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.

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…

Read more

8 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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8 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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8 days ago · 9 likes · 6 comments · Clallamity Jen

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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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The October 20, 2026 meeting runs 1:30–3:30 p.m. in the Clallam County Courthouse Board of Commissioners Meeting Room 160, 223 E. 4th Street, Port Angeles. Attend in person or join virtually and comment. The first public comment period is open. Use it.

The issue is the documented record of Health Officer Allison Berry’s past statements. In 2006, on a LiveJournal under the handle pudlsplashr, she wrote that she would shoot George Bush in his sleep.

The same posts include a fantasy about secretly sterilizing her younger brother and other extreme political statements. Full archival of Berry’s statement can be found in an article by the Grim Reporter.

Read the Grim Reporter

French chairs the Board of Health that oversees her. For years he publicly demanded clear condemnation of political violence and insisted that people be judged by what they say out loud. He applied that standard without hesitation to the President.

In October 2018, he posted this after attempted bombings targeting Democratic figures:

On June 9, 2020, he reacted to a Trump tweet about the Buffalo protester this way:

Later that year, he shared the Atlantic piece claiming Trump called war dead “losers” and “suckers,” arguing the public record already showed who the President was:

On January 6, 2021, he described events in Washington as “violent armed vigilantes” storming the capital:

Those are Mike French’s words. He said political violence is terrorism, that leaders must state clearly it is unacceptable, and that people who say outrageous things out loud should be believed.

The same standard has not been applied to Berry’s threat to shoot a sitting president in his sleep. The Board has not placed her professionalism on the agenda. Ask French tomorrow whether the rules he wrote and posted for years apply to the Health Officer he supervises. Consistency requires an answer.

Thank you, CCWD Subscriber Ashley Melville, for supplying this article’s images.

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Today’s “No Kings” rallies arrive as Clallam County residents still can’t safely walk the Olympic Discovery Trail or shop at the Lincoln Street Safeway. Local women just put Jake Seegers on the hot seat about why the drug crisis keeps growing, and families keep leaving. Meanwhile, stickers deface property, a machete-wielding man appears on the trail, and a double-homicide suspect gets a competency evaluation.

Local Women Put Jake Seegers in the Hot Seat

Concerned Clallam County women put Jake Seegers in the hot seat for an unfiltered conversation about why local families are being priced out, why the drug and homelessness crisis keeps growing despite millions spent, and why so many businesses are finally speaking up.

They dig into the real levers a county commissioner controls: rolling back fees and regulations that block income, protecting the timber industry from lawfare, forcing budget and NGO accountability, ending outdoor living as an accepted option, prioritizing locals for housing, and reforming shelters so they demand treatment and a path to work instead of simply counting beds. The women—longtime residents, a former mayor, a West End doctor, and working parents—press him on the toxic online climate, the comprehensive plan’s hidden costs, and public safety failures that have made people avoid places like Safeway. Seegers answers with specific, practical proposals rather than slogans. The group closes by reminding viewers that three votes once decided a local race. If you care whether Port Angeles, the West End, and the rest of the county can still be a place working families choose to stay, this is the discussion worth watching in full.

No Kings, Handmaids, and the Real Rape Culture

Today are the “No Kings” protests. According to Indivisible, “Join us as we celebrate our right to vote and rally against authoritarian rule.”

Here’s the thing: if you’re voting, it’s a democracy. No authoritarian rule, no kings.

Expect the handmaids in full force, dressed in their red cloaks. Their new message for people trying to reach businesses in downtown Sequim is “Stop Rape Culture.”

Indivisible is even linking “rape culture” to CC Watchdog and the Jake Seegers campaign.

Yes, there is a rape culture in Clallam County. It happens in Tumwater Creek when we allow outdoor living. Vulnerable women are invited into tents to stay warm and sometimes use drugs with paraphernalia supplied for free by the Harm Reduction Center. Then the terms change: if you want to stay warm and dry in a man’s tent, he demands more. Rape culture also occurs when we attract out-of-county criminals with free services. One fifteen-year-old found that out in a public restroom when she was raped multiple times by Avonte Abram. Soft-on-crime policies and the active encouragement of drug use are driving much of it.

