OK.
And it says that in recording in progress connected, it says I'm connected but
um a bit of Caroline kit and CP is your Ethernet in. If she had it in, it still wasn't
working. Try, try restarting
you guys can ride that run without me. I'm gonna try and make this work. He'll still
be here,
plug it in me.
Good morning, everyone. I'll call this meeting of the board of commissioners to order.
Um Happy Monday, everyone. We're having a little technical issues. So sorry that
we're a couple of minutes late. Um Wanted to start off this morning by welcoming
our new central services director. Welcome to Tracy Coleman, eagerly awaiting your
arrival and mark maybe you can introduce Tracy. Yes. Thank you very much. Um OK.
Um I'm delighted for you here this morning. She's a, a distinguished
professional with a great track record. Um Her experience includes uh two years with
the city of Renton, nine years with Weyerhauser, seven years with Pacificorp and
six years with the City of Woodland, which is uh close to my old stomping grounds.
Uh It's actually in Cows County, but uh just north of Clark County where I spent
almost 17 years. She uh got a, a great deal done there, capital projects and all
kinds of great work. And uh she brings to this county a great suite of skills that
we're excited to see her put to use. So, do you wanna say a word or two?
Well, first of all, thank you for hiring me. I appreciate that and I'm excited to
work for the county. Um I just moved in here yesterday and just driving around just
here in Port Townsend, which is part of the county, um, is absolutely wonderful,
beautiful and I cannot wait to get to work. Um I guess I just wanna say that I'm
honored that you guys would hire me for the position and I hope that I don't let
you down. So, thank you very much.
Thank you. Central Services is such a critical role such as every department. It's
central though, that one, it is central I hear. So, um, anything I you Greg, I would
just say it was fun to be on your interview panel and I loved your energy and spirit
and I'm really excited that you chose us as well and that you're coming to work here
and I look forward to working with you for a long time. Thank you. Yeah, I'm really
excited to have you, Tracy. Um, look forward to uh the, the impact that you can have
and so many critical, I mean, essential services does impact all of our, our different
departments. I really appreciate you having here and you know, reach out any time
if we can be of assistance and, and you know, letting you take off quickly. Thank
you. Thank you very much. And my computer's not working. Yeah,
you'll, you'll hear from us often from the station. All right. Um, we will start
off this morning with public comments and we welcome uh all public to weigh in on
any issue at 9 a.m. public comment period. We ask that folks um state their name
and their place of residence although it is not required. Um And you'll have up to
three minutes, the light will be green for those of you in the room turns yellow
and there's 30 seconds remaining. And then we ask that you end promptly at the red
light that gives everybody an opportunity to uh participate equally in the public
comments. If you are online, you will hit um the raised hand and there'll be a brief
pause when we bring you over. Um And I think we'll start today with folks in the
room. So um who on earth would like to provide public comments, Mister Walter,
I'm Show Walter from Shine Road. Uh I think I'm gonna try to get three points across.
First is a little show and tell. Uh this is HD pe which some people think is better
than PV C that I picked up on our beach a week ago. Um, I don't wanna have discussion
on which is better. I think they both have problems. My point is citizens want the
right to present such things and discuss such things before a hearing examiner. I
think you can tell it's a little different where you have seen me with this, uh,
versus, you know, maybe a photograph and, um, oh, uh, the second
point, you know, the lips, you know, like, yeah, uh, the second point is uh
Commissioner Dean. At the last meeting, he said that with existing shellfish operators
who are all kind of familiar with them. So it maybe requires a different threshold,
but we aren't, the citizens are in the dark. We can't get information about their
uh, permits and requirements. You would think we could. But the Army Corps of Engineers
won't give you any information except through a foyer which can take a year. If I
had more time, I would tell you how a simple question that I posed, which was is
the hill grass buffer on this plot 10 ft or 50 under an existing permit. It took
2.5 years to get a nonanswer to that question. Uh and only after a lot of
correspondence. Um, but of course, the shellfish with themselves, they do know a
lot more. They do have the permits. And here's my proposal of the day, why shouldn't
the county require existing shellfish operators as a condition of being here
to submit? They their publicly, uh, public information, excuse me, their permits,
which is public information. You just can't get it on time. It would take about two
minutes to press an email button with ASAP DF on it to get to you. I don't, there's
something like 10 or 15 operators in the county. I'm not sure. You don't know. I
don't know. But two of them Taylor and, uh, Guns Stone are the Lion's share. They
each have maybe three, possibly four permits. Since 2014, the new permits are given
out for 1015 years. So this is not a big ask at all and yet it would give us and
you a lot of good information. Um, I'm running out of time. So, uh, I wrote you a
letter yesterday but I want to provide you hard copies in case you would like to
track during this afternoon's uh discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Walter.
Well, it's in the room.
Mhm. We're good at that here. It's usually the
good morning. Hi, I'm sure you remember me from last time? My name is Betty and I
was here on behalf of Harold and I'm here on behalf of Harold and all unhoused people
again. Um, as you know, um, the fire department,
the real team and the police department came in to the warning center to
relay that they had, had the, uh, call from the governor's office telling
them not to move Harold's home and they did it anyway. And so we are saying
that, uh, uh, the Governor and the, uh, um, Attorney General are saying it's possible
that, um, they committed fraud, uh, and deceit and trickery and violated the,
uh, 14th amendment and sub substantive due process as well as a couple of executive
orders. And, uh, because they knew that his ban, uh, had already been
told to and they liked him. So, um, um, is the cons uh
is it conspiring together that um makes it rico violations?
Um You know, that's, that's the question up in the air of those agencies. Also, I've
looked at uh your collective budget for 2024 and 2025 and you have
no uh housing uh advisory committee. Uh So there's,
there's no entity that's advising you on housing, no budget for housing within Jefferson
County. Um So, uh at this point, uh Harold's got his lawyer and he's
going to be trying to get his, his ban out on the 26th of February at 9
a.m. in the courthouse here. Uh And we encourage anybody who
believes in the Homestead Act and believes that uh you know, life should be preserved
during a declared emergency over towing park cars and over capitalism and nepotism
and cronyism. Then please come down to the courthouse February 26 9 a.m. and join
us and um hope to see you there. Thank you. Thank you, Maggie. And we will respond
after everyone has provided public comments. Mhm. Um Mister Gordon. Ok.
Just this pair, please. Thank you very much. They should all be the same. Thank you.
First confirm that uh My name is Gordon King. Uh I live in Bell Street, Port Townsend.
Shellfish. Farmers have been and continue to be stewards of our environment in the
past, fighting to restrict the dumping of toxic mill into our waters and continuing
to participate in organizations such as the MRC and Clean Water District. Of note,
the Clean water district's main task is limiting the damage to our aquatic environment
caused by outland development. The commissioners have been presented with the storyline
concerning the permitting of good duck aquaculture that somehow at the 11th hour
of consideration of the SNP update, the planning commission grossly liberalized the
good duck permitting language. The table I handed you tracks how the update dealt
with good duck farms and cups. At various stages of this process, you will see that
by July 2021 at the direction of the Department of Ecology uh to decrease Jeff Jefferson
County's excessive use of cups. The D CD had suggested there be a discretionary c
there be discretionary cups for new farms and no cups for expansion or conversion
to the shellfish industry shock by October the 20th, uh excuse me. But by October
2021 this had converted into full CE PS for every iteration when I was finally able
to listen to recordings and minutes from the planning commission meetings that were
posted months after the actual meetings, I found that the planning commission had
been presented with inaccurate information from good farming, from property owners
living on expensive waterfront properties and decided to adopt K A very negative
aquaculture S MP language. The October 2023 version coming out of the planning Commission
is significantly more restrictive than the original 2021 draft suggested by the Jefferson
County Planning Department demanding more full ce P adds considerable expense to
the regulatory process. This will ensure that it is out of reach for smaller growers
trying to get a toehold in the marine farming industry that produces aquatic food
and economic development in Jefferson County. The irony of the call for more expense,
expensive, excessive regulation is being procul by those that have chosen to live
in a shoreline environment grossly changed by their roads, houses and warms. And
that doesn't. That irony does not escape me. Thank you, Mister Keys.
