Can continues to get kicked down Towne Road

Ozias departs meeting before public comment

Over 60 attendees crowded the standing room only gallery at yesterday’s Clallam County Commissioners’ Meeting, but one elected official was notably absent.  Commissioner Mark Ozias attended the meeting via video feed. 

Ozias announced his departure from the video feed at 11:30, five minutes before the public comment period began, but promised he would review footage of the meeting later.  Those seated in the gallery, who had patiently awaited their opportunity to address the Commissioner, would not be able to do so directly. 

Yesterday, it was expected that the Commissioners would agree to “Option 2”  with the aim of completing and reopening Towne Road for the taxpayers of Clallam County who have paid for and maintained the rural road for over a century.  However, during Monday’s Work Session, the crowd was subjected to a circular, rambling, repetitive, on-again, off-again vote to either ratify Option 2, or delay making a binding decision.  Ultimately, the “decision to make a decision” was chosen as a path forward.  No vote was taken, no option was ratified, no choice was made, and the decision remains undecided. 

The Commissioners cited budgetary concerns and the effects of rubber particulates on coho salmon as reasons to postpone progress.  While tire particles are one byproduct of rubber-tired vehicles traveling on roads, the Towne Road levee was designed, and built at considerable extra cost, with catchment basins to mitigate tire particles before they reach waterways.  The environment will benefit from every driver who chooses to drive on Towne Road versus an alternate route.  The closure of Towne Road has forced traffic onto Ward Road which lacks the mitigation technology to prevent tire particles from reaching the river which is a stone’s throw away from Ward Road in places.  Simply reopening the new, technologically superior, updated Towne Road will mitigate the tire particles currently entering the ecosystem from Ward Road.

For the spectator, witnessing this week’s process helped crystallize the litany of incompetence and arrogance that has brought us to the current state of affairs.  For readers, a review of the project’s history will help shed light on the evolving culture that has contributed to our County’s floundering and muddled processes.

In the beginning, a through Towne Road was always part of the Dungeness Floodplain Restoration Project and proper procedures were followed.  The required County Engineer Report was performed.  A proper public hearing in 2015, which allowed oral comments, was followed by an appropriate public comment period which resulted in overwhelming support for keeping Towne Road open through the entire project.  The required State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) was submitted and approved.  This all resulted in a project plan that was complete and committed to keeping Towne Road open as a county road, and those facts were communicated to the Clallam County taxpayers.

In the beginning, Towne Road was never intended to close for a single day.  All the studies were done, all the votes were taken, all the funding was appropriated, and a promise was delivered to the taxpayers of Clallam County.

Incompetency led to the early, and mysterious breach of an existing dike which put Towne Road in danger.  As a result, Towne Road was closed and has remained closed for over a year.  This blunder, which forced the County to spend additional funds in an attempt to protect downriver communities, never led to a search for accountability or a request for reimbursement.  

Unfathomably, County staff was astonished to discover contaminated soil beneath a century-old asphalt roadbed.  A narrative was developed that blamed the closure on financial insecurity due to the unexpected soil remediation, but that cost was covered entirely by grant funds and the County was not financially liable.  

While County staff outwardly messaged that soil remediation closed the road, the ahead-of-schedule dike’s breach was the true reason.  Then, County officials inexplicably suspended the adjusted September 2023 targeted completion of the road.  

Special interests soon interceded.  Their motives attempted to alter the original commitment at the expense (literally) of Clallam County taxpayers. One interest desired a three-year delay for no justifiable reason, others lobbied for a private road only open to a handful of users, and one desired a private driveway with automated, electronic gates.  None of these desires took into account the broader interests, wellbeing, and safety of the Clallam County taxpayers who had financed the road and would continue to fund it.  

The special interests remained steadfast in wishing that those financing the road be banned from using it, and elected officials succumbed to their clout.  The promise to Clallam County taxpayers, who had the right to use the road, was broken.  Encouraged by their apparent ability to influence elected officials to suspend a binding commitment, the special and private interests’ attempted derailment of the project continued.

The required report from the County Engineer was not procured, the obligation to refile an amended SEPA report was not met, and a proper public hearing was waived. In fact, the September 26th informational meeting, purposefully not called a “hearing” by County staff, was advertised to “solicit discussion” from the public while ridiculously stating that County leaders would not be “soliciting oral comment”.  

Emails later revealed that those wishing to permanently close Towne Road had attempted to allow public comment, thus fulfilling the criteria of a “hearing”, which would (hopefully) counter the results of the original 2015 public hearing that resulted in overwhelming support for an open Towne Road. 

