Jefferson County is being celebrated as a triumph of climate resilience, salmon restoration, and tribal leadership. But behind the ribbon cuttings and ceremonial blessings are larger questions taxpayers should be asking. Why was a Clallam County tribe leading a major infrastructure project in another county? Why is a bridge paid for with public funds decorated with the symbols of a sovereign nation? And why are many of the same organizations involved in regional flood-control projects continuing to receive public trust despite the unresolved questions surrounding the Towne Road debacle?

When most people think about major transportation projects, they assume local governments are in charge.

Jefferson County roads are managed by Jefferson County. State highways are managed by WSDOT. Federal highways are managed by federal agencies.

Yet when the ribbon was cut on the new Twana Bridge in Quilcene last month, the organization front and center was not Jefferson County. It was the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe.

According to the Tribe’s June 2026 newsletter, the project has been more than a decade in the making and includes replacement of the old 81-foot bridge on Linger Longer Road with a new 1,140-foot structure spanning the Big Quilcene River. The overall construction effort is expected to cost approximately $37 million. The project was funded through a combination of state and federal sources secured by the Tribe and project partners. The actual construction work was performed by outside contractors, including Cascade Bridge and Bruch & Bruch Construction.

The newsletter portrays the bridge as much more than a transportation project.

It is repeatedly described as a climate-resilience project, a flood-reduction project, and a salmon-restoration project.

Jamestown Chairman and CEO Ron Allen stated:

“Replacement of the bridge restores the natural function of the river, a healthy habitat supporting salmon recovery, and honors the deep cultural connections of the S’Klallam people.”

The newsletter further explains that restoration work will create what it calls “world class salmon habitat” that will produce large numbers of salmon “for the benefit of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and other treaty tribes as well as non-treaty fishers.”

It also states that restoration of the floodplain will provide major benefits for shellfish habitat in Quilcene Bay and further the Tribe’s goal of enhancing treaty resources.

Those statements deserve attention.

Treaty resources are not simply an environmental concept. They are economic resources. Salmon, shellfish, and other marine species support tribal fisheries and harvest opportunities. The newsletter openly acknowledges that habitat restoration associated with this bridge project is expected to increase those resources.

None of that is hidden. The Tribe proudly says so.

But it raises an obvious question.

If the bridge serves transportation needs for the public, flood-control objectives for the community, and resource enhancement objectives for the Tribe, how much of the project was driven by public infrastructure needs versus resource-management goals? Taxpayers deserve to understand the answer.

Another question involves symbolism.

Photos from the dedication ceremony show the bridge adorned with Jamestown S’Klallam artwork and tribal design elements. The newsletter celebrates the bridge with tribal songs, blessings, cedar brushing ceremonies, and extensive tribal branding.

There is nothing inherently wrong with recognizing the cultural history of a region.

But this is not a bridge on tribal land. It is not a private facility. It is a public bridge funded through public dollars and intended for use by everyone.

Some residents may reasonably ask whether infrastructure funded by all taxpayers should be presented primarily through the lens of a single government or cultural group, regardless of who led the project.

The newsletter also repeatedly emphasizes flood protection.

According to project descriptions, the new bridge and levee improvements are intended to provide protection exceeding a 1,000-year flood standard and improve safety for downstream residents.

That sounds reassuring.

Yet many residents of Clallam County may remember another flood-related project involving the Jamestown Tribe: Towne Road.

During that project, the Jamestown Corporation deliberately removed a dike before replacement protections were fully in place, exposing hundreds of downstream residents to substantial flood risk. Internal communications released during subsequent investigations described scenarios so severe that one tribal communication referenced helicopters circling a disaster area and speculating about the number of fatalities.

Years later, residents are still asking for a full accounting of what happened, who made critical decisions, how much it cost, and what lessons were learned.

Those questions remain largely unanswered.

That history makes the Twana Bridge project impossible to evaluate in isolation.

If organizations seek public trust as leaders in regional flood-control and restoration projects, they should also be willing to address concerns surrounding previous projects where things did not go according to plan.

To be clear, the Twana Bridge appears to be a remarkable engineering achievement. Replacing a flood-prone bridge with a modern structure that improves access and reduces flood exposure is a worthwhile accomplishment.

But public infrastructure should always come with public accountability.

The newsletter celebrates the bridge as a victory for climate resilience, salmon restoration, treaty resources, transportation infrastructure, and community partnerships.

What it does not fully address are the broader questions many taxpayers are asking:

• Why was a Clallam County tribe the lead force behind a major Jefferson County transportation project?

• How much influence do tribal priorities have in determining which regional infrastructure projects move forward?

• What public oversight exists when projects are funded through a complex web of federal grants, state agencies, nonprofits, counties, and tribal governments?

• And why, after the controversies surrounding Towne Road, has there never been a complete public reckoning with what happened there?

Those are questions worth asking.

One final note: the Jamestown newsletter itself is worth reading.

Tribal Newsletter June 2026 Digital

7.9MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

For years, these publications provided a fascinating look inside one of the North Olympic Peninsula’s largest employers, most influential institutions, and most politically connected organizations. The newsletters contain information on economic development, natural resources, healthcare, cultural programs, government affairs, and major regional projects that affect the entire community.

Today, those newsletters are no longer readily available to the general public.

That is unfortunate.

Whether residents agree with the Tribe’s priorities or not, understanding the activities of one of the most powerful organizations on the Olympic Peninsula is important for anyone trying to understand how the region is changing.

Today’s Tidbit

The Jamestown newsletter contained several other noteworthy items. Among them was the Tribe’s continued promotion of a weekly food bank pop-up event held at the Jefferson County Immigrant Rights Advocates Multicultural Center in Port Townsend. According to the announcement, no income verification is required to receive food assistance. However, participation is limited to individuals who identify as Black, Indigenous, or other people of color, as well as members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

The newsletter also highlights opportunities for non-tribal community members to volunteer in the Jamestown community garden. Participants are invited to help maintain the garden while bringing their own beverages and a food item to share. The invitation presents an interesting dynamic: members of the public donating their time and labor to support a community garden operated by one of the most financially successful and influential organizations on the North Olympic Peninsula.

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When Clallam County’s controversial Conservation District parcel fee came up for a vote, Commissioner Mike French cast the lone dissenting vote and portrayed himself as standing up for struggling rural residents. But public records, meeting footage, and even French’s own campaign statements tell a different story. Long before the fee reached the commissioners’ desk, French was one of the Conservation District’s strongest advocates, openly questioning why county government wasn’t doing more to permanently fund the agency. So what changed? The fee—or the politics surrounding it?

Here we are in the first year of the Clallam Conservation District collecting its controversial $5-per-parcel fee, a revenue stream projected to transfer roughly $2 million from property owners to the agency over the next decade.

The Conservation District has a fresh new website, a polished public image, and ambitions to expand its role. The county commissioners even approved a generous new payscale for district employees.

According to an April presentation to county commissioners, however, the agency is still working to determine exactly “where its place is” in county wildfire planning. District leaders also indicated they need to do a better job telling their story and are considering hiring a consultant to help do it.

Meanwhile, the agency recently submitted a letter of support to the Washington Department of Ecology backing a Jamestown Corporation proposal to identify alternative irrigation water sources for the Cedars at Dungeness Golf Course, including the possibility of drilling deeper wells to keep the 122-acre course green during the driest months of the year.

That detail is particularly noteworthy because tribal trust lands—including the golf course—are exempt from the parcel fee. In other words, ordinary property owners are paying the fee while the Conservation District is spending time supporting efforts that could benefit landowners who do not pay into the program at all.

Yet perhaps the most interesting story isn’t the Conservation District.

It’s Commissioner Mike French.

The Vote That Didn’t Match the Rhetoric

When the parcel fee came before the Board of Commissioners, the vote was not unanimous. Commissioners Mark Ozias and Randy Johnson supported the fee, while Commissioner Mike French cast the lone dissenting vote.

French explained that while he respected the Conservation District and valued its work, he was uncomfortable asking residents in the western half of the county—many of whom live in rural and economically struggling communities—to pay a fee when much of the CCD’s focus appeared concentrated in eastern Clallam County. He challenged the agency to provide more services to District 3 residents, mentioning possibilities such as rainwater catchment programs and septic-related assistance, and repeatedly apologized for voting against the measure.

To many observers, it sounded like a principled stand on behalf of rural taxpayers. It was one of the few times the commissioners did not vote in lockstep and one of the rare occasions where French positioned himself in opposition to a new fee.

There was only one problem.

Just weeks earlier, French had been making the exact opposite argument.

Three Weeks Earlier

During discussions surrounding the Conservation District on September 2nd, French argued passionately that the agency provided essential public benefits and that county residents depended on its work.

“The most essential need that we as humans have is water,” he said. “It’s clean and available water.”

French emphasized that both residents and commerce relied on the Conservation District’s expertise and suggested that ensuring stable funding for the organization was an important public responsibility. While he expressed some hesitation about enforcement provisions that could place liens against property owners who failed to pay the fee, he ultimately accepted those provisions because they would help ensure the fee could actually be collected.

More notably, French voiced support for the ten-year duration of the fee because it effectively “locks the people in.”

That is a remarkable statement for a politician who now frequently campaigns on affordability concerns and the financial pressures facing working families. The same commissioner who later voted against the fee had previously defended the mechanisms that would make the fee mandatory, enforceable, and long-lasting.

So which Mike French is the real Mike French?

The answer may lie not in the parcel fee debate itself, but in comments French made years before he became a county commissioner.

Rewind Four Years

To answer that question, it helps to go back to October 2022, when then-Port Angeles City Councilmember Mike French participated in a League of Women Voters virtual candidate forum against incumbent Commissioner Bill Peach.

The moderator asked a question that remains relevant today: How can Clallam County ensure a sufficient water supply while continuing to build housing developments?

Peach discussed long-term planning and the Dungeness River Off-Channel Reservoir. French’s answer took a different direction.

Rather than focusing on a specific water project, French praised the Conservation District extensively and expressed disappointment that county commissioners were not doing more to provide stable funding for the organization.

“One question I was disappointed that no Clallam County Commissioner asked was how can we plan on permanently supporting the Clallam County Conservation District’s budget to make sure that they’re not just dependent on grants to make sure that they’re doing the work to preserve our water quality and quantity all the time whether or not a yearly grant cycle doesn’t go their way.”

Years before the parcel fee proposal reached the Board of Commissioners, Mike French was publicly calling for permanent funding for the Conservation District. Not temporary funding. Not grant funding. Permanent funding.

The parcel fee that eventually came before the commissioners would accomplish exactly what French had argued for years earlier.

In hindsight, one could reasonably argue that the commissioner who ultimately voted against the fee was also one of the people most responsible for laying the philosophical groundwork supporting it.

What French Believes About Rural Living

The debate footage also provides a revealing glimpse into how French views growth, development, and rural communities.

During the same discussion, he argued that Clallam County’s high number of private wells was evidence of poor planning.

“Clallam County I believe has the most private wells per capita of any county in the state,” French said. “That means that we haven’t done a good job planning around water use in the past.”

For many residents, that statement is worth pausing on.

French wasn’t simply discussing water policy. He was describing one of the defining characteristics of rural Clallam County as evidence of planning failure.

He went on to argue that dense urban housing conserves more water and energy than rural development, stating that “building dense urban housing does more to conserve water and energy than anything else we can do.”

Throughout the discussion, French repeatedly emphasized clustering people together in urban areas and limiting suburban sprawl. He argued that suburban development results in people relying on individual wells, driving longer distances, and consuming more resources.

“Suburban sprawl is where we lose all of that conservation opportunity,” French said. “Where people have individual wells, where people are driving long distances and using those natural resources.”

He continued by arguing that cities are where future density should be concentrated because residents can share infrastructure and resources more efficiently.

That perspective may resonate with planners and environmental advocates, but many rural residents would likely see things differently.

People do not move to Joyce, Beaver, Clallam Bay, Agnew, or other unincorporated parts of Clallam County because they want to live in dense housing developments. They move there specifically because they do not. The ability to own property, maintain a private well, enjoy open space, and live independently is not viewed as a planning failure by many county residents. It is the very reason they chose to live there in the first place.

The comments are revealing because they demonstrate that French’s support for the Conservation District was never simply about water quality. It was connected to a broader vision of land use, growth management, housing density, and how people should live.

The Politics of a Dissenting Vote

This is where timing becomes difficult to ignore.

After Jake Seegers delivered 1,032 signatures from residents opposing the parcel fee, public opposition became impossible to dismiss. The proposal had become controversial, and elected officials knew it.

French also knew something else.

The votes were already there.
Ozias was going to support the fee.
Johnson was going to support the fee.
The measure was going to pass regardless of how French voted.

A dissenting vote suddenly carried very little risk.

The Conservation District would still receive its permanent funding. The fee would still be collected. The agency would still get exactly what French had advocated for years earlier.

At the same time, French could position himself as the lone commissioner standing with taxpayers.

Whether that was genuine conviction or political strategy is something voters will have to decide for themselves. But it is difficult to ignore the optics. The commissioner who once publicly questioned why the county wasn’t permanently funding the Conservation District became the commissioner who voted against the funding mechanism only after it became politically unpopular.

With reelection looming, many observers viewed the vote less as a principled stand and more as a carefully calculated political maneuver. French could now claim he sided with the people while knowing the fee would pass anyway.

What the Record Reveals

The Conservation District got its funding. The fee passed. Property owners will continue paying it for the next decade.

What remains is a question of leadership.

As Mike French asks voters for another term, they will have to decide whether his opposition to the fee reflected a genuine change of heart or a politically convenient vote on a measure that was already guaranteed to pass.

The answer may say less about the Conservation District and more about the kind of leadership voters can expect in the years ahead.

Today’s Tidbit: Protecting Protection Island

Some of the very environmental advocates who helped create Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge are now raising concerns about the proposed transfer of the refuge to the Jamestown Corporation.

At a recent gathering at Cape George, longtime conservation leader Lorna Smith—who played a key role in the effort to establish Protection Island as a national wildlife refuge in the 1970s and 1980s—joined her husband Darrell Smith and others to discuss both the refuge’s history and unanswered questions surrounding the proposed transfer. Also attending were family members of Eleanor Stopps, one of the women credited with helping save the island through a grassroots campaign that ultimately won bipartisan support and President Ronald Reagan’s signature.

The Smiths questioned why ownership needs to change when the Tribe already receives federal funding to co-manage the refuge and tribal leaders have previously described the co-management arrangement as successful. They also raised concerns about future aquaculture activities, regulatory authority, public oversight, and whether future tribal leadership could make decisions that affect the refuge’s wildlife habitat without broader public input.

Whether readers agree with their concerns or not, it is important to recognize who is raising these questions. These are not anti-environment activists. They are people who dedicated decades of their lives to protecting Protection Island and Dungeness Spit in the first place.

For those interested in learning more about the history of the refuge and the concerns being raised, consider following and subscribing to conservation advocate Al Bergstein’s blog, where he continues to provide updates and commentary on this issue.

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A recent letter to the editor by League of Women Voters activist Ann Soule blames oil companies, the President, Congress, the Supreme Court, and nearly everyone else for high gasoline prices. What her letter never mentions is Washington State's own role in creating some of the highest fuel costs in America. The omissions raise an uncomfortable question: when activists support policies that directly increase fuel costs, can they fairly complain about the consequences those same policies create?

Many Clallam County residents recognize the name Ann Soule. She serves on the County’s Marine Resources Committee, which recommended to the commissioners that flooding in the Three Crabs area should be dealt with by “retreat or removal” of the homes and road.

Through the League of Women Voters, she has pushed for the creation of a county Water Steward position.

She has participated in Peninsula Behavioral Health initiatives, including turning the first shovelful of dirt at the NGO’s North View low-barrier, luxury, permanent housing complex — a publicly funded project that offers harbor views, rooftop terraces, a dog-washing station, and other amenities, with an average price of $350,000 per unit.

Recently, Soule authored a Peninsula Daily News letter titled “Oil Repercussions,” arguing that oil companies are reaping excessive profits while consumers struggle under high gasoline prices. In her view, political corruption, insider trading, corporate greed, and Republican leadership deserve much of the blame. What was missing from her analysis, however, was perhaps the single largest state-level factor affecting fuel prices in Washington: Washington State government itself.

The Missing Piece of the Story

Washington routinely ranks among the most expensive states in America for gasoline. At the time of this writing, only California has higher average fuel prices. Neighboring Idaho is more than a dollar per gallon cheaper.

If corporate greed alone explained the difference, one would expect similar prices throughout the region. Instead, Washington has spent years layering taxes, regulations, and climate policies onto the cost of fuel.

The most significant of those policies is the Climate Commitment Act. The CCA established a cap-and-invest carbon auction system that requires fuel suppliers to purchase emissions allowances before bringing fuel to market. Those costs are then passed through the supply chain and ultimately to consumers.

Whether someone supports or opposes the Climate Commitment Act, the basic economics are not controversial. The program increases the cost of fuel distribution in Washington.