And let's go online.
I'll bring over Kim Juliet and G Great. Let's start with Kim Thompson and for Juliet
Pucker and then Jane Ball, he's a such promotional Panelist and MS Thompson to unmute
yourself and you have up to three minutes. Welcome, good morning. And thank you for
this opportunity to comment on this lovely morning, Monday morning. Uh My name is
Kim Thompson. I'm the executive director for the Pacific Coast Shell Fish Growers
Association. Um, and we do have multiple members. Um in Jefferson County. Uh First,
I want to draw your attention to a comment letter that we submitted on Friday, February.
The second. Um If we did address uh the debris question, um I think it's important
to note that while there are certainly bad actors, most shellfish farmers do understand
the need to maintain and to the extent practicable, reduce the risk of gear loss.
For one thing, they are part of the communities in which they operate and they do
not want to compromise the health of the watersheds that they do rely on for their
livelihoods. For another gear is expensive that said as with any form of food production
and farming, sometimes gear will escape. And in those cases, there are already requirements
in place by the US Army Corps to address debris and I included those requirements
in the letter. Um but perhaps a more reasonable solution here rather than punishing
all of the growers, uh work with the Army Corps to improve enforcement to address
the bad actors um and reduce some of the gear debris issues that have been brought
up. Um I also want to point out that we are uh concerned about some of the items
that were listed in the staff report that was posted on the website on Friday. We
unfortunately have not had a lot of time to look at those items um and see how they
might impact our growers. But, you know, there are a few items on that list that
could have some significant impact. So we do ask for more time to take a look and
provide thoughtful comments. Um And we welcome the opportunity to work with the commissioners
to find workable solutions here. Um I know it's a tricky world to navigate. Um You
know, we, we all want to get through this as smoothly as possible. Um So please in
the future, if there are significant changes like this, we would welcome the opportunity
to sit at the table with you and, and work with you to find those workable solutions.
Thank you for your time. Thank you, MS Thompson, Miss Cochran.
To, to do you. Good morning with the restructuring of the administration of ICAP.
We, the community have an opportunity to have our churches, our civic organizations
and our community collaborate to ensure that the Jefferson County will have a shelter
for the homeless. We must quickly work together to make sure that these geriatric
and disabled people who are in the American legion and the people who are tenting
in our forests and living in vehicles will have the possibility of an emergency shelter.
After March 31st, it is our moral responsibility to not lose the progress we've made
in the last couple of decades. We the Winter Welcoming Center will work with the
government nonprofits and the faith community to make sure that starting April 1st,
there will continue, there will continue to be somewhere for people to go every day
to get warm, dry fed and be able to find clothing and other resources as well as
Wi Fi electricity and most importantly, community. I believe your role is to set
that stage and start that conversation. Thank you. Thank you, MS Pran this ball.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
One? Never knows. Um Welcome to the team Tracy, wherever you are out there in Cyber
world. Um We know the steering committee met on the 30th. I hope that Kate will provide
a briefing on that meeting today. I hope that she will tell us that she strongly
advocated for all future meetings to be open to the public and that the committee
enthusiastically agreed to her very reasonable demands. I want to tell you why I
think it is important that you understand what transparency can do for you and what
secret meetings do to you. The dis citizens have a right to information about what
our government is doing. Openness not only strengthens our democracy, but I would
also argue that it is an indispensable requirement of good governance. Transparency
promotes efficiency and effectiveness in the functioning of government. Transparency
in leadership means keeping the public informed and welcoming honest feedback. When
you are transparent, trust grows and the strength of the relationship between the
public and the government also grows. The absence of transparency, foments distrust
yields poor outcomes and produces a lack of accountability. When government processes
are transparent. It is difficult for corruption to thrive and easier for citizens
to understand why our government is doing what they are doing. Lack of transparency
is deadly to democracy. Data produced by our government is public and should be easy
to access as a normal and ordinary practice, we shouldn't have to beg for it or make
foyer requests to discover basic stuff which should be made readily available to
us. We should be allowed to attend meetings and we should be provided with briefings
to keep us updated. There is an obvious interest in this issue and there have been
glaring problems with the current and past protocols. I do not see a public facing
correction to the invaluable and actionable feedback we have brought to you. I know
we helped to dodge a bullet for our county but the work is not done. I am convinced
there is a viable and productive path forward. If we work together, we have shown
that the outcome is always better when we have more eyes examining the data and the
documents. Nobody on the steering committee is an expert in any of the stuff you
are reviewing and so many things have been overlooked, ignored and obscured. I hope
you will pivot and pull this thing together so that we will see a county pool in
our lifetimes, democracy, equity and inclusion are your friends. Thank you.
Thank you, MS Paul. Anyone else online wish to provide public comments. So please
raise hands at the bottom of your screen.
Yes.
Went twice. All right, we'll go ahead and close public comments. And
Kushner, does anyone care to respond? Oh, sure. I can start off um appreciate everyone
uh contributing to the record this morning um regarding the S MP. You know, we're,
we're coming back at two o'clock today. So the significant deliberations will be
done then and hopefully, I disagree with MS Thompson. I hope we can wrap this up
today. That is my, my, my uh you know, at least move it to the next step. Um What
I will say is uh thank you, Mr Walter for identifying the, the gap that happened
in the uh um in the drafting. I thought Burke's explanation for how it happened and
the, the resolution was pretty good, but I appreciate your, your contribution to
that and I idea for that as well and we'll consider that. Um I'm not sure I have
a lot more. Yeah, you know, thinking about this a lot, read through everything again.
I thought Burke's presentation though, the, the document today was really a really
good distillation of the conversations that we've already had. So I don't think there's
a lot of new stuff in there. Just stuff made manifest that we talked about. Uh Julia.
Thank you. Um I really appreciate that. I think she's um yeah, we wanna make sure
that we do continue to have a place that people emergency shelter functioning in
April. So I really appreciate the, the the tender of her note and I'll get to it
a little bit more too, but I think she had kind of uh indicated changes at cap and
I, I do want to acknowledge that uh our Ed of Cap resigned on Friday. We accepted
that resignation on um Sunday and uh cherish will be working uh
on transition to the end of the week on the ninth will be your last day. So big changes
at cap, wanna make sure that we don't drop balls as we go through that leadership
transition though. It's uh yeah, it's big. Hey, Greg, is there um talk about um any
solution for the post March 30th emergency shelter closure? I have not heard one.
So I, I think it's, it's an important conversation. I appreciate bringing more people
to the table, you know, I think, yeah, we, we need to have that sooner rather than
later. Um And then let's see, Gordon Two. Appreciate it. We'll appreciate the, the
history and uh we'll dig into it. Um And thanks MS Ball for, you know, uh
the comments we're still working. I look forward to hearing how the steering committee
went. I think we may be talking about, check that up a little bit on our side and
I think that would be to the benefit of the process, but, you know, really we're
playing a waiting game right now for that independent financial review to get back
um as contracted by commerce. So, um but I will say that many, much of the work of
the county and any municipality happens not in an open public meeting and there are
many meetings. I mean, if we had to invite the public to every single time we sat
down with someone, it would be um unworkable. And there's where, where to define
that line is something that we constantly struggle with and, and happy to have uh
critique and, and conversation about. I don't think the steering committee has been
a series of secret meetings. It's been a working group that goes and comes up with
a product and, and brings it back and, and I think it's been, um I don't think anything
untoward has been happening in those meetings and I'm confident in the integrity
of all the people at that meeting. So I do feel like our process isn't, you know,
it's never perfect. That's why it's a process, right? So keep getting it better.
But thank you. Thank you. And, well, there seems to be a couple of themes
today. Um Maybe I'm just gonna ask specific questions or call out what we can do.
