Towne Road petitions shed light on closure

Majority want road open

This is a lot of information to digest, but it is crucial when understanding how special interest groups drive local issues.  I’ve had a chance to review the four petitions that were submitted to the County Commissioners (two for reopening Towne Road, and two wanting it to remain closed to through traffic).  Here is the data:

Reopen Towne Road: 140

Keep Towne Road closed to through traffic: 98

The first petition, received by the Commissioners on October 17th of last year, was from the “Towne Road Working Farm Neighborhood” and supported the reopening of Towne Road.  It had 18 signatures (no addresses provided) and requested that Towne Road be a well designed thoroughfare for cars, trucks, pedestrians and cyclists.

The second and third petitions, received by the Commissioners in February of this year, “support the option of closing Towne Road to through vehicle traffic.”  Confusingly, some of the same names appear in the first two petitions — in the span of four months residents changed from “reopen the road” to “close the road".  These 2nd and 3rd petitions wrongly state that signatures were collected only in the Towne Road neighborhood and were from residents living north of Woodcock, including Towne Road's many side streets and cut-de-sacs — but some signatures came from other neighborhoods such as Happy Valley, Sunland, Village Green, Trailside Drive, East Palmer, Vicky Lynne Lane, Livengood Lane, Laura Lane, and Cays Road.

These petitions also included feedback from Forest Ridge residents (Forest Ridge is accessed from Towne Road).  It stated that residents are hopeful for the closure to remain permanent and they supported their stance by making two lists.  The first list offered reasons to open Towne Road and had one item:

1) Concern for the Dungeness Dairy and convenience of using Towne Road occasionally.

The second list offered reasons to keep Towne Road closed.

1) Relieved at the reduced volume of traffic

2) Relieved at the lower overall traffic speeds coming over the hills in both directions

3) Relieved that vehicles entering Towne Road is less dangerous

4) Relieved that walking along or across Towne Road is less hazardous

5) For those living directly on Towne Road, relieved at reduced noise pollution

6) Pretty much unanimously everyone agrees that with the road closed it is safer for residential car, bike, and foot traffic

7) Relieved that there is less litter with Towne Road closed to through traffic.

It’s probably safe to say that these residents' concerns have been pushed onto other county roads and neighborhoods during the Town Road closure.

The fourth petition, with 122 signatures, supports reopening Towne Road and was received on March 14th of this year. This was likely a reaction to the Board’s decision on February 27th to delay finishing the project.  Unlike the previous petitions, support was received from all over the greater Sequim area and even Port Angeles.  This represents a much wider cross section of the community than the special interests represented in the previous petitions.  In fact, few of the petitioners supporting reopening the road reside in the Dungeness area.

Some petitioners advocating for the reopening wrote comments such as:

• “Employee at Dungeness Creamery, has to go around, lives on the north side, 10 times a week at least.  Been w/ farm over 20 years.”

• “Drive through street/access to farm should south Towne Road be blocked.  Allows residents of the town of Dungeness a shorter trip to west part of Sequim.”

• “Best interest for people of Dungeness.”

• “This is affecting tourism and business.  Need through road.”

• “The local people need thru access to town provided in the original plan.”

• “Give us space to work, & open the road.”

• “Open up our drive thru from Dungeness — you cut off our big Rd. to town!! Reopen!”

• “Need through access to Sequim-Dungeness.”

• “Need access for emerg. & local vehicles.”

• “Open it as promised.”

• “Keep this open per your plan.”

• “Keep it open!  We need the road for evacuation in case of emergency!”

• “Road belongs to everyone.”

• “Keep road!  Enough trails."

• “Please open the road.  I’m old and can’t drive that far!”

I’ve contacted the Department of Community of Development asking if I had missed some of the petition documents but they said, in all likelihood, I have received all the petitions from my public records request. 

According to the Commissioners’ statement provided to the Sequim Gazette, “the upswell of support for an alternative resurfacing option gave the Board reason to pause the road construction”.  

When I spoke to the Department of Community Development, I was told the project was halted because of 300 petitioners.  Commissioner Mark Ozias halted the project on February 27th because he had received “over 200 signatures”.  The documents provided by the County show only 98 petitioners who would prefer that Towne Road be closed.

The Commissioners’ decision to halt the project caused the deadline for grant funding to expire —  the County’s taxpayers will be paying more in the long run and those funds won’t be secured for 2-3 years. Towne Road would likely be opening a week from now if our County Commissioners had listened to the needs of the community instead of entertaining the wishes of a small special interest group.