A Facebook post making the rounds celebrates Tamanowas Rock near Chimacum, a 150-foot volcanic monolith that has been a sacred site for more than 10,000 years and is now owned by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe.

There’s one part of the story the post skips. The rock is also called Chimacum Rock, after the Chemakum people, whose land this was. In 1847, Suquamish warriors led by Chief Seattle, joined by about 150 Klallam warriors, attacked the last Chemakum village near Port Townsend. The men were killed, and the women and children were taken as slaves. Survivors fled to the Skokomish on Hood Canal, and the Klallam moved into the former Chemakum territory.

In December 2012, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe bought the rock and 62 surrounding acres for $600,000 and closed it to climbing. Today it’s promoted under the name Tamanowas, and the Tribe calls it “sacred to the S’Klallam people.”

Conquer a neighbor, take their land, rename its landmark, and claim it as your heritage. When people of European ancestry did it, it was called colonization. What do we call it here?

“We Have Said This Since Day One”

In October 2020, Brent Simcosky, the Jamestown Tribe’s health services director, assured the Sequim City Council in an email: “We will NOT be ‘busing’ or providing transportation to any patient outside of this area. We have said this since day one.”

Now read this recent Facebook post from a Sequim local:

And remember what Commissioner Mike French told Sequim Rotary:

“So, the first thing is, yes, Clallam County had an expansion of harm reduction a few years ago. A lot of that was response to, again, the Jamestown Healing Center opening, and harm reduction being a way to create a connection with active drug users so that you can leverage that connection to get them to go to treatment. So that’s the desire behind that expansion.”

Put it together. The county expanded harm reduction to steer drug users toward the clinic. People are coming to Sequim for treatment and ending up stranded here. The neighbors who warned about this in 2020 were brushed off. It turns out they were right.

“Please Stop”

Relatable

Alex, a Manhattan man who posts on X, calls himself “pro-gay, anti-woke.” He’s tired of woke activists co-opting the marriage equality movement and twisting it into causes “we never signed up for.”

He’s not alone. The League of Women Voters of Washington is fighting to let boys take trophies and scholarships from girls in school sports. Every June, Ozias, Stoffer and Fisch wave their Pride flags and preach acceptance and inclusion. The rest of the year, they tell you your views don’t matter.

I know at least one gay man in Clallam County who feels exactly the way Alex does.

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Thank you, Clallam County, for a campaign I will never forget.

When I announced my candidacy for county commissioner, I knew why I was running and what I believed. But I could never have anticipated the friendships we would make, the people we would meet, or the way this community would come together along the way.

Because of all of you, this campaign will always be one of the most meaningful experiences of my life.

Thank you for opening your homes to me and my family. Thank you for the conversations on front porches and sidewalks, in coffee shops and grocery stores, and at community meetings and campaign events. Thank you for every sign proudly displayed, every endorsement, every donation, every prayer, every word of encouragement, and every vote.

You made this a wonderful race, and I am deeply grateful.

Congratulations to Mike French on his re-election. Mike, this campaign gave both of us an opportunity to hear more clearly from people across Clallam County about what they value, where they are struggling, and what they want for the future. I urge you to put what we learned into practice, and I wish you well as you carry out the important obligation of representing all of us.

As for my family and me, we’re not going anywhere.

We made Clallam County our permanent home in 2019 because we fell in love with this community and wanted to raise our family here. An election doesn’t change that. In fact, the friendships forged over the past fourteen months have only deepened our ties here.

You’ll still find us on the trails and in the mountains, on the beaches and in the surf. You’ll still see us at community meetings, cleaning up alongside our neighbors, supporting local businesses, asking questions, speaking up, and working beside you to make this place better.

And I will continue advocating for the future that brought me into this race in the first place: a safe and prosperous Clallam County where hard work is rewarded, families can afford a home, businesses can thrive, property rights are respected, and our children and grandchildren can stay or return to this county we love so much.

Over the last fourteen months, we found power in our collective voice. We formed friendships. We challenged each other. We learned from one another. And we proved that ordinary citizens who care deeply about their community can make a difference when they show up.

That doesn’t end with one election.
That doesn’t stop now.

I believe that what we’ve built will continue to grow, and I can’t wait to see what we accomplish together next.

From Amy, our family, and me: thank you, Clallam County.

We’ll see you out there.

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The governor says the budget hole is in the billions. Commerce is still paying people $71.25 to attend an environmental-justice Zoom. It’s not the dollars. It’s the priorities.

Olympia says the cupboard is bare

In June, Gov. Bob Ferguson told state agencies to plan for “significant” cuts. In September, the revenue forecast didn’t “make a dent in the anticipated multibillion-dollar shortfall in the next budget,” according to the Washington State Standard. On Nov. 5, Ferguson said the shortfall is a number starting with “b.” This is the third straight year of budget gaps, and lawmakers have already cut early education and child care.

Here’s where the money and staff time are still going.

Paid to talk environmental justice

On Oct. 27, Commerce invited residents to a Nov. 5 Zoom “community conversation on environmental justice” about two grant programs. The pay: “Compensation of $71.25 is available to eligible participants who have lived experience or household incomes at or below 400% of the federal poverty level.” The meeting ran 75 minutes, and the budget shortfall is in the billions.

Outreach for “communities and tribes,” including ours

Commerce is also hiring a nonprofit to run an energy-resilience outreach campaign in Eastern Washington and the North Olympic Peninsula, which includes Clallam and Jefferson counties. The job is to serve “disproportionately impacted and over-burdened communities and tribes,” and applicants needed five years of experience in “rural, tribal and disaster-impacted communities.” The cap is $230,000 in federal FEMA money, administered by the state.

A state screening of “Fish War”

On Nov. 30, Commerce’s Office of Tribal Relations will screen “Fish War,” a documentary on the Boldt decision. The film’s website opens by saying Washington’s restrictions on tribal fishing were “a declaration of war.”

It was co-produced by Northwest Treaty Tribes Media, the media arm of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, and even the Seattle International Film Festival called it an “activism documentary.”

That’s not a history lesson. It’s a state agency lending its stamp to advocacy.

Priorities

None of this alone closes a billion-dollar gap. But when public money and public agencies are used to advance the agendas of sovereign governments that don’t answer to our voters, don’t be surprised if there isn’t enough left for education, the Simdars Road Interchange promised since 1998, or a struggling hospital (and our county’s largest employer), Olympic Medical Center.

If Olympia wants us to believe the cupboard is bare, it could start by acting like it. Tell your legislators whether this is the right use of public time and money in a billion-dollar budget deficit year.

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Clallam County’s draft Comprehensive Plan adopts, word for word, a Jamestown Tribe statement that it “will continue to reacquire land” across its Land Consolidation Area, a sentence the Tribe first wrote about “our Land Consolidation Plan.” An April email from the Tribe asked the county to rewrite its policies on trust land and casino growth, and the Planning Commission agreed “by concurrence.” Two weeks ago, the commissioners told the federal government that trust transfers are eroding the county’s tax base and zoning, yet the plan they’re about to adopt never says so.

Ron Richard’s letter to the commissioners on the Comprehensive Plan update made a pointed claim: parts of the plan read as if the Tribe wrote them.

Few have taken the time to review the 567-page draft ordinance, the two volumes of the county’s Hazard Mitigation Plan (Volume 1, 1,950 pages; Volume 2, 176 pages), and the county’s own Public Engagement Report. Is Richard’s claim true?

How the Tribe’s words got into your plan

Start with the new climate chapter, Section 31.02.820. Policy 8.6 says:

“The 2025 Clallam County Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP), is hereby adopted by this reference (Exhibit M). This policy is also considered part of the Land Use Element of this Comprehensive Plan.” (draft ordinance, p. 179)

The Hazard Mitigation Plan is a FEMA plan covering several governments. Each one (the cities, the tribes, the PUD, the Port) writes its own “annex,” a chapter about itself. That’s normal. The plan explains how it worked: participating governments got “data requests and instructional worksheets” between April and August 2024 and “coordinated with the MJHMP [Multi Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan] Project Management Team and Consultant Team to develop content for their respective jurisdictional annexes.” (Vol. 1, §2.1.6, p. 2-61)

The Jamestown annex says the same:

“representatives from Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe coordinated directly with the MJHMP Project Management Team and Consultant Team to update this jurisdictional annex.” (Vol. 2, §1.2, p. 89)

Here’s what the Tribe wrote on its July 2024 “Past and Future Growth Worksheet”:

“The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe will continue to reacquire land within the area outlined in our Land Consolidation Plan (East Clallam and Jefferson), a federally approved area in which the Tribe takes jurisdiction through the fee-to-trust process.” (Vol. 1, Appendix F, PDF p. 1,882)

And here’s the annex the county is now adopting by reference:

“The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe will continue to reacquire land within the area outlined in the Tribe’s Land Consolidation Plan, including areas in Clallam and Jefferson counties, a federally approved area in which the Tribe takes jurisdiction through the fee-to-trust process.” (Vol. 2, §3.4, p. 102)

Only a few words changed: “our” became “the Tribe’s.” The annex adds that the Tribe’s goal “is to transfer lands from fee status to trust/reservation land” (p. 100), and that its Service Area “is defined as the entirety of Clallam County” (p. 92).

Some of the first person survived the editing (pp. 92–94): “We chose to keep our land… our treaty rights were abrogated… all through these many assaults on our identity… rights were being denied us…”

To be fair, a tribe writing its own annex is how these FEMA plans work. The problem is that the county made the whole thing part of its Comprehensive Plan’s Land Use Element without a word of qualification. The plan doesn’t say “this is the Tribe’s statement, not county policy.” It just adopts it.

The emails that rewrote county policy

The tribal influence doesn’t stop at the hazard plan. The county’s Public Engagement Report logs every comment and what happened to it. Public Comment #58 is an “Email from Wendy Clark, Transportation Program Manager, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, dated April 1, 2026.” (Appendix P, pp. 83–85)

• Item (g) noted that the Tribe had put land near Diamond Point Road and Highway 101 into trust and suggested updating Policy 15. The result was “Adopted as presented by concurrence.” The draft now deletes this existing protection: “…in order to allow commercial development of this site contrary to the direction provided by local residents as expressed in the Sequim-Dungeness Regional Plan, then such development shall not provide any justification for adjacent commercial development of lands under Clallam County jurisdiction.” In its place: “The County will work with the Tribe to encourage that future use of the trust lands is done so consistent with the goals and policies of the Comprehensive Plan.” (Sec. 31.03.415, p. 245)

• Item (h) said the last sentence of Blyn Policy 4 was “non-binding” and suggested removing it. Staff suggested more, and it was “Adopted as presented by concurrence.” The draft deletes all of Policy 4: “Future development by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in the Blyn LAMIRD will require increased public services, particularly police and fire. Future development plans should be carefully coordinated with those service providers…” (Sec. 31.03.435, p. 246)

• A December 9, 2025 Tribe email asked to swap the Highway 101 “overpass” language for “multimodal safety improvements” (Appendix P, comment #17). The draft now strikes the sentence: “An overpass on Highway 101 should be considered if traffic congestion caused by development of the casino impacts the regional mobility of the highway.” (p. 246)

The same draft also strikes a policy nearby: “Along Highway 101, potential encroachment or sprawl from the Blyn rural center, including development accessory to the Jamestown S’Klallam casino, shall be avoided.” (Sec. 31.03.425, p. 246) It also strikes “Since local government has no regulatory authority of Tribal land use…” from the Blyn section (p. 247). It did not identify who asked for those two deletions.

What you got

The county did do outreach, and it deserves credit for it. Its own report lists:

• an online policy survey from December 20, 2024 to March 15, 2025 (464 responses);

• five community workshops in July 2025 (Clallam Bay, Joyce, Sequim, Forks and Port Angeles);

• printed binders of the draft at four library branches starting March 17, 2025;

• a Planning Commission hearing that opened November 5, 2025 and was continued ten times through April 15, 2026.

The hazard plan ran its own survey from March 6 to May 10, 2024 (619 responses), held a public workshop on August 7, 2024, and posted the draft for public review from December 4 to 31, 2024. It received six public comments. (Vol. 1, §2.1.7)

The record also shows where the process fell short. The automatic email notices to people who had signed up for updates “[were] not functioning as intended.” The county found out on March 4, 2026, four months into the Planning Commission hearing, and had to extend the hearing to make up for it. (Appendix P, p. 2)

Look at the difference. You could answer survey questions, attend a workshop, or write a letter about a 567-page document plus 2,100 pages of hazard plan, and hope staff summarized your point fairly in a table. Members of the hazard plan’s Steering Committee (governments, agencies, and some businesses) got the draft for a two-week internal review from November 18 to December 2, 2024, before the public saw it. (Vol. 1, §2.1.6) The Tribe, a sovereign nation, went further: it wrote its own chapter, and its emails were adopted “by concurrence.”

No ordinary Clallam County Citizen got to write a chapter about themselves into the Land Use Element.

The commissioners already know the cost

Here’s what makes the plan’s silence hard to excuse.

On October 27, 2026, the Board approved on its consent agenda a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs about a Jamestown trust application for 9.6 acres on Fish Hatchery Road. It’s signed by Chair Mike French, Randy Johnson, and Mark Ozias. The letter says (Oct. 27 agenda packet, pp. 50–54):

“This approach to land transfers diminishes the ability of the County to equally and equitably tax and regulate property consistently within Clallam County.”

“When you combine federal, state, local government, school, and tribal reservation lands, nearly 70 percent of Clallam County is in public ownership and is exempt from paying property taxes.”

“Local communities are left with a patchwork of parcels subject to either different or no regulations. The result is that communities no longer control land use…”

The Board asked the BIA to deny the application, or to require a payment in lieu of taxes and land uses consistent with neighboring parcels.

That’s exactly the analysis the Comprehensive Plan leaves out. The plan says only that it “does not guide physical improvements on tribal trust lands” (Sec. 31.01.100). It reprints the Tribe’s plans to keep acquiring land, and it deletes the policies that protected neighbors. It never addresses jurisdiction, tax base, or where trust land should and shouldn’t go.

A citizen body already asked for this. In 2025, a Charter Review Commission amendment would have required the Comprehensive Plan to contain standards for responding to these federal notices. It failed 4–7 on November 10, 2025 (minutes).

On December 22, 2025, the commission did send the Board a resolution recommending that it “develop policies and procedures for responding to requests” on land transfers that would affect the county’s “taxing, revenue raising, legislative, regulatory, and/or law enforcement jurisdiction.”

The Board wrote a strong letter to the BIA. It should put that same thinking in its own plan.

Write them before the record closes

The county’s Comprehensive Plan page says written comments are accepted “up to the public hearing before the BOCC and any continuances thereafter.” Keep writing, the commissioners are still reviewing the comprehensive plan.

Who to write:

• Bruce Emery, Director of Community Development, who runs the update: bruce.emery@clallamcountywa.gov

• Loni Gores, Clerk of the Board, who sends your comments to all three commissioners (Ozias, Johnson, and French): loni.gores@clallamcountywa.gov

Use the subject line: “Comprehensive Plan Update – public comment.” Say where you live. Keep it short and specific.