I mean, Harold and I feel like, can't we do something? Maybe let me speak a little
bit more. I, I did, I did actually II, I, sorry, I forgot to respond to Maggie, but
um I met with Maggie last week when she was here for our fifth Monday and, and we
didn't have a meeting but we did talk. But after two weeks ago, I did connect um
Danielle from the team who has been working with Harold with uh Jefferson Associated
Council and talked to District Court. I mean, the process now is towing companies
have uh a form that goes to District Court, uh which is free for the indigent. So
hopefully it was a free application, but it takes three weeks and that's kind of
rushing it through. So two options that were available to, to Harold were that district
court. So the 225 will be District Court. Um and I think, you know, on the 25th,
I think 26 at 9 a.m. Ok.
And so, you know, just being there, I think, you know, court watching is something
that I've heard from the Jefferson associated Counsel can be very effective just
to make sure that everyone is getting their, their due, but it is, it is moving forward.
I I mean, it's just frustrating the pace. Right. Yeah, there's, you can't speed up
the court system there, things happen when they happen. So a three week delay was
what was expected from District Court when I spoke with them. So that is that is
moving forward. Ok. Um We've talked about housing like a housing advisory committee.
We have the Housing Fund Board, but we don't really have like a policy committee
on housing. I mean, it's something we talked about having a housing office of the
county. We've talked about a lot of structure around housing. We had, we had uh contracted
staff for the housing fund board for several years. We don't right now it's kind
of on the backs of our age or subsidiary nonprofit agencies that are doing the housing
and uh and our staff and elected um capacity. Well, there's a lot of volunteer work
that goes into that too. But the conversation is fairly vital, I would say, and can
I just say too, I think the um in the limited funding we have for housing, there's
been a sense that we don't want to use more of that to, to fund, yeah, staff and,
and infrastructure instead of having that actually. And by infrastructure, I mean,
you know, governmental infrastructure to be that housing office versus putting that
money into projects. Um Yes, the priority has been getting that money on the street
put to use. So, um but potentially somebody in a position could focus on bringing
more capacity to the county to leverage the resources we do have. I don't know, I'm
just, it's a worthy conversation. So it was the day I walked in the door and it still
is, I think we do have it regularly at the housing fund board, which was one committee
I'm not on and I'm, I'm not looking for more committees. So um uh
let's see. On the SNP issue. I appreciate all the extra work that staff and our consultants
have done to answer all the questions we've had and how many deliberative meetings
have we had today? But I, I look forward to the further conversation today and um
I've been a little distracted with personal matters the last week and um
I did read all of the SNP briefing document for today and that's done a good job
and I still feel um kind of where I was last week, that expansion should be anyway,
we'll talk about it later. But, um, I really appreciate the extra work and I appreciate
Gordon bringing the table and kind of over time what's happened. It's helpful to
have it on one piece of paper and instead of 50 pieces of paper anyway. So, um, I
look forward to the conversation this afternoon and I'm still like, I was thinking
last night after I read all that stuff. I'm like, I, I don't think you could find
three commissioners anywhere on the planet that are as equally committed to our aquaculture
industry in Jefferson County and our marine environment. I mean, when I think about
each of the three of us working with you guys the last few years and knowing Kate
for over 20 years, um, you know, you've got a good set of commissioners here. We're
doing our best and it's taken a while, but we really are supportive of um, making
the right decision on this. Um
and Gene secret meetings. I mean, I, I, I pulled out my list of committees the other
day because there's just a suggestion that some of my colleagues here might be willing
to take a couple of committees for me over the next few months while I'm dealing
with family matters. And, you know, we said on a lot of committees, a number of them
are uh noticed meetings, Board of Health, I think the MRC is noticed and, you know,
public open public meetings and then we sit on a number of task forces and work groups
and, you know, subcommittees and uh we don't have the staff capacity to have those
meetings all open public meetings. And I mean, I'm sure I'm gonna get comments about
that later, but, um, some of this work has to be done more, you know, expediently.
And I don't feel like there's any, I don't feel like the steering committee for the
Aquatic Center has been doing anything untoward. I just feel like the issue has drawn
a lot of interest and ideas and opportunities that maybe weren't seen in initially.
And we're, we're in the process as Commissioner Dean has said a number of times we're
in the process right now and, um, at some point, I think it would be good to have
an open meeting just to hear from folks. I mean, I've, I've been criticized for saying
I'm complaining about all the comments. I'm getting, I'm not complaining. I'll say
it again. I'm marveling. I've got nearly 500 comments I've gotten about the aquatic
center and how they've gotten more thoughtful over time. And so I just feel like
we are in the midst of the process and I am historically, if I think about myself,
I am somebody who likes to do things quickly expediently and efficiently. And um
in this case, it's not really an option. So anyway, um I think that's the end of
my commentary today. Sorry about the box of Kleenex. It might be here for a while.
Folks that we take turns. Yeah. Um Thanks everyone for uh
meaningful public comments as usual. Um Few things, obviously, we'll get much deeper
into the S MP later today. But um interesting Michel alter your suggestion to include
the, the other permits in the local permits. Um was actually a, a recommendation
uh told to me by someone in industry saying that that would um be a practical way
to be able to reference all of that information. Um And this was actually for the,
so that the local decision makers would have all that information at their fingertips.
But you're right when it becomes part of our public record, it's much easier to access
as well. So hearing that from both sides, which always feels like a bit of a win.
Um So let's keep tabs on that idea. Um
uh Let's see, what else do I wanna add there. Um, I, I do agree that the Army Corps
has. Uh, well, I'm not sure if I'm agreeing. I will say it, it does seem as though
getting the Army Corps to do enforcement is really challenging that we need to create
a system whereby there's a way for, um, for our department to keep tabs on
what's happening locally and they have the authority to be able to, um, effectively
enforce our S MP and um, and the permits that we issue and that's always a, a challenge
but want to keep in mind while we're building the um the process right now.
Um Let's see a few things. We, we generally talked about housing um and just
the challenge of wanting to uh provide more capacity um
for housing in general, but when we're deciding between funding a staff person and
having another say $100,000 to put into keeping the emergency shelter open, you know,
we end up putting it into operations, not into our own staffing. And um those funds
have continued to diminish um in this case, because of high interest rates are real
estate transactions are down. So the reporting fees for real estate are way down,
which is what funds operations for very low income housing. So big challenge and
one that we don't see um being remedied anytime in the near future. Unfortunately.
Um hm uh the steering committee did indeed meet for the aquatic center
and um would it be helpful for me to jump in to that? Now, um, this is while we have
some folks who are interested in this. Ok. Um, let's see here. So make sure what
do we have on our 45. So we do need to save some time for consent because we have
a hearing notice on there. Ok, great. I will quickly go through um, our steering
committee meeting and then if there are, uh, follow up items, we can come back to
it. Um, and we will be doing S MP at two o'clock also today. You know that right.