Bradley Callaway’s Delivery-Driver Math

On a recent post about deaths in law enforcement, Bradley Callaway—the Democratic Socialist candidate who ran for state representative and was eliminated in the primary—commented that “being a delivery driver is twice as dangerous as being a police officer.”

We dodged that bullet.

Johnny Talbert Ordered to Undergo Competency Evaluation

Remember Johnny Talbert? He’s the homeless vagrant who hid in plain sight in Port Angeles for years while using social services until he was arrested outside Serenity House and extradited to North Carolina after being accused of a double homicide. He has now been ordered to undergo a competency evaluation.

Read more at the Olympic Herald here.

Machete Encounter on the Olympic Discovery Trail

Imagine going for a morning walk on the Olympic Discovery Trail in rural Carlsborg and encountering a man with a machete, screaming and moving in your direction.

Do you feel safer than you did four years ago?

The Year of Stickers

The 2026 Mike French campaign will go down as the year stickers were used to deface public and private property.

Reaction to the North View Housing Story

A recent CCWD story about a drug-using criminal being handed one of the luxury homeless housing apartments at the new North View complex drew this comment on Facebook:

Ballot Drop Reminder

When you return your ballot, please consider dropping it off at an official ballot drop box. Several people are saying that USPS is taking much longer than usual. Find your nearest ballot drop box location here.

Bullet Casing at the Courthouse “Un”Safeway

We know the “Un”Safeway across from the courthouse is commonly a place for drug use, drug dealing, and panhandling, but finding a bullet casing in the parking lot takes it to a whole new level.

Mike French says the public needs to take back their public spaces, and he’s planning a new criminal justice tax next year. Maybe more money will fix the problem?

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Retired Sequim School teacher and Indivisible activist Martha Rudersdorf is back on Facebook—this time under the name “Karla Keasey Rogers”—explaining why she’s voting for Mike French. Her video paints Jake Seegers as a “youngish,” “very wealthy” outsider from Texas who has been “nonstop telling us what is wrong with our county” while buying up properties. The claims collapse under even basic scrutiny of his life story, financial filings, debate statements, and property records.

Posting as “Karla Keasey Rogers,” Martha Rudersdorf’s short video endorsing Mike French for Clallam County Commissioner District 3 is circulating on Facebook.

She begins by calling Jake Seegers a “very wealthy, youngish man and his family” who “moved to Clallam County from Texas.” She says he has been “nonstop telling us what is wrong with our county, our home,” that he is using his wealth to “buy up properties across our area,” and that he “promises to fix things without any reference to working with others and without a clear knowledge of the costs of his solutions.”

She contrasts this with Mike French, who “grew up here,” “treasures and respects what we have here in Clallam County,” and is “a collaborator, open and willing to work with others.”

These are not minor slips. They are the exact talking points that have circulated for months from the anonymous Salsa Picante blog—an account that portrayed Seegers as a Texas real-estate developer quietly accumulating land and airport-adjacent parcels. The blog has gone largely dormant, but its framing lives on.

“Youngish” and “From Texas”

Age is irrelevant to the job of county commissioner. More importantly, the geographic claim is inaccurate.

Jake Seegers was born in Montana. Following his father’s medical schooling in Dallas and medical residency in Salt Lake City, his parents, both medical professionals, moved to northern Mexico when Jake was eleven to do nonprofit medical work with the Tarahumara people. He spent much of his childhood there, moving to Texas only for two months of his senior year of high school. He attended college in Bozeman, Montana, earned an MBA in Ohio, worked briefly in New York City, then worked in finance and portfolio management in Midland, TX, and lived in El Paso while his wife attended medical school. The family then spent three years in New Hampshire during her residency before moving to Clallam County in 2019. Their daughter was born here.

If labels matter to Indivisible members, the more accurate description is that Seegers spent much of his formative years in rural Mexico. His own campaign site describes assisting his parents in mobile clinics, taking vital signs and preparing prescriptions in Spanish. One might expect an Indivisible activist with her own documented ties to nonprofit work in rural Mexico to treat that background as a feature rather than a liability.