Asks you can copy:

• Restore the deleted protections: Policy 15 in Sec. 31.03.415, which keeps trust-land commercial development from justifying commercial zoning next door; Blyn Policy 4 in Sec. 31.03.435 (police and fire impacts); and the casino-sprawl policy in Sec. 31.03.425. At minimum, explain each deletion on the record.

• Don’t adopt the Tribe’s statements as county policy: If Policy 8.6 adopts the Hazard Mitigation Plan by reference, add language saying each jurisdictional annex reflects that government’s own statements and is not county policy. Or leave the annexes out of the Land Use Element.

• Put the BIA letter’s analysis in the plan: Add a section on what trust transfers do to jurisdiction, zoning consistency, services, and the tax base, using the same figures the Board sent the BIA in October 2026.

• Adopt standards for responding to BIA fee-to-trust notices, as the Charter Review Commission recommended on December 22, 2025, including the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes and consistent-land-use conditions the Board already requested.

• Show the public every change made at another government’s request: Publish a list of every policy changed at a tribal or agency request, with the request beside it.

The Tribe did what any good advocate does: it showed up early, wrote things down, and asked for specific changes. We can do the same before the hearing closes.

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DNR’s Elwha draft would take 2,180 acres of working trust timber offline — land that already helps pay for Crescent schools, Fire District 4, County Roads, the Port, the library, and Olympic Medical. The 171-page report can name a lichen and a butterfly, but it never adds up the lost revenue or the 1,904 timber jobs tied to this industry. You have until 11:59 p.m. Friday, November 13 to tell them the economic chapter is missing.

Public comment on the draft closes at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, November 13, 2026. That is three days from now. If you care whether Clallam County’s junior taxing districts keep the timber checks that help pay for school levies, fire protection, roads, the port, the library, and hospital care, this is the week to say so.

DNR has already sent a courtesy reminder: the draft legislative report is posted, and comments are being taken until Friday night at wadnr.commentinput.com.

The draft report is DNR’s answer to a $250,000 proviso in the 2025 capital budget. The assignment was to inventory ecological and conservation values on DNR-managed land in the Elwha watershed and identify acres that might become a Natural Area Preserve or Natural Resource Conservation Area. It was not an assignment to measure what the trust beneficiaries would lose. Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove’s office wrote a 171-page draft that can name a lichen and a butterfly. It cannot, or will not, name a dollar amount.

What DNR wants to lock up

DNR manages about 7,700 acres of trust land in the Elwha watershed — roughly 4 percent of the whole watershed, but a working piece of the local timber base. About 2,130 of those acres are Common School Trust, which helps pay for public K-12 school construction statewide. About 5,570 acres are State Forest Transfer Trust, managed for Clallam County and the junior taxing districts in the tax areas where the trees stand. DNR names those Elwha beneficiaries in the draft itself: the County Roads District, the Port of Port Angeles, the North Olympic Library District, Hospital District 2, Crescent School District, and Fire District 4.

DNR knows what those lands are for. The draft recites the agency’s common-law trustee duties: generate revenue, manage the assets prudently, and act with undivided loyalty to the beneficiaries. It says the primary way DNR has met that duty is sustainable timber harvest.

Then it recommends taking a large bite out of that base.

The Washington Natural Heritage Program wants a new “Elwha Hills Natural Area” of about 2,364 acres in four separate units. About 2,180 of those acres are DNR trust land — roughly 28 percent of everything DNR manages in the watershed. Another 150 acres already belong to the Center for Natural Lands Management. About 34 acres are private land at Eden Valley.

The four units are:

• Eden Valley, 113 acres, proposed as a Natural Area Preserve

• Dan Kelly Ridge, 799 acres, proposed as a Natural Resource Conservation Area

• Joyce Ridge, 1,035 acres, proposed as a Natural Area Preserve

• Whiskey Creek, 417 acres, proposed as a Natural Area Preserve

Natural Area Preserves are the stricter box. Recreation is generally not allowed. That is the proposed designation for about 1,565 acres. NRCAs allow only “low-impact” use; mountain biking is not assumed and would be decided later, after the land is already locked up.

The draft does point to real, documented species: Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly (mentioned 47 times), marbled murrelet (27 times), northern spotted owl (17 times), rare plants (44 times) and lichens (60 times), a state-endangered grassland, and a state-threatened dry-forest type.

An honest reading should list all that. The policy choice is still to convert working trust assets into a conservation designation. Science can tell you what lives on a hillside. It cannot excuse ignoring the bill.

The money these districts already live on

Clallam County’s treasurer publishes exactly what DNR timber sales send to local districts. The 2024 Tax and Timber Report covers distributions from 2018 through 2023. DNR manages about 93,000 acres of State Forest Transfer land countywide. After DNR takes its management fee, currently up to 25 percent, the rest is paid to the County Treasurer and spread to the taxing districts in that tax area according to their levy rates.

In 2023 alone, those DNR timber distributions totaled $10,029,286.98 countywide. The six junior and local beneficiaries DNR lists for the Elwha transfer lands received:

• County Roads: $1,015,535.24

• North Olympic Library District: $382,725.61

• Crescent School District: $315,089.73 ($255,091.17 for maintenance and operations and $59,998.56 for capital)

• Hospital District 2 (Olympic Medical): $310,628.45

• Fire District 4: $194,657.73

• Port of Port Angeles: $139,491.85

That is $2,358,128.61 in a single year to the very districts DNR says benefit from Elwha transfer lands.

Timber checks can vary. 2023 was a strong year. Across 2018 through 2023, the same table still shows serious money, year in and year out:

• County Roads averaged about $660,000 a year (from $318,399.21 in 2018 to more than $1 million in 2023)

• North Olympic Library averaged about $246,000 a year

• Crescent School District averaged about $214,000 a year, M&O and capital combined

• Hospital District 2 averaged about $165,000 a year

• Fire District 4 averaged about $128,000 a year

• The Port of Port Angeles averaged about $89,000 a year

Countywide, DNR timber distributions to Clallam districts averaged about $5.92 million a year over that six-year stretch. And the money has not dried up. DNR’s Clallam County 2025 fourth-quarter income report said $9,551,558.00 had accrued for the county in calendar 2025, with another $11.49 million in state-forest timber still under contract at year’s end.

Two facts have to be held at the same time. First, those treasurer figures are countywide. They come from all of Clallam’s state forestlands, not only the Elwha. The Elwha’s 5,570 transfer acres are about 6 percent of the county’s transfer base. Second, DNR is proposing to lock up 2,180 trust acres in and around that watershed — about 28 percent of the DNR acres it manages there — and it never says how many of those 2,180 acres are county transfer land versus Common School Trust. The Common School acres do not show up as a line item on the county treasurer’s timber table; they feed statewide school construction. Either way, the acres come out of a trust.

No honest writer can turn that into a “this proposal costs $X next year” headline, because DNR refused to run the numbers. Harvest value depends on which stands, whether they are already tied up by the Habitat Conservation Plan or the marbled murrelet strategy, and when they would have been sold. That is exactly why a 171-page legislative report that recommends a new natural area, and then says nothing about lost board feet, lost stumpage, or lost levy support, is not a complete report. It is a conservation recommendation with the economic chapter torn out.

What can be said without guessing is this: once those acres are designated and acquired as a natural area, they stop producing timber receipts for Crescent classrooms, Fire District 4, hospital care, library hours, port operations, and county roads. A Trust Land Transfer check, if one ever arrives, is a one-time political appropriation. A working trust forest is a renewable revenue stream.

The jobs attached to those trees

Timber is not an abstraction on a DNR map. It is payroll.

A 2024 Port of Port Angeles presentation cited 2023 figures from data.workingforests.org: Clallam County had 1,904 timber-dependent jobs. That includes 878 direct jobs paying an average of $84,331, or about $74.0 million in direct wages; 659 indirect jobs paying an average of $48,633, or about $32.0 million; and 367 induced jobs paying an average of $29,814, or about $10.9 million. All together, the Port reported about $117.0 million in timber-dependent labor income.

Those direct jobs are the people who find, fell, yard, and haul the logs. The indirect jobs are the truckers, mechanics, fuel dealers, equipment vendors, road builders, and suppliers who keep a sale moving. The induced jobs are what happens when that paycheck is spent at the grocery store, the coffee stand, and the cafe. DNR’s own draft notes that timber harvest on these lands is followed by replanting, that the agency maintains a forest-road system and rock sources, and that it also leases brush and bough harvest for the floral and decorative trade. That is more local work, not less.

This county has already watched that payroll shrink. The Forks Forum reported that the August 2024 closure of Port Angeles’ McKinley Mill took nearly 500 direct and indirect jobs with it. Taking more federal- and state-encumbered trust acres permanently off the harvest schedule does not rebuild a mill. It starves the remaining woods work of future volume.

DNR’s public survey gathered more than 1,200 responses. Forty-four percent came from mountain bikers. Recreation ranked as the top concern. Trust beneficiaries and junior taxing districts showed up in the leftover categories under 1.5 percent. The loudest voices in a recreation-heavy survey are not the same thing as the people who depend on a timber receipt to keep a fire engine staffed or a school levy whole.

Replacement money is a hope, not a guarantee

DNR is careful to say this report covers only the first three of seven steps in creating a natural area. Next come a formal recommendation to the Natural Heritage Advisory Council, a public meeting in Clallam County, and a decision by Commissioner Upthegrove. If he issues a Commissioner’s Order, DNR’s conservation staff would then apply for Trust Land Transfer money and/or a Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program grant “to acquire the lands from the Trust beneficiaries.” The next sentence is the one that should be boxed on the page: “If funds are awarded,” the deals get done, and the Natural Areas Program takes over.

“If” is doing a lot of work here. Trust Land Transfer is a statewide competition for a limited pot of money. It is the same pot that paid for this $250,000 study. Even a full buyout, on a good day, substitutes a one-time check for decades of future harvests, road work, replanting, and the local jobs that ride along with them. On a bad day, the designation lands and the replacement money does not.

The outside pressure campaign is not a mystery. After the public survey closed, DNR “reviewed and acknowledged” a separate report titled Elwha Watershed Protection: A Call for State Stewardship (recently reported by CC Watchdog here). That August 2026 document came from Earth Economics, Earth Law Center, the Center for Responsible Forestry, the Elwha Legacy Forests Coalition, and the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition — the same network that has been pushing to take Elwha trust land off the harvest schedule. They wanted a larger lockup: a Mt. Sutherland preserve plus a watershed-scale conservation area covering Dan Kelly Peak and Indian Creek, Dry Hill, Little River, and the river mouth. DNR did not photocopy that map. It proposed four smaller, species-driven units and even trimmed part of Joyce Ridge “to accommodate Trust interests.” The destination is still theirs: a new natural area on land that now owes a living to schools, fire districts, and roads.

The tribal story here is not a land transfer. DNR consulted the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, shared draft boundaries early, and gave the Tribe an exclusive two-week look at this draft from October 16 to November 2 — a window the general public did not get. DNR also says it “did not receive direct feedback from the Tribe regarding cultural information to be included in this report” and points readers to the Tribe’s website. In the draft posted for all of us, the headings “Tribal Comments” and “Public Comments” are still blank.

The proposal also wanders outside the watershed the Legislature told DNR to study. About 41 percent of the “ecological boundary,” or 1,233 acres, sits outside the Elwha. Eden Valley is “well outside” it. A significant part of Joyce Ridge is outside it. Whiskey Creek is “almost all” outside it, and DNR admits that the outside portion “has not yet been surveyed” by the Natural Heritage Program or its contractor — yet the draft still recommends it as a 417-acre preserve.

Say something before Friday night

This report, by itself, does not create the natural area. That is true, but it is not a reason to wait. The recommendation is now on paper and headed to the Legislature by December 1. After that, the Natural Heritage Advisory Council, a Clallam County public meeting, and Commissioner Upthegrove decide whether to put these acres on the path to permanent conservation status.

DNR found room in 171 pages to name a lichen and a butterfly. It never found room to count the stumpage, the timber checks, or the 1,904 jobs that ride on this industry. Tell them to add up the cost before they take the acres — comment here — by midnight on Friday, November 13.

DNR can count every lichen and butterfly twice. It cannot unwrite the duty it already has to the trusts.

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Neighbors spoke. The Hearing Examiner imposed limits. The developer sued. Now Clallam County is telling a judge that residents’ sworn testimony matters: “This is evidence.” On November 12, the fight over Grouse Glen’s resort proposal moves into Superior Court.

Check your ballot status here. Read how to cure a challenged ballot here.

The Resort That Didn’t Get Everything It Wanted

When CC Watchdog published “Smoke and Mirrors” on February 10, the question was straightforward: What happens when a developer proposes a sizable resort in the middle of a quiet rural neighborhood?

Thanks to Heather Cantua, who shared the court filings and provided this update, we now know the next chapter. The resort received approval—but not on the developer’s preferred terms. Those restrictions are now being challenged in court.

Grouse Glen sits off Highway 101 between Forks and Lake Crescent. The neighborhood consists of 23 five-acre parcels, many with homes, reached by a single private gravel road maintained by residents.

Luminary Resorts, through 9999GrouseGlen LLC, purchased roughly 21 forested acres in the middle of that neighborhood, with the shared road running through the property.

The original proposal called for 32 mirrored cabins, saunas, pickleball courts, a 4,800-square-foot community center, and a 50-space overflow parking lot. The community center could accommodate weddings and events of up to 122 people. The original layout included eight vehicle connections to the road residents use to get home.

Four Conditions the Developer Wants Gone

Residents testified at the February hearing about the road, fire and emergency response, wells, rural character, and elk moving through the property.

On March 4, the Hearing Examiner approved the conditional use permit with 23 conditions. Four are at the center of this appeal:

• 20 cabins instead of 32.

• An operating season of April 1 through September 30, rather than year-round use.

• No mirrored or reflective cabin exteriors.

• A community center limited to registered cabin guests, rather than a public event venue.

The distinction matters. The County did not reject the resort. It approved a smaller, seasonal project with restrictions intended to address its surroundings.

The developer wants those four limits removed.

“This Is Evidence”

The company challenged the decision under Washington’s Land Use Petition Act in Clallam County Superior Court.

Its petition argues that the disputed conditions exceed the County’s authority and amount to unconstitutional demands on the project.

Lupa 26 2 00261 05 Petition 2026 03 24

3.37MB ∙ PDF file

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In short, the developer contends that the restrictions lack the required legal justification.

The County disagrees.

In its October 23 response brief, Clallam County defends all four conditions and asks the court to dismiss the petition with prejudice.

Brief 10 29 2026 12

585KB ∙ PDF file

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One passage deserves particular attention. Defending the seasonal restriction, the County emphasizes that nineteen witnesses testified under oath about specific facts they had observed. Its blunt conclusion: “This is evidence.”

The brief also cites Cantua’s testimony about winter storms in the Sol Duc Valley.