A Return on Investment

What costs working families more money at the pump can simultaneously become additional revenue elsewhere.

State Senator Marko Liias, who represents the 21st Legislative District in Snohomish County—not the Olympic Peninsula—was one of the leading advocates for the transportation package that increased Washington’s gas tax by six cents per gallon last year. Campaign finance records show that the Jamestown Tribe made the maximum allowable contribution to Liias’ campaign in 2023.

At first glance, it raises an obvious question: why would a tribe on the Olympic Peninsula financially support a legislator from the Seattle-area suburbs?

One possible answer is that policy matters more than geography.

For most Washington residents, the six-cent gas tax increase means higher costs every time they fill their tank. But the impact extends far beyond gasoline. Because nearly everything on the Olympic Peninsula arrives by truck, fuel taxes become a hidden cost embedded in groceries, baby formula, building supplies, farm products, restaurant deliveries, and countless other necessities. Families pay the tax directly at the pump and indirectly through higher prices on everyday goods.

For some tribal fuel retailers, however, the equation looks different.

Under existing fuel-tax compacts, tribal gas stations can retain 75 percent of the state gas tax collected on fuel sales. That means a six-cent gas tax increase translates into roughly 4.5 cents per gallon in additional retained revenue for qualifying tribal stations.

If a high-volume station such as Jamestown’s Longhouse Market sells 400,000 gallons of fuel per month—a figure that is not unreasonable for a major highway fuel stop—that increase could generate approximately $18,000 in additional monthly revenue, or more than $216,000 per year.

Viewed through that lens, a $2,400 campaign contribution begins to look less like political generosity and more like a remarkably good investment.

The Tax Activists Support

A repeal effort targeting the Climate Commitment Act reached Washington voters. Among those campaigning to preserve the program was Clallam County Commissioner Mark Ozias. That support was hardly surprising. The Climate Commitment Act generates billions of dollars that flow to government agencies, environmental programs, nonprofits, and tribal governments, including projects involving the Jamestown Corporation, Ozias’ top campaign contributor.

The Water App Nobody Talks About

One example of a CCA beneficiary is the League of Women Voters’ Future of Water Committee, which helped develop a digital app allowing users to monitor Dungeness River flow conditions.

The project was presented as a community education tool and, on its face, appears civic-minded and useful. What received far less attention was where the funding originated.

According to publicly reported information, software development was financed through a grant administered by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe using money that ultimately came from Washington’s Climate Commitment Act funding stream.

That means a project promoted by Soule and her colleagues was funded, at least indirectly, through revenues generated by the same climate policies contributing to Washington’s unusually high fuel prices.

Just Buy an EV?

Perhaps the most striking portion of Soule’s letter comes near the end, where she offers a solution to rising fuel prices: buy an electric vehicle or hybrid.

That recommendation may sound reasonable from the perspective of environmental activists, but for many Clallam County families, it reflects a disconnect from economic reality.

Median household income in the county hovers around $60,000 per year. Families are already struggling with housing costs, insurance increases, utility bills, inflation, and grocery prices.

Telling those families that the answer to expensive gasoline is purchasing a $40,000 vehicle is a bit like telling someone worried about food prices to buy a second refrigerator and start shopping in bulk.

Even used electric vehicles can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Many households simply do not have that kind of money available.

Selective Outrage

None of this means global events do not affect fuel prices. They do. Wars matter. Supply disruptions matter. International instability matters.

But acknowledging those realities does not require ignoring state policies that also increase costs.

What makes Soule’s letter noteworthy is not that she criticizes oil companies. Many people do. What stands out is the selective nature of the criticism.

When oil companies make money, she sees profiteering. When government-backed climate programs increase costs but fund projects supported by the “nonpartisan” League of Women Voters, those costs disappear from the conversation. When working families struggle with higher energy expenses, the solution becomes buying a different car. When policies supported by environmental activists create financial burdens for residents, responsibility is assigned elsewhere.

If gasoline prices are too high, every contributing factor should be on the table, including Washington’s carbon auctions, fuel taxes, regulatory costs, and the sovereign, governmental, and political interests that benefit from them. Ann Soule’s letter points toward oil companies, politicians in Washington D.C., and events happening thousands of miles away. It says very little about the policies, taxes, and beneficiaries much closer to home.

If we’re going to follow the money, the trail shouldn’t end when it becomes politically inconvenient.

Today’s Tidbit: Emily Randall

If you’d like to see how Congresswoman Emily Randall’s town hall in Chimacum went last week, the entire event was recorded and posted on YouTube.

5:30 — How can young people help?
9:25 — Transfer of National Wildlife Refuges to Jamestown Tribe #1.
16:50 — Transfer of National Wildlife Refuges #2.
19:20 — Can you help with kidnappings by ICE?
26:05 — How do we restore the Voting Rights Act?
31:00 — Lethal removal of seals and sea lions.
34:45 — Also, the lethal removal of marine mammals.
38:15 — Infectious diseases.
43:20 — Artificial Intelligence.
47:50 — Nationalizing Artificial Intelligence.
49:40 — Military Industrial Complex.

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Here is the Port Angeles Food Bank van mentioned in the podcast:

The real estate video also mentioned in the podcast:

The result is one of the most personal and revealing conversations yet about the District 3 County Commissioner candidate.

Listeners will learn about Seegers’ upbringing, his family’s roots in nonprofit medical work, his education, his year working in Manhattan’s financial world, and his current consulting role with a family investment company. For those wondering whether Seegers is really a “real estate investor,” the conversation explores his actual professional background in finance, portfolio management, business analysis, and family investments.

Bartee draws out stories about Seegers’ journey from Montana State University to Ohio State business school, his experience in New York finance, and ultimately why he chose to trade a high-powered career path for life on the Olympic Peninsula. The discussion also explores what motivated him to enter local politics after years of feeling that residents were being ignored by their elected officials.

The conversation goes beyond campaign talking points. Seegers explains his priorities for county government—public safety, economic development, fiscal responsibility, and affordability—and repeatedly emphasizes the importance of measuring outcomes rather than simply counting inputs. He argues that government should focus less on how many services are provided and more on whether those services actually improve lives.

Listeners will also get to know Johanna Bartee. She shares her perspective as a business owner, commercial property owner, and community volunteer who chose to return to the place she grew up. The discussion explores the challenges facing downtown Port Angeles, including public safety concerns, rising costs, and the struggle many small businesses face just to survive. Bartee also discusses the importance of financial literacy, responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars, and why so many young people leave Clallam County and never return.

Together, the two examine the question that weighs heavily on many local families: Why aren’t more people able to build successful careers and raise families in the communities where they grew up? The answers touch on affordability, economic opportunity, entrepreneurship, education, and the future of the North Olympic Peninsula.

This episode also serves as the public unveiling of much of what voters will soon see in Seegers’ official voters’ pamphlet statement. While District 3 voters typically narrow the commissioner field to two candidates during the August primary, only two candidates have filed for the position this year. That means the August vote will not determine who advances, but it will provide the first indicator of voter sentiment heading into the general election.

In November, voters across Clallam County will decide who will occupy one of the most influential positions in county government. For anyone wanting to understand not just what Jake Seegers believes, but who he is, where he came from, and what experiences shaped those beliefs, this conversation offers a detailed look behind the campaign before ballots begin arriving in mailboxes.

The Voters’ Pamphlet

Elected Experience:

None

Professional Experience:

Portfolio Manager, Palomino Investments; Real Estate Investor; Founder, operator, former owner, The Natchez Pearl Inn; Buy-side analyst, Wilson Capital Management. Earlier roles: General manager and server, Mackenzie River Pizza Company; Substitute teacher; Preschool Spanish teacher; Ranch hand.

Education:

MBA (Investment Finance/Accounting), Ohio State University; BS, Biomedical Sciences, Montana State University.

Community Service:

4PA clean-up crew; 4PA Campus Committee; Surfrider and CoastSavers beach clean-ups; volunteer at Harbor of Hope. As a teenager, Jake served alongside his parents providing healthcare to the Tarahumara people in the mountains of Northern Mexico. He continues to pursue solutions directly with community members experiencing homelessness.

Candidate Statement:

It’s time for common-sense leadership. County government must focus on its core mission, which is to deliver essential services and empower efficient, community-driven solutions. If you elect me, every decision will be guided by two questions: Is it essential? Is it effective?

Public safety is my top priority. Failed policies have fueled homelessness and open drug abuse in our neighborhoods, parks, and watersheds. Instead of measuring inputs—beds filled, meals served, supplies distributed—we must measure outcomes: recovery from addiction and graduation from homelessness to self-sufficiency.

I will work to make Clallam County a magnet for high-quality, high-paying employers. Safe, clean public spaces, streamlined permitting, and skilled workforce development will give businesses confidence that their investments are protected and their partnerships valued.

Housing must be attainable for working families. I will push back on costly mandates, work to reduce county fees, and empower local solutions that expand affordability.

Drawing on my business background, I will restore oversight to the county budget. I’ll demand transparency and measurable results for every taxpayer dollar.

I’m running to restore public safety, economic opportunity, affordability, fiscal responsibility, and trust in local government. Together we can return to common-sense leadership.

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Editor’s Note: CC Watchdog editor Jeff Tozzer also serves as campaign manager for Jake Seegers during his run for Clallam County Commissioner, District 3. Learn more at www.JakeSeegers.com.

A man is struck in the head with a brick by a stranger. Parents report alleged drug use outside the Shore Aquatic Center. Residents post photos of people passed out in public spaces, sleeping in bank drive-throughs, and leaving drug paraphernalia behind. Meanwhile, local activists raise tens of thousands of dollars for unnamed individuals, and citizens continue debating whether Port Angeles and Sequim are becoming safer or less recognizable by the day. Welcome to another Social Media Saturday.

Hit in the Head with a Brick by a Stranger

If there was one post that captured why many residents no longer feel comfortable walking around Port Angeles, it wasn’t a political argument. It was a post from police.

This week, the Port Angeles Police Department reported an arrest after a man was allegedly struck in the head with a brick by someone he reportedly did not know. According to police, the victim suffered a head injury requiring medical treatment before officers located and arrested the suspect.

The detail that stood out to many readers wasn’t simply the violence. It was the statement that the victim and suspect were strangers.

For years, residents have been told that concerns about public safety are exaggerated, that crime is largely between people who know each other, and that we are just as safe as we were four years ago. Yet social media reactions to the incident suggest many residents viewed it differently.

For people walking downtown, taking their kids to the park, or visiting local businesses, the question isn’t whether crime statistics are up or down. The question is simple:

“What are the chances I become the next random victim?”

Seven Years of Warnings at Veterans Memorial Park

The debate surrounding Veterans Memorial Park continues to rage.

This week brought renewed complaints about drug use, disorderly behavior, and public safety concerns around public spaces in Port Angeles. Those complaints are not new.

Mike French’s first term on the Port Angeles City Council began in January 2018. In April 2019, a KING 5 report documenting conditions at Veterans Memorial Park showed a homeless man occupying the park and highlighted concerns that residents were already raising at the time.

What stands out today is not the video itself, but how familiar the discussion remains seven years later.

Residents are still posting photos of individuals passed out in public spaces. They are still debating whether parks are welcoming to families. They are still asking why conditions seem largely unchanged despite millions of dollars spent on homelessness, behavioral health, outreach programs, shelters, grants, and harm reduction efforts.

Seven years after Mike French first assumed public office, the arguments are nearly identical.

A Homeless Guy Shooting Up Outside the Pool

One of the most shared posts this week came from a resident who reported a man was injecting drugs outside the Shore Aquatic Center while families were using the facility.

According to the post, front desk staff were instructed to ask the individual to leave despite not being trained for that type of confrontation.

Hundreds of comments followed, many expressing frustration that public recreation facilities increasingly find themselves on the front lines of issues they were never designed to manage.

The debate comes only weeks after the William Shore Memorial Pool Board voted to reinstate its controversial shower voucher program for transient drug addicts.

For many residents, the concern is no longer about a single incident. It is about whether community facilities intended for children and families are gradually becoming extensions of the county’s broader homelessness and harm-reduction infrastructure.

Pools are uniquely vulnerable because swimmers typically leave wallets, phones, keys, and other valuables unattended in locker rooms while they are in the water. The Sequim YMCA experienced a significant spike in thefts and property crimes several years ago, highlighting the challenges that can arise when public recreational facilities become targets for criminal activity.

Is This the New Normal?

Crack Pipes at the ATM and People Sleeping in the Drive-Through

This week’s social media feed included:

• A resident reporting a crack pipe left in a bank ATM receipt holder.

• A photo of a man reportedly sleeping in a bank drive-through lane.

• Photos showing individuals passed out on public property.

• Complaints from residents about disorder around businesses and commercial areas.

Individually, each post may seem minor.

Collectively, they paint a picture of a community increasingly frustrated by what many perceive as a normalization of behavior that would have been considered unacceptable only a few years ago.

The Anonymous ICE Fundraiser

One of the more unusual discussions this week involved a GoFundMe campaign organized by local Indivisible activist Alex Fane.

The fundraiser states that a longtime community member was detained by ICE and that donations will be used for legal expenses and family support. The campaign does not identify the individual involved, citing privacy concerns, yet had raised more than $25,000 at the time screenshots were shared online.

That immediately raised questions among some residents.

Who is the individual?
What are the circumstances of the detention?
How are donors expected to verify the claims being made?

The fundraiser notes that donations are being collected by the organizer and transferred outside of GoFundMe to the family.

To be clear, there is no evidence the fundraiser is illegitimate. However, when tens of thousands of dollars are being collected from the public while the recipient remains unnamed, questions about transparency are inevitable.

At roughly the same time, other social media users were posting claims that federal authorities had not detained anyone locally, creating even more confusion.

The result was another familiar theme: residents trying to separate facts from rumors while receiving very little verifiable information.

Who Gets a Voice in Port Angeles?

Another discussion gaining traction involved city advisory committees.

One resident questioned why Clallam County residents who work, shop, pay taxes, and spend time in Port Angeles are prohibited from serving on certain city committees unless they reside within city limits.

The argument from supporters is straightforward: city residents should govern city affairs.

The argument from opponents is equally straightforward: many county residents are deeply affected by city decisions and should have opportunities to participate.

Expect that debate to continue.

Million-Dollar Nonprofit Looking for Free Yard Work

The North Olympic Land Trust is asking volunteers to pull weeds around its office.

When an organization reports nearly $3 million in annual revenue, more than $11 million in assets, and a staff of ten employees, residents may reasonably wonder why basic office landscaping is being outsourced to volunteers rather than handled as a routine operating expense.

Compassion or Consequences?

Perhaps the most revealing discussion of the week involved a resident describing a senior mobile home park where a homeowner had reportedly allowed several homeless individuals to stay on the property.

Some commenters viewed the arrangement as an act of compassion.

Others focused on quality-of-life concerns, safety concerns, and the fact that the park was intended for seniors.

The exchange highlighted a broader divide that continues to define local politics.

One side asks whether enough is being done to help vulnerable people.

The other asks whether enough consideration is being given to the people who already live here.

Increasingly, both sides believe they are the compassionate ones.

From the Scanner

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See You In Joyce Today!

Come meet Jake, sign the petition to reopen the Olympic Hot Springs Road, and go home with a yard sign.

As anti-Seegers stickers continue appearing across Clallam County—including more near his home, at local businesses, and on commercial property—a growing number of residents are asking a simple question: Why is so much energy being spent attacking Jake Seegers instead of defending Mike French’s four years in office?

Commissioner Mike French says putting stickers on public property is “fun.”

Commissioner Mark Ozias claims it’s protected under the First Amendment.

However, a growing number of residents and business owners see it differently. They call it defacing property. Vandalism. Immature. Annoying. And one more thing for somebody else to scrape off and clean up.

Yet stickers continue to appear throughout Clallam County.

More have been placed near Jake Seegers’ home, where his children bike to retrieve the family’s mail.

Others have appeared at the Port Angeles Walmart, Sequim Home Depot, and increasingly throughout downtown Port Angeles, labeling Jake Seegers a “carpetbagger” and an “out-of-town real estate investor” as the sticker campaign continues to spread across the community.

There’s even a new design calling Jake a “Christian Nationalist.”

Now, the sticker bandits have been caught on camera. Again.

This time, surveillance footage appears to show two individuals placing a sticker on the window of a local Port Angeles business.

Recognize them?

They appear remarkably similar to the same duo previously captured on camera placing political stickers elsewhere in the community.

But this sticker wasn’t aimed at Jake Seegers.

This one targeted his campaign manager.

The sticker reads:

“Jeff Tozzer Never Worked a Day in His Life.”

The incident occurred Sunday morning at 7:52 a.m. The footage came from the security team of the affected business.

CC Watchdog attempted to contact Jeff Tozzer for comment.

Unfortunately, he was unavailable while inspecting his private yacht fleet off the coast of Monaco before departing for a brief weekend at his Alpine château in Switzerland.

Fortunately, his butler was available.