Wealth and Property

Rudersdorf’s “very wealthy” framing also does not match public records. Seegers’ PDC financial affairs statements show modest holdings. He has been a stay-at-home father and primary educator for their children; his wife, an emergency-room physician, is the primary breadwinner and works locum shifts that take her out of town for weeks at a time.

He is not a real-estate developer. He has never built a house. The family rents their home while saving to build, someday, on land they bought on Freshwater Bay. They sunk their life savings into purchasing that property. They also own a small, primitive camping parcel on the Elwha and co-own another near the ocean in Grays Harbor County with close friends. Three parcels total, no houses.

By comparison, public assessor data show Rudersdorf and her husband own a home in Clallam County appraised at roughly $635,000 and a second Sequim property appraised at about $185,000. Ordinary ownership is not a scandal for either family. Treating Seegers’ limited holdings as evidence of predatory wealth while ignoring one’s own large portfolio is selective framing.

The Debate She Attended

Rudersdorf attended the Clallam County Democrats’ candidate forum. The claim that Seegers offers solutions “without any reference to working with others and without a clear knowledge of the costs” is difficult to square with the transcript.

Seegers opened by speaking about wanting kids and grandkids to have the chance to stay or return, with economic opportunity, clean and safe places, and the ability to afford a home. He repeatedly framed public safety as the foundation for economic development, fiscal responsibility, and affordability. He cited specific numbers:

• County expenses up 51% since 2019 versus 26% inflation (Bellevue CPI)

• Sales and property tax revenue up 39%

• An additional $16 million in grants spent

• Law enforcement spending lagging inflation

• On Recompete, Jake detailed overhead—millions flowing to administrative costs across Olympic Community of Health, NODC, and the county itself—before any program delivery

• He contrasted $30,000-per-unit transitional housing costs with $350,000–$500,000 permanent supportive units

• He described a three-hour meeting with Makah Tribal Council member TJ Greene, praised Jamestown S’Klallam’s economic success as a model for lower fees, taxes, and regulation, and said he had reached out to all four tribes

• He spoke about property rights, vacation-rental rules, the need for measurable outcomes (recovery and self-sufficiency rather than inputs like syringes distributed or beds filled), and the practical limits of “housing first” without accountability

These are not the remarks of someone uninterested in costs or unwilling to engage stakeholders.

Collaboration

Rudersdorf calls French “a collaborator, open and willing to work with others.” French has posted publicly about speakers at county meetings: “Speaker after speaker shouting at county representatives and employees are unhinged conspiracy theorists spouting complete nonsense.”

He also wrote: “The most amazing thing to me is, they really think their nonsense should be convincing. Like, if the Board of Health had a public hearing and let them voice their positions, the decision would’ve been different?”

Commissioner French currently chairs the Board of Health and listens to public commenters.

A commissioner represents an entire district, not only the people who agree with him. Dismissing public commenters in those terms doesn't read like the open collaboration Rudersdorf describes. French’s record on specific issues—harm-reduction expansion, permanent supportive housing costs, shelter performance, and budget growth—can be evaluated on outcomes rather than rhetoric. When people examine Mike French’s record, they often take the easier path — attacking his challenger’s age, origin, or modest assets — rather than celebrating French’s accomplishments.

Origins and Distractions

Rudersdorf isn’t from here; she grew up in Wisconsin. She and her husband bought land in Sequim that had already been subdivided into 5-acre “ranchettes.” They combined the parcels and permanently preserved roughly 50 acres of farmland. That is ordinary real estate activity. It is also ordinary that people move here from elsewhere—whether from the Midwest, Texas, New Hampshire, or Mexico—and that some own more property than others. These facts do not disqualify anyone. They become distractions only when people use them selectively against one candidate while leaving policy questions (public safety, measurable results from nonprofit contracts, housing costs, and whether current approaches produce the outcomes residents want) unexamined.

