or the courthouse clock tower clocking in. I wait for it and I'm like, oh, it's not
going to chime, not yet. It's getting fixed. So there was a contract on the agenda
we're getting there.
Um, so, um, it's 9 o'clock and welcome everyone to the March 10th, 2025 meeting of
the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners. Um, as we always do, we'll start with
public comment, but I just want to first shout out to, um, all of us and the production
alliance and the entire community for showing up this weekend at the connectivity
summit at the Ticum school. It was an awesome display of community spirit and it
really lifted, lifted my spirit and I, I, I heard some. Uh, similar sentiments coming
from you guys too. Oh my goodness, what a great weekend. So nice, nice, um, show
of community engagement,
agreed. It's a privilege to participate in. I'd love to see more and more, more things
grow from it. Yeah, yeah. So, as we always do, we'll start with public comment and
we'll start with folks in the room. Is there anyone with us today who would like
to make public comment? Is that everybody? No? OK, let's start with our elder
statesman, retired commissioner John Austin. Come on up, John. And the,
the owl is the microphone, so you don't have to just, you can hear me all right.
We can hear you.
County commissioners, thank you for your service. And uh I have uh two comments.
First is, uh, I was going to be serving on jury duty this morning and uh I've been
relieved, um, and I was talking to my son who's a, uh, who's a, uh,
Who works in uh for Pierce County as a public defender, and I told him that I was
going to be earning the princely sum of $15 a day. Which is considerably less than
I would get if I were substitute teach, which I had scheduled to do, um, and I'm,
I'm quite willing to forego the about, you know, about $60 or $70 per day, um.
Because I feel it is the duty of every citizen to be on a jury, and he noticed or
told me that, uh, in Pierce County, they're going to start uh paying $100 a day for
their jurors, and I thought, well, maybe we could go for half that. We're a smaller
county. So I'd like you to at least consider raising how much is given to our um
citizens who serve as jurors. Uh, the second is once again we have the problem of
road closure on your western access to the national park, and I know that this has
been a thorn in the side, particularly Monty and uh and other folks who work for
the county, and in the past there have been some efforts to have. The access road
to the rainforest turned over to the uh to the park service similarly to the way
that race road is out of Port Angeles and um. I'd I'd like to know if we are
continuing to urge our representatives in Congress to take over that access road
because I know that eventually we supposedly get reimbursed for the amount of money
that we put into uh fixing it up, but this means that every time it goes out, we
have to have our county engineer or some other representatives of the county go over
there and uh that's time that we have to pay for it so. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, John. John.
Um, I'm just gonna say for folks who've joined us online, if you're with us online
and you would like to make public comment, please use the raise hand button at the
bottom of the zoom screen, and we will get through the folks in the room with us,
and then we'll move to the folks online who have their hands raised. So Maggie, would
you like to come up?
No, you're, you're, you're already on your way. Come on up.
OK, so the connectivity summit was cool. I connected with some people about, um,
marrying environmental justice with social justice and making that, uh, the Porthosin
Yacht Club a day center and using the two docks in front for environmental justice
programs. OK, so now I'm gonna talk about something else real quick. OK, back in
the Depression era, there was a woman who created a board game called Monopoly.
It turned into. A capitalist BS game, but it originally was a game to show
citizens how banks worked and how the banking system worked, and during the Depression
there were 1000 foreclosures a day on people's homes, and so they created that federal
bank, I forget the name of it, you can go look it up. Um, that kind of like, um,
the precursor to Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they were supposed to give, uh,
mortgage loans to people who could not. Uh, who were too low income to afford uh
loans on homes. So there, there were some regional banks and they across the country,
and eventually it ended up with 6400 members. So today, only
42% of those banks that are a member of this federal loan place.
Have have originated mortgage loans since 2018. And
the rest of the money is tied up with private equity
companies who have grabbed all that money and put it in their own banks and then
they're making $200 million off interest. So, um, there are
6400 banks, only 42% of them. Have
originated a single loan since 2018, which the purpose of
was supposed to be for low income people. So you know this is and and the rest of
the money has been taken by private equity firms who are making $200 million a year.
Off in interest off of money that was supposed to be loaned to low income people
for affordable housing. So you wonder why everybody's ending up on the street who
should be in housing who, you know, they're kind of a little maybe a 100% over the
poverty line, 80% on the poverty line, that's why. So then, of course, then we go
down to people with disability. Um, who are trying to get permanent supportive housing
in those empty units and those landlords, if they, if they, if they have a big portfolio
and they have people going, um, you know, they leave a few units empty because they
don't like the fact that their tax is over, they will leave those units empty, so
that's the problem. OK, thank you, thank you.