“The sticker is entirely inaccurate,” the butler said. “The gentleman depicted on the sticker appears to have hair. Mr. Tozzer has not enjoyed that luxury for quite some time.”

Tozzer’s maid also offered a statement.

“Mr. Tozzer was deeply saddened by the sticker,” she said. “Mainly because his diamond-encrusted sticker removal tool is currently in the shop.”

Sources close to the billionaire watchdog report he remains committed to serving the public despite the hardships associated with managing his fleet of private helicopters, offshore islands, and collection of solid-gold lawn mowers.

In all seriousness, the growing sticker campaign raises a larger question.

If one thing has become clear during this election season, it is that this does not appear to be a campaign focused on elevating Commissioner Mike French or communicating his accomplishments over the last four years.

Instead, it increasingly appears to be a campaign centered on attacking Jake Seegers, his supporters, and the people working on his campaign.

Voters can decide for themselves whether that strategy reflects confidence in an incumbent’s record—or a lack of one.

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Today’s Tidbit: Blurred Lines

A recent email exchange between a Clallam County resident and the Elections Department raises troubling questions about political neutrality inside the office responsible for administering our elections.

The resident contacted Elections Manager Ian Hillway after learning that Alex Fane, a prominent leader with Indivisible Sequim, was involved in ballot collection activities. Concerned about appearances and public confidence, she asked whether someone from the opposite political perspective could accompany him.

Hillway responded by explaining that ballot retrieval crews work in teams of two and that chain-of-custody procedures are in place.

Fair enough. But then came the surprising part.

Hillway encouraged the resident to contact the Democratic Party, Republican Party, or the League of Women Voters if she wanted observer training and a better understanding of the election process.

The problem is that many Clallam County residents no longer view the League of Women Voters as a nonpartisan organization.

Whether you agree with the League’s positions or not, the organization has repeatedly inserted itself into political issues that align overwhelmingly with one side of the political spectrum. Yet the Elections Department continues presenting the League as some kind of neutral alternative between Democrats and Republicans.

That should concern everyone.

The Elections Office should not be endorsing, promoting, or directing citizens toward political advocacy organizations under the banner of nonpartisanship. Public trust in elections depends on election officials maintaining both actual neutrality and the appearance of neutrality.

County Auditor Shoona Riggs oversees the Elections Department and is herself on the ballot this November. Residents who believe election officials should remain completely independent of outside political organizations may wish to ask why the League of Women Voters continues to be promoted as a supposedly nonpartisan election resource.

If you share these concerns, contact the Clallam County Elections Office at elections@clallamcountywa.gov and respectfully ask that references to the League of Women Voters be removed from future election-related guidance and outreach materials.

Regardless of political affiliation, election offices should be above politics—not steering citizens toward organizations that many voters no longer trust to be politically neutral.

A simple email exchange between a Clallam County resident and Habitat for Humanity reflects a growing frustration across the county: taxpayers fund projects, commissioners celebrate the spending, and nonprofits ask for more money, but when citizens ask basic questions about results or accountability, the answers become vague. From stalled housing projects to nonprofit financial failures, the same pattern keeps repeating itself while residents asking questions are treated like the problem.

“The Project Is Not at the Stage to Share This Information Yet”

A short email exchange between a Clallam County resident and Habitat for Humanity of Clallam County may perfectly capture the culture that now defines local government.

The resident asked a simple question: What project was using the $800,000 the Clallam County Commissioners approved for Habitat through the county’s Opportunity Fund?

The money, Habitat explained, was going toward “Lyons Landing,” a proposed 45-home development in Carlsborg.

Then came the obvious follow-up question: Can taxpayers see the grant numbers, project numbers, and cost centers to understand how the money is being spent?

That answer was different.

“The project is not at the stage to share this information yet.” Habitat’s CEO, Colleen Robinson, was copied on the exchange more a week ago and, as of publication, has not responded to the resident’s questions.

It has now been a year and a half since county commissioners approved the funding. Aside from a ceremonial groundbreaking photo opportunity featuring county officials, Habitat leadership, and tribal representatives standing together with shovels in a vacant lot, little work has occurred on the property north of Sunny Farms in Carlsborg.

And that response — “we’re not ready to share that information yet” — says a great deal about how Clallam County now operates.

Public Money, Private Transparency

To be fair, Habitat for Humanity is legally within its rights. It is a nonprofit organization, not a government agency. Once taxpayer money leaves county government and is handed to an NGO, much of the public transparency disappears with it.

Citizens cannot demand internal budgets the way they can from government departments. Public records laws no longer apply in the same way. The money may have originated from taxpayers, but once it changes hands, public visibility ends.

That is exactly why oversight before funding approvals matters so much.

The controversy surrounding Lyons Landing began in late 2024 when the Opportunity Fund Advisory Board recommended awarding Habitat $800,000 for the project. The Opportunity Fund collects a portion of local sales tax revenue and distributes it to economic development projects throughout the county.

Problems emerged after it became public that Habitat did not intend to competitively bid major portions of the development. Instead, significant excavation, surveying, and concrete work was expected to go to Jamestown Corporation businesses. The issue raised eyebrows because Jamestown Corporation had also donated $50,000 to Habitat for Humanity.

The county paused the award for months while legal review examined whether public funds could legally be used in a project structure that appeared to bypass traditional competitive bidding requirements intended to protect taxpayers and ensure fair pricing.

Eventually, the funding was approved.

Today, the property still sits vacant.

That makes the public’s questions entirely reasonable. What work has been completed? How much of the $800,000 has been spent? What exactly are taxpayers funding?

Instead of answers, the public is increasingly told to simply trust the process.

When Journalism Starts Reading Like Advertising

At the same time taxpayers are being denied answers, local newspapers continue publishing glowing nonprofit-written features celebrating community partnerships, fundraising dinners, wine tastings, and awareness campaigns.

One recent Habitat for Humanity article spent far more time discussing silent auctions, wine festivals, and “turning strangers into supporters” than it did discussing measurable housing production.

Readers were told repeatedly how important Habitat’s mission is and why the organization needs continued support. What readers were not told was how many homes Habitat is currently delivering annually, how much each completed housing unit costs, how long projects are taking, or how much taxpayer money is now flowing into the organization from local government sources.

Another detail stood out as well. Many of Habitat’s major fundraising events are hosted at Jamestown Corporation properties, including Cedars at Dungeness.

That raises a reasonable question: do other local venues ever have the opportunity to host these high-profile nonprofit events and receive the economic benefit and exposure that comes with them? Or are these relationships increasingly concentrated among politically connected organizations and tribal enterprises?

The question becomes even more relevant given Habitat’s emphasis on its Native American Housing Liaison program and its close partnerships with Jamestown entities.

These are not unreasonable questions. In a healthy civic environment, they would simply be part of public accountability.

Instead, people who ask them are often treated as troublemakers.

The Humane Society Warning Signs Everyone Ignored

This same pattern has repeated itself across Clallam County for years.

One of the clearest examples occurred during a December 2023 Clallam County Commissioner work session involving the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society. Executive Director Luanne Hinkle appeared before commissioners requesting an increase in county funding from $104,000 annually to $125,000 annually.

Hinkle opened the presentation by explaining that her goal was to show commissioners that county money was “very well spent.”

Commissioners asked one of the most basic financial questions imaginable: what is the cost per kennel?

Hinkle said it was difficult to calculate.

No estimate was provided.

No follow-up pressure came from the commissioners.

During the presentation, Hinkle acknowledged that animals were regularly transferred into the shelter system from outside Clallam County. The discussion relied heavily on emotional appeals about vulnerable animals, overcrowding, and community tensions, but offered little hard financial analysis.

The commissioners praised the organization anyway.

Then came perhaps the most revealing moment of the entire meeting. As the discussion wrapped up, Commissioner Randy Johnson’s final question was not about costs, operational efficiency, or financial sustainability.

“Are you and your husband planning a trip when you retire?” he asked.

Within months, the Humane Society suffered a financial collapse that shocked much of the community. The Bark House facility shut down. Dog intake operations effectively stopped. Reports surfaced alleging serious internal dysfunction, including claims involving employee treatment and controlled substances intended for animals.

Financial records showed that while revenue had significantly declined, salaries and compensation had surged. IRS Form 990 filings showed total revenue dropping from roughly $1.5 million to $1.18 million in a single year, while salaries, compensation, and benefits increased from approximately $758,000 to more than $1 million.

Luanne Hinkle’s compensation jumped nearly 50 percent in one year, rising from about $95,000 to nearly $142,000.

At the same time, tax documents showed that only 8% of total spending went directly toward animal care itself.

Yet despite all of this, the Humane Society had already received taxpayer support, public praise, and minimal scrutiny from county leadership.

The Weekly NGO Parade

And that is the broader story here.

Every week, nonprofits rotate through county commissioner meetings asking for taxpayer money. Housing nonprofits. Behavioral health nonprofits. Arts nonprofits. Food nonprofits. Animal nonprofits. Outreach nonprofits.

The presentations are almost always emotional. The scrutiny is almost always light.

The commissioners routinely thank the organizations for their work, praise their missions, and approve additional funding. Sometimes those same commissioners simultaneously sit on boards connected to the very nonprofits receiving public money.

One recent example is OlyCAP’s “safe parking” program in Sequim, where over $118,000 in taxpayer funding was approved for what amounts to three overnight parking spaces. Residents asking where the money is going and what measurable outcomes justify the expense have struggled to get clear answers from either OlyCAP or the county.

The silence is especially troubling because Commissioner Mike French not only voted on funding connected to OlyCAP, but he also sits on OlyCAP’s board. That dual role creates an obvious expectation for transparency and accountability, yet residents increasingly feel they are met with silence.

Questions about measurable outcomes, operational efficiency, and financial accountability are often secondary to narratives about compassion, partnerships, and community investment.

Meanwhile, taxpayers increasingly feel like the only people ever told “no” are the citizens asking for transparency.

The Disappearance of the Local Watchdog

The larger problem is cultural.

Local journalism once acted as a watchdog over government and public spending. Increasingly, many local publications now resemble public relations platforms for government agencies, nonprofits, and publicly funded initiatives.

Residents are constantly told how transformative programs are, how critical funding is, and why even more taxpayer support is necessary.

What is often missing are measurable outcomes and adversarial scrutiny.

How many homes were built?
How many people exited homelessness permanently?
How much did each project cost taxpayers?
What are the actual performance metrics?
What happens when organizations fail?

Those questions are becoming rarer and rarer.

Instead, the public is asked to trust institutions that increasingly resist transparency while continuing to demand larger amounts of taxpayer money.

This Is the Culture Now

This has become the norm in Clallam County.

Government praises nonprofits. Nonprofits praise government. Local media amplifies both. Taxpayers fund the entire system while struggling to obtain basic answers about where the money went and whether any of it is actually working.

Commissioners get to look compassionate and generous while handing out public money. NGOs receive funding, glowing media coverage, and reduced scrutiny. Meanwhile, residents asking hard questions are portrayed as cynical, divisive, or anti-community.

And while millions continue flowing into studies, outreach programs, partnerships, consultants, and nonprofit initiatives, many residents increasingly feel the county’s most basic responsibilities — public safety, infrastructure, accountability, and transparency — are slipping further out of reach.

This is not an isolated incident.

It is the culture.

And until voters demand something different, the revolving door will continue spinning exactly as it does now.

Today’s Tidbit: Jake in Joyce

Join County Commissioner candidate Jake Seegers this Saturday at the Joyce General Store for a casual Community Conversation focused on the future of Clallam County.

Stop by anytime between noon and 2pm to meet Jake, share your concerns, pick up a yard sign, and sign the growing petition to restore access to Olympic National Park by reopening Olympic Hot Springs Road into the Elwha Valley.

The petition effort is calling on state and federal leaders to prioritize restoring one of the county’s most important recreational and economic corridors. Reopening the road is about more than access — it’s about supporting local tourism, protecting gateway communities, and reconnecting families to one of the most iconic areas of the Olympic Peninsula.

Residents are encouraged to stop in, ask questions, and be part of the conversation about public safety, government accountability, economic priorities, and the future direction of Clallam County.

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For years, Port Angeles residents reported the same man wandering into traffic, trespassing, exposing himself, and generating constant police and medical responses. No one realized the familiar figure from the local street scene was allegedly a fugitive tied to a nationally publicized 2008 double murder cold case once featured on America’s Most Wanted. Now sitting in the Clallam County Jail, Johnny Steven Talbert’s arrest is raising difficult questions about public safety and how someone accused of such horrific crimes could spend more than a decade cycling through local systems unnoticed.

For over a decade, Johnny Steven Talbert drifted through Port Angeles as one of the familiar faces of the local street scene. According to police records, Port Angeles officers had contacts with him going back to at least 2011, while residents on social media were documenting incidents involving him as far back as 2017 and likely earlier.

Now, Talbert sits in the Clallam County Jail as a fugitive wanted in North Carolina for a 2008 double murder and armed robbery cold case that once appeared on America’s Most Wanted. He was arrested in the 2300 block of West 18th Street in Port Angeles. The Serenity House homeless shelter is located at 2321 West 18th Street.

According to the Peninsula Daily News, Talbert is accused of killing Donna Barnhardt, a longtime office manager at the Sun Drop bottling plant, and Darrell Noles, a church choir leader who had simply stopped by to apply for a job.

Police believe nearly $10,000 was stolen during the robbery.

In a detailed news release, the Concord, North Carolina Police Department described the arrest as a major breakthrough in the nearly 18-year-old “Sun Drop Murders” cold case. Investigators said Talbert was identified after detectives reexamined evidence, pursued previously undeveloped leads, and continued forensic testing as technology evolved over the years.

Concord detectives reportedly contacted the Port Angeles Police Department in December 2025, then traveled to Washington earlier this month as the investigation intensified. Talbert was arrested May 21, 2026 by Port Angeles Police without incident and is currently awaiting extradition to North Carolina on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of robbery with a dangerous weapon.

What’s puzzling is that somehow, Talbert ended up almost 3,000 miles away in Port Angeles.

Why Clallam County?

Why do people from across the country with severe instability, criminal histories, addiction problems, warrants, or untreated mental illness keep finding their way here?

For years, local residents repeatedly documented Talbert wandering into traffic, trespassing, exposing himself publicly, causing disturbances, requiring welfare checks, sleeping in stairwells, and generating constant police and medical responses. Social media scanner pages show incident after incident stretching over years.

The scale of these interactions is staggering. According to the Olympic Herald, a review of Port Angeles Police Department records showed approximately 288 contacts with Talbert since his first documented police contact in Port Angeles in November 2011. Those records reportedly include 14 arrests, two of them felonies.

Every single incident consumed scarce public resources.

Police time. Jail bookings. Court appearances. EMS responses. Outreach contacts. Behavioral health interventions. Shelter systems. Food programs. Transportation assistance. Public sanitation. Taxpayer-funded nonprofit services. Public defenders. Hospital care. Repeat contacts over and over and over again.

Residents are now asking how many local outreach workers, social workers, nonprofit employees, volunteers, and publicly funded agencies had interactions with Talbert over the years without knowing they were dealing with a man now accused of a double homicide.

And residents are also asking a larger question: Does Clallam County’s growing homelessness and addiction infrastructure unintentionally advertise itself as a safe harbor for people trying to disappear?

Free food. Free transportation. Free medical care. Free paraphernalia. Housing prioritization. Outreach teams. Safe parking programs. Hygiene vouchers. Permanent supportive housing.

When Peninsula Behavioral Health’s new luxury permanent supportive housing complex opens, officials have already stated that individuals with frequent incarceration histories will be prioritized for placement.

That reality lands differently now for many residents reading about Talbert’s arrest.

Some residents are bluntly asking whether Clallam County has unintentionally created a system where unstable and dangerous individuals can survive indefinitely on taxpayer-supported services while drifting deeper into addiction, mental illness, criminality, or violent behavior.

Others are asking how many more people hiding in plain sight may already be here.

And perhaps the hardest question of all:

How does someone wanted in connection with a nationally publicized double murder cold case spend well over a decade cycling through contacts with law enforcement, outreach systems, nonprofits, medical systems, shelters, and behavioral health environments in a small town without the larger system ever connecting the dots?

Today’s Tidbit: Randall in Chimacum Tomorrow

Congresswoman Emily Randall — the elected official now helping advance the Jamestown S’Klallam Land Transfer Act through Congress — is coming to the Olympic Peninsula for a public town hall Thursday night in Chimacum. Campaign finance records show Randall previously received a $2,000 contribution from Jamestown Corporation CEO Ron Allen and another $3,500 contribution from the Jamestown Tribe.

Now, she is helping lead legislation that would permanently transfer federally protected wildlife refuge land into tribal ownership.

In a recent message to supporters, Randall wrote:

“I can’t wait to answer your questions about my work in Congress, and hear about what matters to you most.”