For residents wondering whether showing up accomplishes anything, there is your answer. Their testimony became part of the record. It helped support permit conditions. And now the County is relying on it in court.

That does not guarantee the conditions will survive. It does show that public participation was more than a box checked before approval.

The November 12 Hearing

According to Cantua’s update, the hearing is scheduled for Thursday, November 12, at 2:30 p.m., before Judge Simon Barnhart at the Clallam County Courthouse.

The hearing is open to the public. It is a court proceeding to hear the parties’ arguments, not a public-comment session.

The published remote-access information for Superior Court Courtroom II lists Zoom meeting ID 968-5772-2818, with passcode 12345. Confirm the hearing time, courtroom assignment, and remote-access instructions with the court before attending; calendars can change.

Approval Is Not a Blank Check

This dispute is not about whether a property owner received permission to build a resort. That permission was granted.

It is about whether the conditions attached to that permission will stand.

The neighbors presented facts about where they live. The Hearing Examiner imposed limits. The developer challenged them. Now a judge will decide whether those limits hold up under the law.

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Credit to Heather Cantua for continuing to follow the case, sharing the filings, and bringing this update to CC Watchdog.

Stay Engaged This Week

Your property. Your county. Your chance to speak.

On Tuesday, November 10, at 10:30 a.m., commissioners will continue the public hearing on the ordinance and resolution concerning Clallam County’s Comprehensive Plan and zoning amendments. They are still taking public comment.

Why show up?

• Protect private property rights. Broad planning policies lay the groundwork for future restrictions on where and how residents build and use their land. Ask what new restrictions these policies could support.

• Question optional additions. The Climate Vulnerability Assessment (CVA) is recommended by the state Department of Commerce, not specifically required by the Growth Management Act. Recommended is not mandatory. Commissioners should explain why they are adopting it and how it could influence future regulations.

• Insist on equal treatment. Ask whether policies identifying and prioritizing particular communities could lead to preferences based on race—and what safeguards ensure every resident is treated fairly.

Attend at the Commissioners’ Meeting Room, Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth Street, Port Angeles, or participate virtually. See the agenda and attendance instructions.

Don’t wait until a broad policy becomes a restriction on your property. Ask the questions now, while public comment is still open.f

The PDN wrote this race off on election night, and the ballots kept coming in anyway. District 3 votes late, and the West End is only now showing up in the count. More than 300 Clallam ballots won’t count unless voters fix them, and yours could be one of them.

The Count Isn’t Finished

On election night, the Peninsula Daily News ran “French in lead for Clallam County commissioner” and called a second term “likely.” At that point, 17,999 ballots had been counted.

As of Friday, the county’s official results page shows 22,172 ballots counted. Jake now has 8,972 votes (41.32%) to Mike French’s 12,722 (58.60%), a gap of about 3,750 votes. That means Jake has gained almost two points since election night. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s ballot file shows about 41,855 Clallam ballots returned.

That leaves roughly 19,000 still to be counted. Clallam has also climbed to #3 in the state for voter turnout.

District 3 votes late. Ballot returns over time show District 1 (Sequim area) voters return their ballots early, and District 3 (the “West End”) voters return theirs late, and in the latest jump in returns, about 40% came from District 3.

None of that guarantees a different result, since Jake still trails by a real margin. But “likely” isn’t the same as counted, and every legal ballot deserves to count.

Step 1: Check Your Ballot

Go to the Secretary of State’s Ballot Status Reports page and click “Check Your Ballot Status.” You can also check at VoteWA.gov.

• Accepted: You’re done. Thank you.

• Received / Pending: It’s still being processed. Check back in a day or two.

• Challenged / Rejected: It will not count until you fix it. Go to Step 2.

Step 2: Fix a Challenged Ballot

As of the latest state file, 307 Clallam ballots are challenged. Most are for a signature that doesn’t match the one on file (171) or no signature at all (116). Both are fixable, and about 96 of the challenged ballots are in District 3.

Call Clallam County Elections at 360-417-2217, or stop by 223 E 4th St, Port Angeles. The county should also contact you with a cure form, but don’t wait for it. The deadline is close of business Monday, Nov. 23 (WAC 434-261-053). The county certifies the next day, Nov. 24 at 2 PM.

Step 3: Help Your Neighbors

Below the button on that same SOS page, there’s a form. Fill it out, and you’ll get the countywide ballot return file emailed to you. One West End resident did just that, found Forks-area neighbors with rejected ballots, and messaged them directly so they could fix their ballots in time. That’s how it’s done.

A tip of the hat to West End Voter, an independent, nonpartisan site tracking Clallam returns precinct by precinct: westendvoter.com. It’s updated by hand each evening after the county and state release new numbers, with the “last updated” date at the top. Its Challenged and Pending Ballots section breaks the numbers down by district and community without naming anyone. Tips and corrections go to solducvalleyresident@gmail.com.

Bottom Line

Check your ballot today. If it’s challenged, fix it before Nov. 23. Then text three friends and tell them to check theirs.

— Jeff

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• Vote! Ballots are due by 8:00 p.m. A list of Clallam County ballot drop box locations can be found by clicking here.

• Today's regular 10:00 a.m. commissioners’ meeting features the Citizens’ Forum, your only chance to ask questions and get answers. You can find information on participating in person or online here.

A New Report, Same Goal

The latest development from eco-activists is a 2026 report titled Elwha Watershed Protection: A Call for State Stewardship.

Produced by the Center for Responsible Forestry (Brel Froebe and Mary Jean Ryan), Earth Law Center (Elizabeth Dunne), Earth Economics, the Elwha Legacy Forests Coalition, the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition, and others, it urges the Washington Department of Natural Resources to designate large swaths of its Elwha Watershed holdings as a Natural Area Preserve and Natural Resources Conservation Area. That means permanently taking them off the timber harvest schedule.

The report calls itself “supplementary information” for the study the Legislature ordered DNR to do. Its real goal is simpler. It picks out land to take off the harvest schedule for good, argues that “ecosystem services” are worth more than timber sales, and suggests paying the trusts back with state programs funded by carbon-auction money.

That payback doesn’t make the cost disappear. It shifts the cost onto taxpayers and leaves the trusts with less working forest forever.

What the Report Doesn’t Count

The report’s big number, $367.5 million, sounds like cash. It isn’t. It’s an estimate of what clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation, and stored carbon are “worth” if these forests are left standing.

• It’s spread over 120 years. It’s the total for more than a century, not a sum available today.

• It’s borrowed. The authors didn’t measure the Elwha. They took values from studies of other forests and applied them here.

• Even they shrink it. In today’s dollars, their own figure drops to $106.4 million.

No check is ever written, and none of it reaches a hospital district, a library, or a fire department. Timber sales do.

What the report never calculates is the number that matters most to those beneficiaries: the timber revenue they’d lose. In 65 pages, not one line puts a dollar figure on it. That loss gets waved away with a promise that Trust Land Transfer and Climate Commitment Act money will “make beneficiaries whole,” as long as the Legislature keeps paying, year after year.

The report also names the sales it wants stopped. There are six, totaling 608 acres. Parched and Tree Well were auctioned, and roads were started, but both are tied up in a lawsuit. Kicker, Bread & Butter, Alley Cat, and By a Whisker are paused by order of the Commissioner of Public Lands. That’s revenue already counted on, now sitting in limbo.

The People Writing the Report

Brel Froebe of the Center for Responsible Forestry—previously active with Defund the Bellingham Police—has received multi-hour platforms before the Clallam County Board of Commissioners to argue for removing prime timberlands from harvest. Elizabeth Dunne of the Earth Law Center, who has led litigation that temporarily halted road-building and timber sales in the Elwha area, has been right there with him.

Earth Law Center’s broader project is “rights of nature”—the idea that ecosystems should have legal personhood. The organization has been involved in efforts to grant legal standing to wild rice and similar features elsewhere. That legal theory is now being imported into Clallam County timber debates.

What the Land Acknowledgment Leaves Out

The report’s own land acknowledgment is the standard one: it honors the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe’s “enduring stewardship” of the watershed “since time immemorial” and commits to supporting their cultural heritage.

What it does not acknowledge is the modern, statutory purpose of these particular lands. They are trust lands managed by DNR to generate revenue for public beneficiaries—schools, hospitals, libraries, counties, and other junior taxing districts. When parcels remain locked in legal delays, injunctions, or activist-driven “replacement” schemes, the promised money doesn't arrive. The void is filled either by higher taxes on the people who live and work here or by cuts to the services those institutions were supposed to provide.

Invited Into the Boardroom

This is not abstract. Local reporting and public records have already documented how the pattern works. County leadership under Chair Mike French has repeatedly given these voices a long platform, while ordinary residents who actually depend on the revenue stream are lucky to get three minutes at a microphone.

The same activist ecosystem that produced the report has been given preferential access, and the results show up in delayed sales, ongoing litigation, and pressure to treat productive trust lands as permanent conservation set-asides.

No Consequences for the “Troublemakers”

The same activist movement produced the “Troublemakers.” Last year, they entered the Doc Holliday timber sale area, removed DNR boundary markers and flagging, filmed themselves doing it, and delivered the materials to DNR headquarters in Olympia with a letter taking responsibility.

DNR police estimated the immediate cost of remarking at $9,536, not counting delays and staff time. The video and police report identified the participants by name and age. A Seattle Times piece treated the action as a human-interest story about older activists “hoping to save” forests.

The kind of accountability any ordinary citizen would face for damaging public property never materialized. The people who filmed themselves committing the acts then sat comfortably in the county boardroom for the very presentations pushing more permanent conservation.

December Is Coming

This isn’t an academic exercise. DNR has to deliver its Elwha recommendations to the Legislature in December 2026, and this report was written to shape them. The groups behind it have done their homework: field surveys, maps, economic modeling, and a ready-made legal pathway.

The Predictable Result

This is what happens when a growing activist class gets preferential access, and county leadership would rather host presentations than protect the people who pay the bills. Revenue promised to our hospitals, schools, and libraries gets traded for a theoretical number on a spreadsheet. Pressure for higher taxes grows, services get squeezed, and the people who filmed themselves pulling survey markers get a seat at the table instead of a court date. A land acknowledgment doesn’t change the arithmetic.

What You Can Do

• Vote today. Ballots are due by 8:00 p.m. The direction of Clallam County is on the ballot.

• Speak at the Citizens’ Forum at today’s 10:00 a.m. meeting. Ask the commissioners whether the county has calculated what these designations would cost its junior taxing districts, and whether they’ll ask DNR to put that number in its December report.

• Contact DNR and your legislators before December. Ask them to require a full accounting of lost trust revenue before any land comes off the harvest schedule. The Board of Natural Resources oversees trust land decisions and takes public comment at its meetings. You have to register by 4:00 p.m. the Thursday before each meeting, and the page has the instructions.

• Read the report yourself: Elwha Watershed Protection: A Call for State Stewardship.

Promises to replace revenue are only as good as the next budget. A working forest pays out year after year. A legislative promise pays only as long as someone in Olympia remembers it.

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Thank You for Showing Up

Preliminary election results should drop tonight shortly after 8:00 p.m. Check the county auditor’s page.

County Auditor

KONP Radio (myclallamcounty.com) usually gives a brief write-up shortly after results are released.

KONP Radio Website

Whatever the results, this community proved local news matters. Now it’s time for a breather.

I planned to send this after the election results came in, but then I realized the results don’t change a word of it.

These days it’s easy to just let the news wash over you. You didn’t. You read, asked questions, showed up, and stayed engaged, and that takes real work. It can be exhausting, especially in campaign season, and especially at the end of a county race unlike anything Clallam County has ever seen.

With international, national, and state headlines everywhere you look, you showed me there’s a real appetite for hyper-local news. You understand that the closer the news is to home, the more it affects us. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel grateful to be part of a community this engaged in its own civic life.

You’ve Earned a Break!

With that in mind, CC Watchdog is taking a short hiatus for the next few weeks so we can all decompress and remember what matters most. Believe it or not, commissioner races, tax hikes, and even comprehensive plans are small next to family, health, and time with old and new friends.

I’ll still check in now and then, because some important dates and meetings are coming up, but it won’t be every day.

In the meantime, please do something special for yourself this week. You’ve earned it.

Thank you, truly.

Jeff

Signs of the Times

Ever notice that Emily Randall’s and Mike French’s campaign signs always seem to travel together?

It isn’t a coincidence. They have a lot in common. Both are Democrats. Both take campaign money from sovereign tribal governments (nations they weren’t elected to represent). And both are open to handing two of our national wildlife refuges, Dungeness Spit and Protection Island, over to the Jamestown Tribe, a sovereign government with a growing commercial seafood business.

Did you ever think we’d be electing representatives who want to give our public lands to another nation for a profitable commercial seafood operation?

Read the Bill

The draft legislation is real, and it’s titled the “Jamestown S’Klallam Land Transfer Act of 2026.”

The sponsor’s name is still blank, but the text is not. Here’s what it does:

• It transfers the land. “All right, title, and interest of the United States” in about 608 acres at Dungeness and Sequim Bay and nearly 300 acres on Protection Island goes into trust “for the benefit of the Tribe.”

• The land becomes reservation. The transferred land would become “part of the Tribe’s Reservation,” governed by Indian trust law and managed by the Tribe, which also gets to rename it.

• It repeals Protection Island’s protection. The 1982 law that created the Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge is “hereby repealed.”

• It hands over the buildings. Every building and structure on the land would be conveyed to the Tribe outright.

• It keeps the federal checks coming. The Interior Secretary would plan “annual distribution of funds for the Tribe’s management.” You’d keep paying for land you no longer own.

The bill promises public access “in perpetuity,” but read the fine print. That promise covers only the former Dungeness lands. And once the land is sovereign, the only one who enforces that promise is the Tribe. Notice what’s missing, too: there’s not a word in the bill limiting commercial aquaculture.

Proposed Jamestown Land Transfer Legislation

156KB ∙ PDF file

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Where They Stand

Congresswoman Randall is the Tribe’s go-to in Congress. In a letter to a constituent, she says the Tribe wants the Dungeness Refuge held in trust “for the benefit of the Tribe” and points to precedent for moving refuge land into tribal trust. She says she plans to “work closely with the Tribe” so the transfer “continues to safeguard public access.” Her question isn’t whether to transfer. It’s how.

Mike French says he can’t take a position until he reads the legislation, but that he would likely support it if public access is guaranteed. Well, Commissioner, here it is. Read it.

French should know better than anyone what a Jamestown promise is worth. For a decade and a half, the Tribe worked with the county on relocating Towne Road. Then, at the eleventh hour, it decided it didn’t want the road to go through after all. It wanted the land for itself, for a park or an “outdoor classroom.”

Promises from Jamestown change, and sovereign land doesn’t come back.

The Challengers See It Differently

Teresa Fox, who is challenging Randall, opposes transferring these public lands to a sovereign nation.