Come on up. OK. Try this again. So Linda Shad and
I'm here for the upper room. So I just want to explain that I've given my entire
life to mentoring and encouraging young people, first as a juvenile probation counselor
for 17 years. Uh, for Clown County and Jefferson County too. I worked on the, the
west side of, um, uh, Clown County, um, and yeah, so my students today are not the
students I taught or worked with 50 years ago or even 30 years ago, virtual experiences
have replaced actual participation. Frankly, all of us need to get out, inhale fresh
air, fill our sights and our memories with the beauty of nature, the exhilaration
of hiking a challenging trail and making it to the top. There's nothing like hiking
the Heidivide Trail or the 18 miles up the up the whole rainforest trail and encountering
the Blue Glacier. How many of you have done that? Yes, so you know exactly what I'm
talking about, depriving hundreds of thousands of visitors, the actual experience,
the actual experience of the Hall of Mosses Trail. It is not acceptable. Many families
come from cities where they live frenzied lives and visiting the rainforest is the
therapeutic, is therapeutic for body, mind and spirit. People come from all over
the United States. They also come from Europe and Asia, the Middle East, Turkey,
Saudi Arabia, and India. Everyone in search of a peaceful, majestic and magical place,
and this is the one that is on their bucket list. I had not planned on being here
this morning. I didn't sleep all night but felt compelled to speak after last night
when it was brought to my attention that we needed to raise $20,000 by Tuesday at
noon or there would be no funds available for the upper repair of the upper Road.
I've never raised money through a GoFundMe account, but it seemed like that that
would be the only hope of coming up with something. My reply to here's what I got.
Most figured that it was a scam. They ranted and raved about how money is spent in
Jefferson County. Some claimed the federal government should fix this. Others said
the state would fix it. Others said the road needed to be moved. Others made statements
that use language I don't use. I'm an English instructor, and by the way. George
Orwell in politics and the English language uh instructs us to let the meaning choose
the word and um that's what I teach in English 101 and force my students to read
that. Um, my reply to many of these very angry responses was simply that this was
what was offered to us, and yes, it meant paying more taxes, but at least this tax
is a choice, and one could choose not to pay the tax without losing a home or going
to jail. So, um, with that, I just want to say I was up all night because I've never
had that kind of reaction. Um, I don't know if there was any money, uh, uh, received,
but that I, I think the most important thing is that there would be transparency
and that the meetings that are had by various people. That we know about them and
we know what's going on and I was told that this actually was an investment and if
it if it's a duck, and I mean if it walks like a duck and cracks like a duck and
looks like a duck, it's probably a duck, and George Orwell would say let the meaning
choose the word. It's a tax, but I'm willing to pay it. And so are a lot of other
people. But I guess we just call it a tax and. That's it. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Would you like to make a comment this morning? No, but I will
anyway. OK. I love that.
I haven't slept in a week. I'd like to start with a quote from the Ironman of the
Ho, a settler who moved to the upper hoe in 1890. He doesn't it.
Go ahead. It said, uh, his wife, his daughter wrote a book, uh, about the, the legend
of the Iron Man of the Who, and she said he spent his life waiting for the road,
but he realized, he said, uh, our numbers are insignificant and our, and our votes
don't count. But and so, but the thing about the Iron Man and the whole, um. And
maybe you know his legendary Packer who got paid double wages for packing double
loads. I wrote about him about carrying a, a load of frozen pizzas in a microwave
oven from Forbes. It's just totally erroneous. He's actually packing a stove full
of potatoes, you know. And so they could never get roads, but what did they do? The
locals went to work to pay off their taxes. They built something called the Pacific
Trail, a road out of split cedar from Forks to Moclips with side roads to Oil City,
Goodman Creek up the, up the Clearwater, up the Queets, all with local labor. And
so now, of course, we can't cut cedar, you know, without getting arrested. And so
we come up with every idea we can for the locals to help open this road. One of them
was the GoFundMe, which, you know, got no reaction and is now we get 48 hours to
raise. We don't know how much money we need, but you know we probably can't raise
it in 48 hours. But the point is. Uh, since 1890, the Hillstocks have paid a lot
of taxes. Glenda's grandmothers started a ranch for packing up though in 1927, 98
years ago. They've been paying taxes. They've been trying to help, so we're trying
to stop, you know, open the road as part of an effort to Preserve our national parks,
which you realize are under attack being shut down, and we're trying to do it through
local action and we really appreciate some help. That's all I gotta say. Thank you.