Thank you. Bye bye. All right. So where we landed in the steering committee meeting,
um, was, uh, I'll just kind of run through my main points. Here. One is, um, uh,
as suggested by, I think Greg who originally brought it up. Um, I could be replaced
by a, a commissioner from a different district. It would be helpful. Um, the group
decided to create a task force. So have each commissioner appoint two people from
their district who are open minded, curious, um, knowledgeable,
knowledgeable, uh, pro pool of some sort, but without a, a kind of, um, agenda in
mind about exactly what that should look like. And that is in large part because
we were gonna task that task force with doing an assessment of the, the plan that
was, uh, currently approved by the steering committee, taking a look at other construction
types and um sprung who we've heard a lot about is coming to town this week. So,
um that's something uh to be taking a look at and doing some analysis of and um consideration
of another site port headlock being the obvious one. So the task force would be,
can I test with reviewing a number of options and, you know, ideally come to a, a
recommendation or at least flesh out the um you know, kind of pros and cons of various
avenues before us. Can I ask one question about that task force? I think it sounds
like a great idea is the idea that this would, could form the nucleus of a PFD if
that comes to pass. I mean, we're going to need at some point assuming it comes back
from commerce with, you know, rosy financial numbers. It could, I think we are afraid
of politicizing it and the, the public facilities district board, you know, that's
part of the ballot. And I think we want to keep this relatively depoliticized, but,
you know, certainly building up the kind of knowledge and capacity of a number of
folks, it would be really helpful. That would be a great idea. Yeah. And there's
certain skills that we would like to add on the PFD board, uh knowledge of cons construction,
construction techniques, financing, um things of that sort just just to make sure
that um when the PFD, um I mean, they'll be managing the facility. Um, they'll be
handling all the financing and we need to work on defining what skill sets we would
like to see
the task force, um, would be staffed by Mark and carry height from the city as well
as, um, Wendy Bart as a, a technical advisor. Um, and I think maybe that's um, the
topic of how those meetings should be conducted. It's something that, um, we should
give some thought to that hasn't come up previously. So, um, we will give some thought
to that in some ways. It would be helpful to get the test score seated and, you know,
kind of decide how, how, how it can best operate, but I, I have to give some thought
to it so I can't answer, um M Ball's question about that specifically right now,
but good, good, um, call out and we will, um, do some talking about that. Um,
Wendy Bart, uh, knows the person who did the market study in 2004 that identified
port padlock was not a viable site. And, um, she's going to ask if there are ways
that we can affordably update that, you know, as a kind of a formula that we could
plug new data into and come up with some, you know, uh different scenarios. So we'll
have to see looking for an inexpensive way to get, um, that market study updated
because we know that obviously things are changing quickly. And, uh, we headlock
right now. Um The city has uh created a memo that um
I can't remember if it's gone out for public distribution yet. It's, I think it's
going before City council tonight, so it should be public. Um And it is uh describes
the various reports that were done that there's been a lot of concern about these
reports that were not made public. Um So it, it really summarizes the, it does an
analysis on various reports that have been done uh and talks about the, the feasibility
of improving, updating the current pool. So, um I actually haven't read it yet. I
will admit to that we got it this weekend. Um And, but um if it's not on the website
yet, it probably will be soon and I look forward to digging into it. Uh Anything
I've forgotten mark, I think you covered it. Well, thank you. So we should talk about
uh if we're gonna switch out one of our positions and then also, um the meeting with
Sprung is uh this coming Wednesday. It would be nice. Ok, great. I know we need to
leave time for um consent. So can we hit a pause on that? Ok. All right.
Sorry, everyone don't mean to give whiplash but um the consent agenda before, so
we need to get past before 945. Do you want anything else? Um I can, there's a couple
of great things and one or two questions that I have. It's great to see the bid come
in. All of the bids come in for the sewer infrastructure significantly lower than
the engineer's estimate, you know, kind of offset of that last one that was so far
above. So I geek out on the bid opening, I was here for that one. It was quite exciting.
Yeah, it really was. Um, yeah. No, it's really exciting and I just again and again,
appreciate public works kind of breaking that project into smaller component pieces
so we could get local bidders which really seems to be bearing fruit. So really props
to, to public works uh for being ahead of the curve there. My question on number
seven, the forestry contract, I mean, I want to keep going with, with uh Chickadee
and all that. But um I mean, I've had a contract with the county before. I've never
seen a unit of work a month. That's it. That was pretty, was a red flag to me. Yeah,
it's a retainer contract much like we have, we don't have any prices for, for what,
who's doing? What, how much did they bill per hour? I mean, it's still like they
contract with our lo lo fir where we just pay him fix amount per month for a body
of work. We and there was, there was a price per hour factored into figuring out
the amount per month and mark and I have had a number of conversations with Mallory
over the last year about this updating our contract. So, I don't know, it seems pretty
squishy. Well, I think that we have kind of called on Mallory to jump in and provide
guidance on a number of initiatives mostly that Heidi is working on, but that we
wouldn't have foreseen to put in a contract, you know, like an hourly rate and everything.
She's got a team of people. We don't know how many, any of them. Well, other than
they've, ok, so one of the contracted, I just, you know, I mean, I don't want the
work to stop if you guys are both comfortable with an hourly rate in there because
Mark, we factored that into this, you know, to see some justification for how we
got to that figure. Mark, I mean, so just a way to follow the contract, it just seems
like difficult. It's not a great control. So it's 33 hours a month at 100 and 80
an hour. So for two people, it's less than 17 hours a month and there's 100 and 73
work hours per month. So that's not a lot of work. So do they just get that whether
they do the work or not? And no matter if they do more, they also get that much.
I don't, well, we also get a monthly report of what they did that month and some
months though, they'll work 60 hours and some months they might work, but it eliminates
all the admin administration necessary to, you know, clock your time on this task
and on that task, right, we want spending the time in the forestry activities and
that, and that's why we have, you know, it's a retainer contract and we have three.
If this is approved, we'll have three contracts of that nature. Bob Ron one. our
lobbyist firm is two and then this would be three. I remember the Bob Brown contract
and it's not quite as vague as this. I wonder if we can um table this and approve
our hearing notice. Um so that I can maybe we can pull this and just talk about it
a little bit more if we have time critical stuff. I mean, I wanted to move forward
other than that great, great stuff going, glad to see you don't mind going to rental
subsidies for Woodley Place the last of the 1590 or not. The last um
advisory board appointments and exciting more jobs. I swear we just did a job
thing last week.
This is District Court. This last time was where it was also last week. Feels like
every week. I'm happy to move that. We approve the consent agenda for February 5th
2024 minus item seven, which we will pull and discuss later. Second. Ok. Any further
discussion, all those in favor say AAA.
Um Did you say I Heidi? Uh I, great, thank you. Uh The agenda is adopted
unanimously. And let's see, we always have this two minute discrepancy. My phone
even says that it is 945. So um Doctor Barry and well, Lily Ben are online. Yeah,
we will welcome Doctor Berry and director of emergency management. Lily Bent for
our monthly briefing. Um What are we calling it these days?
Have an emergency management update. Um Head it up to you, Doctor Bery. Welcome everyone.
Nice to be here. Um Thanks for having me. Um looking at the the respiratory report
uh nationally, we are finally seeing COVID-19 hospitalization sound trend as well
as flu and RSV. So all are moving in the right direction um but are still elevated
compared to where we usually see them. Um We are in the process of moving out of
flu and RSV season, but we likely will still be in that season for at least one more
month. We tend to see moving out of that in the springtime. Um The big question mark
that remains is whether COVID-19 will follow a seasonal pattern going forward. Um
And the answer to that appears to be that we are gonna continue to see COVID-19 with
us um in higher rates than we normally see flu and RSD in the summer months. But
we do for the last, even for the last three years, we see our most severe activity
in the fall and winter. We see our biggest surges of hospitalizations and emergency
department visits from about November to April. And so we expect that COVID-19 will
continue to move in more and more of a seasonal pattern like flu and RSV with some
continued activity and some continued risk in the summer. But our our biggest activity
in the fall and winter locally in Jefferson County, we are seeing about one hospitalization
per week for COVID-19. And unfortunately, we have had one more death due to COVID-19
since our last meeting, which puts us at a total of 44 deaths. So far. In this response,
we do unfortunately have one long term care facility outbreak for influenza and COVID-19.
At the same time, we're working very closely with that facility because the risk
of those viruses mixing at a high risk population is very real. Uh but the facility
is working closely with us and uh doing a great job at minimizing any spread to the
extent that we can in neighboring Clallam County, we have had a total of two deaths
from COVID-19 so far this year and a total of 24 in the last year, Clallam has had
more deaths due to COVID-19 than Jefferson County by a long shot. And so we have
started counting them by year um in part to acknowledge the difference between what
we saw in 2020 now, um and we'll get some more into this as we move into the listener
questions, but COVID-19 is less severe now than it was in, in the darkest days of
the pandemic. When we were seeing, you know, the shutting down of government facilities,
we were seeing, you know, in some parts of the country or trucks in the streets.
