Clallam County Watchdog

Jeff Tozzer
  • 3.1 (7)
  • Politics
  • Updated Daily

Holding County Leaders Accountable www.ccwatchdog.com

  1. 17h ago

    Nobody Requested It. They Are Reading It Anyway.

    This morning the commissioners will read an Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation that no one requested, and that last year no one showed up to receive. A counter-proclamation sent September 9 is still unanswered. The reading shames the taxpayers who fund it, then clears the ground for the grants and land deals that follow. Nobody asked County Administrator Todd Mielke explained the rule a month ago. Proclamations get on the agenda because somebody asks. A club. A nonprofit. County employees who want a diaper drive. Staff writes it up and puts it on the calendar. Asked at a commissioners’ forum where this one came from, Mark Ozias said he did not know if anyone requested it, and he did not recall how it began. He has been on the board eleven years. What he did recall is why he supports it. He “personally believes” the public needs a lesson in systemic discrimination, and that residents who say they had nothing to do with colonization hundreds of years ago have missed the point. That is the origin story. Not a request. A commissioner using county letterhead for his own theory of inherited guilt. He said it is not a performance. A proclamation nobody requested, delivered to a room that nobody showed up to receive last year, is indeed a performance. Commissioner Mike French agreed and said Ozias had explained it very well. He added a headcount: four federally recognized tribes have territory here. He also did not know how the proclamation got started. Randy Johnson’s name is on the signature block with theirs. Three commissioners. None of them are tribal members. Salaries on the order of $118,000, paid for by taxpayers. Don’t forget, the second installment of your property taxes is due at the end of this month regardless of your ancestry, unless the land is held in exempt tribal status. What they will not say The proclamation does not say tribal people once lived here. It says the borders “encompass Tribal ancestral land” and that they have lived here “since time immemorial.” That is the phrase in the League of Women Voters textbooks given to third, fourth, and fifth-graders in this county. A courtesy resolution does not rewrite a property deed. But it puts the sentence on county letterhead, so the next time a shoreline permit, a refuge handover, or Towne Road comes up, “ancestral land” is already baked into the county’s own language. Leaving out the part that doesn’t fit In 1847, about 150 Klallam warriors joined Suquamish fighters under Chief Seattle in an attack Suquamish oral history called a war of extermination against the Chemakum. Men were slaughtered. Women and children were taken as slaves. Klallam people then occupied that region, including today’s Port Townsend. On May 8, 1792, Peter Puget, ashore with Vancouver’s expedition near present-day Port Townsend, found three poles topped with human skulls. Before dawn on September 21, 1868, S’Klallam men led by Lame Jack killed seventeen Tsimshian tribal members camped on Dungeness Spit, including five women and two children. The party was resting before continuing to British Columbia. Jamestown’s own history page says captive-taking was common. Attacks, genocide, and extermination of rival tribes did a lot of damage to Indigenous peoples. The proclamation mentions none of it. Watch the other account Matt Walsh’s The Real History of the American Indians runs about 65 minutes, free on YouTube as What Schools Don’t Teach You About American Indians. Snow White, Cinderella, and smallpox blankets, he says, have one thing in common. They are fairy tales. Walsh explains that raiding, scalping, and captive-taking were ordinary intertribal war practices long before Europeans arrived. The phrase "Trail of Tears" came later, after the event (many of the Indians owned black slaves who also made the journey). “Stolen land” works as a slogan, similar to the impulse behind a land acknowledgment. Walsh’s point is simpler than the proclamation. When the United States won, it sent many of the defeated tribes to reserved land. A victorious tribe on this coast usually killed the men and took the women and children. The film is worthwhile. It is still a harder account than the “whereas” clauses in a proclamation that Mike French praises Mark Ozias for. What the reading buys No county money moves this morning. The vocabulary does all the work. French chairs Recompete, the $35.6 million federal grant he is running on. One slice buys Jamestown a hydroseeder and a mini excavator so a tribal enterprise can enter a business local contractors already do. Jamestown has a budget of over $100 million, with about 213 members living in the area. The same premise of repairing historical injustices nearly led the commissioners to give Towne Road to the Jamestown corporation. The same proclamation underpins a current proposal to hand two national wildlife refuges to the Jamestown tribal government, which also runs commercial seafood harvest operations. The proclamation does not transfer the land. It tells the public the transfer would be justice. This board let the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th arrive with no proclamation until the morning of. Shaming colonizers, with no one in the room, is a yearly ritual. The one they ignored On September 9, I emailed the commissioners and Administrator Mielke. I asked who requested this proclamation. I also asked that a second one be read beside it: residents of every background pay the taxes, no culture is innocent, and inherited guilt is not a governing program. Under Mielke’s rule, a request plus draft language gets you on the calendar. Diaper-awareness week made it. Food waste made it. Dark skies made it. This proclamation did not. Nobody replied. This was my proposed proclamation: WHEREAS, the residents of Clallam County—of every background and ancestry—work, pay taxes, and sustain the government that serves them; and WHEREAS, history shows that no culture or nation is without conflict or harm, and that the story of humanity is one of migration, struggle, and survival, not moral perfection; and WHEREAS, people first arrived on this continent by migration thousands of years ago, long before modern borders existed, and all who live here today share the same earth and the same duty to treat one another with respect; and WHEREAS, using history as a tool to divide present-day citizens or to assign inherited guilt risks deepening resentment rather than healing it; and WHEREAS, working families in Clallam County already shoulder heavy burdens—rising costs, limited opportunities, and repeated calls to raise their own property taxes—while county funds often go to symbolic or politically fashionable projects instead of core needs such as infrastructure, public safety, and housing people can actually afford; and WHEREAS, proclamations that emphasize virtue-signaling rather than measurable improvement distract from accountability and good government; and WHEREAS, public officials are elected to represent all citizens equally, not to advance the interests of select organizations or donors; and WHEREAS, lasting progress comes not from guilt or grievance, but from ensuring that every resident—regardless of ancestry—has the same chance to succeed through effort, education, and enterprise; NOW, THEREFORE, we, the citizens of Clallam County, proclaim that unity, fairness, and shared responsibility are the foundation of a healthy community. We call on our elected leaders to pursue fiscal responsibility, transparency, and equal respect for all taxpayers; to focus on opportunity rather than division; and to remember that the strength of this county lies not in rewriting the past, but in building a fair future together. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, we dedicate this day to the residents of Clallam County—those who keep its lights on, its roads repaired, and its spirit alive. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. This morning The board meets at 10 a.m. in the commissioners’ boardroom at the Clallam County Courthouse. The first public comment can address an agenda item, such as the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Proclamation. Remote comment is available via Zoom (click here for instructions). If you cannot be there, email all three commissioners at the Clerk of the Board: loni.gores@clallamcountywa.gov. Comment as neighbors, not as categories. Everyone in that room is a Clallam County resident, and the outcomes worth arguing over are the same ones: roads, housing, public safety, and a tax bill that buys something real. Tell the commissioners the shaming is finished. Ancestry is not a debt, and genetics are not a governing program. Ask them who requested the proclamation. Then ask them to represent the county, and all the people who live in it. Stay Engaged This Week PABA Seegers / French forum this morning The forum will be broadcast live on PABA’s Facebook page. Todd Ortloff Show: Seegers / French conversation Today – Candidate forum for Clallam County Commissioner District 3 with incumbent Mike French and challenger Jake Seegers. 1 pm on 1450AM, 101.7 (Port Angeles), 101.3 (Sequim), or listen online. Sequim comprehenisve plan The City of Sequim’s Planning Commission will be holding a Continued Public Hearing on the Draft 2025 Comprehensive Plan and Draft Title 18 Proposed Revisions today, Tuesday, October 6. The meeting will begin promptly at 5:30 p.m. PDT at the Sequim Civic Center (152 W Cedar St.) in the Council Chambers. For more information, you can visit the Comprehensive Plan Page or view the meeting agenda. Forks Seegers / French candidate forum Wednesday morning Jake Seegers and Mike French will be in Forks on Wednesday for the Chamber of Commerce meeting for a Candidate Forum! Wednesday, October 7, Blakeslee's Bar & Grill