I'm wondering if I should It was a big review before more public comment. people
are out of the loop,
yeah, maybe before you go online, OK, so before we go to online comment, I would
like to share some news with the community. Um, I, I can't believe we're getting
criticism this morning, but I have been working double time for the last two weeks
in Washington DC, Olympia, and right here at home, including on Saturday on a Zoom
call with our Good governor Bob Ferguson, who has pledged to the money to repair
the road, the upper Hill Road. The issue is that that source of funding because this
is different. Um, than the way we've repaired the road in the past. In the past,
we've repaired the road using Federal Highway Administration emergency repair funds.
That were administered through the Washington State Department of Transportation.
I've been on both coasts of this great nation trying to see if we could free that
money again to do the repair before the spring and summer season, and the answer
has been unequivocally no from the Federal Highway Administration. We can all speculate
as to why that is, but our governor has been awake at night worrying about this
issue since he saw it on the front page of the Seattle Times and came up with a solution.
And the source of funding that we're going to use to do this repair comes from the
state Department of Commerce, and it requires a private match. Of $5 to $20,000 was
the range that was given to us on Saturday. So Commissioner Randy Johnson, I'm just
clarifying this for everyone. Commissioner Randy Johnson from Clallam County put
out an email with the low end of the range. I, being the eternal optimist in the
room, said our community can do more than that, and we'll I'll put out the high range
of the the high range. I was on a Zoom call with 20 people on Saturday. 10 of them
have already pledged $100 each to this effort. I pledged $500. OK, great. So I'm
gonna add you to the list. Put me down for 100. Yeah, OK,
OK, I'm doing this real time, but anyway, um, so we've been working very hard to
come up with a solution, a new, a new recipe to repair the road, and we've come up
with one. And our public works team has already talked to the contractors and already
has materials in place. We just haven't had the funding to hire the contractor, so
we're optimistic that um a repair will be. Imminent and that's why it was 2 days
because we want the money as quick as possible to get the repair going, to get the
contract signed and the repair going. We're not going to sign a contract without
the funding, so the private fundraising we're doing is to free up the over $600,000
in public funding. That the governor has pledged to do this repair and just to be
clear, Heidi, we couldn't use county funds for this match. It has to be private,
right? And the requirement for this source of funding is that it's private. I said
that private dollars that match. Do we need cash in hand or will pledges sledges
will suffice. So what do I do with if I actually, if I even get anything in the GoFundMe
I've never done. You've gotten $250 so far. I just because Anna sent me the link
and I've seen so I put out an email yesterday saying the money needs to come to Jefferson
County. That's what we agreed to on Saturday on the call, and I put out a PO box
1220 Port Townsend, Washington 98368. I posted that and everybody said it was a.
It's not a scam. So that's that's that's personal prerogative, right? It's not a
scam. I can show you the picture of the Zoom room on the call. It was the city of
Forks, um, Claudam County, Jefferson County, many people from the state of Washington,
all participating in this call and coming together on this solution, and I have $270.
That's what people were saying to me and so I got. Lots of pushback. OK, we're not
gonna do back and forth because now the list of people online who want to make comments
is growing, so we're gonna go to them now. So, um, that was a brief update, but I
just want to wanted to share that with folks because I felt like it was going to
waste a lot of public comment. Um, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna go to the top of the
list. So let's start, let's bring everyone over and we'll start with Anna Peterson
when she gets into the Zoom room. I think that's Anna Maia.
Well, I'm reading what's written on that Zoom list.
Good morning, Anna. Hi, and I'm actually here at Upper Hill Road. Um, I do want to
say we are very grateful for the progress that has been made over the last 24 hours.