Jake Seegers, who is challenging French, opposes it too, and he puts it simply. The Jamestown Tribe already owns the national wildlife refuges, just like the rest of us, because we are all Americans.

In the Chairman’s Own Words

You don’t have to guess why this is happening. Jamestown Chairman and CEO Ron Allen told the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners on June 22, 2026 [Ron Allen’s presentation begins at 1:58:00]:

“What initiated this to start with? So, we have an oyster farm inside of the Refuge... We ran into a buzzsaw with Fish and Wildlife on recertifying and getting all the permits because we were out of compliance.”

“We’re developers too, so don’t confuse yourself that we’re just conservation-minded.”

“But we decided that why not just take two of them? ... It makes more sense for us because we basically wanted to remove Fish and Wildlife and that we can control and manage it.”

“It’s not just for subsistence anymore, it’s just for commercial purposes.”

That isn’t conservation. It’s a business plan. The Tribe was out of compliance, the regulators said no, and the answer was to get rid of the regulators.

Protect the Peninsula’s Future reports that the Tribe proposed a 34-acre industrial oyster operation with 80,000 bags of non-native oysters inside the Dungeness Refuge. PPF warns that this would smother life on the bottom, harm the eelgrass beds that birds and salmon depend on, and endanger the wildlife the refuge exists to protect.

“As Transparent as We Possibly Can”

At that same June 22 meeting, Ron Allen told the Jefferson County commissioners, “We want to be as transparent as we possibly can.” So let’s look at what else he said.

The graves. Allen told the commissioners, “We have graves on the spit.” What he left out is whose graves some of them are. On September 21, 1868, S’Klallam raiders crept up on a camp of 18 Tsimshian travelers on Dungeness Spit before dawn and killed 17 of them, including five women and two children. The Tsimshian were heading home to British Columbia after harvesting hops. The lone survivor, a 17-year-old pregnant woman, was clubbed, stabbed, and left for dead before she made it to the lighthouse. Settlers buried the victims on what is still called Graveyard Spit. The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe’s own history page describes the attack as “revenge” for a kidnapping. You can read the full account at HistoryLink. If graves on the spit are a reason to hand the Tribe the land, the public deserves the whole story, including the graves of the people their ancestors massacred there.

The dates. Allen repeatedly said Protection Island became a refuge in the 1950s. It didn’t. Congress created the Protection Island National Wildlife Refuge in 1982, after a decade-long fight led by Eleanor Stopps. The man asking to take over the refuge didn’t seem to know when it was created.

The county park. Then Allen dropped this: Clallam County has reached out to the Tribe and asked it to run the RV park at the county’s Dungeness Recreation Area.

“We’re very interested in obtaining that idea with them… We even told them we’re interested in buying it.”

That hasn’t been discussed during a public Clallam County meeting. So who reached out, when, and why haven’t the people who own that park heard a word about it? If the Tribe wants to buy the county park next to the refuge it’s trying to take over, Clallam County voters deserve to know before the deal is done, not after.

Transparent? Then let’s have the conversation in public.

Oysters Aren’t Just Oysters

The Jamestown Corporation intends to farm Pacific oysters, which are larger than Olympia oysters. The Pacific oyster isn’t native here. It was brought from East Asia starting around 1902 after the native Olympia oyster declined, and it has not been a neutral guest.

• Habitat change: In Willapa Bay, intensive oyster culture turned open mudflats into hard oyster beds. The heavy waste from dense oyster beds can starve sediment of oxygen, which hurts eelgrass and the creatures living in the mud.

• Displacement: Feral Pacific oysters in the San Juan Islands have changed which species live on the rocky shore and pushed out some natives.

A refuge is supposed to protect what belongs there, not serve as a farm for something that doesn’t.

The Scientists Have Spoken

In August, twelve scientists wrote to Senators Cantwell and Murray and Rep. Randall. Together they represent more than 40 years of peer-reviewed research on the seabirds and marine mammals of these two refuges, and they are uniformly opposed to the transfer.

They study tufted puffins, rhinoceros auklets, pigeon guillemots and black oystercatchers, birds they describe as “sentinels for the quality of the marine environment.” Their warning is blunt:

“Without this constant vigilance and growing body of related research, many of these species could fall further into decline and eventual extinction.”

They also explain why breaking up the refuge system makes no sense:

“Birds and other marine species do not understand boundaries, and many species move throughout the Maritime Complex.”

Even the scientists say the current partnership between the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Tribe “is working well,” but they stress “the critical role that federal oversight, federal protective regulations and federal ownership continue to play.” In other words, if co-management isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

What Eleanor Stopps Fought For

Eleanor Stopps spent years leading the fight to make Protection Island a refuge. Her campaign partner, Lorna Smith, recalls thousands of letters and dozens of building lots bought by Audubon members and donated to the Fish and Wildlife Service to be protected forever.

Jefferson County Commissioner Greg Brotherton has tried to cast the transfer as a way to honor Stopps. Her daughter, Laura Walker, wasn’t having it. In a letter to the Peninsula Daily News, she called it an “outrageous attempt to spin the repeal of National Wildlife Refuge status into a way to honor Eleanor Stopps.”

“Losing it now is no honor.”

Walker agrees that the Fish and Wildlife Service is underfunded, but points out that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is “both less able and less willing to offer protection to any natural resource.” The transfer, she wrote, would be “an irreversible, long-term solution to a short-term problem, akin to junking your car because the tires wear thin.”

Co-Management Already Works

The Tribe already has a seat at the table. It has helped co-manage the tidelands since 1990, and in 2024 it reached a co-management agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service covering both refuges.

Lorna Smith says opponents welcome the Tribe as co-managers. But the bill would dissolve that agreement and take Fish and Wildlife out of the picture. As Smith puts it, once the land is sovereign, “the Tribe and the Tribe alone controls all actions and decisions.” The public would have no legally enforceable say.

Where’s the Environmental Lobby?

Mike French has the endorsement of Olympic Climate Action, a group that’s supposed to care about the environment. So how does that work?

The candidate it endorsed is open to giving a national wildlife refuge to an entity that wants to fill it with a non-native commercial oyster crop. If a private developer proposed this, environmental groups would be lining up at the courthouse.

What’s at Stake

• Protection Island: About 70% of the nesting seabirds in Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca nest here. It’s the world’s 10th-largest rhinoceros auklet colony and one of the few places tufted puffins still breed. It’s also the Salish Sea’s largest consistent harbor seal pupping and haul-out site, at a time when the Tribe has asked Randall to sponsor a bill on culling seals and sea lions.

• Dungeness Refuge: One of the longest sand spits in the world, hosting about 260 bird species.

• The precedent: Allen told the Jefferson County commissioners that other Washington tribes plan to follow suit “once this is done” and go after the remaining four refuges in the Washington Maritime complex. PPF warns that refuges across the country could be up for grabs.

Randall and Allen are spearheading the effort to pull both refuges out of federal conservation oversight, and Mike French supports it.

In Court, Too

Protect the Peninsula’s Future, the Coalition to Protect Puget Sound Habitat, and Beyond Pesticides sued the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2023, arguing that it skipped the required review of whether the Tribe’s oyster operation is compatible with the refuge. The Tribe tried to join the case to protect its “financial investments.” The judge said no, and the Tribe appealed. PPF now reports that the 9th Circuit sided with PPF and the Fish and Wildlife Service, ruling that the Tribe’s bid to intervene was premature because the Tacoma court hasn’t issued a final decision.

Here’s the catch: if Congress transfers the land, the lawsuit becomes moot. If you can’t win in court, change who owns the land.

What You Can Do

These refuges were saved by ordinary people writing letters. They can be saved the same way.

• Read Protection Island, Dungeness Spit: Enviros vs. Enviros at the Olympic Open.

• Sign the petition at ProtectRefuges.org, or email ProtectRefuges@gmail.com and see if they can present to your group.

• Tell Rep. Emily Randall and Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray to drop the transfer before it’s introduced, keep co-management, and keep these refuges in public hands.

• And when you vote, remember whose signs are standing side by side.

The refuges belong to all of us, every American, tribal members included. Let’s keep it that way.

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I’ve gotten some pushback on that statement over the last 14 months, but I still believe it.

I didn’t enter this race to become an agent of government. I entered this race to represent the people of my community—many of whom, like me, felt they no longer had a voice in the decisions shaping our lives and our future.

If I am elected, I will never forget whose business I am conducting: yours, not the government’s.

This was my first campaign. And despite seeking advice from many people who had run for office before me, I really had no idea what I was stepping into. I mean that in a positive way. I could talk about the difficult moments during this race. There have been a few. But those aren’t what I will remember.

I will remember all of you.

I will remember the overwhelming kindness, support, encouragement, prayers, and love my family and I have received from people across this county.

I will remember old friends who stepped forward and new friends I never would have met if I hadn’t taken this leap.

It has been one of the most humbling and meaningful experiences of my life. This campaign was never about me. It was always about us.

It was about a community tired of feeling ignored — a community that banded together to demand results. A community asking for common sense. A community concerned about public safety, stagnant economic growth, rising taxes, and the increasing difficulty of simply affording to live here. A community that wants our children and grandchildren to have the opportunity to stay or return to this county that we love so much and to have a future where neighborhoods are safe and clean, hard work is rewarded, families can afford a home, businesses can prosper, property rights are respected, and government remembers that it works for the people.

This campaign has always been about turning hopelessness into a future full of hope.

And the entire time, you all showed up in a huge way.

You wrote articles and social media posts. You challenged claims that didn’t make sense. You organized and showed up to rallies.

You built and managed teams of doorbellers.

You ran text-message campaigns. You put up signs and drove hundreds of miles delivering them to others.

You tirelessly made peanut brittle and unabashedly sold it to every sweet tooth.

You opened your homes for meet-and-greets, hosted parties, lent your vehicles, and offered properties and equipment.

You walked in parades.

You introduced me to your friends and neighbors. You knocked on doors. You made phone calls. You donated generously.

You offered words of encouragement. You prayed for my family and for me.

You committed something invaluable: your trust. When people attacked my character, many of you stood up and vouched for who I am.

You put your name, your reputation, and your businesses on the line.

I will never forget that.
I couldn’t have done this alone.
And the beautiful thing is: I never had to.

Together, we have had so many victories along the way.

• Last year, we packed the commissioners’ boardroom and pushed back on proposed changes to RV ordinances.

• We demanded changes to existing ordinances to restore property rights that give people greater freedom to use and generate income from their own land.

• When a new $5 parcel fee was proposed, 1,032 Clallam County citizens put their names on paper and said “no.”

• Another 659 signed a petition calling for the reopening of Olympic Hot Springs Road and restoring public access to the heart of Olympic National Park.

• We refused to stand aside and let our commissioners rubber-stamp a Comprehensive Plan that will shape this county for the next generation.

• We demanded a plan that protects property rights, respects the people who live here, and preserves our ability to afford to stay, work, and prosper on the property we own.

Together, we have forced difficult conversations about the substance abuse and homelessness crisis unfolding in our community and the policies that have expanded it.

We have shed light on the human and environmental consequences along Tumwater Creek and elsewhere that too often have proliferated under the banner of “compassion.”

We have demanded a different kind of compassion—one that refuses to accept addiction, homelessness, and life outdoors as acceptable outcomes for our neighbors.

We have questioned why policies receiving millions of taxpayer dollars are not measured against the outcomes they promise, and we have demanded metrics and accountability from the organizations we pay to provide solutions. Most importantly, we have listened to the very people living outside and struggling with addiction, and many of them recognize the same thing we do: they are trapped in a system that too often manages their circumstances without providing a meaningful pathway out.

We have demanded the same accountability with our tax dollars. We said no to a proposed levy-rate increase that would have burdened our community with millions more in taxation, and we have continued to insist that government live within its means just as the families and businesses funding it must do.

We have demonstrated that elected officials, department heads, and experts can get things wrong—and that citizens asking legitimate questions cannot simply be dismissed by labeling their dissent “misinformation.” We challenged assumptions, read the underlying documents, followed the money, and demanded outcomes over ideology. When transparency wasn’t provided to us, we went looking for it ourselves.

Regardless of what happens in this election, every one of you should be proud of what we have accomplished together. A community has found its voice. We have shown that we are no longer willing to stand quietly on the sidelines while decisions affecting our families, property, businesses, and future are made without us. We will ask questions. We will demand transparency. We will insist on measurable results. And we will hold our leaders accountable for their decisions and the outcomes they produce.

My family moved here because we wanted to raise our children in a community small enough to still feel like one—a place where we’re invested in each other’s dreams and successes, where we celebrate one another’s victories and show up when someone is struggling.

In Clallam County, we show up for each other.

Over the last 14 months, you have shown me that truth over and over again.

You showed up for Amy and me.
You showed up for our family.
You showed up for your neighbors.
You showed up for this community.
And I am profoundly grateful.

Thank you.

Thank you for every door knocked.
Every sign placed.
Every dollar donated.
Every article written.
Every conversation with a neighbor.
Every introduction.
Every event hosted.
Every encouraging text.
Every handshake.
Every hug.
Every prayer.
Every vote.

And every moment you spent in unwavering confidence in what our community can achieve — together.

Regardless of this election’s outcome, our lives will never be the same. This campaign has connected people who may never otherwise have met. It has created friendships. It has awakened people who had stopped believing their participation mattered. And it has reminded us of something fundamental:

This community belongs to all of us.

This election is not the end of that. It is just one chapter. There will be more issues. More meetings. More decisions. More elections. Some will be decided by remarkably small margins.

Every voice matters.
Every vote matters.
And every person willing to stand up, ask questions, and participate makes a difference.

Whatever comes next, I hope we carry forward what we built together—not anger, not division, but courage, accountability, friendship, and hope.

Fourteen months ago, I stepped into this race because I believed my community deserved a representative voice.

What I didn’t understand then was how many incredible people would step forward and lend me theirs.

That has been this campaign’s greatest gift.

From Amy, our family, and me:

Thank you, Clallam County.

It has been an absolute honor.

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Sponsored by Jake Seegers for Commissioner (IND), 131 E. First St., Port Angeles, WA 98362

The group the League supports that protests every Friday in Sequim just told a national audience its real goal: make sure nobody ever dares to disagree again. Meanwhile, the drugs keep coming, the repeat offenders keep walking, and smoking drugs out in the open is the new “normal". Three days until Election Day. Here’s what you need to know this Social Media Saturday before you drop off your ballot.

See You at the Rally

See you today at the rally for Jake Seegers!

Lost Your Ballot? Your Local Socialists Have Some Advice

Do you need a reason to return your ballot? Here’s one. Democratic Socialists like Bradley Callaway are encouraging people to head out with a laptop and a printer to help others print ballots, which can then be taken to a drop box.

During the primary, Bradley set up in Jesse Webster Park in Port Angeles with plans to sign up homeless people to vote.

Bradley does get one thing right: at this point, it’s safer to skip the mail and return your ballot to an Official Ballot Drop Box. There are nine in Clallam County and they close at 8:00 p.m. this Tuesday.