  2. 1d ago

    French Told Rotary the Quiet Part: Harm Reduction Grew to Feed the Sequim MAT Clinic

    At a Sequim Rotary forum, Commissioner Mike French said Clallam County expanded harm reduction after the Jamestown Healing Clinic opened, so the program could “leverage that connection” and send active users to treatment. The county health officer who oversees that program also works at the clinic. Last year the Harm Reduction Health Center logged about 12,000 encounters and 27 on-site treatment assessments. Much of the District 3 commissioners’ race has narrowed to one argument the public will not drop: harm reduction. Incumbent Mike French, who also chairs the Board of Health, defends the Harm Reduction Health Center as an evidence-based program the county should stand by. Independent challenger Jake Seegers says the county should count how many people leave addiction, go back to a one-for-one needle exchange, keep naloxone available, and stop handing out smoking kits, foil, straws, and rectal “boofing” supplies. A month before the election, Peninsula Daily News published the county’s preferred version of that argument. The paper that cleaned it up The October 2 piece, “Health program addresses perception,” quotes French as a supporter of best practices and Seegers as the man who says the program enables addiction. It then hands the rest of the column to Health and Human Services Deputy Director Jenny Oppelt and HRHC coordinator Lari Karan. Oppelt walks readers through the origin story. In 2000, the Board of Health started a needle exchange. “One syringe comes in, and one syringe goes out.” Then the drug supply changed, the exchange became a syringe service program, and in 2023 it was renamed the Harm Reduction Health Center. What the article does not say is that the county no longer runs an exchange. Participants are not required to return a used syringe. The 2025 county report lists 137,499 sterile syringes distributed and 67,244 sharps returned by participants. The same report lists 20,848 sterile pipe kits and 4,274 “other injection alternatives.” The offering includes foil, straws, and boofing kits. The old program and the current one share a building and a press release. They are not the same policy. “We do not provide substances,” Oppelt stated in the article, which only means the county does not hand out drugs. But in 2023, it tried to. Jake Seegers reported that commissioners approved a plan to take illegal drugs from addicts, test them, and give those same drugs back. A county risk manager stopped it over legal and financial liability, so the program never launched. The county did not try to supply the substance. It did try to accept it, test it, and return it for use. That is more than the paper admits. Then the success story. Oppelt says Clallam had 46 overdose deaths in 2023, the most on record, and 22 accidental drug overdose deaths in 2025, about a 51 percent drop. The next sentence in the Peninsula Daily News story is a tell: “Harm reduction is not the only reason for that increase.” They meant decrease. But the slip fits the argument. The paper treats the drop in deaths as the center’s success, then concedes that the Jamestown clinic and other outreach did much of the work. Port Angeles Fire Department has already claimed a large share of that decline for Operation Shielding Hope, the community-paramedic response that started engaging overdose survivors who used to walk away. The Jamestown clinic, which opened in 2022 and operates a mobile unit dosing clinic in Clallam Bay since March 2024, belongs in the picture too. So does the national fall in overdose deaths after fentanyl’s peak. Seegers has also pointed at the longer curve: from the year Allison Berry became health officer, 2018, through the local peak, Clallam’s overdose deaths rose far faster than Washington’s or the nation’s. A two-year drop after a record year is not a reason to hand out unlimited supplies. The client spotlight does the rest of the work. Kristyn Milom, who does not use drugs, says she goes for nutrition drinks, cold compresses, and tampons, and that staff sees her as a human being. Hygiene items and a clothing closet are real needs. Serenity House, TAFY, food banks, and a long list of other providers also offer them. Seven pages of free-food options in this county do not require a stop at the syringe counter. Using a homeless woman who needs tampons to soften a debate about meth pipes is your local government and legacy media colluding to propagandize. What French said when the paper was not writing it Last week, at the Sequim Rotary candidate forum, French said he wanted to clear up misconceptions. “So, the first thing is, yes, Clallam County had an expansion of harm reduction a few years ago. A lot of that was response to, again, the Jamestown Healing Center opening, and harm reduction being a way to create a connection with active drug users so that you can leverage that connection to get them to go to treatment. So that’s the desire behind that expansion.” That is the bluntest public explanation yet of why the program grew. The MAT Clinic opened in Sequim in 2022. The county renamed and broadened the program in 2023. French’s own account ties the expansion to the clinic: meet users with supplies, then move them to Medication-Assisted Treatment. Jamestown is not a volunteer booth. The tribe runs the Healing Clinic as part of a profitable health enterprise. CC Watchdog has already reported the scale of that billing. By Mike French’s own account at the Sequim Rotary forum, the county expanded its taxpayer-funded supply program after the Jamestown Healing Clinic opened, specifically to create a connection with active users and move them into that clinic. In his rebuttal to French, Jake Seegers did not argue about how many supplies went out. He argued about what happened next: 27 on-site treatment assessments out of about 12,000 encounters last year. “That’s a terrible conversion rate,” he said. “We are not actually pushing people to the treatment and the help that they need at harm reduction. We’re giving them drug use supplies.” If the expansion was about treatment, the county’s own tally, as Seegers read it, says it failed. Health Officer Allison Berry oversees this arrangement. The Board of Health appointed her (then Allison Berry Unthank) on September 4, 2018. She already worked at Jamestown Family Health Clinic. She is now also health officer for Jefferson County, and the state Board of Health bio lists her part-time work in primary care and substance-use treatment at the Jamestown Healing Clinic. One of Berry’s employers, the County, writes the harm-reduction policy. The other employer, Jamestown, treats the patients that policy is supposed to produce, and gets paid for the visits. French chairs the board that keeps her in the first job. Nobody at Peninsula Daily News thought that was worth mentioning. The Indiana story, and the budget cut he wants credit for French then told the room the county has since cut the harm reduction program. He said he talked to Jamestown, Peninsula Behavioral Health, community paramedics, and 4PA. Joe DeScala of 4PA, French said, told him about half the supplies recovered on cleanups were unused. Staffing at the HRHC was reduced. Supplies were scaled back. Told that way, it sounds like a commissioner who heard the public and trimmed the waste. Seegers answered with the other half of the story. The reduction followed the loss of state grant funding. The board didn't discover restraint after years of complaints. Full-time employees and drug-use supplies came down because the money dried up. French called it a course correction. Seegers called it a hole in the budget. French closed with rural Indiana. He called the current local program evidence-based, and warned what happens if services like these are removed. Scott County, Indiana, experienced a real outbreak in 2014 and 2015. About 215 HIV infections were eventually tied to it, in a town of roughly 4,200, almost all from injecting drugs with shared equipment. The county had about five HIV diagnoses in the prior decade. Indiana banned syringe sales without a prescription and did not allow needle exchanges. Possession could be a felony. The governor authorized a temporary exchange in 2015 after dozens of cases were already confirmed. Sharing then fell sharply. One study of participants found about an 88 percent drop in syringe sharing. That is an argument for sterile syringes in a place that had none, during an injection outbreak of HIV. It is not an argument for Clallam County in 2026. Clallam has had a syringe program since 2000. It is not facing a Scott County-style HIV cluster. The Indiana emergency program was a restricted exchange plus testing, contact tracing, and treatment. It was not a service desk for meth pipes, foil, straws, and boofing kits, and it was not needs-based distribution of hundreds of syringes with no return required. Researchers credited sterile syringes, not a wider selection of crack pipes to choose from. Austin, Indiana, was an injection-driven HIV outbreak. The intervention tied to the drop in sharing and new infections was a syringe-services program: sterile needles, a place to return used ones, and a link to testing and treatment. That finding does not cover pipes, foils, or the rest of a safer-use menu. Clallam County’s Harm Reduction Health Center does both. It runs syringe services and also hands out safer-smoking supplies, along with naloxone, test strips, wound care, and referrals. Using Indiana to defend the whole center treats evidence for one tool as evidence for the entire package. Just like a seatbelt study can justify using seatbelts. It cannot justify handing out the rest of the car. French wants both sides at once. The harm reduction program had to grow to feed Jamestown’s clinic. The program also had to be cut because unused supplies were piling up in cleanups. And the cut program is still the evidence-base