Um, I think it, it was very exciting to get some of these emails. I do have to
say the level of confusion now that we've heard this update was immense because we
heard from two different sources, two different numbers. And so our excitement and
our optimism with the $5000 was immediate. We knew we could do $5000. We have $4000
in pledges already, and I've sent that to Ryan O'Connor because that was the address
that I got to send that information to. So I'm sorry if that hasn't been shared with
the commissioners. Um, so it's $1000 from Hard Rain Cafe, $1000 from Whole Valley
Cabins, $1000 from Peak 6, and then from Glenda $500. So amongst our friends,
family, employees, everyone we knew, we were up to $4000 already. And then what happened
is yesterday I was driving, I stopped at a rest stop. I checked my emails and I got
the emails from Ryan O'Connor and Ms. Eisenhower, and it said 20, and it just felt
like we had been hit with a load of bricks. We felt hopeless and as soon as I got
home, then I talked to Glenda and we set up the GoFundMe account. Um, and I do, I'm
I just have to say, on one hand, super grateful that we're making progress. On the
other hand, we need transparency and we need more open communication. I think that
the situation is developing by the hour and so it's difficult to get that. But at
the same time. I really feel like something that I learned in college in terms of
communication when you're a business, is that you have to be as open and transparent
as possible, and that needs to happen in a timely manner. And I think we're struggling
with that, and I would ask for Maybe when we review the situation in the future,
if we can look at how can we be more clear, like if we have a goal between 5 and
20, that would have been so helpful to just put that out as a blast email to everyone
that's on these meetings or everyone that has written emails in, so we're all on
the same page, so we don't have this panic and confusion, so people don't lose sleep
at night, um. I think transparency brings trust. That was what came to me this morning
when I was thinking about this meeting. Transparency brings trust and we'll be better
partners as residents and as business owners if we get that. Um, I'm glad that you
all had a meeting and all. The important powerful leaders were in that meeting. It
would have been nice to know that that kind of meeting was about to take place, even
if you didn't know what the results would be. But just knowing that those meetings
are happening is very helpful, um, for our sleep and also for our planning. Um, it
was just a wild scenario of emails that have happened that's, that's 3 minutes. OK,
thank you. I thank you.
I don't know who's back on here. Let's see. You have you listened
Liy Andros.
Good morning, Lucy. Good morning. Thank you so much. I'm sorry I'm in my car. Um,
I wanna thank the commissioners for all their hard work. Um, I know that, uh, the
meeting after Rod let me know about it on Saturday, I was super excited about it,
um, with, with Anna's, uh, pledges and, um, including Melinda's and so forth. We
our list is at 12,000 here in Fork, so, um, and I know people are still willing to
contribute if necessary so that doesn't include any of the pledges, you know, outside
of the area because I'm not aware of those, but anyway, um, I'm hoping we can get
this done quickly and I appreciate all y'all's hard work and I'll be sending my list
over to Rod when I get it all finished. Thanks, Lucy. If you'll copy me and Ryan
and um Representative Birnbaum's office, that would be great because those guys and
Representative Birnbaum and Ryan are officially collecting the compiled list. OK,
absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. OK, Ed Bowen. Uh, good morning, Ed Bowen, West Jefferson.
I normally comment on the topic of this today, but in hopes that you are gonna have
public comment during the upcoming work session next, I'll switch topics to something
I'm hoping the chair has sat in on a while back in DC. So Secretary of VA Collins
gave a briefing to the counties uh regarding veterans benefits. I hope the chair
in the county is paying attention to that. It is a golden opportunity for not just
getting the money in, in the service connected disability claims, but it's actually
a way of connecting with the counties to get the actual benefit itself. The, the
purpose of the benefit is not just money, it's medical care, it's everything. And
uh I did take away from that listening to the secretary that he is very interested
and very Engaged with the idea of uh bringing the counties into the equation. So
I hope the chair participate in that. If not, maybe it's something to go back and
take a look at. Thank you. Thank you.
Uh, next on my Zoom screen is Shelly Arnell.
I know Trisha has her hand up and so I think I'll just need her. Good morning. Good
morning, Shelly Yarnell Brennan. Um, I too would like to talk on the Ho River. Um,
in my opinion, it is, um, really dramatic that those who are hurt the most by
this, um, problem with the river are the ones who are giving the most, and I think
that needs to be noted. Um, you can feel the Heartfelt, um.
Request for help. There has been an offer of a contracted piece of equipment that's
meant to do this job, to be donated. We don't hear anything about that.
This can be done. It, uh, you know, I. I agree with the transparency. We have this
problem in the county with everything. The county can be way more transparent than
they are and should be. All of these issues wouldn't be coming at you screaming and
angry if we knew what was happening, and it's a simple solution if we would just
do it. It's not the hoe. It's not the. Resort, it's not taxes it's not the pool it's
the fact that it's not transparent we need to address the problem and address it
as soon as we can and when there's comments that come through to the commissioners,
be careful of your comments back to the public. That's a problem that needs to be
handled and it needs to be handled immediately in my opinion. Thank you. Thank you,
Shelly. Uh, over to Jean Bob.