It was a catastrophic event three years ago. Uh We're not in that space now, but
COVID-19 is still serious and is still more serious than any of the other respiratory
diseases that we currently monitor. Uh that have seasonal patterns like flu and RSV.
When it comes to COVID-19, you are three times as you are 10 times more likely to
be hospitalized for COVID-19 than for influenza even today in 2023 and 24 data. Um
it's still much more severe than the flu and you are three times more likely to die
from COVID-19 than from the flu. So it's not the flu, it hasn't turned into the flu.
It is still more severe than the flu, but it is much better than it was. And we are
likely to see it become more and more like the flu in its characteristics. But it's
worth taking seriously as we move forward and remembering that those there are individuals
in our community who remain at high risk. So those over 65 those who are very young,
um and those who are immunosuppressed or are those at the highest risk of COVID-19,
but we've got good protection available, which didn't used to be the case three years
ago, if we do if we access those protections, we can do well and we can move more
into the normalcy that we saw before this pandemic. So with that, I'm happy to take
any questions from our commissioners before we take lister questions.
Sorry, we don't have as part of this.
Yeah, I'll, I'll reiterate that people can send questions in for this section to
KPTZ before beforehand and then the good doctor can respond. I guess. I, uh, my only
questions are kind of process questions. I'm wondering if we should start counting
like Colin does here as well. I mean, it's, it's starts to lose its meaning, you
know, six years in we have, you know, how many, it's just, uh, I don't know, my wife
and I and I have an ongoing ping pong game and every once in a while we gotta start
scoring over again, you know? All right, you won that set. Maybe it's time for a
new set. Um, and then the look like, what do you mean? Well, Clown County does a
monthly report of how many, I mean, maybe it's every six months or since, you know,
2020 you know, 2024. I had to look at my computer, see what year it was. Um, something
like that. I don't, I don't know, you want to respond to that and I have one more.
Yeah, I think that would be really reasonable. Um, is to start counting Jefferson
County deaths by year. Um So just like Clapham, our worst year was 2021 and actually
it wasn't 2020. Um We did so well in our COVID-19 Protections that first year, but
the Delta wave hit us really hard. Um And I think that would be interesting folks
to track that annually over time. One of the challenges is we often are um there's
some guidance from the state on not sharing numbers less than 10 because it could
potentially be identifiable, but I think annual death counts are not identifiable.
Um And I think that could help people understand um how things have changed over
time. Great. And then my other point is just that uh the great questions that we
have weren't actually listener questions but uh provided by the radio station. Uh
I'm just, are, are we still sure this, this uh you know, we, we take time out of
Doctor Berry's time and, and uh out of Willie's as well and I'm wondering if we want
to make the intervals even less or whether this is still uh adding value for everyone.
And I guess I'm, I don't have any questions, you know, that's, that's, that's really
what it is. I used to have 25 questions at the beginning and, you know, understand
it. Good to see the stats would report. Give the same benefit. Yeah, I think I was
actually having that same question too is that we're having less questions from the
listeners and some of that might be that the folks are, you know, folks have actually
come to understand COVID better. We've been doing this monthly for years. Um And
so people have a better understanding of these viruses than they used to. Um And
we do have other places to have this kind of conversation. We have our board of health
meetings, which are also public. Um And so, so I think it would be reasonable to
consider either spacing these out or actually taking a pause from, from radio briefings
now that we're moving out of the emergency state and potentially bringing them back
if, if things change, if the new variant happens or some other infectious disease
element needs to be brought to the public um public attention. And that's not to
say that COVID is gone or that we don't care about it. We do. Um But there are other
ways to potentially get that information across. We do a weekly report on the respiratory
uh the respiratory viruses on our website. Um It's not there this week because there
was an issue with the um with the data elements. Uh the state essence dashboard that
gives us all those emergency department visits that then we build our grafts from
is down right now. It's not there this week, but it will normally be there. Um But
I'm open to ideas on that on, on what would be most helpful for folks if I can just
follow up with one more. I mean, this has got nothing to do with the good doctor.
Uh, but, you know, Clown County has been inviting was dot For a monthly update, you
know, and maybe the same space still on KPTZ could be responsive to other acute things
that people are really interested in, you know, road closures and ferry work. I mean,
watch dot would be something that people would really be interested in. Um So, I
don't know, just we could maybe keep the slot and um, and program to what is more
acutely interesting to. And we said that last year when they invited us to participate
and we did that joint meeting, we said maybe we need to do our own update with Lash
shot because we have different issues than Allen County. So that's a good idea. Well,
um my comment related to that is in the form of a question also, which is, um I read
and I think I generally read repeatable sources, um, that, um, somebody had had
predicted that up to a third of Americans would contract COVID by the end of February
that there's an anticipated surge. And, um, you know, my guess is that's not coming
to, to be. Um, but I believe, are we still seeing an uptick in our, our numbers in
the wastewater here in Port Townsend? Um Do we anticipate a surge or is that, um,
you know, I think that uh maybe finishing out this kind of flu season with our monthly
updates. Um If indeed, we still expect those numbers to continue to increase. Uh
It could be helpful and then reconsider for summer months where we're likely to see
less activity. Oh, yeah, great question. Um As far as COVID-19 um
transmission, yes, we're still seeing a lot of transmission in our community. It's
not going away. The one that we monitor the most closely is those kind of more severe
outcomes, the emergency department visits, the hospitalizations and those have been
down, trending nationally and down trending to some extent here though, we're seeing
a bit of a plateau in Jefferson that is likely due to our local long term care outbreak.
Um You know, those folks who are most uh most likely to get severely ill when you
have such a small population that really affects your numbers. And so we're kind
of taking that out of, of our counting locally because it doesn't mean that everyone
is likely to get hospitalized, but those who are at highest, I certainly could. Um
One interesting thing we are seeing is that not here yet. Uh but in the puget sound
region, they're actually seeing a second rise in flu cases. Um So they came down
and then they're seeing a second pump starting. Um whether or not that will be a
full on surge really remains to be seen. Um But I would say as far as behavior we
should all expect to have flu RSV and COVID for the next month or so. You know, February
March is really when we would likely see all those continue to downturn and, and
behave accordingly. So that means make sure you're up to date on your vaccine. Keep
masking in your crowded indoor spaces until we get properly into real spring in the
northwest. We're very familiar with False Spring, which is what we have right now.
Um, it will likely get colder again. Um, and the viruses will behave accordingly.
Um But when we get to really proper spring, March, April, we should see all those
things downtrend, the COVID will stay with us. And so those of us who are at high
risk, they'll need to need to think about it. Um, but we see our biggest surges in
the winter. Um And whether or not we wanna uh continue this for one more month, it
is totally up to y'all. I'm, I'm happy to be here if it's useful to y'all and if
it's not, I'm happy to go through some other uh important public health things. Well,
maybe I would suggest, um, I always think of uh, um, Jennifer James Wilson, our long
longest standing elective, I think in the county right now saying, um, it's a community
that doesn't startle well. And so maybe keeping keeping March in places with Doctor
Berry and then, um, you consider at that point and maybe look for other, um, you
know, kind of partners that we think would be interesting to fill that radio slot.
See if we get a, we get a, a huge amount of resistant to the suggestion. 500 questions.