  3. 2d ago

    They Are Being Bussed Here

    In this Sundays With Seegers, commissioner candidate Jake Seegers addresses a rumor head-on. Everyone has heard the stories: people struggling with addiction and homelessness are being transported to Port Angeles from communities across Washington. Public records show that, at least in the treatment system, transportation from outside the county is not a rumor—it happens. The more important question is what happens after people arrive. The Question Residents Keep Asking During an April Public Safety Town Hall, Mike French was asked whether Clallam County’s homelessness and harm-reduction services are drawing people from outside the area. He said he does not have definitive data. His answer was still “generally no.” He offered remoteness instead. Someone with a warrant elsewhere, he suggested, might head for a place less connected to the community they are trying to leave. He also warned against blaming outsiders. “The focus right now is on finger-pointing,” he said, and treating arrivals as “not our community” would be “an abdication of our responsibility.” That does not answer the question residents were asking. If remoteness is the main draw, why are so many people concentrated exactly where the services are? And it does not address a narrower claim: that public agencies, hospitals, courts, and treatment systems are moving vulnerable people from elsewhere in Washington to Port Angeles. They are, and the history of a treatment facility at Fifth and Race shows how that happens. French returned to the subject in a later debate, after he and Jake Seegers were asked about homeless, addicted, and mentally ill people being bused to Port Angeles. French said: “This is something that obviously, like, I’ve heard since I’ve been in public office from individuals. People have the right to move around the country; that’s how America works. So, people move around. People come here, people leave here, there’s nothing we can do to stop that.” On the constitutional point, he is right. Americans can move where they choose, and government should not decide where someone is allowed to live. Choosing to travel here is not the same thing as a hospital, court, or treatment system sending someone here. A $450,000 State Grant The story begins in 2014 with the former Port Angeles Care Center at 825 E. Fifth Street. CRALI Properties, associated with Craig Phillips of American Behavioral Health Systems (ABHS), purchased the former nursing home for $175,000. Phillips told the Peninsula Daily News that Specialty Services, a business under the ABHS umbrella, had received a $450,000 grant from the Washington Department of Social and Health Services to purchase the building, remodel it, and establish treatment there. The money was part of a $2.6 million legislative appropriation intended to establish eight 16-bed inpatient treatment centers around Washington. But Specialty Services was not simply opening another business. Operating a residential chemical-dependency treatment facility at that location required a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) from the City of Port Angeles, and the proposal sparked significant debate among neighbors. The initial plan called for a 16-bed inpatient treatment center, with an additional 16-bed detoxification center proposed for the same building if funding could be secured. Supporters argued that people struggling with addiction were safer in treatment than on the streets. Danetta Rutten, a former Clallam County probation officer who lived in the neighborhood, told the Peninsula Daily News that there was “nothing to fear” from the treatment center. “And I live in this neighborhood, too,” Rutten said. “We have more to fear about what’s on the corner and what’s walking the street not in treatment than we have to fear with people that are in treatment.” But some neighbors raised a concern that would become particularly relevant in the years ahead: What would happen when patients brought to Port Angeles from elsewhere left the facility or completed treatment? Pamela Blakeman put the concern bluntly: “If the clinic is approved, the town needs to be ready to absorb more needy people.” Other residents raised concerns about transportation and whether people brought to Port Angeles from other parts of the state would actually return home—or remain in the community. Many of those concerns sound remarkably familiar today. ABHS representatives attempted to address them. The proposed facility would provide residential treatment for people requiring short-term detoxification or longer-term substance-abuse treatment. ABHS representatives sought to reassure neighbors that patients would be supervised while in treatment and that the facility would not simply release people into the surrounding neighborhood. And there was another important assurance: Clallam County residents would be prioritized. As reported by Peninsula Daily News, Sally Beaven, then director of Specialty Services, promised: “We’ve come to fill a need.” Craig Phillips echoed, “I know from 30 years of experience that if there’s no inpatient treatment on the Peninsula, then the 16 beds will be full all the time.” The Promise to Prioritize Locals That wasn’t merely a talking point; it became a condition of the permit. When the Planning Commission approved the conditional use permit, it imposed five conditions. Condition No. 4 stated plainly: “The applicants will prioritize occupancy for Clallam County residents.” The permit was initially approved for twelve months, through June 11, 2015. Continued operation beyond that date was subject to review based on compliance with the CUP conditions. When the City conducted that review in 2015, Assistant Planner Scott Johns recommended extending the permit indefinitely, stating: “All 5 original conditions of approval have been met by the applicant.” But the City’s justification for determining that the local-priority requirement had been satisfied is revealing. Immediately beneath the requirement that Specialty Services “prioritize occupancy for Clallam County Residents,” the City’s review stated: “SSII (Specialty Services 2) has remained inclusive of all counties in the State of Washington, including Clallam County.” Those are not the same standard. Prioritizing Clallam County residents means giving Clallam County residents preference. Being inclusive of all counties means treating Clallam County as one county among 39. Yet City staff concluded that all five conditions had been satisfied and recommended extending the permit indefinitely. Nathan West, then Port Angeles’ Director of Community and Economic Development and now City Manager, approved the extension. A treatment facility established in Port Angeles with state funding had been permitted with an explicit requirement to prioritize Clallam County residents. Yet when the City later reviewed compliance with that requirement, it apparently treated serving patients from throughout Washington as sufficient. Then City Council Erased the CUP Even a weak condition is still a condition—until the code changes. Six years later, that is exactly what happened. In December 2021, the Port Angeles City Council adopted Ordinance 3688 as part of a broader effort to increase residential building capacity, provide greater flexibility for housing development, and remove regulatory barriers to new housing. Mike French was serving on the Port Angeles City Council at the time. He has since pointed to those housing reforms as contributing to the multifamily, duplex, and ADU development now occurring in Port Angeles. “On housing, eight or nine years ago, when I was at the city, I was one of the people advocating for some common-sense reforms to make it so that we have more housing options and types available. We did regulatory reforms to make sure that we weren’t putting up barriers in front of housing developers and increasing costs for no reason. We had zoning reform, including setbacks, minimum lot sizes, things like that, and then adding incentives. We added a multifamily housing tax exemption so that people who wanted to build four units or larger could get a small property tax break, or, if they promised affordability, a larger property tax break. And then I would say that, eight or nine years later, you can walk around Port Angeles and see those housing types being constructed. You can see, probably two or three blocks away, a duplex being built across from Hamilton. Go up to 14th and E, a couple blocks off 14th, and you can see a whole neighborhood of duplexes being built… Those duplexes that you can walk around and see being built, or a lot of times some of the ADUs, they were illegal to build eight years ago. So we made the changes” But the sweeping zoning changes had another consequence. They made treatment facilities an outright permitted use. Specialty Services therefore no longer needed the Conditional Use Permit that had governed the facility—including its explicit requirement that “the applicants will prioritize occupancy for Clallam County Residents.” In response to a public-records request asking the City for the current Conditional Use Permit governing Specialty Services, City Clerk Kari Martinez-Bailey confirmed that the old CUP no longer governed the use: “Council made the use permitted out right in December 2021 with Ordinance 3688, therefore the CUP we provided has been non-applicable for at least five years.” In other words, the zoning change eliminated the need for the conditional-use approval that had contained the local-priority requirement. The original local guarantee and the leverage to enforce it disappeared with Ordinance 3688, passed by Mike French. No Longer Local Local leaders did not hold ABHS to the requirement to prioritize Clallam County residents. Eventually, that requirement disappeared altogether. Specialty Services once offered both detoxif