The town hall will be held tomorrow, Thursday, May 28 at 6:00 p.m. at Chimacum High School Auditorium, with doors opening at 5:30 p.m. For many residents concerned about the proposed refuge transfer, it may be one of the few opportunities to publicly ask direct questions about the future of public lands, public access, and political influence surrounding the proposal.

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A young mother stood before the Clallam County Commissioners earlier this month and spoke candidly about the fear of homelessness. She said rising housing costs and the removal of affordable housing options are pushing families to the brink. “This will only kill people,” she warned. Sitting in the room listening were Commissioner Mike French and OlyCAP Housing Director Viola Ware. French sits on OlyCAP’s Board of Directors. Weeks later, basic questions about a taxpayer-funded “safe parking” program tied to OlyCAP and a Sequim church still remain unanswered, even as public records show French seconded a motion approving additional funding connected to the program without recusing himself.

A young mother struggling to stay housed recently came before the Clallam County Commissioners and shared something many residents quietly fear every day: even working families are one lease renewal away from instability.

She explained she had finally found housing large enough for her and her children, but admitted she had no idea what would happen when the lease expired.

“When my six month lease is up, I don’t know what we are going to do,” she told commissioners.

She spoke about housing costs spiraling beyond reach for ordinary residents. Buying a home is unattainable. Rentals are scarce. Affordable housing options continue disappearing.

The public testimony was emotional, raw, and remarkably honest. What was equally remarkable was who was sitting in the room listening. Among those present was Viola Ware, chair of the County’s Homelessness Task Force and Housing Director for Olympic Community Action Programs — better known as OlyCAP.

Also sitting there nodding empathetically was Clallam County Commissioner Mike French.

French is not simply a county liaison to OlyCAP. IRS filings from 2024 list him as a member of OlyCAP’s Board of Directors.

OlyCAP is a nonprofit organization serving Clallam and Jefferson Counties. Founded in 1966 as a Community Action Agency, it administers a wide range of publicly funded programs, including housing assistance, homelessness prevention, food programs, energy assistance, Head Start, senior services, and case management programs. The organization relies heavily on federal, state, and local taxpayer funding while partnering closely with local governments.

Earlier in the meeting, the commissioners issued a proclamation celebrating OlyCAP’s 60th anniversary. Viola Ware was there to accept it.

Yet after the young mother finished describing her fears about homelessness, neither the commissioners nor OlyCAP representatives publicly directed her toward assistance programs or followed up with her concerns during the meeting. Instead, it was a member of the public sitting in the audience who informed her that OlyCAP may have services available.

It was a missed opportunity for both Commissioner French and OlyCAP.

“The Safe Parking Program Is Not an OlyCAP Program”

During public comment, Viola Ware attempted to clarify what she described as misconceptions surrounding the Safe Parking Program operating through Trinity United Methodist Church in Sequim.

“The safe parking program is not an OlyCAP program,” Ware explained.

According to Ware, the program is managed by Trinity United Methodist Church, while OlyCAP partners with the church by providing staffing and support services.

Ware explained that OlyCAP provides approximately one hour of staffing support in the evening, one hour in the morning, and maintains one staff member on-call overnight should emergencies arise. OlyCAP also provides supportive services to participants.

“But we do it for free,” Ware said about the supportive services.

However, public records obtained by a CC Watchdog subscriber paint a more complicated picture.

County contract documents show that Clallam County approved up to $118,780 in taxpayer funding for the Safe Parking Program through Trinity United Methodist Church.

The agreement specifically states that Trinity United Methodist Church’s Safe Parking Program operates “in partnership with Olympic Community Action Programs.” The contract outlines funding for staffing, benefits, phones, on-call coverage, security, operations, maintenance, and direct services.

The scope of work explicitly identifies OlyCAP staffing positions tied to the program, including:

• Safe Parking Manager

• Evening Coordinators

• Morning Coordinators

• On-call phone support

The records also include OlyCAP payroll records, time sheets, invoices, and reimbursement documents tied to Safe Parking staffing.

The Safe Parking Program appears less focused on permanently moving people out of homelessness and more focused on managing homelessness indefinitely by giving participants a place to sleep in their vehicles.

The invoices and supporting records obtained by one Watchdogger show substantial spending tied to staffing, coordination, on-call coverage, and administrative support related to OlyCAP.

The program increasingly resembles a publicly funded homelessness management and employment infrastructure rather than a measurable pathway out of homelessness.

Taxpayers still do not know how many participants have successfully transitioned into permanent housing, how long individuals typically remain in the program, or what objective outcomes justify the continued expense. At the end of the day, the public is still looking at more than $118,000 tied to just three parking spaces — a figure that is difficult to defend, especially in the absence of clear performance metrics.

Two Weeks of Questions — Still No Answers

Today marks two weeks since CC Watchdog began asking questions about the Safe Parking Program and the public funding surrounding it.

Other residents have been seeking answers for months.

Among the unanswered questions:

• How exactly is the $118,780 being spent?

• How many individuals have utilized the program?

• How many participants are currently enrolled?

Questions directed to Trinity United Methodist Church were answered with an invitation to attend the upcoming Homelessness Task Force meeting rather than with direct responses.

The response stated:

“To learn more, you’re invited to attend the Homeless Task Force meeting June 2.”

The Homelessness Task Force meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 2, at 2:30 p.m. in the commissioners’ board room. Remote and in-person attendance are allowed.

The Ethics Questions

The larger issue now extends beyond the Safe Parking Program itself.

It involves transparency and ethics regarding elected officials voting on funding for organizations on whose boards they serve.

The Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC), which provides legal and governance guidance to Washington municipalities, addresses these issues under Chapter 42.23 RCW, dealing with conflicts of interest.

MRSC guidance states that local elected officials generally may not have a “beneficial interest” in contracts made under their supervision. Even when an official’s involvement qualifies as a “remote interest,” MRSC guidance states the official should disclose the interest publicly and abstain from voting.

MRSC further emphasizes avoiding not only actual conflicts of interest, but even the appearance of impropriety or special privilege.

Importantly, Washington law distinguishes between:

• serving on a nonprofit board without compensation, and

• receiving direct financial benefit.

Simply serving on an NGO board is not automatically illegal.

However, MRSC guidance specifically notes:

“A municipal officer may not vote in the authorization, approval, or ratification of a contract in which he or she is beneficially interested…”

MRSC further recommends that officials with remote interests should avoid even appearing to participate in the governing body’s action on the contract.

The issue surfaced in a complaint involving Jefferson County Commissioner Greg Brotherton and OlyCAP funding. That complaint cited RCW 42.23.040 and argued that even where a “remote interest” exception exists for unpaid nonprofit board service, the official’s vote should not count toward approval and the official should refrain from influencing the decision.

The complaint quoted MRSC guidance stating:

“It is accordingly recommended that the officer with a remote interest should not participate, or even appear to participate, in any manner in the governing body’s action on the contract.”

The December 16th Vote

That brings attention back to Clallam County.

Minutes from the December 16 meeting show commissioners approved an agreement providing additional funding connected to Trinity United Methodist Church’s Safe Parking Program.

The minutes reflect in county shorthand:

• Commissioner Randy Johnson made the motion,

• Commissioner Mike French seconded it,

• and the motion carried.

The agreement added supplemental funding tied to the Safe Parking Program, which operates in partnership with OlyCAP.

No recusal by Commissioner French appears in the meeting action summary. That does not automatically mean any law was violated.

But it does raise legitimate public questions:

• Did Commissioner French disclose his OlyCAP board position before the vote?

• Were disclosures entered into the official minutes?

• Did county legal counsel review the arrangement?

• Does seconding a motion involving funding tied to an organization on whose board he serves conflict with MRSC’s own recommendations?

• If not, where exactly is the ethical boundary?

Those answers should not require public records requests and weeks of follow-up to obtain.

Because when taxpayer dollars move from county government into NGOs tied directly to elected officials, transparency is not optional.

Oversight Is Not a Ceremonial Role

Taxpayers have reason to ask hard questions about oversight. Commissioner French also serves on the William Shore Memorial Pool Board, where, under his watch, the Washington State Auditor found roughly $67,000 in questionable spending and serious failures in financial oversight involving the former executive director.

Public board service is not supposed to be ceremonial or résumé-building. When elected officials sit on boards overseeing taxpayer dollars, the public expects active stewardship, accountability, and transparency. Routing controversial public programs through NGOs while basic financial and performance questions remain unanswered only deepens public distrust.

Commissioner Mike French now finds himself at the center of two growing public trust questions at the same time: one involving controversial homelessness spending through an NGO on whose board he serves, and another involving a public pool board that state auditors found lacked even basic financial controls. At some point, taxpayers are justified in asking whether these boards are being governed — or merely attended.

Today’s Tidbit: Helping or Enabling?

A recent letter to the editor in the Peninsula Daily News struck a nerve with many local residents frustrated by the growing normalization of homelessness in Port Angeles. Writer Jeffrey Schreck argued that when he briefly experienced homelessness years ago, discomfort and instability motivated him to quickly return to work. Today, he says, the growing network of free meals, public services, hygiene programs, warm spaces, and harm reduction resources may unintentionally reduce that urgency. Whether residents agree or disagree, the letter reflects a growing public debate over whether Clallam County’s expanding homelessness infrastructure is truly helping people recover — or simply making long-term street living more sustainable.

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For one afternoon earlier this month, Veterans Memorial Park in Port Angeles was clean, peaceful, and worthy of the sacrifices it was built to honor during the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office annual Law Enforcement Memorial Ceremony. But within days, the park returned to open drug use, camping, and disorder. This Memorial Day, many are asking whether we truly honor veterans if the memorials built for them are no longer safe or welcoming to the public.

Earlier this month, the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office hosted its annual Law Enforcement Memorial BBQ and ceremony honoring officers who died in the line of duty and those who continue serving the community every day. Following the barbecue on the courthouse grounds, attendees gathered at Veterans Bell just north of the courthouse for a solemn and deeply moving ceremony.

There were speeches, an invocation, the national anthem, and a flag line provided by the American Legion Riders. For those who attended, it was a powerful reminder of sacrifice, service, and civic duty.

And the park looked beautiful.

The Veteran’s Bell itself — a replica of the Liberty Bell — stood over spotless grounds, clean walkways, manicured landscaping, a clear reflecting pool, and memorial plaques that visitors could actually approach and read.

Veterans Memorial Park, located north of the Clallam County courthouse on Lincoln Street in Port Angeles, was renamed in 1986 to honor Americans who served in every branch of the military and in every conflict since the Civil War. It was built as a permanent public tribute to those who sacrificed for the country and the freedoms Americans enjoy today.

But according to local resident Mitch Zenobi, the park's condition the day before the ceremony looked very different.

Zenobi recorded video around Veteran’s Bell showing loitering, camping, open drug use, and pipes being passed around near the memorial grounds. The park’s temporary transformation was achieved only through an intensive, coordinated cleanup effort involving the Port Angeles Police Department ahead of the ceremony.

Within days, Zenobi returned and again documented individuals camping, sleeping, publicly urinating, and smoking drugs off foil around the memorial.

That contrast is difficult for many residents to ignore this Memorial Day.

Perhaps the best way to honor veterans and public servants is not simply with an annual proclamation, ceremonial bell ringing, or speeches once a year. Perhaps the greater act of respect is maintaining the memorials built in their honor as safe, welcoming, dignified public spaces every day of the year.

Right now, it is impossible to comfortably approach Veterans Bell and quietly read the plaques honoring service members without encountering behavior that makes the space feel neglected, unsafe, or hostile to families and visitors.

That is not honoring veterans.

It dishonors the men and women who served. It dishonors the citizens and veterans who fought to establish and maintain the memorial. And it dishonors the community the space was built for.

Mike French has argued that the public itself must help reclaim public spaces while he’s supporting a new criminal justice sales tax proposal. Meanwhile, the County’s Health Officer Allison Berry has publicly suggested that photographs online can be manipulated and has accused CC Watchdog of “stoking anger,” while framing criticism of current policies as hostility toward poor people or indifference toward people suffering from addiction and disease.

But many residents insist that is not what they are asking for at all.

They are asking for measurable outcomes. They are asking for accountability. They are asking whether current policies are actually helping people escape addiction instead of simply managing visible decline. They are asking for public spaces that families, veterans, seniors, and children can safely use again. They are asking why compassion for struggling individuals increasingly appears to come at the expense of the broader public’s ability to safely enjoy the very parks, memorials, and civic spaces their tax dollars built and maintain.

Memorial Day is ultimately about sacrifice. It is about remembering those who gave something of themselves for the benefit of others — sometimes everything.

And perhaps this year, as ceremonies conclude and the flags are folded away, the community should ask itself a difficult but necessary question:

If we cannot preserve dignity, cleanliness, safety, and public access at the very memorials dedicated to those who served this country, what exactly are we honoring?

Today’s Tidbit: Memorial Day, Citizenship, and the Responsibility to Vote

A recent letter to the editor in the Peninsula Daily News carried a message that feels especially relevant this Memorial Day weekend. Port Angeles resident Kim Butler argued that many of the problems frustrating residents today did not appear overnight. They grew slowly while people became distracted, disengaged, and increasingly absent from the voting process.

“Residents got busy with life and stopped voting,” Butler wrote. “The political elite is counting on apathetic no-shows on voting day.”

Memorial Day is ultimately about sacrifice, but it is also about citizenship. The men and women honored this weekend did not serve simply so Americans could enjoy freedom passively. Self-government only works when citizens remain engaged, informed, and willing to participate.

Voting may seem small compared to military service, but both are rooted in the same idea: responsibility to community and country.

Many Americans died defending the right to representative government. Choosing not to participate in it at all may be one of the quietest ways a society begins surrendering it.

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The conversation dives far beyond politics. Zenobi recounts a chilling early morning encounter at a Port Angeles fuel station where he believes he was moments away from being attacked by multiple individuals armed with clubs, a machete, and what appeared to be a makeshift spear.

What follows is a raw and deeply personal discussion about crime, addiction, public safety, government response, forestry protests, and the frustration many residents quietly express behind closed doors. Zenobi explains why he finally decided to stop staying silent.

The interview also explores the growing divide between elected officials, law enforcement, and ordinary residents who feel the realities they experience every day no longer match the messaging coming from government agencies. Zenobi speaks candidly about what he sees driving through Port Angeles before dawn, why he believes local policies are normalizing dangerous behavior, and why he finally decided to become outspoken.

Whether listeners agree with him or not, this episode offers an unfiltered look into the mindset of a growing segment of Clallam County residents who feel unheard, frustrated, and increasingly vocal about the direction of their communities.

Mitch Zenobi on Facebook

Mitch Zenobi on Instagram

Listen to the full episode and decide for yourself why the “angry logger” has become one of the loudest grassroots voices in local politics.

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Editor’s Note: CC Watchdog editor Jeff Tozzer also serves as campaign manager for Jake Seegers during his run for Clallam County Commissioner, District 3. Learn more at www.JakeSeegers.com.

Public bathrooms filled with drug paraphernalia. Growing encampments beside businesses and grocery stores. Fallout over shower vouchers at the pool during children’s activities. Taxpayer-funded tribal facilities openly advertising racial hiring preferences. Across the county, frustration continued to build this week as residents increasingly questioned whether local leaders were expanding services faster than they could responsibly maintain them.

Public Bathrooms, More Bathrooms, and A City Struggling To Maintain Them

One of the most discussed local posts this week came from a resident who said they discovered drug paraphernalia and biohazard conditions inside the public bathrooms behind Red Goose Shoes while cleaning trash around downtown Port Angeles. The resident said no one answered when they tried calling the listed number to report the conditions. “Kinda represents how bad this town has gotten,” the post read. The resident added they would not handle “drug paraphernalia or items with bodily fluids.”

The post surfaced after comments by Port Angeles City Councilmember Mark Hodgson, who recently pushed to keep all three city bathrooms open 24 hours a day while identifying locations for two more. That proposal came despite city staff warning that the Parks Department has spent nearly half a million dollars cleaning outdoor restrooms since 2023. Staff described syringes flushed into plumbing, repeated vandalism, biohazards, and safety concerns. One employee reportedly admitted: “We don’t clean everything that we should… I wouldn’t take my kids there.”

Staff had already discussed scaling back operations because they reportedly lack sufficient staffing to maintain the current system. But to many residents online, the issue is no longer simply about bathrooms. It is about priorities — expanding services first and dealing with the consequences later.

Sequim Encampment Debate Explodes Online

Another local post questioned why a growing homeless encampment near the QFC in Sequim continues to expand openly beside businesses and grocery stores. The post exploded to 343 comments on Nextdoor. The resident also expressed frustration after reportedly being warned by Nextdoor to be more “kind,” sparking debate over whether residents can openly discuss encampments, garbage, and deteriorating public spaces without backlash.

Fallout Continues Over Pool Shower Voucher Program

Social media fallout continued this week after the William Shore Memorial Pool Board reinstated its controversial shower voucher program, with residents debating whether a family recreation facility should also function as part of the county’s broader harm reduction and homelessness infrastructure.