When I emailed Rudersdorf to ask what led her to call Seegers “very wealthy,” the source for the Texas claim, and where ordinary ownership ends and scrutiny begins, she replied that she wouldn’t be answering questions. I invited her to contact Jake with any questions, but she hasn’t.

That is her choice. It also aligns with an approach that treats labels and voting for party-over-people as sufficient and sees further inquiry as unnecessary.

Clallam County voters can decide for themselves. Public records, the full forum transcript, financial disclosures, and assessor data are available. The choice is between focusing on those records and the results of recent years, or continuing to recycle anonymous blog framing about a “wealthy outsider.”

The information is out there.
Read it.

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You’ve paid the general contractor. He approved the contracts, signed the checks, and sits on the boards that spend the money. But when a retired county employee with decades of grant and budget experience spent ten months asking why the numbers don’t add up, Mike French told her to call the church and the NGO. Those entities answer to no one—and under French’s leadership, neither does he.

The General Contractor Who Won’t Answer

If you’ve ever built or remodeled a house, you know what a general contractor is. You give them your money. They hire the subs, oversee the work, and answer to you when the countertops are wrong, or the cabinets are falling apart. You don’t get sent to “talk to the counter guy, because you paid the GC.

Clallam County’s commissioners operate the same way—with one critical difference. They take your tax dollars and write the checks, then act as if the work is no longer their responsibility the moment the money leaves the county’s account. Under Mike French’s leadership, that has become standard practice.

He approved $4 million of your money for Peninsula Behavioral Health’s North View complex—housing that prioritizes frequent criminals and people actively using drugs. When residents raise concerns, French’s response is to contact PBH CEO, Wendy Sisk. He did the same during the Towne Road debacle with the Jamestown Tribe: direct your questions to the sovereign nation. NGOs and tribes are under no legal obligation to answer you once the check is cashed. Public records laws do not apply. They can ignore you, and that is legal. French knows this, and he still sends people there.

$118,000 for Three Parking Spaces

The pattern is clearest in the Sequim Safe Parking program.

Commissioner French approved $118,000 for three parking spaces at Trinity United Methodist Church in Sequim.

The church then contracts with OlyCAP—an NGO on whose board French himself sits. A retired Sequim resident who goes by CAS (an accountant and auditor by training, with years of county government experience overseeing large public budgets, grants, and contracts in another state) has spent the last ten months trying to reconcile the numbers. The metrics don’t match the grant documents. Payroll records don’t line up with public statements. Roughly 65 percent of the funding is flowing to OlyCAP even though the county’s contract is with the church. Staff has been added beyond what the original grant authorized.

When she raises these points, French and county staff keep sending her back to the church or to OlyCAP. They ignore her or give her the runaround.

Ten Months and Nothing to Show

CAS is not a casual critic. She is a retired professional who has sat in the same kinds of rooms French occupies, represented departments at board meetings, negotiated with tribes, and managed public money at a scale far larger than Clallam’s. She has spent ten months on this one program and has nothing clear to show for it. In a recent email, she told French exactly that:

“I am an accountant and auditor by education, with many years of county government experience in another state, including budget, grants, and contractual oversight… I know what I am looking at, and I know when something is wrong.”

She has asked the structural questions that should trigger an internal review:

• Who is monitoring a grant whose contract is with the church but whose staff and majority of funding run through an NGO on which the approving commissioner sits?

• Why are outside staff being hired when the grant did not authorize it?

• Why does OlyCAP’s Viola Ware publicly claim to have “no idea” about funding while payroll records show her name approving related pay?

The Deflection

French’s reply is long, polished, and almost entirely deflective. He points her to a county employee named Christine Dunn for “independent oversight.” He explains that he only approved the money because the church planned to hire a social-service agency. He lectures her on the difference between Monday work sessions and Tuesday voting meetings. He defends the Recompete metrics shift, the OPHS collapse, the prosecutor’s dual role as the commissioners’ lawyer, and past audit findings. He disputes that anything is non-transparent.

What he does not do is answer the questions CAS actually asked. This is the voice of a commissioner who has decided that once the money is out the door, the questions are no longer his problem. It is defensive. It is lazy. It is the opposite of stewardship.