  4. 5d ago

    The Board Wrote Futurewise’s Lawsuit for Them

    Jake Seegers told the Board of Commissioners that the Climate Element portion of the Comprehensive Plan is written for government, nonprofits, and activists — not for the people who own the land. Then Futurewise attorney Brooke Frickleton asked them not to adopt it, called the vulnerability study only “one step,” and cited the group’s new Thurston County win: planning without hard, action-forcing policies is not enough. That was a preview of a lawsuit coming to Clallam County. Who Futurewise is Brooke Frickleton spoke to the commissioners on Tuesday via Zoom. She works for Futurewise, a Seattle land-use group that polices the Growth Management Act. The Futurewise method is simple: comment on a Comp Plan, then sue the county before the Growth Management Hearings Board if the language isn't strict enough. In a normal year, Futurewise runs 15 to 20 active appeals. It advertises that it wins about 70 percent of them. This statewide Comp Plan cycle, it expected that caseload to triple. What they want is not another study. They want action-forcing policies — timelines, named departments, measurable targets, and “shall” instead of “encourage.” Thurston County already learned that. Futurewise challenged its climate element. The Hearings Board called the county “clearly erroneous.” Frickleton brought that ruling into Clallam’s chambers as the new standard. Someone did the job the Commissioners would not House Bill 1181 requires fully planning counties, including Clallam, to add a climate resilience section to the Comp Plan. It does not require Clallam to pay for a Climate Vulnerability Assessment, lock the most aggressive temperature forecasts into the plan, or turn soft words like “promote,” “encourage,” and “explore” into a 20-year enforcement manual. The County’s own draft Climate Element admits Clallam “is not required to address” the greenhouse-gas reduction section. Then it brags that staff “exceeded the minimum requirements of HB 1181.” That is not compliance. That is a choice. Jake Seegers named the funding source during his public comment: Climate Commitment Act funds. He named the consultant: Cascadia Consulting. He named the product: the most extreme climate story they could write and still call it science. The Climate Vulnerability Assessment (CVA) cover page even carries the CCA logo. The acknowledgements list Diane Harvey first, then Bruce Emery and Tim Havel, then Cascadia’s Mary Ann Rozance, Abigail Lambert, Alyssa Rodriguez, Meg Horst, and Sebastian Espinosa. This is not a mystery document. These are the authors. After the hearing, Jake put it in writing to the commissioners and Director Emery: Commissioners and Director Emery, It was a mistake to undertake a Climate Vulnerability Assessment built around extreme assumptions and to have the process spearheaded by activists already committed to a particular climate-policy perspective. You have now provided Futurewise with ammunition to demand additional restrictions on Clallam County property owners for years to come. The CVA should be rewritten using reasonable assumptions, clearly stated uncertainties, and a balanced assessment of risks before the Comprehensive Plan is finalized. The people of Clallam County will not be intimidated or directed by threats from Futurewise. I hope that you won’t be either. Kind regards, Jake Seegers That is what a constituent sounds like when he still thinks the Board represents him. The study picked the hottest numbers, then treated them as fact Open page 14 of the assessment Jake marked up. NOAA: “Since 1895, Clallam’s average annual temperature is up 1.4°F.” That is 130 years of actual record. Next sentence: “By the end of the century, average summer maximum temperatures are projected to rise 9°F from a historical baseline of 68.4°F.” The source is Abatzoglou and Brown, 2012 — MACA, a method more than a decade old. Jake’s note on the page is the whole argument: MACA is a computer method that takes big global climate models and paints them onto a local map. “Highest end of predictions” means they did not use a middle forecast. They used the hottest example in that stack. The next line — that this warming “will bring significant consequences” — cites the North Olympic Development Council, the NGO on whose board Commissioner Mark Ozias sits. The county farms the science to an NGO behind closed doors. A sitting commissioner presides over that NGO. The same man then votes on the plan when it comes back to the dais. That is not independent analysis. That is a glaring conflict of interest. Page 15 then admits the CVA “primarily uses” RCP 8.5. That is the “business-as-usual,” highest-emissions pathway. It projects about 4.3°C (7.7°F) of global warming by 2100. That is not a middle estimate. That is the top of the stack used as if it were the county thermometer. Page 14: “The rate of human-induced climate change far outpaces natural variability (Perlwitz, 2017).” Jake told the Board: go look it up. The paper is a chapter on large-scale circulation and climate variability. It does not carry the slogan the way the CVA uses it. That slogan is now in a land-use document. Once the Comp Plan adopts it, staff will not have to re-prove the science every time they touch your file. A wider buffer, a climate overlay, a well restriction, a denied bulkhead, a “managed retreat” line — each one can be sold as consistency with the plan the County already chose. “We’re just following the science” will mean: we locked the hottest assumption into the bible, and now we are enforcing the bible. The assessment even photographs the target. Pages 7–8 show 3 Crabs Road under king-tide water and treat the pictures as proof that climate planning must swallow shoreline property. The Comp Plan draft already points toward overlays, high-risk zoning, climate language on property, and “long-term visioning” that includes managed retreat. The Marine Resources Committee told Commissioner Mark Ozias to change “should” to “shall,” treat climate forecasts as binding, and put a biologist on Critical Areas and shoreline files. Tribal trust land is exempt; your property is not. Deaths, “especially Tribal elders,” and two sets of rules Page 24 of the CVA leans on the 2021 heat dome: 126 official heat-related deaths statewide, then “441 more people died during this period than expected.” Jake’s margin note: There were a lot of excess deaths in 2021, not just heat. Overdose deaths in this county were part of that year. Heat was real. Turning a contested statewide number into Comp Plan gospel is how you manufacture urgency and then regulate against it. Then comes the sorting of people. Same page: “vulnerable groups like older adults, especially Tribal elders, and those with chronic health conditions.” Jake asked an honest question: why are tribal elders “especially” compared with every other older adult in Clallam County? Heat does not check tribal enrollment. Policy does. Page 17 lists “frontline communities”: seniors, mobile-home residents, the chronically ill, low-income households, Tribal communities, seasonal visitors, outdoor workers. Workshop notes from the County’s own process said the same thing: “older adults, especially for Tribal elders.” The draft Climate Element repeats the same thing. Food banks and a list of NGOs get listed as “climate resilience.” The property owner trying to take care of a parcel gets listed as something to regulate. Jake named the two-tier county out loud. Nonprofits stay “safely above the fray,” he said, “despite their contribution to the environmental catastrophe on Tumwater Creek.” Property owners keep losing. The fix?: Meet House Bill 1181 only; do not exceed it. And if the Board actually worked for the people, it would stop treating a house and a parcel as a problem and start treating them as this county’s greatest private asset—including common-sense room for vacation rentals and short-term uses —instead of another round of bans. On trust land, the Jamestown Tribe runs its own environmental process under TEPA. County Critical Areas Code does not apply the way it does on a private tax parcel. CC Watchdog documented the Tribe’s TEPA notice to expand the driving range at Cedars at Dungeness: grade the site and fill part of a Class III wetland. Once that course went into trust, it left the county rulebook that still governs your buffers, wells, and shoreline work. Same watershed. Rural well owners get lectured on every gallon. The CVA writes “especially Tribal elders” into the climate study. An 18-hole, water-heavy golf course does not sit under the same county code. That is not one environmental standard. That is two sets of rules. Harvey, Cascadia, and the office that wrote the record Diane Harvey, Code Enforcement and Special Projects Manager, is listed as project lead on the CVA. This site has already shown her asking the Planning Commission for more enforcement fees, more discretion, and mass notices that make people “fold” once they see the Hearing Examiner. The same office that wants a thicker whip is helping write the climate chapter that will justify the next round of “violations.” Cascadia Consulting is the hired pen. The County paired the Hazard Mitigation Plan with the Climate Element and paid Cascadia hundreds of thousands to do both. Cascadia has also worked with the North Olympic Development Council and the Jamestown Tribe. CC Watchdog has reported Cascadia’s use of ICLEI tools. ICLEI is the German-based network that sells local governments software, methods, and a global “movement” vocabulary. The NODC — the nonprofit Commissioner Ozias has led — recruited local governments toward ICLEI membership and even offered to help pay dues. NODC and the Tribe have been ICLEI members. That is not a planning department finding scienc