So consider this a friendly reminder from your local Democratic Socialists: if you’ve lost your ballot, it’s okay to print one. Log in to VoteWA.gov and do it yourself.

Indivisible Tells You the Plan

The co-founders of Indivisible, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, sat down on their own podcast and explained exactly what they’re after. The Post Millennial broke it down. Greenberg said impeachment is just “a tactic within a strategy,” and that “our goal is the transformation of American democracy.” Then she explained how they get there:

“You build a mass political coalition... that is so powerful that you actually fracture Republicans and MAGA and you pull some of those folks into our side... and you hold everybody who was involved in this rampant period of lawbreaking and corruption accountable... We need every mid-level staffer who worked in this administration to walk away being like, oh boy, I should not have done that. We need every corporation to be like, I am never ever doing again what I did in 2025 and 2026 because I do not want the heat that came at me in 2027. We actually have to create the conditions in which the entire set of enablers and billionaires and, you know, lackeys are all like, oh, I can’t go along with something as horrifying as what happened in 2025 and 2026 because my personal interests say that I need to stay far, far away from that.”

Read that again. Mid-level staffers. Corporations. Anyone who went along. They don’t want to win the argument. They want everyone who disagreed with them to be afraid.

This is Indivisible, the group that protests every Friday in Sequim, holds “No Kings” rallies, and this is the playbook it follows locally. Shame the dissenters. Call for boycotts of businesses. Attack anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep.

This is also the group Commissioner Mike French relies on for his doorbelling and sticker design. The League of Women Voters supports, amplifies, and collaborates with Indivisible.

Punishing dissenters, public shaming, and spreading fear aren’t democracy. When it happens locally, it needs to be called out for what it is:

Bullying.

100 Pounds of Meth, Bound for Washington

On October 22, a Siskiyou County Sheriff’s sergeant pulled over a 2019 Chevy Suburban driving erratically through north Yreka, California, in a heavy rainstorm. The driver was 44-year-old Juan Collado Penazola of Washington. A search of the vehicle turned up a large box in the back seat full of vacuum-sealed bags. Testing confirmed about 99.6 pounds of methamphetamine.

Penazola told investigators he’d made multiple trips from Bakersfield to Washington state to deliver drugs. He was arrested for transporting meth and possessing it for sale.

The drugs are still flowing into Washington, and Clallam County is not immune. That’s what you’d expect when county government hands out drug paraphernalia for “free.” If you hand out the paraphernalia, the supply will keep coming.

Is That Assault?

Mitch Zenobi caught one Indivisible protester downtown who may not know what assault means.

Thank You, 4PA

What would Port Angeles look like without 4PA cleaning our creeks, streets, alleyways, and public spaces? One can only imagine.

Thank you to 4PA and every volunteer who has cleaned it up over the past five years. We see you, and we appreciate you.

Did Jim Stoffer Just Endorse Jake Seegers?

Jim Stoffer just posted on Facebook that he supports keeping people fed, housed, educated, and treated with dignity.

Welcome aboard, Jim. That sounds a lot like Jake Seegers.

Profiting Off the Problem

Peninsula Behavioral Health's CEO makes more than the Vice President of the United States. It’s expanding to 185 employees, with a budget expected to pass $20 million, and 75 to 80 percent of that goes to salaries and benefits. It soaks up millions in taxpayer dollars every year, and it has fully embraced harm reduction.

And people are still camping out in front of its offices.

To PBH, those aren’t just homeless people. They’re dollar signs. We’ve asked a nonprofit to solve a problem that it profits from, and it has every reason to keep that problem around.

Welcome to Clallam County’s Revolving Door

On Thursday, Cameron George came up on the police scanner for a court order violation. “Someone reported he may have a crossbow.”

This isn’t new. In June, FOX 13 reported that George, a convicted sex offender, was in the Pierce County Jail after he was shirtless and trying to get kids to play with him at an apartment complex.

Go back to March 2021. Port Angeles police responded to a disturbance at a local shelter and found broken windows and evidence that George had violated two domestic violence no-contact orders. He then led officers on a chase through a neighborhood at 40 to 50 mph, blowing through stop signs, until his car ended up in the bushes at East 10th and Washington. He climbed out the window, ran, fought free of officers, and was finally stopped with a Taser. He was booked on nine charges, including DUI, eluding police, unlawful imprisonment, two counts of assault in violation of a court order, and assault 4th degree domestic violence.

Five years later, he’s back on the scanner. A sex offender, a court order violation, and a reported crossbow. Clallam County’s revolving door for catch-and-release offenders keeps spinning. Welcome to Clallam County.

The New Normal

A man smokes illicit street drugs at a grocery store picnic table, with the Lincoln School and the Port Angeles School District offices in the background.

Did Clallam County Health and Human Services buy that pipe for him with your tax dollars? Is this harm reduction? Was that Suburban full of meth in California headed here to deliver more supply? Have Clallam County and Port Angeles become safer over the past nine years with Mike French in office?

Remember, Mike French said it’s up to YOU to take back our public spaces.

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Clallam County Democrats showed up in force at the state convention in Spokane. Among them were a disgraced school board member, a writer for Communist Party USA, and two charter review commissioners who tried to muzzle free speech. And somehow I’m the “extremist” for pointing it out.

This follows an article titled Dear Democrats (Part I).

Who Showed Up for Clallam County?

The 2026 Washington State Democrats Convention ran June 19 to 21 at the Spokane Convention Center, and Clallam County Democrats were there. The convention is where the state party sets its official positions, local activists speak for their communities, and party leaders from across Washington meet.

In other words, it’s where Clallam County Democrats put their best face forward on the state stage. The convention photos on Facebook show faces CC Watchdog readers will recognize.

Jim Stoffer: The Leaker Who Cries “Nazi”

Jim Stoffer was there.

Stoffer left the Sequim School Board under a cloud of controversy. His fellow board members moved to censure him after a whistleblower said he had leaked confidential district information for years. He resigned mid-term. He then won a seat on the Charter Review Commission, where he forwarded an attorney-client privileged memo to his personal email and to a tribal ambassador with no role in the commission. He also demanded taxpayer-funded private security, which his friend Commissioner Mark Ozias helped arrange at $57.50 an hour.

Now he is a featured endorser of Democrat Commissioner Mike French, and he spends his time on Facebook comparing French’s opponent to history’s worst. Under a Peninsula Daily News story on the rise of the Ku Klux Klan on the North Olympic Peninsula, Stoffer wrote: “Looks like History is repeating itself via the Calico Cat Club, Jake Seegers, & CCWD.”

In another thread, he accused Jake’s campaign of wanting to “round up people and put them in camps; that was tried in WW11 and didn’t go over so well.”

A Safe Parking volunteer answered him: “I must have missed the part where Jake said they need to be rounded up and placed in camps?” No one else had heard Jake say it either, because he never did.

Most recently, Stoffer has started mocking a local woman for supporting Jake.

Even Democrats Have Had Enough

You don’t have to take my word for it. Ron Richards was a fellow Charter Review Commissioner and, in his own words, “a good Democrat.” Here’s what he posted in the CC Watchdog comments after Stoffer’s attack on Kelly Johnson:

“As a good Democrat I have found the party’s, and their allies, tactics in their campaign against Jake Seegers disgusting. From anonymous derogatory stickers posted around town; to many inaccurate allegations against Mr. Seegers; to supporting anonymous hit pieces and publications that print misleading allegations and then ban from commenting individuals who attempt to correct those allegations; to Indivisible Sequim banning people from their Facebook page for posting anything that does not match the exact politics of Indivisible Sequim’s anonymous leaders; and then Jim Stoffer’s hit piece against Kelly Johnson quoted above. Not only is the allegation in that hit piece a ridiculous stretch that could be argued against any supporter of any county commissioner candidate who happens to live near that county commissioner candidate, but it’s also notable for Mr. Stoffer’s inability to spell ‘Realtor’ correctly. Perhaps no big deal, but that’s so consistent with the lack of thinking that has permeated a lot of the political dialogue in this campaign. You would expect something better from a person who portrays himself as a leader in Democratic politics. While examples of this same type of conduct can be found among those supporting Mr. Seegers, and certainly worse from the leader of the Republican Party, it is particularly concerning to me for the Democrats to have stooped to this level. There are good reasons to vote against Mr. Seegers, as there are good reasons to vote against Mr. French, but it would be much better to keep the campaign on a more intellectual level.”

Richards isn’t a Seegers supporter. He openly says there are good reasons to vote against Jake, and he’s critical of both sides. That’s exactly why it matters. When a loyal Democrat calls his own party’s campaign “disgusting,” the problem isn’t the critics. It’s the conduct.

Tim Wheeler: The Communist Who Pulled the Markers

Tim Wheeler is a trustee of the Clallam County Democrats. He is also a writer for Communist Party USA and its newspaper, People’s World, and he has attended Communist Party conventions around the world.

He was also one of the five self-described “Troublemakers” who filmed themselves tearing boundary markers out of the Doc Holliday timber sale, on trust land that funds our schools and junior taxing districts.

On camera, Wheeler said, “There are some things more important than just obeying a law.” The repair cost came to $9,536. DNR police recommended felony charges. No charges were ever filed.

Christy Holy: Muzzling the Messenger

Former Charter Review Commissioner Christy Holy was there too. On the commission’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, she voted for a rule that would have barred commissioners from naming public commenters “orally, in printed publications, or electronically.” Its target was obvious: an elected commissioner who reports on public meetings at CC Watchdog.

This blatantly violated constitutionally protected First Amendment rights. Public comment is part of the public record. Holy still pushed to keep it off limits, and the rule failed only on a 6-6 tie.

Susan Fisch: The “Nonpartisan” Gatekeeper

Former Charter Review Chair Susan Fisch also attended. She is a retired judge and ran for the Charter Review as Secretary of the “nonpartisan” League of Women Voters.

She ran the Charter Review Commission like a private club. She stopped speaking to commissioners who wouldn’t go along with her and kept their items off the agenda. She handed the public survey to her ally Jim Stoffer, and that survey charted the commission’s course. Her single biggest effort was reconvening the Bylaws Committee to limit what could be reported about public meetings. Video of one meeting even showed League members in the audience passing her hand signals to direct how Fisch ran the meeting.

She silenced commissioners, and with them, entire parts of the county they represented. She made accusations she couldn’t back up. In my view, no one has done more to erode public trust in local government since Mark Ozias.

Is This Your Democratic Party?

So this is who shows up for Clallam County Democrats: people who hide information, try to muzzle reporting, trample constitutionally protected rights, and a man who writes for the Communist Party.

Meanwhile, other prominent local Democrats have gone after Mike French’s opponent, demanding tens of thousands of dollars in fines because his signs used the wrong font size. They hold up font size as a scandal. Then, to show off our county, they bring along a man who filmed himself tearing out markers on public land.

“Right-Wing MAGA Extremist”? Who, Me?

I commonly get called a “right-wing MAGA extremist.” Me, the gay vegan.

Yes, I’m biased. This is an opinion blog. I give my opinion, then I show you how I got there with facts and public records. Some people agree, and some don’t, and that’s fine.

As for “only attacking Democrats,” I’m not attacking anyone. I’m asking questions and demanding accountability. Democrats happen to be in power in this county, and they are the ones who stalled the completion of Towne Road, the issue that started CC Watchdog in the first place. Thank you, Commissioners Ozias and French, for waking me up.

Show me a Republican in power in Clallam County who is fleecing taxpayers, hiding documents, handing out vouchers so drug addicts can shower with children, trying to give away our county parks, renaming our courthouse, or sending money to the NGOs whose boards they sit on. If there is a Republican in power in Clallam County who isn’t being transparent with the people who elected them and who pay their salaries, I’ll report on them every day.

How Each Party Has Treated Me

On a personal note, the rudest people I’ve met these past three years hold leadership roles in the local Democratic Party.

Chris Walker, founder of the Sequim Good Governance League, called me a “f**ker” while I was holding a door open for her. It was the first word she ever said to me.

At the fair, the Clallam County Democrats’ tent sold pins promoting a blog that claimed my husband and I are having affairs with a Mexican prostitute. That was official party merchandise.

What have the Republicans done to me? They’ve invited me to speak at their events twice. They share my push for transparency in local government, accountability, careful use of our tax dollars, and safeguards against fraud and wasteful spending. They haven’t cursed at me or spread rumors about me. They’ve fed and welcomed me.

I still haven't received an invitation to speak to the League of Women Voters or the Clallam County Democrats.

What Mom Would Say

If you knew my mom when she was active in civic life, you might be surprised that Judy Tozzer’s son isn’t a staunch Democrat. She certainly was, but she wouldn’t be today.

She cared about social programs, especially for children, and she cared about respect. Honestly, she reminds me a lot of Jake Seegers. She would be shocked by how local Democrats behave today: whom they shun, whom they shut out, and how far they’ll go to get their way, even when it means giving up any moral consistency.

Dear Democrats,

So, what’s the plan? Is this how you attract people? Is this how you build your base?

Because when you’ve turned a gay vegan who voted for Hillary Clinton and Pramila Jayapal into an independent, it may be time to rethink who you send to represent Clallam County.

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See You Tomorrow!

Please return your ballot to a secure ballot box (locations here). Let’s get together and remind our neighbors to vote.

Indivisible activist Martha Rudersdorf went behind the camera to ask why protesters support Mike French, and none named an issue. Meanwhile, French “liked” a Facebook post mocking a local woman for backing his opponent. She wrote to him four days ago and is still waiting for an answer.

“Why Are You Supporting Mike French?”

Martha Rudersdorf is a retired Sequim teacher and an Indivisible activist. She recently took to the streets of Sequim to ask other Indivisible activists one question: “Why are you supporting Mike French?”

The first man, wearing a “F*ck Trump” hat, held a “We Stand With Canada” sign.

He said French “has been in there for a while, he’s been doing a really good job,” but gave no examples. Then he said: “His opponent is pretending to be something he’s not. He’s a real estate developer for God’s sake. You know, he’s got a ton of money.”

Martha didn’t correct him, even though an article debunked that exact claim two weeks ago. Jake has never developed real estate, though Martha and her husband have. His PDC filings show he isn’t wealthy. Public property records suggest Martha and her husband are on par with Jake, or ahead of him, when it comes to wealth.

A Family Affair

Rudersdorf next interviewed her husband, Dave LeRoux.

LeRoux recently wrote a letter to the editor in the Sequim Gazette linking Jake to Christian Nationalism.

On camera, he called French “well reasoned” and said he “has depth of knowledge.”

Next came a couple holding a sign that read “the most violent element in society is ignorance.”

They said that after talking with Mike, something about his character, his ideals, and his plan meant that “it all makes sense.”

Notice What’s Missing?

Not one person in these interviews talked about an issue. They talked about character, ideals, and level-headedness, and about how much they like Mike. Then they repeated false things people like Martha have told them about why they shouldn't like Jake Seegers.

Nobody mentioned anything French has accomplished. Nobody even explained what his plans or ideals actually are.