Time for Someone Else

A general contractor who responded to a homeowner the way French responds to a taxpayer would be fired and would likely lose his license. In Clallam County, the same behavior is treated as normal governance. The public is told the Homelessness Task Force will evaluate results someday. Staff will handle oversight. The church or the NGO will explain. Meanwhile, the same circle of people and organizations keep receiving the contracts, and the person who approved them keeps sitting on their boards.

CAS closed her email with a simple observation many residents now share: the last few years have made the county nearly unrecognizable; families are leaving, and without transparency and competent oversight, the people who make a place strong will keep leaving. French’s reply did not engage that point. It redirected.

Taxpayers in Clallam County don't need another explanation for why the subcontractors should answer the questions. They need a commissioner who treats the money as still his responsibility after the check is written. After ten months of a retired professional doing the work the county should have done itself, and after repeated deflections on North View, Towne Road, Safe Parking, and other programs, it is time for someone else to start stewarding your hard-earned money.

The Emails

Commissioner French,

I am writing to you as a resident of Clallam County who has spent the last ten months examining the Safe Parking Program, other grant‑funded programs, and portions of the county budget. My perspective matters here. I am an accountant and auditor by education, with many years of county government experience in another state, including budget, grants, and contractual oversight. I attended weekly Board meetings, represented my department, worked with the local tribe on agreements, and oversaw upwards of a billion dollars in public funding during my tenure. I say this only to make clear that I know what I am looking at, and I know when something is wrong.

I first learned about the Safe Parking Program in the spring of 2025. I had many questions and then started my research. I researched similar programs in Seattle and the greater Seattle area. What I found was troubling: the advertised success of those programs did not match the actual outcomes. They served far fewer people than promised, and the reasons ranged from staffing failures to design flaws to lack of oversight. That prompted me to look more closely at our local program.

I submitted multiple public records requests, including payroll records. What I was reading in the news, seeing on social media, and hearing from the church, TUMC, did not match the grant documents. That discrepancy alone warranted deeper review. I wrote to you, and you forwarded my inquiry to Holly. We exchanged emails, and in one of her replies her tone was condescending — as though I were a child — and I found that inappropriate. I let it go and asked further questions, waited a month for a response, until I had to inquire again. She apologized and answered, which led me to more questions, and I have since, for now, given up. It appears any question will be answered with “something.”

The issues I am raising are not minor. They are structural, procedural, and compliance‑related. The kinds of issues that, in any well‑run county, with proper grant management, would trigger immediate internal review, corrective action, and in some cases suspension of funding until compliance is restored.

Just days ago, WorkSource advertised for a Safe Parking monitor — one hour a day. The grant did not include hiring outside staff. Was a grant modification done? Who authorized this? This may not be a large dollar amount, but it shows the lackadaisical attitude toward grants in this county. This is a pattern.

The county is the grantor. Once state‑mandated document recording fees reach Clallam County, as you know, the county becomes responsible for administering, monitoring, and ensuring compliance. That is the county’s duty. And that is precisely where the problem lies.

The contract which I have thoroughly read is between TUMC and the county, not OLYCAP, yet OLYCAP staff are being used for the program and roughly 65% of the funding is going to OLYCAP. Who is monitoring this grant? The absence of oversight is not a small administrative oversight — it allows programs to drift, change direction without approval, and operate without accountability.

One of the most troubling moments occurred during a BOCC meeting I attended. Viola Ware and staff were present to accept an award. A question was asked about the funding for the Safe Parking Program. She stated she had “no idea” about the funding. She deceived the Board and every resident of this county. I have payroll records showing her name approving payroll for OLYCAP staff — which is part of the program’s funding. Either she is oblivious to what she is signing, or she has delegated approval authority without oversight. Neither is acceptable. These are documented facts.

Moving on, I reviewed the material findings from Serenity House. Their corrective actions include enrolling financial staff in training through 2026. These findings were significant and should alarm the county, even when funding is pass‑through. Competence matters. There were repeat findings. How does payroll become a finding? Longevity in a position does not equal competence, and we have seen that play out in multiple areas of this county.