Separate Tribal Workshop Raises More Questions

The Washington State Department of Commerce announced applications are now open for the 2027–29 Building for the Arts Program, offering grants up to $2 million for construction, renovation, and acquisition of arts and cultural facilities. What immediately caught attention online, however, was the structure of the workshops being offered.

Commerce announced a general workshop on June 3 and a separate tribal workshop on June 4. The program specifically lists tribes and nonprofit cultural organizations as eligible applicants.

Why do tribes continue to receive separate access, workshops, preferences, and funding pathways while many non-tribal organizations struggle financially? Some openly questioned how governments can continue promoting race-based preferences and separate opportunities while simultaneously claiming equity and equal treatment.

Jamestown Facility Hiring Raises More Questions

The Jamestown Corporation continues staffing its new psychiatric and residential treatment facility. One newly advertised position is for a Culinary Wellness Manager/Chef at the Tribe’s new 16-bed treatment center, with an annual salary range of $69,892 to $97,848. The posting states that experience working with Tribal communities is strongly preferred and that “American Indian/Alaska Native preferences apply.”

Another Jamestown Healing Clinic position tied to MAT and behavioral health transportation operations advertised salaries ranging from $62,403 to $87,365. Responsibilities include managing transportation grants, coordinating transit systems, supervising transportation drivers, processing transportation billing, and educating patients on transportation etiquette. The posting again included “American Indian/Alaska Native preferences apply.”

We are watching the continued expansion of a publicly funded addiction and behavioral health industry with racial hiring preferences openly attached to taxpayer-supported facilities.

Sign Controversy

Why These Supreme Court Races Matter

One article gaining significant traction this week came from Shane Kidwell’s Substack. The article breaks down all 14 candidates running for 5 Washington Supreme Court seats this year and argues that the races may determine the future of Washington’s income tax, the $3.9 billion pension sweep, natural gas initiative litigation, sheriff decertification laws, and broader constitutional questions.

The article argues that most voters know little or nothing about judicial candidates because the races appear low on ballots during traditionally low-turnout elections. Whether readers agree with the conclusions or not, the piece is deeply sourced and highlights how significant these races could become for Washington’s future.

David Rogers Challenges City Leaders To Walk The Areas

Remember David Rogers, whom Jake Seegers recently interviewed? This week, Rogers posted a public letter to the Port Angeles City Council after attending a recent meeting on environmental concerns surrounding the proposed Brix Marine project and potential impacts on creeks and beaver habitats.

Rogers challenged councilmembers to apply that same level of environmental concern to areas impacted by unmanaged encampments. He invited city councilmembers to personally walk impacted areas with him and specifically referenced discarded batteries, hazardous waste, propane tanks, open flame cooking, and environmental degradation occurring around encampments.

The comments resonated strongly online with residents who believe businesses and property owners are increasingly held to stricter environmental and operational standards than unmanaged encampments and transient activity.

Indivisible’s Threshold For “Rude”

Backed by the League of Women Voters, Indivisible says displaying signs on public property that don’t align with their “values” is rude. Also from Indivisible:

From the Scanner

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A full-page advertisement appearing in both the Peninsula Daily News and the Sequim Gazette laid out the Jamestown Corporation’s vision for taking ownership of the Dungeness and Protection Island National Wildlife Refuges. The ad presents the proposal as stewardship and restoration. But beneath the emotional language and conservation messaging, many residents are beginning to ask a harder question: why is federally protected public land being permanently transferred into sovereign tribal ownership with so little public discussion and so many unanswered questions?

A Full-Scale Public Relations Campaign

For weeks now, local residents have watched a coordinated campaign quietly build momentum around a proposal that would have sounded almost unbelievable not long ago: the permanent transfer of two federally protected wildlife refuges into tribal trust ownership.

The Jamestown Tribe recently purchased full-page advertisements in both the Peninsula Daily News and the Sequim Gazette promoting the proposed transfer of the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge and Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge into tribal ownership.

The ad is visually impressive and carefully crafted. It emphasizes cultural restoration, environmental stewardship, volunteerism, habitat protection, educational outreach, and continued public access. Anyone casually flipping through the paper would likely walk away believing this is simply a conservation effort with universal support.

But the deeper people look, the more questions begin to emerge.

The first question many people are asking is also the simplest: if these lands are already federally protected wildlife refuges owned by all Americans, why is there such urgency to transfer ownership at all?

The Questions Aren’t Coming From “Anti-Tribal” People

One of the few people publicly pumping the brakes is longtime environmental filmmaker and conservation advocate Al Bergstein.

What makes Bergstein difficult to dismiss is that he is not some anti-tribal activist or political bomb thrower. In fact, he has worked closely with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe for years. He produced films for the Tribe, worked alongside respected tribal elder Marlin Holden, interviewed leaders Kurt Grinnell and Ron Allen, and says he was trusted enough to videotape tribal meetings, something he was told outsiders had never previously been allowed to do.

He supported tribal environmental restoration projects. He supported tribal aquaculture efforts. He has repeatedly stated he has tremendous respect for the Tribe and its leadership.

Yet despite that history, Bergstein is already being labeled “anti-tribal” simply for questioning the refuge transfer proposal and asking for more public scrutiny before irreversible decisions are made.

That should concern people.

When citizens can no longer question permanent governmental land transfers without immediately being accused of hostility or prejudice, meaningful public discussion starts disappearing.

“If I Told You…”

Bergstein’s recent editorial in the Port Townsend Leader opened with a question that cuts directly to the core of the issue:

“If I told you that a prized National Wildlife Refuge was going to be handed over to an aquaculture company, what would be your reaction?”

He then asks whether people would react differently if they learned the recipient was the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe.

It’s an uncomfortable question, but it forces people to separate emotion from policy.

The Jamestown Corporation has undeniably done important environmental restoration work across the Peninsula. Even critics acknowledge that. But the Tribe is also a sophisticated and growing economic organization with expanding commercial interests, including aquaculture operations.

Bergstein’s concern is not whether the Tribe has done good work in the past. His concern is what happens once public land permanently leaves public ownership and enters sovereign tribal trust status, where future decisions are no longer governed by the same federal oversight, public input requirements, or national wildlife refuge laws that currently exist.

That concern is not theoretical. It is how tribal sovereignty functions.

The Shi Shi Beach Example

A useful example many Peninsula residents immediately understand is Shi Shi Beach near Neah Bay.

People often ask, “Wasn’t Shi Shi public?”

The answer is complicated.

The beach itself remains accessible to the public, but access now operates under tribal authority because the trailhead and surrounding lands cross Makah tribal land. Visitors now pay recreation fees, deal with tribal parking systems and access rules, and operate under tribal regulations while visiting an area many longtime residents remember feeling far more informal and open decades ago.

This example matters because it demonstrates what happens once access, management, and oversight shift under sovereign tribal authority.

Fees can change. Rules can change. Restrictions can change. Public influence becomes limited. And over time, benefits increasingly flow toward tribal governments rather than the general public.

That is exactly why many residents are uneasy about permanently transferring federal wildlife refuges into trust status.

“Trust Us Forever”

The Tribe’s advertisements repeatedly assure readers that public access will continue.

But people are beginning to notice how much of the language remains broad, flexible, and undefined.

What exactly qualifies as “public access”?

Will there eventually be permit systems? Access fees? Parking fees? Restrictions on shoreline use? Expanded aquaculture operations? Future public appeal processes?

What happens after the current leadership changes?
What happens after Ron Allen?
What protections exist if priorities evolve over the next fifty years?

Those questions are not clearly answered in either the advertising campaign or the proposed legislation. And that vagueness is precisely what makes many people nervous.

The public is essentially being asked to trust that future tribal leadership, future political priorities, and future economic pressures will always align with the promises being made today.

That’s a permanent gamble.

Protection Island Was Saved By Americans

One thing getting almost completely buried in the current discussion is how Protection Island became protected in the first place.

The refuge did not simply appear overnight. It took decades of activism and enormous public effort to save it from development. Local women like Eleanor Stopps and Zella Schultz helped lead a national conservation movement to stop the island from being subdivided into hundreds of housing lots.

Environmental leaders like Hazel Wolf, organizations like Seattle Audubon and The Nature Conservancy, Republican and Democratic elected officials, volunteers, photographers, conservationists, and ordinary citizens all worked together to preserve Protection Island for everyone.

Now the public is being asked to permanently surrender ownership of that refuge with surprisingly little broad public discussion.

The Drift Cell Study

At the same time, residents are beginning to revisit older tribal planning documents through a very different lens.

One document receiving renewed attention is the Tribe’s decade-old “Dungeness Drift Cell Conservation Strategy.”

The document discusses shoreline conservation priorities, parcel rankings, acquisition opportunities, vulnerable properties, and long-term environmental planning throughout the Dungeness area.

Some residents now believe portions of the study read less like ordinary conservation planning and more like a long-range blueprint for strategic land acquisition and shoreline influence throughout the region.

The language surrounding public fears is especially interesting. Critics point out that the study openly discusses concerns residents may have regarding land ownership and future control, suggesting tribal planners understood years ago that these issues would eventually become politically sensitive.

At minimum, it shows this refuge discussion did not suddenly appear overnight.

This has been developing for years.

Revising The Story

At the same time this refugee transfer campaign is accelerating politically, a broader cultural messaging effort is also becoming more visible.

The Sequim Gazette recently promoted a new lecture series at the Dungeness River Nature Center titled “People, Place, and Time.”

Today’s lecture is called “Since Time Immemorial: A Revised History of the Northeast Olympic Peninsula.”

Revised history — Think about that wording. The presenter, David Brownell, works as a cultural resource specialist for the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe.

Nobody disputes that Indigenous history deserves recognition and preservation. But many residents are beginning to notice how these efforts all seem to be moving in the same direction at the same time: revised historical narratives, expanding conservation strategies, political support letters, cultural restoration campaigns, and federal refuge transfers.

People are naturally beginning to ask whether the current proposal is part of a much larger long-term effort involving shoreline control, land influence, and future governance throughout portions of the Peninsula.

Local Governments Keep Falling In Line

Meanwhile, local governments continue falling into line.

The Sequim City Council has already submitted a support letter. Jefferson County Commissioners have done the same. Clallam County Commissioners are now considering their position.

Yet many residents struggle to point to any truly robust public process that has taken place before these endorsements started rolling in.

There have been very few public forums, few public interviews, and remarkably little adversarial questioning, considering the magnitude of what is being proposed.

Instead, the public is mostly receiving polished advertising campaigns, carefully framed conservation language, emotional historical appeals, and pressure to move quickly before broader scrutiny fully develops.

The “No Funding” Narrative

One of the primary arguments supporters continue making is that the federal government no longer properly funds or maintains wildlife refuges.

But Bergstein recently pointed to a May 19 announcement from the National Wildlife Refuge Association celebrating more than $67 million in new federal refuge and wetlands funding nationwide.

That funding includes millions for habitat conservation, wetlands restoration, public recreation access, and refuge expansion projects across the country.

That announcement complicates the narrative that federal refuge stewardship is somehow collapsing beyond repair.

And it raises another obvious question: if the federal government is still funding wildlife refuges, why is there such urgency to permanently transfer ownership now?

Once It’s Gone, It’s Gone

At the center of all this sits one unavoidable reality: these refuges already belong to the American people, including tribal members, because tribal members are Americans too.

What the public is now being asked to do is permanently surrender ownership and future control of nationally protected lands to a sovereign government under terms that remain surprisingly vague, considering how irreversible the decision would be.

And once that transfer happens, there is no easy way back.

Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Residents interested in hearing more from Al Bergstein about the history of Protection Island and his concerns surrounding the proposed transfer can follow his blog and listen to a recent KPTZ interview.

One More Thing…

Congresswoman Emily Randall — the elected official now helping move the Jamestown S’Klallam Land Transfer Act through Congress — is coming to town.

Campaign finance records show Randall previously received a $2,000 campaign contribution from Jamestown Corporation CEO Ron Allen and another $3,500 contribution from the Jamestown Tribe.

Now she is helping lead the effort to permanently transfer federally protected wildlife refuges into tribal ownership.

Randall recently sent the following text message to residents:

“Hey Neighbor! This is Congresswoman Emily Randall letting you know that I’ll be hosting a Town Hall on Thursday May 28 in Chimacum at 6 PM, doors open at 5:30 PM. I can’t wait to answer your questions and talk about what’s going on in Congress. If you’d like to attend, RSVP Here!”

The location will be provided 48 hours before the event. Those interested should sign up here.

With so much of this process unfolding through political letters, closed-door discussions, and carefully managed public messaging, this may be one of the few opportunities residents have to directly voice concerns about handing federally protected public lands into sovereign tribal control.

Today’s Tidbit: The Rialto Reminder

The timing is interesting.

As the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe pushes for ownership of the Dungeness and Protection Island Wildlife Refuges, the Peninsula Daily News is now reporting that the Quileute Tribe has begun charging parking fees for access near Rialto Beach after decades of free public parking.

No, Rialto Beach itself is not closed to the public. But it is another reminder that when access points, parking, infrastructure, and surrounding lands fall under tribal control, public use can slowly become more regulated, more restricted, and more expensive over time.

That’s why some residents are paying very close attention to the promises currently being made about “continued public access” surrounding the proposed refuge transfers. History shows that those arrangements can evolve considerably once public land leaves public control permanently.

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At Tuesday’s Board of Health meeting, Clallam County Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry sharply criticized opponents of harm reduction, suggested fear about public safety is being amplified for political purposes, and made the explosive statement that she hopes critics are not implying that drug users “deserve to get AIDS and die.” Meanwhile, residents continue asking for measurable outcomes after years of needle distribution, safer-use supply programs, and growing public concern over encampments, addiction, and public safety.

“There are a couple different funky bugs that are in the news,” Health Officer Allison Berry said Tuesday during the monthly Board of Health meeting.

“Two different funky bugs,” Berry explained before discussing Hantavirus related to the cruise ship outbreak. She said the risk in Clallam County is “incredibly low,” but acknowledged that the public is no longer reassured by communications from the CDC using the term “low,” because it was also used in 2020 to describe COVID.

“I think it’s worth acknowledging the loss of trust that came from them saying that, and saying that longer than they should have,” Berry said.

But she acknowledged that “low” is accurate in this case. Berry said she has treated patients for Hantavirus through her part-time work for the Jamestown Corporation at the Healing Clinic and the Family Health facility.

The second concern discussed was Ebola, which Berry said, “we don’t think that’s going to come here, but it’s worth being aware of.” She explained that the outbreak in Sub-Saharan Africa has been worsened by “massive cuts to USAID,” which allowed it to spread farther before being diagnosed.

Harm Reduction Without Metrics

Clallam County Health and Human Services still is not publicly providing meaningful outcome data regarding how many people are entering treatment, leaving homelessness, achieving sobriety, or successfully transitioning out of addiction and instability.

Instead, the county highlighted success stories and “participant encounters.” One slide showed:

• 668 participant encounters in April

• 21 reported overdose reversals

• 61 participants connected with partner services

Dr. Berry explained that the department may explore telehealth access for Suboxone prescriptions through the Harm Reduction Health Center.

Commissioner Randy Johnson noted that earlier public comment included criticism from residents upset about the program and asking where the data is.

“When we talk about specifics of our program, it would be nice to be able to track our specific program,” Johnson said.

That raises an obvious question many residents have been asking for years: How many decades into embracing harm reduction are we, and we are just now discussing establishing meaningful metrics?

How many tens of thousands of meth pipes, crack pipe cleaning kits, boofing kits, foil kits, and needles has the county dispersed while only just now discussing how to measure success?

Commissioner Mark Ozias said one of the most common public concerns involves the distribution of safer-use supplies and the perception that the county is encouraging drug use.

“My understanding of that strategy is that that’s a communicable disease prevention strategy,” Ozias said.

Berry explained that distributing safer-use supplies like pipes and boofing kits is intended to move people away from syringes because syringes carry a higher risk of spreading disease.

Berry explained that sharing pipes can spread disease too, so that’s why it’s important to distribute more pipes. “Because what’s better than clean needles, is no needles,” she said, adding that “we are seeing people in our community quit using needles.”

“I know the rhetoric we see online about it, that maybe we’re encouraging drug use, and the data is just very consistent that having access to these kind of supplies does not increase use of drugs. It does not teach people how to use drugs,” Berry said.

Then came the statement that is likely to become the most controversial moment of the meeting.

“I’ve heard a lot of this conversation about this idea that we need, like, more accountability for folks and — what’s the phrase? — compassion without accountability, and it’s strange that we’ve gotten wrapped into that in some way, because all that we do is help people not get AIDS and make them less likely to die.”

Berry then added:

“I hope that when people are asking for accountability, they’re not saying that people who use drugs deserve to get AIDS and die.”

That statement reframed criticism of county policy into something far darker.

Residents asking questions about public safety, discarded needles, public drug use, overdose rates, or whether distributing safer-use supplies is effective are now implicitly being associated with wanting drug users to “get AIDS and die.”