Instead of six weeks for the 2023 public comment period, the time between the public informational meeting and the deadline to submit comment was cut to just 14 days.  Signage announcing the County’s defection from the original plan was limited to the levee – this meant that those recreating on the closed road’s surface, and those supportive that the county road remain free of vehicles, were most likely to know about the public comment period.  The meeting’s notice was emailed to those who wanted to permanently close Towne Road, but only a flier was mailed to a narrow slice of the community who depended on the road.

Despite all the private and special interests’ efforts to ban Clallam County taxpayers from using Towne Road, the second public comment period resulted in a majority calling for its reopening.  Even, it must be noted, after an attempt to alter the numbers.

The numbers released by the County showed 165 favoring “driveway” (the closed-road option #4) and 185 favoring “open” (options 1, 2 and 3) – that’s 55% favoring the opening of Towne Road, and 45% wanting it closed.  However, when providing the public comment results to the Commissioners on December 4th, DCD Director Bruce Emery purposely counted one of the “open Town Road” categories in the “close Towne Road” category using logic that has no basis in statistics, math, or reality.  

Instead of options 1,2, and 3 being counted as “open”, and option 4 (private driveway) being counted as “closed” for a respective and accurate 55% to 45% result favoring opening, Emery detached options 1 and 2 to stand alone and relabeled them “two-lane paved”.  He then combined option 3 (one-way open) with option 4 (driveway) and renamed that category “recreation-centered” thus showing a respective 51% vs. 49% – a much closer split.  When asked why Emery had chosen to present the restructured data to the Commissioners, he said:

The data you are speaking of is simply different ways of looking at what the public stated in their comments. If we view Alternatives 1 & 2 as favoring a 2-lane road option, and alternatives 3 & 4 as favoring a recreation-centric option, we get a pretty even split at 51% and 49%, respectively.

Despite the repackaged data, “Open Towne Road” votes still topped all other votes.  This demonstrates that the support for Towne Road as a two-lane, through road is as consistent and clear in 2023 as it was in 2015.

This past year and a half have not been easy for the century-old road.  The breached dike in 2022 prompted the County to dump additional resources into accelerating construction, but Towne Road dodged that obstacle – County staff even orchestrated a path forward without using County funds. Next, the Tribe and one private landowner simultaneously influenced Ozias to keep the road closed (for an outdoor classroom and a private driveway, respectively) but County residents activated.  Their efforts saw a 2-3 year delay disappear when Towne Road was introduced to the 2024 Construction Program.  However, every time the project’s completion is delayed, the price tag increases.

Monday saw independently elected Director of Community Development Bruce Emery bring the recommendation of “Option 2” before the Commissioners.  This recommendation was defeated when Commissioner Ozias suspended a vote once it became evident that the other two Commissioners (Johnson and French) supported reopening Towne Road.  Under the guise of a phased approach, Ozias favored beginning “Option 2” with the installation of automated, electronic gates.  Noting the pace at which Ozias has addressed other aspects of reopening Towne Road, this sluggish advancement will lead to months, and easily years, of Towne Road remaining closed.

This is a victory for a handful of special interests who have lobbied to reduce neighborhood traffic by closing the road.  It also leaves many wondering if the requested 3-year moratorium has been promised to the Tribe, just as Commissioner Ozias promised the installation of tax-funded automatic, electronic gates to landowner Derrick Eberle.

Clallam County Commissioners have reneged multiple times on the project plan and spent an enormous amount of money building a 38-foot wide roadbed when a dike, only half that width, would have sufficed in holding back the river.  The Commissioners were entrusted to manage a multi-agency public works project, with the premise that the agencies’ resources would relocate Towne Road atop a levee.  Seeing the lack of action to complete the road by September 30th, 2023, these agencies may come looking for a refund once they realize the deliverables weren’t met after their money was taken.

Incompetence, misconduct, and arrogance has opened Clallam County to liability for damages from a myriad of potential lawsuits.  The blackened shell of one family’s former home on the north side of the closure should be a clear sign to the Commissioners of how many legal actions potentially will be mitigated on the backs of Clallam County taxpayers.  Apparently, even this risk exposure to all Clallam County taxpayers' won’t hinder one Commissioner’s promises to private and special interests. 

Impressive civic engagement and an “upswell of support” to reopen Towne Road can be evidenced on the faces of the Clallam County employees who passed the boardroom this week sneaking a glance at the gallery – the extra chairs in storage had been unstacked, a row of seating was added to a row that had already been added to the front row, and Clallam County taxpayers turned out in droves to see if they had the same influence over the Commissioners that has been extended to special and private interests.  

The needle is moving, momentum is building, stay tuned.