No, no, no. You can give people a sense of, um, a kind of assurance that they're
being cared for your reports. And I, I came today with a question because I'm dealing
with a, um, sick person in my family and some friends of ours came last night to
visit them and um they just came from, this is kind of fun. I could write a short
story about this. They just came from a youtube concert in Las Vegas where there
were like, I don't remember the magnitude, it was 18,000 people or 100 and 80,000
people in that new sphere. And they're like, do you want us to mask up? And I was
like, uh and I should have just said yes, but it was like this
moment where I'm like, I'm not sure and just tell me Dr Barry, I should have just
said yes. Right. Probably yes. I mean, particularly if they're there to visit a sick
relative. Um It really the biggest determinant is the risk status of the people who
you're joining. Um So if you're, if you're coming home from a U two concert, you're
hanging out with a bunch of twentysomethings who don't have a bunch of underlying
conditions. If they get COVID the probability of something super severe happening
is as well. Um But if you're visiting an infant, if you're visiting a sick elder,
taking that extra step to reduce the probability of bringing something home to them
is worthwhile. But it can be awkward, it can be awkward to ask people to mask. Um
But it is, it was one of those moments where I was like, oh what do I do? And you
know, this person is not presenting as really sick yet, but, you know, the prognosis
isn't good. So I was just like I felt really stuck in that moment and I was like,
well, Dr Berry tomorrow.
Yeah,
and one of them didn't have stuff and the other one didn't. So, you know, there you
go. I mean, but it felt like I needed as the advocate for the the person who's going
to be sicker as time goes by um to, you know, I needed to know I needed that my head
did not have the quick answer. So I was, I thought so that's, that's also my answer
to do. I want less visits with Doctor Berry. And no, but I understand that it's practical
forever. And, you know, and I like the idea of um you know, transitioning this time
to other information that would benefit the community if that's what we all agree.
So thank you. And we can always come back if something weird happens. So, you know,
if avi influenza turns out to be a bigger issue or, you know, some other new bug
shows up or COVID gets weird and this has to have a crazy vart that's problematic.
We're always around so we can always come back. Um So as far there were a couple
of questions along that line, um So one of the questions that we got was about, you
know, whenever folks travel, they seem to come home with COVID. why is that? Um is
that from the plane? Is that from gatherings when they get there? And it really depends
on the person. Um The plane is really high risk. Um People travel, whether they're
sick or not. Now you can, you can assume that people have something on the, the plane
with you. Um And so if you wear a high quality mask on the plane, you're not probably
going to get anything from the plane, but a lot of us don't, a lot of people don't,
I do, I wear a high quality mask that don't want what they're sharing on the plane,
but a lot of people don't mask on planes anymore. So that's certainly a risk factor.
The airport is a risk factor, but the biggest one we often see if you are a good
plane masker, is that as soon as you get there, you're there to be with people. Um
you're there to have a family reunion or a big Thanksgiving dinner and you have a
lot of people inside with masks off. And that's usually how they get sick. Um We
value being together, we value those critical family gatherings. Um And so people
are willing to go well ill now in a way that they weren't before. And so I would
just say, uh you know, if you're high risk yourself, it's ok to ask people to mask
when you're there and it's ok to ask them to stay home if they're sick in my family.
We have a dear family member with a significant heart condition. And so we don't
bring sickness around him. Um including my toddler who's sick most of the time right
now. Um And so we have to wait until she's well to go hang out with grandpa. That's
important. Um because we don't want to see anything bad happen to him. And so taking
those precautions makes a huge difference and then you can still gather and still
do fun things and still travel, wear your good masks. Can I follow up just to plain
mask protocols? I usually put my mask on when I get into the airport and take it
off once we're in the air. So once that ventilation starts, is that, is that, can
you evaluate that compared to a different strategy or is there one you recommend?
Yeah, so the your most dangerous time is your airport um and then boarding um while
you're waiting to get to cruising altitude. So basically, if they don't if they can't
have the snack cart going through and you're not allowed to walk around the cabin,
it's not safe air wise yet because those fans aren't on. Um, once you're all the
way up at cruising altitude, they do have good, uh, good HEPA filtration in planes.
So it's safer to take your mask off. Then, um, if you're very high risk, it's reasonable
to keep your, keep your mask on to the extent that you can. But if you have a long
plane flight, if you're flying from here to New York, it's hard to stay masked for
that entire trip. You wanna eat, you wanna relax. Um So your highest field times
is boarding, takeoff and landing and then if you wanna take it off after that, you're
probably pretty safe because that filtration is quite good unless your neighbor is
like sneezing. Um, if you have one of those situations, that's to the extent that
you can and that's how we do it. Uh, keeping a toddler mask for five hours in a plane
is not entirely possible. Um, but masking and take off and landing is so that's what
we do. Um, a couple of quick questions. So if someone is, uh uh the one of the questions
was if someone has symptoms, they think it's just a cold and then they get a lot
sicker and they test later, how do you know when to count your infectiousness? And
basically you count by your first symptoms. So, even if you didn't think it was COVID
in the beginning and then your symptoms got worse as soon as you started feeling
ill is the beginning of the days that you count for your infectiousness. And that's
the beginning of your 10. As far as, uh, when you would get pax livid, uh, you do
have to get PAX livid within five days of your initial symptom onset. So, say you
were feeling a little bit ill, didn't think it was COVID. And then on day six, you
felt a lot worse and said, oh no, I need to test you are unfortunately outside of
the PAX COVID window. The reason why that window exists is because it doesn't really
work after day five. It really needs to get in there when the virus is just getting
started in order for it to work. Um And so that at that point, you wanna do all your
good symptomatic treatments if you have any underlying health issues, like a heart
condition or a lung condition, definitely engage with your doctor to make sure that
you're getting the care you need beyond Paxil. There are other things that we can
offer to help take care of you. My patients with asthma, there's other treatments
we can do to help them get better, um, and keep a close eye on them to make sure
they don't get worse. Um One question was, do we still want folks to report positive
COVID tests and we do not. Um we no longer count individual cases. At this point.
We primarily work on preventing outbreaks in high risk settings. So there are a couple
of places where we do still want to know if folks have COVID long term care facilities
being the number one other uh high-risk congregate settings like jails um where things
can get bad pretty quickly, shelters and schools. Um because while kids are overall
lower risk, there are some kids who are very high risk and we want to protect them
and reduce outbreaks in that setting. So that's most of what we do. Um, individual
cases, we don't count anymore. We do count emergency department visits and hospitalizations.
Um As far as Palova, there was another question about, uh kind of if there's anything
new about how we use it and not really, uh same, same rules apply. Um And there's
not a shortage right now. We have intermittently had some trouble getting Palova
into our QF CS. That's the one pharmacy that's been struggling with that, but it
is available in the rest of the county. Um And so if you're having trouble getting
it at individual pharmacy, you usually use, ask your doctor to send it somewhere
else and you should be able to get it. We do still recommend it if you're high risk,
even if you've had COVID before, even if you've taken Palo ID before, because cumulative
cases can still cause problems. It's worthwhile to minimize your risk. Um, uh, one
person said anecdotally, um, I think there are more cases out there right now but
they seem milder. Is that true? What's the overall trend in severity of COVID cases?
We talked about this a little bit at the beginning. Uh, but yes, there's a lot of
COVID circulating right now. It's the winter. It's the time when that usually happens,
but it is less severe than it was in 2020 2021. And that's not because the virus
is uniquely less severe, but because we have accumulated population immunity, we
have prior exposures. We have vaccines and all of those things are making each individual
case less severe. Overall, we also have much better treatments than we had then,
you know, it's hard to remember, but in 2020 we had no idea how to treat this thing.
Um We didn't know to give folks dexamethasone when they got to the hospital. We didn't
know any of how it worked within the body. Now, our medical systems do. And so it
is easier to treat COVID than it was back in the day. All of those things contribute
to less severe outcomes, but again, still a severe bug, still 10 times more likely
to hospitalize you than flu. Um So it's worth taking seriously, but it's not the
catastrophic level of serious that we were dealing with a few years ago. And for
some, it can still be incredibly serious for those in our community who are getting
chemotherapy COVID can still be deadly for them. Um And, and keeping that in mind
even though it's gotten better for everyone else. Um It's important to still take
care of those who are at highest risk. Um Couple other quick questions. Um Let's
see that one we got. Oh yeah. So this is a really good one. I've gotten the latest
booster vaccination for COVID, but I find myself dragging my feet. I'm getting more
shots. What are the relative risks of contracting COVID versus the flu? How does
that relative risk change with age? So we talk a little bit about that uh risk of
hospitalization and death. One thing that I think is worth considering is as we see
this move into a more seasonal virus is that we aren't gonna be seeing consistently
having to get additional COVID vaccines every six months or so. Uh many of us uh
get our flu vaccine every fall. We know that's a thing that we need to do. It's a
norm of the fall as we move into the flu season COVID is gonna be the same thing.