Good morning.
Well, loop indeed. It it a little disturbed by the lack of pushing of information
out to the public. If I didn't know about this, you know, I kind of tend to be ahead
of the curve on information gathering. I'm, you know, kind of everywhere. Uh, It,
how can other people know about this? How, how, how come I didn't know about it?
How could I have found out about it? Why wasn't there an, an effort to push it? This
is, that damn, this is exciting. My God, what shouldn't we be screaming this from
the rooftops? Holy smokes. I'm coming unglued over here. This is really, really exciting.
Why aren't we amplifying this message? Um, OK, so I have a concern. Um, I
still haven't heard a whole lot from Doula or the National Park. Things are kind
of, you know, undone over there. And I don't know if we can take advantage of the
opportunity to repair the road. Can we then staff the visitor center? Can we get
the, the trails open up the hoe? Um, Uh, those questions certainly need to be
asked and answered. Uh, that should not, regardless of what those answers are, that
should not stop us from getting this road repaired. Um.
20 grand? Are you kidding me? I could raise 20 grand this afternoon to get this done.
Seriously, that is, that is not a problem. Tell me these things. Oh my God. Thank
you. Get this done. Send me some information so I can put this out and we can get
the money. Please send me information.
OK, I'll send you the link to the GoFundMe right now, um, and Tom Tears.
Good morning, commissioners. Uh, thank you for keeping this public comment period
open. Uh, switching subjects a little bit but also related to the, to, to roads in
general in the county. Um, I, I wanna address this set of comments to the Transportation
Benefit District, uh, board, if I could, which of course, are you folks, um. The,
uh, you, you enacted a 0.1% sales tax increase, which will start in April, uh
as, as a first step in funding the transportation benefit district of the county,
but more money is needed for the roads because inflation is going to be increasing,
I'm sure, and the cost of everything is going up very fast. So that money is gonna
disappear pretty rapidly. Uh, so I would just encourage the Transportation Benefit
District Board to put a measure on the ballot this November to increase that sales
tax by the allowed 2.21%. Uh, that'll bring in another $2 million or some dollars
a year desperately needed by our roads department. And uh, so again, I encourage
you to, to add that to the November ballot for the voters to approve. I'm sure it
will pass just like the one in Port Townsend did uh by what was it 80%, it's gonna
be well supported because everybody knows that we need and want good roads in the
county. Um, different subject. Last week, uh, in the discussion of uh putting the
ordinance for the short-term rentals on, uh, your, uh, schedule for a hearing. Uh,
you heard from, uh, Josh Peters DCD. I heard some something that, that caused me
a great deal of concern. He said, well, there's capacity issues. I don't want to
hear about DCD not having enough capacity to do their job. Uh, the short-term rental
program is gonna involve, you know, 5, 600 properties that, that are. are going to
need to have permits in order to operate a short-term rentals. And if you simply
apply a reasonable fee such as those imposed by Shalan or San Juan County, uh, to
each of those permits, you can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in permit fees
each year without hurting any of these uh rental owners very seriously. They're making
plenty of money off their rentals. And you could basically operate the short-term
rental program as an enterprise fund. There's gonna be enough money coming in from
the permits in order for you to fund two people at least full time to do enforcement
and managing of the permits, uh, do the math, it only comes up to one person having
to deal with about 1 to 2 permits per day throughout the year averaged out, so it's
perfectly doable. And again, I don't want to hear DCD complaining about lack of capacity.
This is gonna be one of those programs where, you know, it does not have to cost
anything out of pocket, it's just gonna be paid for by the people that are using
the program. So, more to come in writing, but I just wanted to, to surface that concern
before Josh Peters goes off and writes a proposal that says, oh no, we can't adopt
the the the ordinance as written because it's gonna be an odious amount of work on
our staff. Nope, not good enough, sorry. Thanks for the uh opportunity to comment.
That's time, Tom, thanks. OK. Anybody else, uh, I see Patricia, you have your hand
up. You're gonna need to accept the promotion to panelists to come over to make a
comment, or we can unmute you from where you are, correct? So we are unmuting you
from where you are. Oh, there you are. You're in. OK, you have 3 minutes for comment.
OK, thank you. It's a, a different issue again and not necessarily as important as
what's been going on, but important to us. Patricia Ernest from Marrowone Island.
Good morning, commissioners, administrator and staff. Thank you so much for your
consideration of Maristone.