That is an extraordinary accusation from a public health officer.

Dream Playground Wasn’t “Misinformation”

Johnson again raised concerns about public unease surrounding harm reduction and public safety.

Berry responded:

“I don’t think that’s happening organically.”

She explained there is an active attempt to “build that narrative online” using misinformation and disinformation.

“If someone is trying to make you afraid, you have to wonder what they benefit from sowing that fear,” Berry said.

She claimed some individuals benefit politically by “sowing fear and distrust with our neighbors” and by creating the impression that there is “a public health catastrophe brewing.”

Berry referenced receiving an email from someone who said they would not take their child to Dream Playground anymore because they heard syringes were there.

“There are elements who want to build the idea that it’s so much worse than it is, because that serves them politically,” Berry said.

But residents may remember that fears about syringes in playgrounds are not hypothetical.

In 2018, a three-year-old child was accidentally poked by a discarded syringe at Dream Playground in Port Angeles. The Port Angeles Police Department later issued a public warning explaining that accidental needle sticks can expose victims to bloodborne pathogens and urged parents to conduct safety sweeps before allowing children to play.

That incident was not misinformation. It happened.

And for many parents, once a child is exposed to that kind of risk, the fear does not simply disappear because officials say conditions are being exaggerated.

“Manipulated Pictures” and the Fight Over Public Perception

Berry also said one of the biggest challenges facing public health officials is combating what she described as viral misinformation online.

“Folks can even manipulate pictures online,” Berry said. “We have folks that are going into places that they know are messy, going in ostensibly to clean it up, but then taking a whole lot of pictures and posting online as if it’s downtown Port Angeles, as if it’s the trails we all take our kids on.”

Berry said that portrayal “isn’t accurate” and called it “a disservice” to the community.

The comments appeared to be directed, at least in part, toward community volunteers who routinely document encampments, garbage, discarded paraphernalia, and environmental damage in and around Port Angeles. Among them are 4PA volunteers, county commissioner candidate Jake Seegers, and resident Stacey Richards, all of whom have entered camps, removed trash from creeks and greenbelts, and publicly documented what they encountered.

Those cleanup efforts have resulted in tons of garbage being removed from public spaces and waterways, including needles, propane bottles, shopping carts, human waste, foil kits, and other drug paraphernalia. Critics of the county’s harm reduction policies argue that at least some of those safer-use supplies originate from programs supported by local government and public health agencies.

Berry’s remarks immediately raised another question: Who exactly is she accusing of manipulating photographs?

Because many of the images being shared online are, in fact, taken in downtown Port Angeles, along public trails, beside salmon-bearing waterways, and in parks and greenbelts used by local families. The camps are real. The trash is real. The cleanup efforts are real.

“If I were a business owner, I would hate that people are making P.A. look like that online,” Berry said.

The people documenting the conditions are not the ones creating them. They are simply showing residents what already exists.

“Positive Public Use” As a Vaccine

Commissioner Mike French added that “Positive public use is kind of like its own vaccine against negative public use.” French argued that discouraging positive public activity can unintentionally create conditions where more negative activity takes hold.

To many residents, however, the exchange reinforced a growing frustration with county leadership. Officials appear more focused on criticizing the people documenting deteriorating conditions than addressing the conditions themselves.

That tension is why many residents believe photographs matter.

If officials insist the images are misleading or exaggerated, then readers can judge for themselves.

This is downtown Port Angeles.
These are the public trails.
These are the public spaces residents are talking about.

Fear and Financial Incentives

Berry repeatedly suggested that fear is being politically weaponized.

But that fear also played a central role during COVID-era public health policy.

This is the same Health Officer who supported restaurant shutdowns, vaccine passport requirements, and sweeping public restrictions during COVID, while also working for the Jamestown Family Health Clinic. At the same time, Jamestown-owned businesses operated under tribal sovereignty and were not subject to many of the same mandates and restrictions imposed on local non-tribal businesses throughout Clallam County.

Berry also works for the Jamestown Healing Clinic, a Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) provider.

As the county expands harm reduction services, overdose interventions, and telehealth Suboxone access, some residents are increasingly questioning whether there is an inherent conflict of interest when the county’s Health Officer also works for an addiction treatment provider that stands to financially benefit from ongoing addiction treatment and federal reimbursements.

Those concerns become even more politically sensitive given that the Jamestown Corporation was Commissioner Mark Ozias’ top campaign donor, and Ozias has consistently supported expanding harm reduction.

The question residents continue asking is simple:

If county policy funnels more individuals into MAT treatment pipelines, who financially benefits?

And why are questions about those financial incentives increasingly portrayed as hateful or dangerous?

“Folks Who Use Drugs… Are an Easy Group to Get Folks to Hate”

Berry argued that criticism of harm reduction often targets vulnerable populations.

“Folks who use drugs, folks who are homeless, are an easy group to get folks to hate,” Berry said Tuesday. “There is a strong push to blame that population for anything that’s going wrong right now, and that sells.”

Berry said broader economic policies involving housing and wages are driving homelessness.

“It’s harder to hate policy, it’s so much easier to hate that person that is right there, who is poor, and who looks it,” Berry said.

She also said she personally walks around Port Angeles and is not afraid.

“There are folks who want those challenges to feel worse because that serves them,” Berry said.

Berry insisted there is no evidence that the county’s harm reduction programs are causing drug use.

“Bring the evidence that somehow we have caused drug use,” she challenged.

Storytelling Over Statistics

Dr. Paul Cunningham, who oversees the Jamestown Healing Clinic and also serves on the Board of Health, suggested officials should highlight more stories from people helped by programs like the Jamestown Healing Clinic.

In other words, while data matters, storytelling may be more persuasive in shaping public opinion.

That comment may concern residents who believe public policy should be judged primarily through measurable outcomes, not emotional narratives.

Because the questions many residents are asking remain unanswered:

Are overdose deaths decreasing because of harm reduction?
Are neighborhoods safer?
Are public parks cleaner?
Are more people entering sobriety?
Are fewer children at risk of encountering discarded syringes?

Or are officials simply becoming better at defending the system already in place?

Today’s Tidbit: Follow the Money?

While county officials insist harm reduction is simply about compassion and public health, another question continues surfacing in the community: how much money is tied to the rapidly expanding addiction, behavioral health, and treatment industry?

A recent job posting tied to Jamestown Corporation operations advertises a salary of $300,000 to $400,000 for a Psychiatric Medical Director as the Tribe moves toward opening its new psychiatric facility in Sequim.

The posting repeatedly emphasizes Tribal integration and Native preference considerations, including:

• “Partner with Tribal representatives to integrate Tribal culture and values into medical care, training, and policies.”

• “Demonstrate cultural humility and awareness when working with American Indian/Alaska Native patients and families.”

• “American Indian/Alaska Native preferences apply.”

That language has raised eyebrows among some residents because the public has repeatedly been told these behavioral health expansions and taxpayer-supported partnerships are intended to serve the broader community.

At the same time, Jamestown Healing Clinic — where Dr. Allison Berry works — continues expanding Medication-Assisted Treatment services while Clallam County expands harm reduction strategies designed to connect more individuals into long-term treatment systems heavily funded through federal and state reimbursements.

Residents are now asking how much taxpayer money is flowing into the addiction-treatment system, who ultimately benefits financially, and whether the public is helping fund institutions that may prioritize Tribal systems and hiring preferences over the broader community they were told these facilities would serve.

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Anti-Jake Seegers activism is escalating beyond policy disagreements and campaign signs. After stickers labeling Seegers a “carpetbagger” and “out of town real estate investor” appeared at the end of his family’s private driveway — where his children discovered them during a bike ride — questions are now being raised about how far local political hostility is willing to go, and whether some activists are more interested in intimidation than honest debate.

Stickers calling county commissioner candidate Jake Seegers a “carpetbagger” and “out of town real estate investor” continue appearing, and not just in downtown Port Angeles.

Most recently, the stickers showed up roughly seven miles away from the downtown core — at the entrance to the Seegers family driveway itself.

The stickers were discovered by three children riding their bicycles to pick up the family’s mail. The children were Jake’s. The stickers had been placed on signs and posts at the entrance to the shared driveway used by several neighboring families.

The message was unmistakable.

This was no longer simply, “We disagree with Jake Seegers politically.”
The message had evolved into something much more personal:

“We know where you live.”

Jake’s middle child summed up the moment in a way only a child can:

“That’s scary… they know where we live.”

That sentence says more about the current state of local politics than perhaps anything else could.

A Campaign That Has Intensified

With just over five months remaining in the race, Seegers’ campaign has clearly entered a new phase.

Jake continues to spend long days meeting with residents, listening to concerns, touring local industries, conducting podcast interviews, writing articles for CC Watchdog, and engaging directly with community members. Jake is putting in 60-hour workweeks while balancing life as a husband, father, volunteer, and friend.

But now that the race has narrowed into a two-person contest, another shift has become apparent.

The attacks have become less about policy and increasingly about the man himself.

Rather than debating county spending, homelessness, public safety, roads, taxes, or economic development, much of the rhetoric online has turned toward labeling, personal associations, and attempts to portray Seegers as politically radioactive.

Reddit, Rumors, and Anonymous Politics

A lengthy Reddit discussion about Jake Seegers recently gained traction online after one user reposted what they described as “research” into Seegers’ background, finances, family foundation connections, business relationships, and property ownership.

The original post raised questions about transparency, campaign disclosures, out-of-state family associations, grants tied to the Seegers Foundation, Seegers’ involvement with local organizations, and whether certain property ownership interests should have been disclosed in connection with advocacy surrounding Olympic Hot Springs Road.

Some commenters described the research as “great work” and argued that Seegers was not being fully transparent. Others used the thread to speculate about broader political motives, national conservative ties, religion, Project 2025, and alleged “MAGA” associations. One commenter referred to Seegers as a “carpetbagger,” while others mocked his background, family wealth, and even his children.

The thread also highlighted something increasingly common in modern politics: anonymous online activism replacing direct public conversation.

Reddit allows users to operate under anonymous screen names, and discussions can quickly escalate in tone and speculation. In this case, accusations, assumptions, and political labeling rapidly overtook any substantive discussion about county government itself.

What makes the situation notable, however, is that Seegers did not avoid the thread.

Using his own account, Seegers directly responded publicly:

“Thank you for originally raising these legitimate concerns.”

He then expanded an open invitation to anyone involved in the discussion to join him for a recorded podcast interview where they could ask any questions they wanted, on the record, in long-form format, with the entire community able to hear both the questions and the answers in full context.

He wrote:

“Transparency is critical, and this is a way to provide it for everyone interested.”

So far, despite the accusations and speculation, no one has accepted the offer.

“FTG”

One particularly telling comment circulating online suggested creating signs that say “FTG” with arrows pointing toward Seegers at public events.

For those unfamiliar with the slang, “FTG” is shorthand for the French phrase Ferme ta gueule, which roughly translates to “shut up” or more bluntly, “shut the f*** up.”

That is the level local political discourse is descending toward.

Not debate.
Not discussion.
Not competing visions for county government.

Just hostility.

From Protest to Intimidation?

There is an important distinction between criticizing a candidate’s policies and attempting to intimidate a candidate personally.

People absolutely have the right to oppose Jake Seegers politically. They have the right to question his ideas, challenge his proposals, disagree with his priorities, and support another candidate.

That is democracy.

But when activists begin placing targeted political messaging at the end of a candidate’s private driveway where his children will encounter it, reasonable people begin asking where the line is.

Especially when online discussions openly discuss following him to events, surrounding him with signs, and confronting him with nationally divisive ideological litmus tests that have little to do with county government.

A Different Response

Ironically, just last week, another incident tested the campaign.

A person was caught on camera removing and destroying one of Jake’s signs. It did not take long for members of the community to identify the individual involved through social media.

The individual later contacted Jake directly and apologized.

Rather than escalating the situation, Jake agreed to meet with the man personally to discuss his concerns and ideas about county government.

Law enforcement contacted Seegers and asked whether he wished to pursue charges related to the sign destruction. He declined.

According to Seegers:

“I asked the Sheriff’s Department not to pursue an investigation or press charges. This person appears to have made a poor decision out of frustration and then personally reached out to apologize. That humility is admirable.

Additionally, it did not seem like a good use of our limited and already strained law enforcement resources.

I look forward to a future conversation with this individual and believe that, like most community members, we can find common ground on local issues.”

That response reflects exactly who Jake Seegers is: approachable, willing to listen, calm under pressure, and genuinely interested in hearing from people even when they disagree with him.

People may disagree with his policies or question his solutions. That is fair game in politics.

But targeting a candidate’s family and sending the message that political opponents are comfortable showing up at the end of his driveway is something entirely different.

And many in the community are beginning to notice the difference.

Today’s Tidbit: A Historic Shift

Yesterday, for the first time in more than a decade, the Clallam County Commissioners approved a formal response letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs regarding a proposed transfer of land into federal tribal trust status.

That did not happen by accident.

It happened because members of the public pushed for it relentlessly for more than two years, refusing to let the issue disappear quietly into bureaucracy and backroom silence. Citizens attended meetings, submitted comments, wrote emails, researched federal processes, and repeatedly asked why Clallam County was not formally responding to trust land applications that directly impact taxation, zoning, land use, and local governance.

This is genuinely historic.

And whether people agree with every word of the letter or not, County Administrator Todd Mielke deserves substantial credit for helping move the county toward finally engaging the issue formally and professionally.

The letter itself is surprisingly direct.

It outlines concerns about the cumulative loss of taxable land in Clallam County, noting that roughly 70 percent of the county is already publicly owned and exempt from property taxes when federal, state, local, and tribal lands are combined. The county warns that continued transfers into trust status shift increasing tax burdens onto remaining private property owners while reducing the land base that funds schools, fire districts, hospitals, libraries, roads, and local government services.

The response also raises concerns about inconsistent zoning oversight once land enters trust status, particularly when parcels are not adjacent to existing reservation lands. The county notes that trust lands are no longer subject to many local land use regulations, potentially creating situations where neighboring properties operate under entirely different rules.

Most notably, the county formally requested that the BIA encourage tribes to enter into agreements similar to the “payment in lieu of taxes” arrangement associated with the Quileute Tribe, recognizing the growing strain placed on local taxpayers and taxing districts.

For years, many residents were told these conversations either could not happen, should not happen, or were inappropriate to discuss publicly.

Now, they are happening in official county correspondence.

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Bia Letter Jamestown Added 5 18 26 Item 1h

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A debate over tourism promotion funding exposed a growing frustration in Clallam County: local hotels and vacation rentals are required to collect lodging taxes that fund tourism campaigns, while one of the region’s largest hospitality empires benefits from those campaigns without paying into the system.

What Is LTAC?

Tourism promotion in Clallam County is funded largely through the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee, commonly known as LTAC. The program collects lodging taxes from hotels, motels, vacation rentals, and Airbnbs, then redistributes those dollars to festivals, events, marketing campaigns, and organizations designed to attract visitors to the Olympic Peninsula.

The theory is simple: bring in tourists, fill hotel rooms, boost shopping and restaurant traffic, and strengthen the local economy.

At the April 9 LTAC meeting, Commissioner Randy Johnson and committee members reviewed funding applications for 2026 tourism promotion efforts. Several organizations requested support.

Joyce Daze sought $5,000 to market its annual festival and draw out-of-town visitors. The Port Angeles Waterfront District requested $50,000 for tourism promotion efforts aimed at increasing regional visitation. The Sequim City Band also requested $5,000 to help host the Association of Concert Bands Regional Connections Event scheduled for July 24–25, 2026.

The event is expected to bring approximately 350 musicians and attendees from neighboring counties and other states for concerts, clinics, workshops, and performances hosted at the James Center for Performing Arts in Sequim. Organizers estimate roughly 100 hotel rooms will be rented during the conference.

On the surface, it sounds like exactly the type of economic activity LTAC was designed to encourage.

Until you look at where much of the event activity and lodging will occur.

Who Benefits From the Tourism Push?

A significant portion of the conference is expected to take place at the Jamestown Corporation-owned 7 Cedars Hotel and Resort in Blyn, with RV attendees expected to stay at the tribe’s Salish Trails RV Park.

Organizers also noted arrangements with Olympic View Inn in Sequim, but the Jamestown Corporation properties are positioned to receive substantial benefit from the tourism campaign funded through county lodging taxes.

And that immediately raised a familiar question.

Commissioner Randy Johnson was the first to openly acknowledge the issue during the LTAC discussion.

“The one item… that this also highlights is the issue of a tribal hotel that doesn’t contribute to lodging tax,” Johnson said during the meeting. He added, “This gives me a reason to send another letter to the tribe.”

Johnson was referring to the August 2025 letter sent by the Clallam County Board of Commissioners to the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe requesting a conversation about the tribe contributing property and lodging taxes.

That letter has since become a politically sensitive subject.

The “Fair Share” Debate

At a recent commissioner forum, a resident asked whether the commissioners planned to follow up on the request for the Jamestown Corporation to pay what the commenter described as its “fair share” of property and lodging taxes.