So as we move into the flu, uh the the winter virus season, I guess is what we'll
call it now. Um It's going to be important for all of us to get our flu shot and
our COVID shot, it's going to be an annual thing that helps us get ready for the
fall and winter and it's the time to dust off your masks. There are, I understand
why people connect COVID and the flu because there's a lot of similarities. Um They
uh they are more severe in the fall and winter. They both have good vaccines to prevent,
they both are prevented by masks. Um And they both uh cause their most severe disease
for those who are very elderly, very young and immunosuppressed. But the big difference
is actually severity, flu does kill people every year. Um It kills our elders, it
kills people with underlying conditions, but COVID even today, even right now still
kills about three times more. Um So it's, it's a significant bug but better than
it was. So is it comes to next fall, get your flu and COVID shot and if you're in
a, a particularly high risk group, there may be an RSV shot as well. So they're very,
very young right now. It looks like RSV is gonna be a one time vaccine. Um So you
don't have to plan on getting an RSV vaccine every fall, but COVID and flu uh is
gonna be an annual tradition going forward. I
sorry, just to follow up on what you just said, if RSV is a one time vaccine, do
you think that the eligible? Oh, sorry. Do we lose you? I lost you for just a SEC
but I think I'm back now. Ok. Um if RSV is a one time vaccine, do you think that
the suggested group that takes, that vaccine will change in intervening years as
we, you know, the same people might have to take it. So we'll get it to more people
or will it be the same population are very old and very likely it will be the same
population for most of us who are not very old or very young. RSV is a relatively
mild infection. It's an unpleasant cold, it's very, you don't like it if you get
it. Um But it's very unlikely to kill other folks. Um I think there may be some consideration
of spreading the RSV vaccine to immunosuppressed people generally like we do with
these other vaccines. Um but I don't expect to see an RSV vaccine for all of us next
fall. Um And that is all the respiratory questions. We did get an interesting question
about salmonella. Um which is another infectious disease that we work on at the health
department. It's a food borne illness. Um This person said I have been surprised
by the rise in salmonella infections reported from even processed foods. Raw chicken
is a known vector but cantaloupe and lettuce boxed foods. Um What, what basically
what's going on and how do we prevent that? So, yes, most of us grew up thinking
of salmonella as something that's exclusively on chicken. Salmonella is what's called
a fecal oral bug. So it comes from feces it comes from poo that in a small amount
has gotten on your food one way or another. So, it's not actually unique to chicken.
Um, we get, we had a large salmonella outbreak in Clallam. Yes, last year that was
related to pork. Um, so it's not unique to chicken. It just is from feces getting
on your food. And so unfortunately, if a little bit of animal feces gets on your
cantaloupe, that can cause a problem. Um The way that that happens, it's not a naturally
occurring thing that you see in the soil, but it comes from fertilizing that soil.
So uh places will apply manure including chicken manure to their soil and then that
can get on your vegetables. And you can think particularly about your vegetables
that are close to the ground. So cantaloupe grows on the ground, spinach grows on
the ground. And some of these large agricultural operations were using not very safe
practices. They were using pond water that had been contaminated by feces and then
just spraying it over all the spinach. And you can imagine that that doesn't go well,
which then you send nationally. So what do you do to reduce that risk to yourself?
Um So we have a lot of fantastic local farms where you can ask them about their agricultural
practices and the things that they do to keep you safe. And that's always a good
option when you get the food to yourself. Uh rinsing it before you eat it. If you're
dealing with something that cannot be heated or is not gonna be heated like cantaloupe.
One common thing that we don't realize is we know that we're not gonna eat the outside
of the cantaloupe. And so we don't often rinse those and that's part of how it causes
problems. But what happens is there's a little bit of salmonella on the outside and
then your knife cuts through and brings that salmonella, the cantaloupe which you
then eat. So rinse all your fruits and vegetables, even if they have a peel that
you're gonna take off. And that's gonna make a huge difference to keep you safer.
Rinse your spinach when you get it home and that can make a huge difference as well.
And then if you are dealing with meat, making sure you cook it to the right temperature.
Um So for your poultry, that's 165 it's a little higher than a lot of us do, but
that will kill the salmonella. Um If you're dealing with a cut of meat. So like a
steak, it's about 145 to make sure that you get that taken care of the various bugs
that you might get. Those are the biggest things you can do. The one other thing
is that we usually see most of our salmonella in the summer. Um And that's because
it's warmer and people go camping. Um And so what happens is people bring raw meat
into the forest and they don't adequately refrigerate it on that journey. Uh My family
loves to camp. We bring meat with us, but you gotta make sure it's refrigerated,
keep it cold and then cook it. Um If you do both of those things, you should do just
fine and not have to come out of this with salmonella. And that's all I have for
today. Any questions for my team? I have one question, Doctor Gray and, um, II, I
hope I don't sound alarmist. Um, but I'm, I'm more curious, kind of the the process
here. Um, so I live in uptown Port Town, Zend and on my block, one block, we have
had three young deer die for unknown reasons. Um
And you know, there's fear around is this chronic wasting disease. Um, who is tracking
that? Like, should we be reporting it somewhere? Just what's the, is there a public
health risk? I just curious what that process is. It's been very difficult even figuring
out what to do with the carcasses. Um, so just any, any guidance you can give on,
kind of, should we be doing anything about this? Great question. Um, so a couple,
uh, a couple of different folks you can contact when that happens, so you can call
us. Um, the public health department is, is happy to, uh, help you investigate and
connect you with the people who need to be involved, but probably your best agency
when it comes to Wildlife is WDFW or the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Um, and they can help, um, help you understand whether or not this is something that
you need to be concerned about, talk about how to properly and safely dispose of
those carcasses and those, those are gonna be your folks primarily, but we work with
them a lot. Um, and we can help connect that there's a lot of possible sources for
deer death, certainly chronic wasting diseases. One, COVID thankfully is not usually
fatal in deer. It's probably not COVID in this situation. Um, but, uh, there, there's
a lot of options. The other thing could be, maybe they're getting into some kind
of toxin. You know, is there pesticides that they're, that they got a hold of, um,
there's a lot of things that could be going on. Um, and so we're talking to the pros
to see and to reassure folks so that we can get to the bottom of why this is happening.
But at least at this point I wouldn't be worried about a human health concern. But,
um, but it's, it's worth connecting with the proper folks to make sure that we're
not missing something I will say to contact, uh, fish and wildlife. They're not concerned,
they're very interested. I mean, we've got a lot of, not my jurisdiction.
Yeah, I didn't call public health but, um, even just getting picked, picked up it
took days for the to get picked up. And um, so just our, our neighborhood is all
kind of scratching our heads. And um, so now, now I have informed you done my duty
and
although I did see 1/4 1 and they're all like ear links all the same age, the first
one with really bad diarrhea on a walk in uptown too. So it's, there's just something,
yeah, potentially something brewing. Thanks for letting us know and we can reach
out to our colleagues and yeah, if you're ever contacting a state agency and not
getting the response you need, your locals can sometimes help you get the response
you need so we can check into that. Great. Thank you. All right. Um Welcome Mr Ben.