  5. 6d ago

    Boycotts, Ballots, Fees, and the Harm Capsule

    This article and podcast were delayed due to a power outage. If you want a snapshot of Clallam County right now, skip the official talking points. Look at the boycott threats, the “voter-approved” fee voters never approved, the homeless-voting flyer that treats ID as optional, and the grant money that chases addiction as if the shortage of counselors is the main problem. This week’s potpourri is not one story. It is a pattern. Don’t Sit With Us at Lunch The commissioner race has two camps, and neither is “pro Mike French.” It is pro-Seegers or anti-Seegers. Indivisible activists, backed by the League of Women Voters, now have a message for businesses that stand with Jake Seegers: drop him, or lose customers. One Facebook post put it bluntly: “Don’t they know they’re going to lose like 50% of their customers if they do that? Smart business owners are going to say ‘no.’” That is not civic engagement. It is the grade school version of politics: “Sit with us cool girls, or you are not invited to my birthday party.” These groups have already floated boycotts of businesses tied to Seegers and CC Watchdog. The tactic is intimidation dressed up as virtue. Maybe “smart” business owners are tired of clearing tents and sleeping bags off their stoops before opening. Maybe they are tired of fentanyl foil and washing human waste out of their alleyways. Or maybe they are just tired of rising taxes that fund commissioner pet projects, poet laureate included. Listen: Virginia Shogren on Clallamity Jen Play the Clallamity Jen interview with county auditor candidate Virginia Shogren. The interesting part is not the position. It is the evolution: a progressive Democrat who started asking different questions about her political identity. Shogren is running to restore trust in elections and watch the money. She wants paper ballots you can see and count, processes the public can oversee, and an auditor’s office that treats waste as the enemy. Washington already mails ballots. The question she raises is whether voters still have real oversight, or whether software and untraceable steps have replaced it. If you care who runs elections and who watches the books, listen to the interview before you decide. Sequim This Week Here is a snapshot of Sequim. A person sitting in the middle of JCPenney Plaza, belongings piled around them, a blanket draped over their head. A few blocks away, laundry day on Washington Street: an entire line of clothes drying on the bushes at one of the main entrances to town, in the commercial hub of a small city that still likes to call itself charming. This county is teeming with NGOs surviving off your taxes, and the list of programs for homelessness, addiction, and mental health keeps growing. So ask the only questions that matter: Is it getting better? Is this the hometown you remember? The town you moved to a year ago? The place you want your grandchildren to see when they visit the town you chose for retirement? Are you embarrassed? And if you are, are you ready for change? "When you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got." — Teri Vanzant No ID? No Address? No Problem! From the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence comes a flyer that should stop you cold: * “WE WANT YOU TO VOTE IF YOU WANT TO!” * “You do not need a picture ID or proof of address to register to vote in Washington.” * If you are homeless, you can still register. Give a location you consider home—a shelter, park, motor home, intersection—and a mailing address so the ballot can find you: a P.O. box, a friend’s house, a shelter, or general delivery. That is state law. It also invites you to treat the most basic check—who is this person, and where do they live?—as optional. Advocates can walk people through the county auditor’s office process. The rest of the county is supposed to trust the result. $800,000 Goes Back—After Years of Controversy Habitat for Humanity of Clallam County has told the commissioners it will not take the $800,000 Opportunity Fund award for Lyon’s Landing. In an August 20 memo, Board President Danny Steiger and CEO Colleen Robinson said the organization has not drawn a dollar of the grant. After a board review and a capital-campaign feasibility study, Habitat will sequence its two big projects: finish the roughly 48-home Sequim Avenue development first, and pause active work on the 45-home Carlsborg site. They will not pursue the extension they asked for days earlier. The county can send the money to other eligible projects. Any future ask, they note, would be a brand-new application. That is the polite version. The long version has been on CC Watchdog for years. Habitat first tried to move Lyon’s Landing with a no-bid arrangement with the Jamestown Corporation—an estimated $2.6 million slice of site work—while arguing that, as a nonprofit not yet using state or federal dollars, it did not have to run a formal bid. The Jamestown Tribe had also given Habitat $50,000 and the NGO hired a Native American Housing Liaison. County legal staff then spent months asking whether public Opportunity Funds turned the job into a public work under state law and county code. Commissioners still awarded the $800,000 with a “must meet all legal requirements” caveat. Then came the shovels-in-the-dirt photo behind Sunny Farms. Then, for a long stretch, nothing. Now Habitat says it cannot confidently spend the award in the extension window and is stepping back. Call it stewardship if you want. Call it the end of a deal that never should have been structured that way. Either way, the land off Mill Road is still waiting, and $800,000 in sales-tax money is finally free to be treated like public money again. Harvest of Hope Raises $469,500—and a Familiar Line About Taxes The Peninsula Daily News covered a real local success: Olympic Medical Center Foundation’s 24th Harvest of Hope gala raised a record $469,500 for local cancer care. The Jamestown Tribe received the Rick Kaps Award. Then came the line worth remembering. Chairman Ron Allen said the tribe “started with zero” in the 1970s without federal recognition. Then, “Our tax base is our businesses.” How convenient that the tribe’s tax base is its businesses. Everyone else’s tax base is the property-tax bill that pays for roads, schools, and fire departments. The tribe bought the land for its family clinic from your public hospital, Olympic Medical Center, for $1.00. Allen called the tribes’ endeavors “inclusive.” Try using the tribe’s beach, pavilion, or gym when the signs say tribal members only, and see how inclusive it is. Or try getting hired by the county’s second largest employer when you are more qualified but not a tribal member. Celebrate the cancer money. Do not pretend the tax story is the same for everyone. $10,000 to Redesign Addiction Studies Molina Healthcare gave the Peninsula College Foundation $10,000 to redesign the addiction-studies curriculum and tighten the path into the bachelor of applied science in behavioral health. Read it another way: addiction is also a jobs program and a degree track. As long as the crisis stays large, there is curriculum to write, grants to chase, and a pipeline to feed. The college says it will align coursework with employer needs and state rules. Fair enough. Just notice what never gets treated as the goal: fewer addicts, not more certified staff managing them. You Don’t Need a Crystal Ball. Watch these Cities. You do not need tarot cards to see where Housing First and harm reduction lead. You need Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Watch Nick Shirley’s video investigating the fentanyl crisis across those cities and see how much they have in common with Clallam County. Watch the addicts in that video and ask the question officials keep dodging: Is what they need a $350,000 luxury apartment with a dog-wash station and a harbor view? Is one more clean crack pipe the thing that finally makes them ready for recovery? Clallam is not inventing a new model. It is importing one that already has a body count. This is a drug crisis, not a housing shortage. Our streets have become asylums for the addicted and mentally ill. A county cannot solve a problem it refuses to name. These conditions are the squalor that members of the League of Women Voters, Indivisible, and the Democratic Socialists are pushing the county’s Board of Health to maintain. Does this look like compassion to you? “Voter Approved” — Except the Voters Didn’t Approve It Four years ago, Mike French made Conservation District funding part of his campaign. Last year he backed a parcel fee, then flipped to “no” at the last minute when the other two commissioners were clearly going to pass it. He got to be the “good guy” and look more moderate after three years of pushing for tax hikes. The fee was unpopular. It still passed without a public vote. Now look at your property-tax statement. The fee is listed as a “voter approved” tax. Jake Seegers independently submitted 1,032 signatures against it. History got rewritten on the bill. A commissioner-only passage became “the voters said yes.” Listen: Antonio Price on Clallamity Jen Assessor candidate Antonio Price sat down with Clallamity Jen. Start there if you want to understand the person, not just the office: fair booth, high-school diploma, how long he has lived here, why he is running now, and whether he wants voters focused on party or on the job. Jen did something useful before the policy questions. She separated the elected assessor from the myths. The assessor values property. The Legislature writes the tax laws. The treasurer collects the money. Taxing districts set their levies. Staff does the technical appraisal work. The Department of Revenue still owns pieces of the system. Then the real questions: Should property photos stay online 24/7,