That has been the defining difference in this race from the start. French’s supporters don’t say much in Mike's favor, but they have plenty to say against Jake, and they would rather not talk about issues at all.

Nine Years of Record They’d Rather You Ignore

They avoid the issues for a reason. Between City Hall and the county, French has nine years of policies on the record:

• Recompete is a $35 million handout to special interests and NGOs that has failed to deliver even a fraction of the 900 jobs French campaigned on.

• “Affordable housing” is subsidized luxury housing that you pay for, prioritized for criminals and addicts. North View has quartz counters and harbor views, and the people running it said in their own words that they would target people “at high risk of recidivism of the jail” and those “recovering from substance use disorders.”

• Harm reduction has expanded under French, who chairs the Board of Health, and Clallam County’s overdose rates are now far ahead of the state and national rates.

• The “balanced” budget closes a $3 million shortfall with tax hikes instead of cuts, and voters won’t get a say in them.

The Facebook “Like”

You can see the pattern in two of French’s most avid supporters, Jim Stoffer and Debra Boynton. On Facebook, they floated a theory about Kelly Johnson, a Port Angeles realtor who supports Jake. They suggested she has a crush on him and backs him to help her real estate portfolio.

CC Watchdog already reported on that exchange. What we didn’t know then is that Mike French “liked” the comment about Kelly.

So Kelly wrote to him directly. Her letter is published here with her permission:

Mike,

I am writing regarding your decision to “like” Jim Stoffer’s recent Facebook comment about me.

By liking the post, you appeared to endorse not only the comment itself, but also the false narrative that my support for Jake Seegers is motivated by personal or financial gain rather than my sincerely held views.

The post was not a discussion of policy, qualifications, or issues affecting our community. Instead, it relied on personal attacks and insinuations, suggesting that I have a “fan girl crush” on Jake Seegers and implying that my support for him is motivated by potential financial benefit because I own property in Freshwater Bay. Neither claim has any basis in fact.

My property in Freshwater Bay has nothing to do with Jake Seegers or my real estate business. Bruce and I purchased that property together in 2001 and built the shop in 2001-2002. We later built our home in 2005. Even after our divorce, I continued to jointly own, support, and invest in the property with Bruce. Earlier this year, I found Bruce deceased in that home. The property represents a significant part of my personal history and the life we built together over 25 years. It is completely unrelated to my support of any candidate.

What I found particularly offensive was the attempt to dismiss my political opinions by reducing them to a supposed “fan girl crush” rather than addressing the substance of my views. It is a tactic that trivializes a woman’s participation in public discourse and avoids engaging with her actual positions. My support for Jake Seegers is based on my assessment of his qualifications, character, and leadership, not some imagined personal fascination.

I was equally troubled by the suggestion that my support is motivated by financial self-interest. Making unsupported insinuations about a person’s integrity, ethics, or professional motivations is unfair and contributes nothing meaningful to public discourse.

Finally, using my ownership of a home in Freshwater Bay as fodder for political speculation crossed a line. Bruce and I purchased the property and began developing it more than two decades ago, long before any of the current political issues being debated. Jake owns property off Place Road, miles from the home I own. The suggestion that my support for his candidacy is driven by real estate interests, proximity, or potential financial gain is entirely without factual basis. It is simply an attempt to question my motives rather than address my views.

Reasonable people can disagree on politics. What concerns me is when political debate shifts away from issues and records and instead becomes focused on mocking, stereotyping, and questioning the motives of private citizens who choose to participate in the process.

I understand that candidates cannot control every statement made by every supporter. However, Jim Stoffer is prominently featured on your campaign endorsement page, and your public “like” of his comment reasonably appears to signal approval of both the content and the message behind it.

I have always believed that public discourse is strongest when people debate facts, policies, and qualifications. Regardless of political differences, I hope we can agree that personal attacks, sexist stereotypes, and unfounded assumptions about a person’s motives have no place in that conversation.

Sincerely,

Kelly Johnson

Four Days, No Reply

It has been four days, and French hasn’t answered. That’s another difference between the candidates.

Compare how quickly French moved for David Herbelin, the Executive Director of Olympic Theatre Arts Center in Sequim. As French’s own emails show, the two worked behind the scenes on a new cultural access tax, which would be imposed without a vote of the people. There was a flurry of emails, same-day replies, and steady follow-up. But Herbelin had something the French wanted: a reason to raise taxes.

Kelly has nothing to offer French. She’s just a constituent asking him why his actions don’t match the values he talks about. At the last Board of Health meeting, French lectured the gallery about not making personal attacks. Then he endorsed one, aimed not at his opponent but at a private citizen.

Who Gets a Seat at the Table

When you fill out your ballot, remember who Mike French is and who he answers to. This election decides whose calls get returned and who gets a seat at the table: NGOs and special interests, or you.

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See You Saturday!

The Seegers/French race is coming down to the wire, and your ballot could decide it. Meanwhile, a vandal was caught on camera in Blyn, a Dignity Bus like the one Port Angeles is weighing already failed in Illinois, and county officials found a way to raise taxes without asking you. Here’s what you need to know this week.

Your Ballot Could Decide This Race

The Seegers/French race is going to be close, and both campaigns know it.

Fill out your ballot today. If you can, take it to a secure ballot drop box, because mail has been slow lately and you don’t want your vote arriving late.

One Last Push for Jake: Saturday on the River Road Overpass

This is the final push for Jake Seegers, and for getting Clallam County back on track after years of failed policies, tax increases, and reckless spending. Join Jake’s supporters this Saturday at 11 a.m. on the River Road Overpass.

Bring Seegers signs, patriotic gear, American flags, and anything else that reminds your neighbors it’s time to vote for change and get their ballots in.

Caught on Camera: Blyn Sign Slashed Again

Just over three months ago, someone slashed the John Birch Society’s sign on private property beside Highway 101 in Blyn.

When they put up a replacement, the owners said it would be watched. They meant it. Here’s what the camera caught this week:

The Clallam County Sheriff’s Office is now asking for help identifying the suspect.

The 12-by-5-foot sign read “Get us out of the United Nations” and cost about $450. The footage shows a man holding an object in his left hand and cutting the sign off its posts. The owner told deputies it wasn’t the first time, which is why they put up the camera.

If you have information, call the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office at (360) 417-2459. You can also submit an anonymous tip through the Sheriff’s Office Online Reporting Portal by choosing “Crime Tips.”

They Came for the Wells. Now They’re Coming for the Septics.

Clallam County Environmental Health, the Jamestown Tribe and the Clallam Conservation District are hosting a community meeting tomorrow on the Pollution Identification and Correction (PIC) program. PIC tracks down sources of bacterial pollution, such as failing septic systems and farm runoff.

Private wells in the valley already fall under the Dungeness Water Rule, and tribal land is exempt. Attention is now turning to private septic systems, and tribal land is exempt from those rules too. The county’s meeting will be held at the Tribe’s Rainshadow Hall at the Dungeness River Center.

Want to Shape Sequim’s Future? The Planning Commission Has Two Openings

Getting involved is one of the best ways to shape how Sequim grows. The city has two openings on its Planning Commission. One is a four-year unexpired term ending in January 2031, and the other is a term ending in January 2030. You must live within the Clallam County part of the Sequim School District.

Applications are due by noon Friday, Oct. 30. You can email yours to clerk@sequimwa.gov, drop it off in person, or mail it to City of Sequim, Attention: City Clerk, 152 W. Cedar, Sequim, WA 98382. If you have questions, call 360-681-3428.

The Dignity Bus Has Already Failed Once

OlyCAP, an NGO on whose board Mike French serves, wants Port Angeles to put about $160,000 toward a $260,000 “Dignity Bus.” It’s a converted motor coach with sleep pods, built by The Source, a Florida nonprofit. A group in Kankakee, Illinois has already tried this. In 2023, Fortitude Community Outreach paid $175,000 for a 19-pod Dignity Bus from the same builder. By March 2025, its own director called it “not a long-term sustainable program. It is high maintenance, and there’s high costs of fuel” (Daily Journal).

It lasted two winters. In September 2025, Fortitude said the bus would not return. It needed repairs that “had not been part of the organization’s budget,” the maintenance person was gone, and the group was “actively looking to sell” it. Fortitude switched to renting hotel rooms instead. As of January 2026, the bus was still sitting “not in use.”

Before Port Angeles spends a dime, the council should ask OlyCAP for the full yearly cost of fuel, repairs, insurance, and overnight staff. It should ask who keeps the bus running, and what happens to the public’s money if it ends up parked in two years like Kankakee’s. And OlyCAP should first show what the $118,780 Sequim Safe Parking pilot actually delivered.

Totem Poles, Igloos, and Now a Teepee?

Totem poles aren’t traditional to the S’Klallam people. They come from the tribes of the northern British Columbia and Alaska coast, and even a Jamestown elder has said as much. Igloos aren’t S’Klallam either. They come from the Inuit. Yet Jamestown’s 7 Cedars Resort is now hiring for its “Igloo Experience.” See the job posting here.

It’s seasonal, and the pay is just over minimum wage. So would it be appropriate for someone in Sequim to open a business with a teepee attendant?

Squalor a Block From City Hall

It’s getting harder to convince people that everything is fine and nothing has changed. A recent section of the Peninsula Daily News was full of residents’ observations about Port Angeles.

They described homeless people by the city pier, encampments, abandoned shopping carts, filthy public restrooms, a drug problem, and the squalor on Peabody Street, one block from the courthouse and City Hall.

Remember, Mike French says it’s up to residents to reclaim our public spaces.

Out of Food, but Not Out of Catering?

The Port Angeles Food Bank reports that it is completely out of community food donations. Just a few weeks ago, though, the food bank catered a $50-a-plate fundraiser for Serenity House.

How did it have enough food to cater events a few weeks ago, and now it’s completely out?

Tonight in Forks: Ask the Commissioners About Your Taxes

The Board of Clallam County Commissioners will hold a Budget Town Hall tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 5 p.m. in the Forks City Hall Council Chamber, 500 E. Division St., Forks. The agenda covers the Administrator Recommended Budget and the Six-Year Transportation Improvement Program (TIP), followed by a question-and-answer session.

Details, including instructions to attend virtually, are here.

Here’s what’s interesting. Last year the county faced a multimillion-dollar deficit and asked voters for a levy lid lift. Voters said no, and the county quickly found the money elsewhere, including by renegotiating its contracts with Sequim and Port Angeles. This year it faces a deficit of about the same size. This time it’s closing the gap with a criminal justice tax, plus a one-time boost to the general fund from separating the Veterans and Developmental Disabilities levies. The entire deficit is being bridged by raising taxes, and none of it goes to a public vote.

Funny how that works.

The League’s “Low Flow” Sign Has Some Partisan Company

If you’ve driven the Old Olympic Highway east of the Dungeness River, you’ve seen the League of Women Voters’ “Low Flow Alert” sign by the road, warning about water levels in the river.

These days, that sign has company: political signs, but only for Democratic Party-endorsed candidates.

That’s interesting behavior for a group that calls itself “nonpartisan.” The jig is up, LWV. You’re about as nonpartisan as a referee wearing one team’s jersey.

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OlyCAP wants Port Angeles to help fund a converted motor coach with 20 individual sleep pods. The request comes from the same leadership that oversees a Safe Parking program limited to a handful of spaces. That program received over $118,000 in taxpayer funds approved by Commissioner Mike French, who sits on OlyCAP’s board. Public records showed substantial spending on OlyCAP staffing even as participation lagged and questions went unanswered. Residents are now being asked to trust the same arrangement with a larger ask.

The New Proposal: A 20-Bed Bus for Port Angeles

Earlier this month, OlyCAP presented the Dignity Bus to the Port Angeles City Council.

Housing Director Viola Ware described a decommissioned motor coach that the Florida nonprofit The Source retrofitted into 20 individual sleep pods. The package includes an ADA lift, secure personal storage, a private water system, onboard laundry, smart HVAC, a staff workspace, security systems, power, and Wi-Fi. The total cost is about $260,000, with delivery possible in about 10 weeks.

OlyCAP sought roughly $160,000 from the city while contributing about $98,900 itself. Council directed staff to explore funding options, including possible regional cost-sharing or affordable-housing tax funds. No purchase has been approved.

Ware has framed the bus as “not the solution to homelessness” and “simply a place to sleep” when Serenity House is unavailable. It is described as low-barrier: sobriety is not required.

OlyCAP has discussed overnight hosting with St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Port Angeles and has noted the vehicle could be based on OlyCAP property and driven in daily.

Staffing would involve “Lived Experts,” a CDL driver, and a program supervisor.

Ware introduced the concept to the County’s Homelessness Task Force, which Ware chairs, earlier in the summer.

The Track Record: $118,000 for Three Spaces

This is not the first recent request involving public dollars for limited-capacity shelter alternatives. Clallam County approved up to $118,780 for a Safe Parking pilot at Trinity United Methodist Church in Sequim intended for three to five vehicles. The program is hosted by the church, but county contract documents and internal records obtained through public disclosure show direct ties to OlyCAP personnel expenses, payroll taxes, benefits, and related costs.

Ware has stated that the church manages the program, that OlyCAP provides limited evening, morning, and on-call support, and that case management was provided “for free.” The financial registers tell a different story: public funds covered hours and benefits for specific OlyCAP employees, and Ware herself has approved payroll distributions charged to the program.

Participation has struggled since inception. Later church updates reported a small number of applicants and users after entry criteria were adjusted. No formal, publicly available evaluation of participation, outcomes, and actual costs has been produced. The combination of high cost relative to capacity, slow enrollment, and limited visibility once the money left the county ledger is the record now being asked to support a larger project.

Mike French’s Dual Role and Unanswered Questions

Commissioner Mike French sits on the OlyCAP board—a position established through a county resolution he helped draft and pass.

As a commissioner, he approved the county funding that flowed to the Safe Parking program in partnership with the NGO whose board he occupies. Prior CC Watchdog reporting has detailed how this arrangement creates overlapping roles: French participates in decisions that allocate public money to an organization on whose board he serves, while OlyCAP's Housing Director chairs the Homelessness Task Force that recommends such allocations.

French has not answered detailed public questions about the Safe Parking funds, the program’s results, or the path of the money once it reached the church-OlyCAP partnership. Ware has also not responded to emailed inquiries. At a Homelessness Task Force meeting, the body adopted the position that it is not obligated to engage in dialogue with public comment.

When public records showed OlyCAP payroll costs charged to the program, the official description of limited or “free” support remained conflicting with the documents. French’s dual role—approving the funds as commissioner while sitting on the receiving organization’s board—has not produced public explanations of how the arrangement was managed or what measurable outcomes justified the expenditure.

The LEAD Connection

Proposal materials reference Ware’s role in developing the LEAD program for the county and describe it as a model across the state.

The Washington Policy Center’s August 2026 National Retraction Brief documents widespread and systematic factual errors in how LEAD’s original research has been presented for more than a decade.