Johnson acknowledged he had not sent a follow-up letter. Commissioner Mark Ozias, attending remotely and unable to respond before boarding a flight to Maui, reportedly told the commissioners that he may have contacted someone informally about the issue.

Commissioner Mike French then stepped in to defend the county’s relationship with the tribe, explaining that Clallam County’s “sovereign neighbors” operate on different “time scales,” which he described as “often uncomfortable for us, but it is just how their governments work.”

French also criticized the phrase “fair share,” calling it disrespectful to tribal sovereignty.

“They are a sovereign nation,” French said. “That is not how that relationship works.”

While French objected to the wording of a resident’s question as disrespectful, he has previously used nearly identical language himself in other contexts.

A Different Standard?

In 2020, French posted publicly about illegal marijuana grow operations and black-market activity. In that post, he wrote:

“The least concern of all is that taxes don’t get paid — it’s still an issue, people should pay their fair share…”

French’s earlier comments argued that tax avoidance harms communities and shifts burdens elsewhere. Why does that principle apply strongly to illegal cannabis operations but becomes inappropriate terminology when discussing tribal-owned hospitality businesses competing directly against tax-paying local hotels, inns, and vacation rentals?

The issue extends beyond philosophy.

Local lodging businesses throughout Clallam County are required to collect taxes that help fund tourism campaigns and marketing efforts. Those dollars are then used to attract visitors who may ultimately stay at tax-exempt tribal-owned lodging properties.

In effect, competitors are funding promotional campaigns that benefit businesses operating outside the same tax structure.

“Not My Job”

French later stated he would not personally pursue follow-up discussions because he is not the county liaison to the Jamestown Tribe.

That explanation frustrated some residents, particularly because all three commissioners signed the original August 2025 letter.

While commissioners campaign countywide and make decisions affecting taxpayers throughout Clallam County, responsibility suddenly narrows when politically sensitive issues involving tribal taxation arise.

Even more puzzling to some observers was the contradiction. If French believed it was inappropriate for him to follow up because he was not the liaison, why did he sign the original letter in the first place?

And if decisions made by the Jamestown Corporation impact the tax burden of residents throughout the county, every commissioner has an obligation to represent taxpayers on the issue — especially in a countywide elected office.

Ozias Suggests a Different Path

The conversation took another turn yesterday when Commissioner Ozias floated a different approach altogether.

Rather than focusing on lodging tax payments, Ozias suggested tribal governments could instead help meet tourism promotion goals through cultural participation — sharing tribal history, storytelling, educational events, and performances that would attract visitors to the region.

The concept resembled the type of cultural tourism often marketed in Hawaii — an idea Ozias appeared to bring back from the recent conference he attended in Maui.

Supporters may view the idea as collaborative and culturally enriching.

However, there is a different dynamic emerging: tribal enterprises remain exempt from lodging taxes while participating directly in tourism marketing efforts that could further increase business at tribal-owned hotels, RV parks, and vacation properties.

To opponents, it feels less like equal participation and more like a system where competitors pay into the tourism fund while exempt entities simultaneously benefit from both the marketing and the exemption itself.

First, the county loses the tax revenue, then tourism campaigns funded by competitors help drive business toward exempt properties, and finally the arrangement is celebrated as a partnership.

The Larger Question

For many residents and business owners, the core question remains unresolved:

Should businesses competing in the same tourism marketplace operate under fundamentally different financial obligations when public tourism dollars are involved?

Today’s Tidbit: PDN Returning to Balance?

Two excellent letters to the editor from the Peninsula Daily News last weekend.

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What began as a simple request for help in 2023 quietly evolved into a shower voucher pipeline tied to Clallam County’s Harm Reduction Health Center, all with little public awareness, no clear board approval, and almost no meaningful oversight. Now, instead of shutting the program down after public backlash, the Shore Pool board is expanding it, rebranding it, and pushing forward anyway.

A Shower Program Nobody Knew About

For nearly two years, the William Shore Memorial Pool District quietly operated a shower voucher program for homeless and unhoused individuals without a formal board-approved policy, without meaningful public awareness, and apparently without some board members even knowing it existed.

Now, after public outrage exposed the program, the response from the Shore Pool board has not been caution, accountability, or reassessment. Instead, it has been rebranding.

The “Shower Voucher Program” is now the far more polished-sounding “Community Hygiene Access Program.” Because apparently if you rename something, the controversy disappears with it.

The board unanimously voted to reinstate the program after briefly pausing it following community backlash. During the latest meeting, commissioners and staff discussed expanding the offerings beyond showers to include hygiene kits with soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and towels.

“Having changed the name to the Community Hygiene Access Program, it gives the impression we’re providing more than just a shower,” Director Ryan Amiot said during the May meeting, according to the Peninsula Daily News.

That part, at least, is honest.

Because the Shore Pool is no longer functioning simply as a public aquatic center. It is steadily morphing into another publicly funded social service arm in a city already saturated with them. And taxpayers are rightfully asking: When exactly did families vote for the local pool to become part of the county’s harm reduction infrastructure?

The Real Issue Isn’t Showers

The issue has never been whether struggling people deserve access to hygiene. The issue is where the vouchers are being distributed, who is receiving them, and why this program was embedded into a family-oriented aquatic facility without transparency or safeguards.

The vouchers are being distributed through Clallam County’s Harm Reduction Health Center — the same facility that distributes free drug paraphernalia and supplies to active addicts — as well as St. Vincent de Paul. Meanwhile, Port Angeles already has shelters and facilities specifically intended for serving unhoused populations, many of which already provide showers.

The Shore Pool is not a shelter. It is a family recreation facility where children swim, families change clothes, patrons store valuables, and people are often in vulnerable situations.

Yet the board’s repeated defense is that they are “unaware of incidents.” That is a remarkably low standard for public safety. So the plan is to wait until something happens?

How exactly do you “un-victimize” a child after the fact?

One of the more revealing moments during the public discussion came when board commissioner LaTrisha Suggs argued that while transients are using the facility, they could potentially encounter someone who offers them a job. That may sound compassionate on paper, but many residents are asking a more basic question first: Why are vulnerable families and children being placed into an unnecessary social experiment when alternative shower facilities already exist elsewhere?

The Board Doesn’t Even Know Where the Vouchers Are Going

Even more concerning, the board openly acknowledged they do not actually know where all the vouchers are ending up. Although officials insist only two organizations distribute them, public commenters stated vouchers are also showing up at the library and community feeding events. The board did not seem especially alarmed.

One section of the proposed policy states that “vouchers may not be sold, transferred, or reused.” That sounds reassuring until one asks the obvious follow-up question: How would they know?

There appears to be no meaningful tracking system, no identity verification, no accountability chain, and no enforcement mechanism. Just trust.

Commissioner Suggs also objected to language in the draft policy allowing the board to suspend or terminate the program based on “community impact” because she worried it could stigmatize the program or produce a “fear response.” But “community impact” is precisely what elected boards are supposed to consider, especially when taxpayers are raising concerns about safety, sanitation, operational priorities, and mission creep.

The comments from Commissioner Mike French were equally revealing.

“I want to highlight a couple of things in this because it’s important to me,” French said. “The program is intended to operate at little or no cost to the facility and during low-use times, so I’m against anything that makes the program more complicated or complex.”

In other words: keep it simple. Don’t burden it with too many rules.

French also supported allowing the executive director to approve participating organizations without requiring a formal board application process. So the public gets fewer safeguards, less oversight, and more administrative discretion.

What could possibly go wrong?

Mike French Says He Didn’t Know

Perhaps the most astonishing revelation of all is that Commissioner Mike French — who sits on the pool board and also serves as a Clallam County commissioner overseeing the county’s harm reduction programs — admitted he didn’t even know the voucher program existed until social media exposed it.

In an email, French wrote:

“I was made aware of the program because of information shared on social media; I was not aware of the program before the public was informed.”

The program had reportedly been operating for approximately 18 months.

A year and a half.

And a commissioner serving on both sides of the arrangement claims he knew nothing about it.

This is the same pool district scrutinized last year after the State Auditor uncovered fraud involving tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars. Oversight matters. Boards are not résumé builders for those who serve. Members are supposed to supervise public institutions, monitor programs, ask questions, establish safeguards, and protect taxpayer interests.

Instead, this program appears to have evolved through informal conversations between social service organizations and pool administrators with little visible board involvement.

How the Program Actually Started

The paper trail tells the story.

On October 24, 2023, First Step Family Support Center employee Riley Slonecker emailed then-director Denise Dawson asking whether the aquatic center offered shower vouchers for a client living without running water.

Dawson responded the same day, saying the idea had been discussed previously and suggesting a “pilot program” to see how it would work.

At the time, the discussion sounded limited and specific. Slonecker indicated they may have “a handful of clients” who could benefit from shower access.

By November 30, 2023, Dawson proposed creating “a shower voucher card (similar to a punch card)” for organizations to distribute to people needing showers.

Then management changed.

After Dawson left, current Executive Director Ryan Amiot revived the idea in April 2024, apologizing for it “getting lost in the shuffle between management changes” and promising to implement the vouchers.

On May 21, 2024, Amiot confirmed the vouchers had been finalized and were ready for pickup.

Then, in October 2025, Clallam County’s Harm Reduction Health Center formally requested vouchers for syringe service participants, writing that the population served was “primarily unhoused or unstably housed.” The county specifically requested vouchers to distribute during walk-in hours at the Harm Reduction Health Center.

So despite claims this program simply evolved organically to help people in need, the records show something much more structured: a coordinated expansion between the pool district, social service organizations, and eventually the county’s harm reduction apparatus.

So What Exactly Is the Board For?

That question becomes even more important after another records request response from Executive Director Ryan Amiot.

Amiot acknowledged he could not locate prior board approval for the program and instead cited the executive director’s job description as the apparent authority for creating it.

The job description does indeed state the executive director may “develop programs and improve operations.”

But if a single administrator can independently create public-facing programs involving safety, liability, partnerships with outside agencies, operational impacts, and taxpayer-funded resources without explicit board approval, then residents are left asking a fair question: What exactly is the board for?

Especially when commissioners later claim they had no idea the program even existed.

The same executive director job description also states that the director is supposed to “keep WSMPD Board fully informed of conditions and operations of the District” and work with the board in developing district policies.

If commissioners truly did not know this program existed for a year and a half, either the board was not being informed, or the board was not paying attention.

Neither explanation inspires confidence.

Mission Creep at the Community Pool

Meanwhile, the board continues discussing operational details like color-coded vouchers, reusable towels, hygiene kits, and expanded services. One commissioner worried discarded towels could become litter around town. Another concern raised during the meeting was whether towels used by voucher participants could pose health risks to other patrons. Amiot dismissed those concerns, explaining the towels would simply be washed and reused.

There are also new budget questions emerging. On page 8 of a recent Shore Aquatic Center document, “shower caddies” are listed as an expense totaling $228, along with another $724 for shower parts. Residents are now asking whether those purchases are tied to the expanding hygiene program.

And while the board insists the program operates at “little or no cost,” the reality is that every expansion creates additional operational responsibilities, staffing considerations, laundry demands, sanitation concerns, liability questions, and public safety considerations.

At some point, residents have to ask whether local government has entirely lost sight of mission boundaries.

The Shore Pool exists because taxpayers approved funding for a public aquatic and recreation facility. Not a satellite arm of the county’s harm reduction system. Not a hygiene distribution hub. Not a soft-entry social service center. And certainly not a place where families are expected to simply accept increased risk because officials insist there have not yet been enough problems to justify concern.

Because by the time there is a major incident, it will already be too late.

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Today’s Tidbit: The Boy in the Tent

One year ago, the story of the “boy in the tent” shocked Washington state — a child living in a fentanyl-filled tent along Aurora Avenue while systems looked the other way. Now, according to a follow-up report, his mother has reached five months of sobriety in a recovery-based shelter, and the boy just celebrated his 10th birthday.

One detail stands out: her recovery is reportedly coming through structure, treatment, sobriety, and accountability — not continued drug use under the banner of “harm reduction.” It is a reminder that true compassion means helping people escape addiction, not normalize living in it.

After a teenage driver nearly killed a pedestrian near the Tumwater encampment, County Commissioner candidate Jake Seegers confronts the hard questions local leaders have avoided for years: How did Port Angeles allow dangerous encampments, rampant drug activity, and environmental destruction to flourish beside public roadways and salmon streams — and who will finally stop it? This in-depth article connects the crash, the policies, the funding system, and the leadership failures that critics say turned compassion into chaos.

A Close Call

May 5th was a typical Tuesday for the 4PA Clean-Up Crew. 4PA is a Port Angeles-based nonprofit focused on trash cleanup efforts and high-barrier transitional shelter services for people experiencing homelessness. We were preparing for our second cleanup site of the day along Tumwater Creek.

Founder Joe DeScala had already positioned the truck and dump trailer along the shoulder of the Tumwater Truck Route. I waited for a break in traffic so I could cross from where I had parked on the opposite side of the road, but cars continued streaming through the curves in both directions at a steady, fast pace. Passenger vehicles, log trucks, and dump trucks rumbled past just feet away as I hoped drivers were paying attention to their surroundings.

It is a dangerous location for 4PA employees and volunteers, but it’s the only way to remove the trash that piles up along the creek below.

And the trash never stops. Constant accumulation is a result of illegal camping that violates ordinances the City of Port Angeles fails to consistently enforce.

Illegal creekside encampments have exploded in recent years. Along with them have come thousands of pounds of human and solid waste: discarded clothing, blankets, tents, food containers, stolen shopping carts, and piles of drug-use supplies — many still unopened — from nearby harm-reduction distribution programs.

In a February interview with Radio Pacific Inc., Joe DeScala described the scale of the problem:

“In one waterway alone [Tumwater Creek], we average about 1,500 pounds of garbage removed every single week — 1,920 pounds today, actually. If we stop tomorrow, that accumulation would continue at the same rate. I’ve got the numbers to show it, and these would be directly in sensitive watersheds.”

That pace would total nearly 80,000 pounds of trash annually from Tumwater Creek alone.

On May 5^th, hours after 4PA finished cleaning, a different kind of tragedy struck.

One Instant. Two Lives Changed.

At 9:46 PM on May 5^th, two lives would be changed forever.

A 16-year-old female driver was heading northbound on Tumwater Truck Route, approaching the 8^th Street bridge.

Beneath the 8th Street Bridge, a pedestrian crossing over Tumwater Creek serves as a common access point to and from the encampments lining the creek corridor.

It leads to a clearing in the dense brush, opening onto a frequently occupied parcel of county-owned property.

This corridor is often active with Tumwater residents walking along the shoulders of the truck route in both directions, day and night.

That evening, it was already dark. There are no street lights illuminating the nearby entrance to Tumwater’s unsanctioned encampment. As the young driver rounded the bend near the bridge at approximately 40 MPH, she struck a pedestrian walking along the shoulder.

The vehicle's damage reflected the severity of the collision.

The pedestrian, identified as Brian Clewall, sustained injuries to his head, leg, and arm.

Photos from the scene showed his belongings scattered across the roadway beside a significant pool of blood.

A local resident of the Tumwater Encampment described the injuries as “major” and indicated they were nearly fatal.

According to the collision report:

“Unit 1 was traveling northbound on the S Tumwater Truck Route. Unit 1 did not see the pedestrian walking alongside the shoulder and struck him. She pulled over and called 911. I arrived on scene, and the pedestrian had major injuries to his foot and arm. The pedestrian was transported to the hospital.”

These five sentences describe a tragedy that should have never happened.

The Expansion of Harm

County leadership and the Port Angeles City Council have long embraced the distribution of drug-use supplies under the banner of “harm reduction.”

Meanwhile, the City has often refused to enforce ­illegal camping ordinances on public land in the name of compassion. But what officials describe as compassion has increasingly become a well-documented environmental and public health­­ catastrophe.

The human toll resembles cruelty far more than compassion: individuals trapped in addiction living among mounting refuse while fighting off rats and raccoons burrowing into tents.

Abundant services and access to drug-use supplies have created the Tumwater ecosystem of homeless camping and substance abuse.

• Free food is abundant (see list here)

• Showers are available at multiple locations, including taxpayer-funded locker rooms at Shore Aquatic Center.

• The Answer For Youth (TAFY) provides free tents, camping gear, and propane tank refills to all ages.

• Free healthcare services are readily available.

• Drug-use supplies are widely distributed.

• Drugs are openly bought and sold in known locations throughout the city.

• Clallam Transit conveniently connects these services at no cost to riders.

• Trespass ordinances on public land, such as those at the Tumwater Encampment, often go unenforced.

Public safety has been compromised by attracting and encouraging illegal activity as health officials hand out the supplies and instructions on how to get high, leaving their patients to creatively fund their addiction.

Under RCW 69.50.412 and RCW 69.50.4121, possession and distribution of drug paraphernalia are illegal.

In 2023, Washington added explicit exemptions for public-health-oriented harm reduction distribution.