  6. Sep 29

    Feelings, Convenings, and $9.8 Million

    Olympic Community of Health spent a year and a fortune “connecting people so they could thrive,” then published an annual report with almost no jobs, no cost per person, and no hard outcomes. Recompete was sold as a way to close the prime-age employment gap. The paperwork reads like a social-services slush fund on federal letterhead. Commissioner Mike French chairs the coalition, is running for reelection on the grant, and should start addressing legitimate concerns, not just accepting the applause. A nonprofit, not a jobs creator Olympic Community of Health is not a state agency. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (NGO)—an Accountable Community of Health—created to convene partners and “tackle health issues that no single sector or Tribe can tackle alone.” Olympic Connect is not a separate agency. It is OCH’s program: the community care hub that OCH built, governs, and funds. Recompete’s barrier-removal award of about $9.8 million — over a quarter of the $35 million total — went to OCH. Olympic Connect is the storefront of that nearly $10 million. OCH’s own About page is a stack of mission language: bridges, person-centered care, equity, determinants of health. It does not say how many people got jobs, how much it costs per client, or what “thrive” means in dollars. French sold jobs. The hub sells wraparound. Recompete is a U.S. Economic Development Administration program. Clallam County is the lead applicant. French chairs the North Olympic Peninsula Recompete Coalition and has made the award the centerpiece of his second-term pitch: tens of millions to create good jobs and connect residents to living-wage work. The original sales number floated around 900 placements in five years. Recent reporting dropped the new target to 603. Two years in, the public story is still “implementation.” The fine print shows a bulk of the money going to NGOs, wraparound services, and administration. The June 2025 scope of work is not a jobs plan. It is a contracting plan. Recruit and onboard staff. Note that other funding already covers an additional 7.0 full-time positions. Train current staff. Release funding opportunities. Monitor contracts. Execute more contracts. Build a subawardee management plan. Hire a data vendor. Hire a pre-marketing contractor. Plan sustainability in 2026–2027. Jobs are the pitch. Payroll at OCH is the product. Gas, car repairs, and “trauma-informed workplaces” The partner scopes make the point. The Olympic Peninsula YMCA contract is supposed to help clients with childcare, basic needs, gas, and car repairs. First Step gets more hours and pop-up sites. Transit authorities get expanded rides and “alignment with hub technology.” Discovery Behavioral Healthcare and Peninsula Behavioral Health get money to support clients and employers around behavioral health and “trauma-informed workplaces.” Community-based workforce contractors will “remove barriers.” Short-term training is a plan to create a system to create a plan. This is not a mill, a factory, or a plant hiring on Monday. It is a referral desk with a grant. Then there is the pre-marketing contract. OCH will run focus groups so staff can understand why some people “will be hesitant to ask for help,” organized around “stages of change” theory, so marketing will “resonate and lead to action.” Flyers and ads come from other funding. The federal grant pays for focus groups on why people don’t want jobs. That is research into reluctance—not a count of people hired. The annual report: activity without a bottom line Incoming funds: $7,664,699. Most of it from the Washington State Health Care Authority ($6,475,257) and the Department of Health ($975,000). U.S. EDA: $214,442 in the year they chose to display. Funds sent “directly to partners”: $2,417,545. Of that, $1,460,120 went to 12 Olympic Connect care-coordination partners so “trusted helpers” could connect people to resources. Another $819,400 went to seven partners for food, housing, and substance-use infrastructure. The board sent $138,025 to 11 food banks. Food banks here are open to everyone, regardless of income. That is a money transfer, not proof of job growth. What did the public get as proof? * Over 1,300 people “enrolled” and “got connected to resources and services so they could thrive.” Thrive is not a metric. * Over 700 resources added to a directory. A list is not a paycheck. * A “regional health needs assessment” that “synthesized the findings from recent partner-led community assessments and highlighted health needs.” That sentence is a report about other reports. * A Google Search campaign: 35,507 impressions, 3,562 website visits. For a multi-million-dollar hub, that is a marketing footnote dressed as impact. * 138 re-entry clients referred from Clallam and Kitsap jails. Referred is not housed, hired, or sober. * 27 “learnings and convenings.” OCH’s own IRS language is that it hosts learnings and convenings to foster relationship building. Meetings about meetings. * 1,959 “partner network relationships.” * 95 percent satisfaction among Olympic Connect clients upon discharge. Satisfaction with a referral is not employment. Word salad from the top Miranda Burger, interim executive director: proud of growth, partners “leaned into innovation launching the hub,” “lessons learned,” “strong and positive path looking toward sustainability,” excited to develop the next strategic plan and “understand what is important to our partners.” Heidi Anderson, board president: continued strengthening of partnerships, shared accountability, innovation, community-centered solutions, barriers to care, align resources. Paragraphs of verbs. No cost per placement. No jobs retained at 90 days. No comparison to the $26-an-hour wage talk French used when the grant was still a press release. A private sector company’s annual report would show income quality, debts, and risks. OCH published kayaks, sunbursts, circular quotes, and a land acknowledgment: humility toward Coast Salish peoples on whose sacred land “we live, work, and play.” The treasurer slot is tied to Jamestown Tribe / Jamestown Family Health Clinic. None of that answers the only question Recompete was sold on: how many prime-age adults are on a payroll who were not before? “The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.” — Milton Friedman Credit and the record travel together French does not run OCH day to day. He does chair the coalition that routes federal money into this model, claims the $35 million as leadership, and is asking Clallam County for another term. If the grant is his proof of economic development, the annual report and the scope of work are the audit. They show administration, trusted helpers, gas cards, trauma-informed workplaces, focus groups for the hesitant, and food-bank checks. They do not show a jobs machine. What does OCH do? It convenes. It contracts. It refers. It writes “thrive.” Taxpayers fund the rest. Credit for the grant includes credit for what it actually bought. It’s time for Commissioner French to explain how Recompete is really performing. Candidate Conversation This Morning! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ccwatchdog.com