Thanks for your patience today. Um Are we gonna get spared the atmospheric river
that California is suffering under? Yes, certainly. Um Won't be looking as, as worse
here as it is in California right now. I, I did read this morning that um the city
of Los Angeles got more rainfall in the past 48 hours than Seattle got for the entire
month of January. Um So some pretty extreme weather taking place um down there right
now. So we're certainly keeping an eye on that and wishing them um the best of luck
if they're struggling um with that extreme weather. Um We have to be careful though
about jinxing ourselves up here though as last month at this meeting, we did talk
about how we hadn't had our first winter storm. And I think it was Commissioner Dean
specifically who mentioned we could use a little bit of snow to help build that snow
pack up in the mountains. And so we did have our first snow event in January. Um,
and it was a particularly um difficult one to pin down. Um, some of the models, um
as the system was coming our way. Um One of the more, um, conservative models had
us actually, um, to receive no snow whatsoever, thought it was going to be brutally
cold but dry. Um Another model pinned us at six plus inches over the course of the
event. Um And actually 11 a.m. that Thursday as this just before the snow started
falling, we believe that the system was going to miss us to the south, that Port
Angeles and swim was going to see a little bit of snow, then it was going to cut
to the south and we were going to be spared on any of that wintry precipitation.
As folks know, know though. Um, it's hard to predict the weather, that system ended
up hanging, um, farther north than we thought and we got hit pretty hard with several
inches over the course of a couple of hours. And then that combined with warmer temperatures
that then dropped pretty rapidly, um, created those icy conditions that made travel,
um, difficult to impossible. Um, for a lot of us around the county. So, um, huge
credit to both city and county road crews for dealing with a very difficult situation.
Um They did quite a lot with very limited resources and as I said, with the, the,
um, models all over the place, the speed with which that snow fell followed by that
temperature dropping. Um, was a very, very difficult situation for everyone. So,
um, I can credit to everyone involved for doing their best, um, with what they had
during, um, during that event. Um, a good reminder for us though, we often talk about
checking in on your emergency kit, having a kit in your car, um, is just as important
as your home. Um, a lot of folks were, um, it's taking quite a while to get home
or a lot of folks ended up abandoning their vehicles, especially if they had, um,
gone off road. So having a kit in your car, um, some snacks, some water, some warm
clothes, um, can make all the difference in a situation like that when the weather
changes really rapidly and next, uh, travel all but impossible. Um, also, um, very
important to check in with your neighbors during events like that. My wife and I
moved to a new place just a few months ago. So this was a good opportunity for us
to check in and get to know our neighbors just a little bit better. Um, as again,
many of us were stuck at home over the course of a couple of days. Um last but not
least I do want to give a shout out to the folks who ran the Winter Welcoming Center.
They were open overnight for a number of days that's 24 hours a day. Um Volunteer
run an absolutely fantastic job. I'm helping keep our most vulnerable um safe during
those brutally cold temperatures. So, a huge thank you to that group as well. Um
My question and thank you to KPTZ for giving me uh at least one question to deal
with um was concerning how much F ma reimbursement we got during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Um And the answer to that is about in terms of cash reimbursement, about $250,000
over the course of a couple of years of the response. Um early on there was um a
lot of conversation about what F MA was actually going to pay for. Um since this
pandemic required so many folks to work at home. F MA didn't pay for work at home
equipment. So none of none of the Zoom subscriptions or laptops or anything like
that. This was mostly for equipment um as it related to our vaccine clinics. Um So
that was everything from the facility rental to um the chairs to um all of the equipment
and um consumables that we used um during those vaccine operations. Um That doesn't
include um a lot of the P pe that the state provided us and other partners um over
the course of the pandemic. So a little over $100,000 worth of in kind um P pe that
we got um over the course of the pandemic and that doesn't include the um time that
was donated by our volunteers. Um We actually had received so many um volunteer hours
in support of our operations. We stopped counting in January of 2022 since historically
F MA uses those. Um They consider that as part of the local match for their reimbursement.
Um But uh our costs were reimbursed at 100% rate. So we actually didn't really need
to count those for that purpose anymore. Um But over the two year period between
January of 2020 January of 2022 we actually had about 12,600 volunteer hours um that
were donated to Jefferson County and the way uh F MA counts those, it's a little
over $30 an hour. So that was about $400,000. Um In value volunteers provided Jefferson
County. And again, we actually just stopped counting those um because the number
was um overkill at that point for potential reimbursement purposes. So I begin to
answer the, the KPTZ question. We received about 250,000 or so from F MA and that's
actually still ongoing. Um We just wrapped up one of our project submissions a couple
of weeks ago and have one more um of about $25,000 or so, we close out that aspect
of our pandemic response. But um again, I always want to say thank you to our volunteers.
It was an absolute team effort. F ma did reimburse us and did help out the local
response quite a bit, but couldn't have done it without the hard work of all of our
volunteers. So, thanks again for that. Um Other than that happy to take any questions.
Can I follow up with one question? Uh I heard that even after that snow and then
the warm spell that came after the cold snap that our snowpack is back to as bad
as it was before. Do you know, kind of the status of the uh snow pack in the Olympics?
Yeah, I don't know. Last I heard it wasn't as bad as it was before, but it wasn't
as good as one would have thought given the amount of snowfall. Um So I don't have
those exact numbers with me. Um But we again, knock on wood, don't want to um cause
another issue like we had last month, but we could, we could definitely use some
more snow by the end of the season. I got an email from the National, the Olympic
National Park saying that our snow pack just in the last couple of days was at 29%
of what it is normally. And So they're concerned about water in the park. So I think
that we can extrapolate that to us pretty easily. Yeah. Well, and I think it's worth
acknowledging that that poses a subsequent wildfire risk and also a water access
issue for our folks. And we should start planning ahead for that um As we go into
the summer and how we use our water um to keep it available for drinking, which is
the most, most critical place we use it. You're saying there are significant downstream
impacts likely. Yeah, that's uh that was pretty solid, solid dad joke. Move
there.
We also got an email from our, one of our fire chiefs saying that the um East Jefferson
fire and rescue is scheduling presentations in the spring with various community
groups through their fire district to discuss prepared me preparedness measures and
review the community wildfire protection plan that we're just in the process of adopting
um because they are concerned about, you know, the water issue and wanna get the
word out far and wide. So, um look for those and we'll try and uh share those on
Facebook and promote those as much as possible. But it's important that we all have
the current information. I'm not ready to think about summer yet. Can I go back to
winter? Um Well, I remember years ago hearing a story about a family that perished
in a winter storm they got stuck in um in a mountain road and I think the Oregon
Cascades and, um, the thing that stuck out to me was saying if there had been, if
they had a candle in the car that would have provided enough heat to potentially
keep them alive, to melt water. Like, and so I've carried a candle in my car in a
metal container ever since. Is that silly? Is that dated? Is that, I mean, I'm sure
there's, there's risk associated with that too. But do you recommend that as part
of a winter car kit? Um, I've actually never heard that before. Um And typically
when we are talking about, you know, kind of building out an emergency kit, we recommend
against candles specifically because we usually have earthquakes in mind. Um, and
an aftershock can knock that over if there's a gas leak, candles do represent an
inherent hazard. Um, but they do make those mitten and boot warmers that you can
activate, that do provide heat. Um And there are other likely safer methods like
that. Um, those space blankets as well. Um, enough to use your own body heat to help
warm you. Those are about a quarter a piece. Um And honestly don't provide the, the
same risk that a candle would, but that's an interesting thought. Um I've just never
heard that before. And again, we typically shy away from kind of open fire sources,
especially in a potentially confined space like that as well. Um But thinking along
those lines. I'm very certainly worthwhile.
All right. Anything else for Doctor Barry or Best? No, thank you very much. Thank
you guys. Thank you both. We'll see him in one month in the name of Love. Right?
Still thinking about that. You two concert and trying to remember how many people
were in the crowd. But,
ok, Mr Eisenhower, I, I'm the worst singer, I mean.
No, that's You too. Love Bug. Yeah. But KPDZ up in the name of Love
now. Yeah. KPTZ as well.
All right. Um, we have Sophie to group with us here. Um, maybe Sophie while you're
getting set up. Um, we will take a quick recess so you can buy a break and get, you
can get set up and we'll be talking about, um, not just weed control, um, recess
for six minutes until 1035.
Yeah. Don't ever ask me to, oh, I'm gonna ask you to sing every.