Common claims of 58 percent reductions in recidivism or large percentage drops in felony charges and employment gains substantially overstate what the underlying study shows. After accounting for design limitations, selection issues, and differences in how groups interacted with prosecutors and law enforcement, the research found little or no clear positive intervention effect on key measures.

Absolute outcomes were modest. Those inflated results helped the program spread and attract funding across the country. Relying on the same framing here, without an independent local look at what earlier programs actually delivered, is worth questioning.

What Residents Asked and What Ware Answered

After the Dignity Bus reporting, Clallam County resident Terri DiMartino wrote to Viola Ware. She noted that the bus concept had not been presented at the October 6 Homelessness Task Force meeting, even though Commissioner Mike French has described those meetings as a place for stakeholders and the community to review developments and coordinate countywide efforts. She asked for a formal evaluation of the Safe Parking program—participation, outcomes, and costs—by the end of October. She pointed out that the 2025–2030 Homeless Housing Plan does not mention acquiring a bus or using vehicles as permanent sleeping accommodations, and she asked how the proposal aligns with that plan, where the request is available for public review, what the funding source would be given the county’s budget pressures, and what measurable outcomes and comparable Washington examples would be used to judge success. She also asked about greater collaboration with Olympic Community of Health’s low-barrier funding and the role of tribal partners.

Ware replied. She thanked DiMartino for her interest and said:

• OlyCAP had submitted the only proposal in response to the city’s request for ideas to better serve people not currently using existing shelter services

• She stated that no one from OlyCAP was contacted for comment before the KONP or Peninsula Daily News stories and that some information lacked important context; she said she had reached out in hopes of an interview

• She described the goal as providing “safe, affordable, and realistic options” for people with few alternatives, noted that traditional shelter construction can cost tens of thousands of dollars per bed and take years, and said communities across the country are exploring lower-cost approaches.

• She asserted a commitment to transparency and community engagement, pointed to a June 2 Homelessness Task Force presentation on the Safe Parking program operated by Sequim Trinity United Methodist Church, and directed readers to publicly available records.

• Ware closed by encouraging people seeking information about county-supported programs to contact the appropriate public agencies directly, and restated the focus on helping people move from unsafe situations into safer ones while connecting them to medical, mental health, and recovery supports.

The reply addresses some of the process points and restates the cost argument for the bus. It does not answer the core requests.

• It does not explain why the Dignity Bus was not presented at the October 6 Task Force meeting

• It does not supply, or commit to supplying, a formal evaluation of the Safe Parking program’s participation, outcomes, and actual costs—the specific document DiMartino requested

• Pointing to a June presentation does not substitute for the performance data that has remained limited and contested in public records

• The response also does not address alignment with the 2025–2030 plan, the funding source amid county budget pressures, measurable outcomes, comparable Washington examples, collaboration with Olympic Community of Health, or the involvement of tribal partners.

Ware’s direction to contact “the appropriate public agencies” sits alongside the fact that the program in question involved county funds approved while Commissioner French sat on OlyCAP’s board, that public records showed OlyCAP personnel costs charged to the Safe Parking effort, and that both French and Ware have previously left detailed questions unanswered.

The claim of transparency offers no new information that closes the gap between the official description of limited or “free” support and the payroll registers. The reply notes that OlyCAP was the only organization to submit a proposal; it does not explain why the prior pilot’s combination of high cost relative to capacity, slow enrollment, and limited visibility once the money left the county ledger should give the public confidence in expanding the same approach.

The letter and the response therefore leave the central issues where they stood: a request for an evaluation and for answers about results, funding, plan alignment, and the dual role of the commissioner who approved the earlier funds and sits on the receiving organization’s board. Those questions remain open.

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HTF presentation (@1:19:30)

OlyCAP presentation to City of PA

OlyCAP proposal (pg 172)

Sixty years after the civil rights movement, racial segregation and discrimination are poised to make a quiet comeback under the leadership of the Clallam County Commissioners. They intend to use the Comprehensive Plan—the massive document that will chart the course of the county for the next twenty years—to accomplish it.

French’s “Misspoke” Moment on a Non-Required Assessment

Commissioner Mike French spent the month of September telling civic organizations and debate audiences that the state required the county to complete a Climate Vulnerability Assessment (CVA). His opponent, Jake Seegers, pointed out repeatedly that no such standalone assessment was required.

At the October 13 commissioners meeting, French acknowledged that he had “misspoke” and apologized. The damage, however, was already done. The CVA had been drafted behind closed doors by Cascadia Consulting Group and the North Olympic Development Council—Commissioner Mark Ozias’s NGO—and is now being treated as foundational input for the Climate Element of the Comprehensive Plan.

How the CVA Elevates Tribal Communities Above Everyone Else

Why does the CVA matter so much? Because it repeatedly elevates Tribal communities as a distinct, especially vulnerable class of people whose needs the county must prioritize. On page 17 the assessment lists “Tribal communities” as one of the core vulnerable groups alongside seniors, mobile-home residents, and low-income households.

Page 20 gives them their own dedicated subsection, citing “unique climate challenges due to their reliance on natural resources and treaty-protected lands.”

Page 24 states, in the exact language a public commenter read into the record on October 13: “In Clallam County, vulnerable groups like older adults, especially Tribal elders, and those with chronic health conditions are especially sensitive to extreme heat.”

French Defends Singling Out Tribal Elders

One public commenter noted that his own father is 89 and white, then asked how an elderly white man is any more or less vulnerable than a tribal elder. French’s reply was that elderly people are all vulnerable, yet when pressed on whether the “especially Tribal elders” phrase would remain, all three commissioners initially refused to answer. The next speaker, Mitch Zenobi, stayed at the podium for his full three minutes demanding an answer.

French finally said:

“I think that it’s perfectly reasonable for us to have a phrase like that in our comprehensive plan. I don’t think that it detracts from other members or other demographics, and I think the history of how our reservations got to be where they are is relevant. Our reservations in some cases are in some of the most vulnerable places to climate change.”

The Practical Reality of Coastal Cooling Versus Special Status

All four of Clallam County’s Tribes have traditional villages on the water. On a hot summer day, Jamestown Beach typically runs about ten degrees cooler than downtown Sequim four miles inland. The same coastal cooling effect exists at Neah Bay, Lower Elwha, and La Push.

The CVA still singles out Tribal elders as especially sensitive to heat while saying nothing about non-Tribal seniors living in hotter inland areas.

The Racism Test French Cannot Pass

If French believes the phrase is “perfectly reasonable” and does not detract from other demographics, the logical test is simple: would the commissioners accept language that said vulnerable groups “especially elderly white people”? If the answer is no, then prioritizing any other race or ethnicity is the same distinction by race.

The CVA does not stop at heat. It contains a full section on “Tribal Access to Cultural Foods and Activities” that frames climate impacts as “exacerbating the legacy of settler colonialism.”

Another section details “Tribal Emergency Management Adaptive Capacity,” cataloguing Tribal plans and resources while the county’s own residents receive only generalized treatment.

The conclusion again lists “Tribal communities” alongside the elderly and low-income residents as “particularly at risk,” positioning the assessment as the guide for future planning and resource decisions.

Real-World Preferences the CVA Would Create

Real-world consequences follow directly from this framing. During a heat wave, county-run cooling centers, bottled-water deliveries, or emergency transportation could be directed first to Tribal elders identified as “especially” sensitive.

Citizen John Worthington’s research discovered that climate-resilience grant dollars and weatherization programs could be prioritized for Tribal communities labeled “overburdened.”

Zoning and land-use decisions under the Climate Element could require “environmental-justice reviews” that give extra weight to Tribal interests, while private landowners face new restrictions justified by the same assessment.

Health-impact assessments and partnership requirements already appearing in draft Comp Plan policies—health equity for Tribal communities, environmental-justice standards for overburdened communities, and centering partnerships with Tribes—would convert the CVA’s language into binding preference.

The Board of Health’s Reconciliation Commitment

The county’s own Board of Health, chaired by Mike French, has already adopted the ideological premise. Its 2025 annual report opens with a land acknowledgment that commits the department to “working toward reconciliation and respect for their cultural heritage, traditions, and rights.”

Reconciliation usually means patching things up after a fight. In this setting it points to an open-ended obligation—something closer to reparations—that county government is supposed to keep paying. Plenty of enrolled Tribal elders today are majority European by ancestry. Under the CVA’s framing, a multimillion-dollar tribal corporation CEO like Jamestown Elder Ron Allen would get first dibs on a cooling center or resilience money ahead of a non-Tribal senior of the same age and health living on the same street.

Call to Action: Speak on Tuesday

French and Ozias are the commissioners who advanced this framework while Commissioner Johnson and Administrator Mielke were absent. French is now the one defending the resulting language as reasonable and historically justified. The Comprehensive Plan public hearing resumes this Tuesday, October 27, at 10:30 a.m. in the Commissioners’ Meeting Room (or via the county’s Zoom link). The board is taking public comment.

Residents should tell the commissioners that the CVA must be discarded or completely revised, that the county will not return to an age of racial preference, and that every citizen of Clallam County is entitled to equal representation and equal treatment under the plan that will govern the next twenty years.

Email all three commissioners through Clerk of the Board Loni Gores at loni.gores@clallamcountywa.gov and DCD Director Bruce Emery at bruce.emery@clallamcountywa.gov, then show up in person or online so they have to hear it from the people they were elected to represent.

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Clallam Climate Vulnerability

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In this Sundays With Seegers, County Commissioner candidate Jake Seegers shares powerful news: 659 of our neighbors signed the petition to reopen Olympic Hot Springs Road. The signatures came from kitchen tables, family conversations, and booths at this summer’s festivals—proof that Clallam County is ready to lead. This is what happens when a community refuses to wait and decides to write its own letter of support.

I couldn’t be more grateful for what this community has done.

Over the summer, we collected hundreds of signatures to reopen Olympic Hot Springs Road—proof that when Clallam County organizes, things move.

Thank you to everyone who signed, shared, and showed up. This is what community leadership looks like.

Back in May, I wrote “Reopening the Elwha: A Community-Led Path Forward” on Clallam County Watchdog. I laid out why restoring this access matters—not just to visitors, but to the people and businesses of Clallam County.

For generations, the Elwha entrance provided a gateway into the heart of Olympic National Park’s Elwha Valley just fifteen minutes from downtown Port Angeles. Before the repeated closures, more than 74,000 vehicles a year traveled this road, bringing visitors into our community and providing access to trailheads, Olympic Hot Springs, the Glines Canyon overlook, and some of the most spectacular country in Olympic National Park.

Those visitors didn’t just drive through the Elwha. They ate in our restaurants, stayed in our hotels and vacation rentals, bought fuel and supplies, and supported the small businesses that depend on tourism.

After more than a decade of washouts, stalled timelines, and uncertainty, that gateway remains closed to vehicles beyond Madison Falls. The National Park Service itself has described Olympic Hot Springs Road as the only vehicular access into the Elwha Valley. (⁠Park Planning)

Reopening the Elwha is about much more than rebuilding a road. It is about restoring access to the heart of the park, strengthening our tourism economy, supporting local businesses, and giving visitors another quality destination so Hurricane Ridge and our other heavily visited areas don’t have to carry the full load.

Access is foundational to Clallam County’s economy. With so much of our county in federal ownership, our ability to benefit economically from these extraordinary public lands depends in large part on people’s ability to reach them.

When we lose access, we don’t just lose recreation. We lose visitors, economic activity, and opportunity for local families and businesses.

The Elwha was once one of Olympic National Park’s major gateways. It can be again.

I’m proud to announce that we gathered 659 signatures on the petition to reopen Olympic Hot Springs Road.

Those signatures came from neighbors and family members, and from the folks who stopped by our booths at Joyce Daze, Unity of Effort, and the Clallam County Fair. Meeting so many of you this summer was one of the true highlights of the year. Every conversation reminded me that our greatest asset in Clallam County is the people.

We’ve entered a new era. We don’t have to sit and wait years for the chain of command to notice our issues. When we organize, we have power—and this signature drive is living proof. This is a community-led solution.

We are sending the petition to:

Federal Officials

• President Donald J. Trump
  Contact form: whitehouse.gov/contact
  Phone: 202-456-1111 (comments) / 202-456-1414 (switchboard)
  Mail: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500

• Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum
  Phone: (202) 208-3100
  Mail: Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street NW, Washington, DC 20240

• National Park Service leadership (Jessica Bowron exercising the delegated authority of the Director)
  Mail: National Park Service, 1849 C Street NW, Washington, DC 20240

• Olympic National Park Superintendent Sula Jacobs
  Email: olym_superintendent@nps.gov
  Mail: Olympic National Park, 600 E. Park Avenue, Port Angeles, WA 98362
  Phone: 360-565-3000 or 360-565-3130

• NPS Pacific West Regional Director (Acting: Randy Lavasseur)
  Phone: 415-623-2100
  Address: 555 Battery Street, Suite 121, San Francisco, CA 94111

Washington Congressional Delegation

• Sen. Patty Murray
  Contact form: murray.senate.gov/write-to-patty
  Phone: 202-224-2621
  Mail: 154 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

• Sen. Maria Cantwell
  Contact form on cantwell.senate.gov
  Phone: 202-224-3441
  Mail: 511 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510

• Rep. Emily Randall
  Contact form on randall.house.gov
  Phone: 202-225-5916
  District offices: Bremerton (345 6th St, Suite 500, Bremerton, WA 98337; 360-373-9725); Tacoma (253-272-3515)

I couldn’t be more proud of this community. The turnout and hard work didn’t surprise me one bit—because I know the people of Clallam County believe in solutions that start with us.

Thank you for standing up, for signing, and for showing what’s possible when we work together. The best is still ahead for the Elwha Valley and for Clallam County.

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Sponsored by Jake Seegers for Commissioner (IND), 131 E. First St., Port Angeles, WA 98362

Ballots are in the mail, the county commissioner race is tight, and social media does what it does best: amplify the fights, the failures, and the occasional sharp reminder that local government answers to the people who live here. From a mysterious truck taking out downtown lights to Health Officer lectures that sound more like economics seminars than public health, here’s what Clallam County has been talking about.

Return Your Ballot. Please Vote.

Ballots are out. Mark yours, seal it, and return it. Every election is decided by the people who actually show up. This one is no different.

Mystery Truck Damages Downtown Port Angeles Lights

The occupants of a pickup truck are suspected of causing thousands of dollars in damage to lights in downtown Port Angeles. Guess who covers the repair bill? If you live or shop in Port Angeles, you do. The city will pass the cost along to residents and businesses through taxes and fees. No public identification of the driver has been released yet.

Will Jake Win? New Supporters Are Speaking Up

It’s going to be close. What’s new is that people who have never publicly backed a candidate before are choosing Jake Seegers. First-time endorsers are stepping forward. Every vote will matter.

Read the Grim Reporter on the Board of Health Meeting

The latest Grim Reporter piece covers the Board of Health meeting and Commissioner Mike French’s vehement defense of Health Officer Allison Berry. It also notes the sanctimonious lectures Commissioners French and Ozias delivered to the gallery, along with French’s misrepresentation of the law.