  7. Sep 28

    The Debt That Never Clears

    Port Angeles’ deputy mayor just told council that “respect and decorum” are artifacts of a white male heterosexual society. The commissioner whose campaign she runs says his most important job is building trust with tribes—then steers federal money toward an enterprise that already spends half a million a year on holiday lights. The guilt is the point. It never gets paid off. It only gets converted into the next grant. Decorum, recoded On September 15, Port Angeles Deputy Mayor Navarra Carr was not talking about potholes. She was talking about who is allowed to define manners. Council was discussing respect and decorum. Carr said the city probably does not want people whose “backgrounds… would be not in line with city values.” Then she explained whose values she meant: “A lot of times the words respect and decorum come at the expense of… cultural norms and a lot of times the people who are left out of those conversations about what constitutes respect and decorum are people of color, queer people, women… I want to make sure that when we’re talking about those things that we’re not unintentionally creating an environment that limits people’s freedom of speech… and ability to adequately serve based on sort of artificial norms that really come out of a very white male heterosexual centered society.” She added that “disrespect” is subjective, that court cases protect the public’s right to curse at council, and that she is “concerned” about councilmembers “limiting our own ability to speak freely to one another.” So: norms of courtesy are coded as white, male, and straight. Objecting to that framing is the problem. The solution is to treat those norms as optional “guidelines.” The campaign manager is not a side character Carr is not a random commenter. She is Mike French’s campaign manager. French is running for a second term as Clallam County commissioner. In 2022, his campaign’s largest expenditure was $3,000 to Carr for “management and consulting.” He later put her in charge of the reelection. He was one of the biggest donors to her city council run, donating $1,000. When Carr calls “respect and decorum” a product of a “white male heterosexual centered society,” she is not freelancing. She is French’s campaign manager, speaking from the deputy mayor’s chair. Trust the tribes. Charge the taxpayer. French’s own answer to that charge is not to reject racial scorekeeping. It is to keep the books. At a Clallam County Democrats debate with Jake Seegers, French said elected officials must think about “the broad spectrum of our community,” and pointed to Recompete: a project “to serve our underserved regions… rural areas like tribal areas.” French added, “I’m a white man in modern America that has had a very blessed life.” At the Calico Cat Club forum, he went further: “The most important thing I think for the board of commissioners is for us to build trust with our tribes.” Not the most important thing for public safety. Not roads, not the jail, not the budget. Trust with tribes. The vehicle to build that trust is Recompete, the $35.6 million federal grant whose coalition he chairs. One tangible way trust gets built is through purchasing machinery: a hydroseeder and a mini excavator for the Jamestown Tribe so it can expand enterprises that already run on more than $100 million a year. That is the conversion. White privilege, once confessed, becomes a white savior. The term is not a slur invented on this site. It is the name for the move: the guilty party purchases moral credit by delivering other people’s money to the approved identity. Half a million in lights, then a grant for a hydroseeder The lights tell you the scale of the need. Right now the Jamestown Corporation and 7 Cedars are hanging the annual display—three to four million LED lights across Blyn, the campus, the clinic, the golf course, the Railroad Bridge. Jerry Allen and local press have put the budget at about $400,000 to $500,000 a year. Crews start in the fall. Installation alone is thousands of man-hours. An organization that can spend half a million dollars every winter wrapping birch trees in LEDs is not too poor to buy a hydroseeder. It is too well-positioned to let a commissioner who needs to “build trust” charge the federal taxpayer for the next piece of the white guilt starter kit. French does not have to write a personal check. He chairs the coalition. The guilt does the rest. The local dialect The supporting chorus is not subtle. Rae Hesselbach, French’s appointee to the Developmental Disabilities Advisory Committee and an Indivisible regular, told the public that “we all need to be vigilant because the wealthiest white men are a greater threat to safety than the unhoused.” Paula Allen, listed as Director of Leadership at 7 Cedars, posted that “white people are a problem” and that they think they are “superior to the bottom of my shoe.” Former Sequim Councilmember and Jamestown descendant Vicki Lowe told colleagues that the phrase “high quality” is “a dog whistle for white people.” Charter Review Commissioner Nina Sarmiento, wordsmithing a Water Steward problem statement, said the county had been managing water “ever since white people set foot on this land.” A Jefferson County Conservation District interview asked a resident how she would “deal with privileged white males.” None of that is hidden. It is the local dialect of a national script: one racial category is the original sin; every institution must perform repayment; the debt has no payoff date. Wear orange. Don’t ask about the graves. Wednesday, Peninsula College will host Orange Shirt Day on the Robins Green—remembrance of children taken to residential and boarding schools, co-sponsored by the First Nations Club and the House of Learning. Wear orange if you