In other words, it is a misdemeanor for ordinary citizens to possess or distribute drug paraphernalia, yet government-protected healthcare workers are exempt when distributing those same supplies in ways that facilitate illegal drug use in our community. Once those supplies are handed off to individuals intending to abuse drugs, criminal activity has been enabled, condoned, encouraged, and facilitated under the banner of public health.

These policy decisions have made Clallam County the destination of least resistance for homelessness and substance abuse, and have welcomed illegal communities like the Tumwater Encampment, where drug use is commonplace.

Listed among Mr. Clewall’s personal possessions was 17.2 grams of methamphetamine – a quantity unlikely to represent personal-use alone.

Tumwater is not officially sanctioned as a drug camp, but through persistent non-enforcement and active enabling, it increasingly functions as one.

This failed leadership nearly cost another life — this time not from overdose, but from the dangerous conditions created by allowing illegal encampments and drug use to thrive beside dangerous roadways.

Local Housing Last

Housing First — the belief that homelessness is solved by providing permanent housing without requiring sobriety, employment, or participation in treatment — has guided Clallam County policy since the county’s original 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness in 2005.

Yet homelessness continues to grow.

Part of the problem may be tied to how the system is funded. The federal HUD Continuum of Care grant awards consider “demonstrated local need.” Point-in-Time homeless counts, along with lengthy housing waitlists, are often used to justify additional or continued funding and resources.

In 2024, 2,408 households were on the waitlist for local permanent supportive housing.

By 2025 – only twelve months later - the waitlist had nearly doubled.

Meanwhile, Clallam County’s Point-in-Time Count (shown earlier) identified 310 homeless individuals, including 176 unsheltered — a meager 7.6% increase over the same period.

How did the housing waitlist increase by 86% in a single year while the Point-in-Time count of homeless individuals rose by only 7.6%? More importantly, why is the housing waitlist nearly fifteen times larger than the homeless population counted in 2025?

The disconnect is difficult to ignore. Thousands of individuals appear to be competing for local housing resources despite not being physically present and unsheltered in Clallam County.

In an economically depressed county with scarce resources and a strained tax base, local housing resources should prioritize local needs.

The Tumwater Fix

Working together, Clallam County and its municipalities, the Port of Port Angeles, the Clallam County Board of Health, the Sheriff’s Department, local police, fire, and EMS agencies, and social service nonprofits have an opportunity to reverse the decline in public safety and public health, protect environmentally sensitive areas and business districts, and restore public spaces to the communities they were meant to serve. Cities such as Spokane, Dallas, and San Diego have successfully implemented approaches.

Here’s how elements of those strategies could be applied in Clallam County:

1. Prioritize local housing resources for individuals currently residing in Clallam County. This may require wiping the housing waiting list clean and rebuilding it with individuals who are physically present and unsheltered in Clallam County.

2. Strengthen shelter policies to ensure services are supportive and attractive to those leaving outdoor living. Serenity House Shelter typically has dozens of vacant beds.

3. Expand transitional shelter capacity rather than focusing primarily on costly permanent supportive housing. Fast-track permitting and prioritize funding for transitional shelters similar to those operated by 4PA.

4. Redirect funding from drug-use supplies to treatment programs with measurable outcomes.

5. Remove the option to live outside on public land.

6. Prevent encampments from returning through consistent cleanups, volunteer ambassador patrols, regular inspections, and coordinated law enforcement presence.

The Choice

Housing and treatment — or move along.

Individuals living illegally on public land should be given a clear choice: enter shelter or transitional housing combined with mandatory treatment and case management, or move to a county that will accommodate their desire to live outside.

The Process

Grants Pass vs. Johnson affirmed the authority of cities to enforce anti-camping laws.

The Port Angeles City Council has the authority, through the Port Angeles Police Department, to lawfully remove the Tumwater encampment through established legal process. To date, it has largely failed to do so.

On Tuesday, May 19^th, at the Council’s upcoming meeting, city staff are expected to present long-awaited recommendations regarding homelessness and public safety. Residents should pay close attention to whether those recommendations finally include meaningful enforcement of public camping ordinances and protection of environmentally sensitive areas.

This is an opportunity for the City of Port Angeles to lead by example. However, if the City continues to refuse to act, the County has both the authority and obligation to intervene.

The County’s potential avenues include:

• Action through the Board of Health and the health officer under RCW 70.05.060 and RCW 70.05.070,

• Directing the Sheriff's enforcement authority of trespass, solid waste, reckless burning, and public nuisance

• Emergency declarations related to human health or environmental hazards

• Court-ordered cleanup and removal processes with appropriate due process protections, including clear notice of eviction and lawful opportunity for individuals to retrieve their belongings from storage.

Human waste, solid waste accumulation, and contamination of fish-bearing streams are not merely policy disagreements — they are public health and environmental hazards.

If the City will not act, the County must.

Public safety is not optional.

The Port Leads

The Port of Port Angeles deserves recognition for stepping forward and demonstrating leadership by clearing overgrowth and improving visibility along Tumwater Creek on Port property.

Before this effort, the area provided dense cover for encampments, illegal dumping, and drug activity.

Thick brambles often concealed vehicles associated with disturbing and unlawful behavior.

Today, those activities are far more difficult to hide.

The Port’s willingness to act stands in sharp contrast to years of paralysis elsewhere.

Now What?

Clallam County did not arrive here overnight.

Years of non-enforcement, policy drift, and enabling have transformed environmentally sensitive areas into illegal encampments marked by addiction, violence, human waste, and growing public danger. The collision on the Tumwater Truck Route was not an isolated tragedy. It was the predictable outcome of leadership that tolerated dangerous conditions in the name of compassion while abandoning basic standards of public safety and accountability.

Compassion without boundaries is not compassion at all. It is neglect.

Residents should not have to dodge needles on public trails, clean human waste from waterways, or watch young drivers navigate dark roadways beside illegal encampments that officials pretend not to see. Nor should individuals struggling with addiction be left to slowly destroy themselves in tents along fish-bearing streams while government agencies distribute the supplies that sustain the cycle.

The status quo is failing everyone.

The encouraging news is that this can change. Other cities have proven that consistent enforcement, transitional shelter, treatment, cleanup efforts, and coordinated leadership can reclaim public spaces and reduce dangerous encampments. Clallam County can do the same.

The Port of Port Angeles has already demonstrated what leadership looks like. By clearing overgrowth and restoring visibility along Tumwater Creek, the Port showed a willingness to act while others debated, delayed, and deferred responsibility.

Now the question is whether the rest of our local government will finally do the same.

Public safety is not cruel. Protecting waterways is not extreme. Enforcing laws is not oppression. These are the basic responsibilities of government.

The people of Clallam County have been patient long enough.

What can you do?

If you believe the status quo is failing both the community and those struggling with addiction and homelessness, now is the time to speak up.

• Contact all three Clallam County Commissioners by emailing the Clerk of the Board: loni.gores@clallamcountywa.gov

• Contact the entire Port Angeles City Council and urge meaningful action on public safety, environmental protection, and illegal encampments: council@cityofpa.us

• Attend the Port Angeles City Council meeting this Tuesday at 6:00 PM — in person or virtually — and consider giving public comment:

• Thank the Port of Port Angeles for taking the initiative to steward land along Tumwater Creek and improve visibility and safety beside a salmon-bearing stream. The port can be contacted at paulj@portofpa.com.

• Contact Clallam County Health Officer Allison Berry and ask what steps are being taken to address the growing public health and environmental concerns surrounding Tumwater Creek: allison.berry@clallamcountywa.gov

The people of Clallam County have been patient long enough. Public safety, clean waterways, and accountable leadership matter.

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See You This Afternoon in Forks

Editor’s Note: CC Watchdog editor Jeff Tozzer also serves as campaign manager for Jake Seegers during his run for Clallam County Commissioner, District 3. Learn more at www.JakeSeegers.com.

Another campaign sign gets destroyed. A county commissioner defends property destruction as a path to change. Overdose deaths fall—but who deserves the credit? Meanwhile, repeat offenders cycle through the system, activist groups fracture from within, and parents are warning each other about terrifying encounters at local parks. This week’s Social Media Saturday dives into the posts, photos, scanner chatter, and community debates shaping life in Clallam County—and asks the question many residents are already asking themselves: are things really safer than they were four years ago?

The One-Sided Sign War Continues

The Seegers campaign is spending time, money, and volunteer energy bringing every campaign sign into full PDC compliance after concerns over font sizing that could expose the campaign to $30,000 in penalties.

But compliance issues aren’t the campaign’s only problem. Signs are now disappearing.

One newly updated and fully compliant sign was recently stolen and destroyed. The metal stake was left behind, and an engaged CC Watchdogger captured the incident on camera.

And if there’s one thing people in Clallam County know by now, it’s this: if anyone can solve a mystery, it’s the CC Watchdog community.

With filing week now closed, the race for County Commissioner is officially a two-man contest between Jake Seegers and incumbent Commissioner Mike French.

That makes the contrast even sharper. Commissioner French has publicly stated that “property destruction is not only fine, it’s usually the only way we’ve ever seen actual change happen.”

But there’s another way to create change.

Build something.

Find a candidate you believe in. Donate. Knock on doors. Put signs out legally. Volunteer. Engage your neighbors. Participate in the process.

Whether residents support Jake Seegers or Mike French, many are discovering that building something you believe in is a lot more rewarding than destroying something you dislike.

Who Really Reduced Overdose Deaths?

Operation Shielding Hope launched in 2024 as a partnership between police, fire personnel, and community organizations focused on reducing overdose deaths and connecting survivors to treatment immediately after crisis intervention.

Commissioner Mark Ozias credited the county’s harm reduction efforts for a 33% reduction in overdose deaths compared to 2023. But the timeline suggests another major factor: the launch of Operation Shielding Hope by the Port Angeles Fire Department.

Unlike traditional harm reduction programs focused on distributing supplies, Shielding Hope emphasizes immediate paramedic response, relationship-building, and treatment referrals after overdoses.

Before the program, roughly 60% of overdose survivors reportedly refused help. Under Shielding Hope, officials say 78% engaged with services, compared to just 3% without paramedic intervention.

By May 2025, Fire Chief Derrell Sharp reported overdose deaths had dropped sharply, and Clallam County fell from having the second-highest overdose rate in Washington to outside the top ten.

Most overdoses occur in Port Angeles—the exact area where Shielding Hope operates. The timing aligns. The results appear measurable.

Which raises a political question heading into election season: if overdose deaths are declining because of a fire department-led treatment program, will county leaders credit the Port Angeles Fire Department—or frame the success as validation of expanded county harm reduction policies?

Justin Cox Is Back

Residents may remember Justin Cox from previous arrests involving stolen vehicles, methamphetamine possession, resisting arrest, and damaging emergency vehicles.

Then came the Carlsborg standoff last year.

According to law enforcement, Cox allegedly fired 25 to 30 rounds from an AK-style rifle toward deputies and armored vehicles after barricading himself inside a home and threatening officers.

Investigators say he claimed to be “the Messiah,” threatened to kill law enforcement, and used an elderly resident as cover while armed.

The situation escalated into a full tactical response involving crisis negotiators, armored vehicles, and chemical munitions before Cox was eventually arrested. No one was killed.

Now he’s back.

This week, Cox was arrested for obstructing law enforcement, resisting arrest, reckless endangerment, unlawful firearm possession, malicious mischief, felony harassment, and assault charges.

At the recent Public Safety Town Hall, attendees were asked whether Clallam County feels as safe today as it did four years ago. Out of 172 attendees, only three said yes.

One of them was Commissioner Mike French.

Is the League of Women Voters Really Nonpartisan?

At the national level, Indivisible openly aligns with Democratic Party causes and activism. They say so themselves.

No mystery there.

Indivisible Sequim has also publicly encouraged Democratic voter turnout in newsletters and organizing efforts.

Again—that’s their right.

But questions are increasingly being raised about organizations that simultaneously claim neutrality while appearing consistently aligned with one side politically.

This week, an Indivisible Sequim member posted about organizations supporting their efforts, including the League of Women Voters.

That caught people’s attention.

The League of Women Voters strongly markets itself as “nonpartisan,” which gives it credibility in election monitoring, civic engagement, and local government participation.

But critics increasingly argue the organization functions as functionally partisan while maintaining the protective branding of neutrality.

Residents searching for examples of the League supporting conservative causes or Republican candidates locally are struggling to find them.

Fair or unfair, skepticism is growing. And once public trust starts eroding, rebuilding it becomes difficult.

Trouble Inside Indivisible Sequim

Indivisible Sequim itself appears to be facing internal strain. Founder PJ Harris recently posted online that she was “in tears because I’m weary,” suggesting too few members are carrying the workload.

At the same time, critics continue accusing the organization of ideological gatekeeping—claiming people are excluded if they do not fully align with climate activism and social justice politics.

Meanwhile, former Sequim School Board member Jim Stoffer, who serves in a security-related role within the organization, has been accused of pushing out members who engage with CC Watchdog content.

Whether those accusations are fully fair or not, the organization appears increasingly fractured. And some are asking whether ideological purity tests are contributing to dwindling participation.

What Happened to Beth?

Earlier this week, an Indivisible Sequim member named Beth posted concerns about feeling unsafe and vulnerable online, expressing interest in blocking people who disagree with her politically.

That might sound understandable in today’s climate. But prior social media posts tell a different story.

Back in 2019, Beth expressed concerns many local residents shared: homelessness, drug use, garbage, public disorder, and rising crime. At the time, she appeared focused on practical solutions and concern for the community.

Fast forward several years, and her online rhetoric became dramatically more aggressive. Last year, she openly mocked the murder of political activist and commentator Charlie Kirk after he was killed while exercising his free speech rights.

That transformation raises uncomfortable questions.

How does someone move from concerned community member to celebrating political violence?
What role do activist echo chambers play?
What role do fear-based political messaging and social media radicalization play?

And perhaps most importantly: What has happened to civility in Clallam County?

A Frightening Warning From Carrie Blake Park

One of the most alarming social media posts this week came from a mother in Sequim warning parents after a terrifying encounter at Carrie Blake Park. According to her account, a man approached while her two-year-old daughter was on a swing and repeatedly demanded the child, telling the mother he “wanted” her daughter and “wouldn’t hurt” her.

The mother said she struggled to free her daughter from the swing as the man continued approaching. She eventually escaped and ran for help while calling the police. The suspect reportedly fled before officers arrived.

The post spread rapidly across community pages, with many parents expressing fear and frustration. And again the question resurfaced:

Are residents really safer today than they were four years ago?

Craig Gallauher: Out Already?

This week, social media lit up with warnings about Craig Gallauher allegedly riding throughout Sequim near parks, trails, and children’s areas.

Posts described him frequenting the Railroad Bridge area and various public spaces.

What shocked many residents was that Gallauher had already been arrested last year in connection with disturbing allegations involving children near a campsite south of Railroad Bridge Park.

According to law enforcement, two children told investigators Gallauher attempted to persuade them to remove their clothes and sit in what he allegedly called a “sex chair” at his encampment.

The children fled. Detectives later located a campsite matching their descriptions. Gallauher was arrested on multiple felony charges involving attempted sexual exploitation of minors and luring. Now residents are asking the obvious question:

Why is someone accused of crimes like this already back on the streets around public parks and trails?

Another Disturbing Park Incident

Another troubling social media post circulated after parents reported a man approaching children and asking to push them on swings and play on playground equipment.

One parent claimed the man was hiding inside a slide waiting for children to come down. When confronted by several fathers and asked whether he had children at the park, he reportedly answered, “No.”

Parents said several children were frightened. When people discussed recording him and waiting for the police, the man allegedly ran toward the bathroom area before later riding around near Sequim Middle School during volleyball activities.

The mother who shared the post said her goal was simply awareness and vigilance.

“Watch your babies closely,” she wrote. “NO child should ever feel this way.”

For many residents, incidents like these fuel growing concerns that Clallam County no longer feels as safe as it once did.

Flashback: Jim Stoffer and the Vigil

For this week’s social media flashback, we return to November 2021.

Former Sequim School Board member Jim Stoffer had just received a community service award while simultaneously facing criticism and censure efforts involving allegations of disclosing confidential school board information.

That controversy sparked intense political division locally.

Among those publicly rallying to Stoffer’s defense was Tim Wheeler—Sequim’s well-known communist activist—who organized a public vigil on Stoffer’s behalf.

Even Jamestown S’Klallam Chairman Ron Allen submitted a public letter defending Stoffer’s integrity and character.

In small-town politics, alliances can get complicated quickly.

Scanner Chatter of the Week

And finally, another week of scanner traffic brought more reports involving drugs, repeat offenders, disturbances, thefts, mental health crises, and transient-related incidents throughout Clallam County.

Many residents say they feel the county is changing rapidly—and not for the better. Others insist progress is being made. But one thing is undeniable:

Public safety, addiction, homelessness, and political accountability are no longer fringe issues in Clallam County.

They are now front-and-center election issues.