The Grim Reporter

Mike French Defends Dr. Berry’s Death Threat Against the President

The Sanctimonious Standard…

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22 days ago · 12 likes · 18 comments · GrimReporter

The commissioners would do well to reread the county’s employee code of conduct before selectively applying it to protect the activist ideologues they favor.

Hiking Mount Storm King in Election Season

While the campaign noise fills the feeds, some locals are still heading for the trail.

When Will “Harm Reduction” Reduce Harm for Citizens?

The question keeps coming up: when does the harm-reduction model start measuring harm to the people who live and work around the programs, not just the people receiving supplies?

Will Port Angeles Declare a Humanitarian Crisis?

Downtown merchants and residents keep asking when Port Angeles will treat homelessness and the street-level crisis with the urgency it applies to other issues.

French on France

A Message from Someone Who Loves This County

One resident put it simply: this election matters to people who intend to stay here. The outcome will shape the county for years.

Jim Stoffer Goes After a Jake Supporter—and Gets an Answer

Jim Stoffer, featured as a Mike French endorser on French’s website and safety lead for Indivisible, has spent his time criticizing Jake Seegers supporters rather than discussing French’s record. He suggested supporter Kelly Johnson has a “crush on Jake” and is wealthy enough to own property on Freshwater Bay, implying her support is about real-estate interests.

Kelly saw the post. She wants Stoffer and Debra to know the rest of the story: she was in a 25-year relationship with her former husband. They built a dream home together. He died unexpectedly. After that loss, she inherited the house. She is still coming to terms with the tragedy. She wouldn't wish that path to acquiring property on anyone.

David Rogers recorded an exchange with Mike French at the county fair in which French said, “It’s really important that we police people on our own side.”

Stoffer has compared Seegers to the KKK and to Nazis during the Holocaust, and is now attacking Seegers’ supporters with personal speculation. The question follows: will Commissioner French police his own side?

Sign Theft Celebrated

Sign theft is increasing as Election Day nears. Alexandria Fermanis, one of the people previously identified in sticker-bandit activity, has celebrated a French supporter having a trunk full of Jake Seegers signs.

Fermanis has also posted artwork referencing a time Jake Seegers helped me recover from a hangover while Mitch Zenobi, Stacey Richards, a mystery nurse, and the President visited me in bed.

Is Anyone Talking About Mike French’s Achievements?

Here’s a direct question for Mike French supporters: Is anyone highlighting what he's accomplished in four years, or is the campaign purely criticism of Jake Seegers? A post from Indivisible Sequim drew comparisons involving Jake Seegers and the “banality of evil,” with Miriam Rose writing that Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and others used metaphor to further genocidal programs.

Banality of evil aside, how has Mike French made Clallam County better?

More Sign Theft

Additional reports of campaign signs disappearing continue to circulate.

Wales Moves Toward Voter Recall for Deliberate Deception

Wales has strengthened standards, requiring members to avoid deliberately misleading statements and to correct factual inaccuracies. It is also advancing measures aimed at election candidates who knowingly make false claims. Serious misconduct would not automatically remove a politician; it would trigger a formal recall process in which voters decide whether the person keeps the seat.

Wouldn’t that be nice for Clallam County?

Health Officer Deflects to Macroeconomics—Satire from the Strait Shooter

The satirical Strait Shooter has a new piece titled “Health Officer Deflects Harm Reduction Backlash to Mystery Forces of Macroeconomics.”

It portrays Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry telling the Board of Health that the overdose crisis and encampments are the result of complex macroeconomic forces—supply-chain disruptions, yield-curve shifts, liquidity traps—rather than the daily distribution of foil, pipes, and injection kits.

The Strait Shooter

Friday Discharge

Clallam County Fire District Asks Forest to Submit Reliable Annual Budget After Trees Miss Revenue Projections…

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22 days ago · 12 likes · 3 comments · The Strait Shooter

While reading, you have to remind yourself that it’s satire.

Sequim’s Halloween Birthday Is Almost Here—Has Anyone Noticed?

Sequim was incorporated on October 31, 1913—the only municipality in Washington with a Halloween birthday. Clallamity Jen at the Sequim Monitor has pointed out that Monday’s city council agenda contains a proclamation for Native American Heritage Month but no mention of the city’s own 113th birthday.

The city’s 2027 budget book also omits the October 31 date from its history section. The October newsletter also stays silent. Bucoda calls itself the “World’s Tiniest Town with the Biggest Halloween Spirit,” yet Sequim has the Halloween incorporation date. Whether the council acknowledges it Monday night is anyone’s guess; the agenda and recent city communications do not. Read the Sequim Monitor for the full account.

The Sequim Monitor

Did Sequim Forget Its Birthday?

The Coolest Thing No One Talks About and May Not Know…

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22 days ago · 9 likes · 6 comments · Clallamity Jen

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The League of Women Voters still prints “nonpartisan” on its letterhead and still receives privileged access to forums, voter guides, public buildings, and elections because of that claim. Karen Crowley’s Peninsula Daily News column defends the organization by splitting hairs between “political” and “partisan.” Local evidence shows that distinction has collapsed. The Clallam County chapter and its leaders function as one side in a partisan contest while still collecting the credibility and institutional access that were granted under the old promise of neutrality.

The Semantic Escape Hatch

Crowley’s piece rests on a familiar claim: the League does not endorse parties or candidates; therefore, it remains nonpartisan even when it takes strong positions on issues. That framing treats the League’s own rules as optional. In practice, the local chapter has spent years aligning with one political direction. The League now sells “Political but not partisan” as the distinction. The record shows the League has repeatedly crossed that line.

Paid Ads Against a President

The Clallam County League ran a paid advertisement in the Peninsula Daily News under the headline “LWVUS Condemns Trump Administration’s Weaponization of Government Against Americans.”

The ad accused the administration of terrorizing immigrants, gays, attacking civil rights, and undermining democracy in its first 17 days. It was not a narrow critique of a single policy. It was a full-throated condemnation of a president and his administration. No comparable advertisement has appeared against Democratic administrations.

Partners Who Pick Candidates

The same chapter regularly tables, marches, and co-hosts events with Indivisible Sequim. Indivisible endorses candidates, produces partisan voter guides, and has turned local rallies into opposition events aimed at the President, Jake Seegers, and Virginia Shogren.

League members appear at these events under League branding.

Crowley argues that partnerships do not compromise the League’s nonpartisanship as long as the shared activity stays focused on an issue. That claim fails when the partner organization exists specifically to defeat particular candidates and the League still lends it both its name and its volunteers. At that point the distinction between issue-based work and partisan activity disappears.

The Face of the Local League

Norma Turner has been a League member for more than five decades and has served multiple terms as president of the Clallam County chapter. Public Disclosure Commission records show she donated $1,000 to Mike French’s campaign for county commissioner—one of his larger individual contributions. She has voiced radio ads for French and filmed a Facebook video promoting his candidacy.

In the video, she claims Seegers wants to send troubled youth out of the county, deport anyone who uses drugs, and make people afraid of the homeless. None of those statements appear in Seegers’ recorded debates, questionnaires, or public comments. Turner has not produced the quotes or context to substantiate them.

If Norma Turner, Karen Crowley, Mike French, or any League official can document that Jake Seegers said any of those things, Clallam County Watchdog will make a donation to the local League of Women Voters chapter. Until then, the video stands as a sitting commissioner’s most prominent local supporter circulating falsehoods about his opponent while the organization that still claims nonpartisan status stays silent.

Title IX and the Girls’ Sports Initiative

Crowley herself has been associated with opposition to Initiative 638, which would require biological males to compete in boys’ sports rather than girls’ sports. She helped author the voters’ pamphlet statement against the citizen-led initiative.

The organization that once advanced women’s suffrage now opposes measures that preserve the protections Title IX was written to guarantee. Young female athletes lose podium places, scholarships, and physical safety while the League treats biological reality as a partisan talking point rather than settled policy.

One Direction Only

Crowley asks why the League has “so much to say” if it does not take sides. The record shows the answer: the organization says a great deal when the position aligns with radical, progressive priorities and almost nothing when it doesn't. It has not run ads against Democratic administrations. It has not partnered with groups that endorse Republican or independent candidates. Its leaders’ donations and public advocacy flow overwhelmingly in one direction. National League materials now frame the country as in a “constitutional crisis” under a program titled “Women Defend Democracy: Democracy Under Siege.” Local chapters are instructed to implement that framing.

The Brand That Buys Access

The League retains its special access—curated forums, ballot processing, and tables in public buildings—only because enough people still believe the old brand. That access is not automatic. It was granted on the explicit claim of neutrality. When the claim no longer matches the behavior—paid anti-administration ads, partnerships with groups that endorse candidates, ballot handling in races those groups have already picked, and a longtime president circulating lies about a challenger—the privilege should end.

Is Norma Turner defending democracy, or desecrating it? Crowley’s column asks the public to treat a word game as if it were still true. The local evidence shows the distinction has already been abandoned.

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At Tuesday’s Clallam County Board of Health meeting, Chairman Mike French stood up for Health Officer Allison Berry, telling the public that county employees’ personal lives are “none of our business” and that his job is to defend them. He also said Berry was named Citizen of the Year by the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce and that local schools reopened faster than most districts in the country. Neither claim is true.

The Meeting and the Canceled Review

After several public comments criticizing local health policy—and after Health Officer Allison Berry’s own extreme political statements came under scrutiny—Board of Health Chairman Mike French rose to her defense.

A special meeting scheduled immediately before the regular Board of Health session was set to consider an executive session, closed to the public, to review a public employee's performance. That meeting was canceled and appears to have been pushed to November 6, after the election.

As Board of Health chair, French will not have to make any difficult decisions about Berry’s performance until after voters have already cast their ballots.

French’s Defense: Standing Up for Employees, Not Constituents

Near the end of the meeting, French explained that county employees are “hired to do a job — their job is what we care about. What happens in their personal life is none of our business.” He added that one of the roles of elected officials is “just to stand up for our employees and to make sure that they are treated fairly.”

Some residents expected that French’s primary duty, as an elected official earning roughly $118,000 a year, would be to represent the constituents who put him in office. Instead, he framed his role as protecting Berry. As Health Officer, Berry held delegated authority during the COVID period to restrict businesses, control access to public places, limit church services, and influence travel rules. Critics argue that unchecked power of that kind requires oversight, not automatic defense. French’s comments suggested his job is to shield Berry from accountability rather than help the public address legitimate concerns.

The Citizen of the Year Claim

French told someone in the gallery who had not lived in Clallam County during the COVID restrictions that “our health officer was selected by our chamber of commerce as the citizen of the year.” He said he was “personally convinced that my community, that a lot of what you heard today is not representative of my community,” and that the community “valued the direction and the support that our public health officer gave us through a global pandemic.”

That award claim is not accurate. Allison Berry (then often referred to as Dr. Allison Berry Unthank) was a finalist for Citizen of the Year in the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce’s Fourth Annual Community Awards, which covered 2020 and were presented in late January or early February 2021. She was not the winner. The award went to Steve Deutermann, board president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula. The other finalist was Patty Pastore. Contemporary reporting from the Peninsula Daily News and Radio Pacific confirms the finalists and the winner.

No available records show Berry winning the Port Angeles Chamber’s Citizen of the Year award in 2020, 2021, or other years. She did receive other local recognitions around that time, including a “Making a Difference” award from the League of Women Voters of Clallam County.

Allison Berry certainly did “make a difference” for several small business owners.

The School Reopening Claim

French also said the Board of Health focused for years on “making sure that we had a response, that people didn’t die, that our kids could go back to school. Our school districts were able to put kids back in school faster than most school districts across the country. We’re proud of that response.” He told the room that “the true story is very different.”

The national comparison is not merely inaccurate — it is the opposite of French’s “true story.”

Clallam County schools, including Port Angeles and Sequim, began the 2020–21 year mostly remote after a case-rate spike and a recommendation from the county health department. Limited hybrid learning (typically two days a week for younger grades) did not start until October 2020. Port Angeles Superintendent Martin Brewer later noted that local districts were ahead of much of Washington state, where roughly 75 percent of students remained remote until after Gov. Inslee’s April 19, 2021 order forcing hybrid options.

Washington as a whole, however, was among the slowest states in the country. In fall 2020, more than 94 percent of Washington students started the year fully remote — roughly double the national rate. By February 2021, Burbio’s In-Person Index ranked Washington 47th out of 50 states, with only 19 percent of students receiving any in-person instruction. Many districts across the South, Midwest, and Mountain West had already offered broader in-person options for months.

Local hybrid reopening in October 2020 was earlier than many districts inside Washington. It was not faster than most districts across the country. French’s claim is false. Berry did not correct it. Both the award statement and the school-reopening claim remain unchallenged in the official meeting record.

Public Comments on Recent Deaths

Carlsborg resident Joyce Stuart, also a member of the Homelessness Task Force which advises the commissioners, spoke about her friend Jamie Trudeau, who died after an incident in the Baker Dip captured on police body camera.

She said CC Watchdog had turned Trudeau’s death into a “political statement.” Stuart explained that Trudeau did not die from an opioid overdose but from blunt force trauma in an accident “probably due to lack of lighting.” She argued that because he was homeless, and because of the political climate, his death was politicized as an indictment of the Harm Reduction Health Center. She said he probably collided on his bicycle with the other man found passed out, and that was the cause of death. “He did not die from an overdose,” she said, and that watching the video would show “exactly what happened.”

Stuart did not address why straws for smoking fentanyl and foil with charred marks were found around the victims, or how both men were found without pulses but revived with Narcan.

A young man, Cody Mollway, also spoke. “I’m here tonight because my dad recently died right down in the Baker Dip. His name was John Adkins,” he said. “I just want to say that I think the harm reduction is not working. He was on Suboxone for a lot of years, and then he switched to methadone, and in less than a year he spiraled out of control… and it’s obvious now if you look down at Peabody [street] and stuff, it’s just horrifying. I think something needs to happen, to stop what’s going on.”

Before Cody Mollway spoke, it had not been publicly known that both men found in the Baker Dip in July had died.

Accountability and Next Steps

The contrast is difficult to ignore. Clallam County Public Health has repeatedly warned residents about the dangers of misinformation and urged them to trust official sources. Yet when Board of Health Chairman Mike French claimed that Health Officer Allison Berry had been named Citizen of the Year by the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce and that local schools reopened faster than most districts in the country, Berry said nothing. Both statements were false, and neither was corrected. Those claims are now part of the official meeting record.

The department’s anti-misinformation efforts appear to apply only to the public, not to the elected official defending the Health Officer.

French’s defense of Berry rests on two claims that do not match the record. Both went unchallenged by Berry. At the same time, public speakers raised questions about whether current harm-reduction policies are contributing to deaths rather than preventing them.

The postponed performance review means French will not have to confront these issues until after the election. The question left for residents is direct: if French’s stated role is to stand up for Berry, who is responsible for standing up for the public?

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