want. The schools were real. The removals were real. The grief is real. What is not proven is the 2021 Kamloops headline: 215 children in a secret mass grave. Radar found disturbed soil. No graves have been dug up to match the number. The country still treated it as a closed case. Churches burned. Names came off buildings. Professors who asked for bones lost their jobs. The woman who inspired the orange shirt has told CBC that “denialism” should be written into the criminal code—so a T-shirt that says “dig deeper” is not an argument. It is a charge sheet. The League already wrote the assignment Washington’s League of Women Voters does not wait for a grave. Its land acknowledgment says the state sits on homelands of peoples who have “long resiliently resisted the ongoing harms of colonialism,” and that the League will “amplify the voices of Indigenous people,” partner with tribes on policy, and “respect the sovereignty of tribes.” That is not a history footnote. It is a political instruction: one set of governments is owed perpetual deference; the rest of the public is the guest. “When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity.” — Theodore Dalrymple After the lights, the refuges Where does it end? It does not end at Christmas lights. It does not end at a hydroseeder. The Jamestown Corporation is now pursuing legislation to move Dungeness and Protection Island National Wildlife Refuges from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service management into tribal trust. Local and federal allies are working to make that transfer happen. After that there will be another one. There always is. Ron Allen, longtime chair and CEO of the tribe, is three-quarters European by ancestry. The racial ledger still lists him on the creditor side. Carr still lists “white male heterosexual centered society” on the debtor side. French still lists Recompete as the payment plan. A penance office with a till Guilt works because it never closes. If “respect” is a white norm, then enforcing it is oppression. If a corporation can light half the highway and still qualify as underserved, then the grant is justice. If a county commissioner's most important job is tribal trust rather than the people who elect him, then the taxpayer is not a constituent. He is an ATM with a conscience. The question is not whether history was ugly. It was. The question is whether Clallam County intends to run itself as a county—or as a penance office with a $35.6 million till and a $500,000 light bill. PABA Forum Tomorrow: District 24, Live at 7:30 a.m. Port Angeles Business Association’s next meeting is tomorrow, September 29, 7:30–8:30 a.m. at Jazzy Joshua’s Restaurant & Lounge and is open to the public. The group is hosting a forum for 24th Legislative District candidates. Kaylee Kuehn and Marcia Kelbon will appear in person. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ccwatchdog.com

  8. Sep 27

    Face to Face on a Divided Peninsula

    This podcast-only episode of Sundays with Seegers is not a campaign commercial. It is an unfiltered conversation between Clallam County commissioner candidate Jake Seegers and Jesse Charles — a Lower Elwha tribal member, recovery-community voice, social media influencer, and one of Seegers’ sharpest public critics. It contains explicit language. It also contains the kind of exchange that most campaigns never risk. Jesse came with hard questions: the “skunk sermon,” an affirmative-action joke told in church, family-foundation donations to 4PA, appointing a young child as campaign manager, and ties to outspoken local activists. He pressed Seegers on tribal outreach, local service gaps, and whether a relative newcomer can represent a county with very different communities and perspectives. Seegers answered. He discussed his family’s years in Mexico, why he is running as an independent, and what he meant by the skunk story. He explained his views on race, his conversations with Makah and Lower Elwha leadership, visits to Serenity House and the Olympic Peninsula Community Clinic (OPCC), and why he favors local detox, treatment paired with accountability, and greater budget discipline.Seegers said that the conversation reaffirmed his belief that face-to-face conversations with people who disagree are always beneficial. He respects and appreciates Jesse’s willingness to meet in person and share his perspectives and experiences.They did not leave agreeing on everything. They did not leave fully trusting each other. But they both left understanding more about the experiences and perspectives that shape their views — and recognizing that beneath significant disagreements are outcomes they both want for the community. “The people in the recovery community have probably the hardest lives, the biggest hearts, and some of the craziest stories to share.” — Jesse Charles For Seegers, conversations like this offer reason to be optimistic about the future of Clallam County.Those who only don’t listen will miss the most important part: two people who have publicly disagreed — sometimes sharply — sitting across from one another, asking difficult questions, listening to the answers, and finding some common ground.Listen to the full conversation. This article was approved by Jake Seegers for Commissioner, 131 East First Street, Port Angeles, WA 98362. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ccwatchdog.com

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About

Holding County Leaders Accountable www.ccwatchdog.com

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  • Creator
    Jeff Tozzer
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    401
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Jeff Tozzer
  • Show Website
    Clallam County Watchdog

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