At the recent Homeless Taskforce meeting, Sharon Maggard stated they have corrected the findings. The corrective action for staff enrolled in further training is a positive. But why were staff without grant and accounting knowledge hired in the first place? And now Serenity House is in the red but seeking to expand. Too much is taken on without addressing existing problems. Securing grants can be good, but racing for more funding can be detrimental. Internal controls should have been in place from the beginning.

I do not always attend BOCC meetings in person, but I find the procedures lacking. When I attended weekly meetings in my former county, every agenda item had a department head present to answer questions. Many questions you receive are beyond your knowledge, which is understandable and while Mr. Mielke is present, it would be more appropriate to have department heads there. Governmental accounting and public policy can be difficult concepts for the public to understand. Wouldn’t it behoove you to make this process more accessible and understandable for your constituents?

Now to OPHS. That was an absolute, horrific outcome for this county. We are now limping along without an animal control officer, temporarily. I watched the animal advisory meeting last week. The increase in animal abuse, lack of training for deputies who will fill the duties — none of this is being addressed. I doubt anyone in this county has heard of “The Link,” the National Link Coalition, which connects animal abuse to domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse, and even homicide. I spent years studying this and started the first collaborative task force in the nation educating on this topic as well as the investigation of cruelty cases and prosecution of such cases. Deputies need training. Some deputies are afraid of dogs. What happens when a dog is shot because a deputy did not know how to handle the situation? The county is sued. Has the county considered the liability in having deputies without the proper training answering these calls? Training records are the first thing examined.

As you are aware, OPHS, had a contractual agreement for many years. When everything fell apart, why was a national organization not called in to investigate? They do this free of charge. Deputies could not investigate this, and our prosecutor’s office does not employ investigators. A proper investigation with collected evidence could have been handed to the prosecutor. Instead, nothing. Again, I have experience, this was done in the county I worked for. The case was investigated by a national organization, who had the experience, knowledge to handle such an investigation, and ultimately given to our prosecutors. They prosecuted and the defendants were sentenced for the crimes they committed.

I am thankful for the groups stepping in, but this is not a long‑term solution. Has the Board reached out to Ron Allen for assistance in funding a shelter? This has been done in other counties in this state and across the nation, reaching out to the local tribes. I have not heard this discussed. I applied for the animal advisory board but was turned away, even when one position, at large, was filled by a rescue. I provided my experience, but was summarily dismissed. Yet this week, there is a resolution to change the board’s name — as though that is the priority and why not a change in the number of at large positions, when they are seeking members?

The county also had ARPA findings. There is a common thread here, and the majority of residents have no idea what is happening with their tax dollars. Have these findings been addressed? I find conflicting information on that regarding county policy.

And the William Shore Pool, which you sit on the Board of — we are still waiting to hear if charges will be filed in that investigation which was handed to the AG. In all honesty, our prosecutor, as he has stated publicly, could have walled off staff to prosecute that case, but the path of least resistance was taken and given to the AG. Letters to the AG go unanswered. Will we see justice served in this county for that?

With that said, this county operates in a unique and problematic position: the Prosecutor serves as the legal counsel for the Commissioners. There is a blatant conflict in that structure. I do not understand why this county does not have a separate county legal counsel. This arrangement restricts potential cases that, in reality, should be investigated and prosecuted within this county. As you know, optics in government matter, and what we see now — as in past cases, which I do not need to list — is that we should have had an investigator here in the county and a prosecutor to handle these matters. Instead, cases are moved out of the county because of the “conflict of interest” repeatedly stated by our Prosecutor, even though he has publicly said he can wall off prosecutors to handle such cases. Why is that not done? What residents see are cases sent off to the state, where they rarely, if ever, result in justice. What does that say about leadership in this county?

As you have probably heard, there have been rumblings about a Public Integrity Unit (PIU). When this was briefly mentioned at a BOCC meeting, Commissioner Ozias quickly responded, “We have an auditor’s office.” When I heard that, I thought: he has no clue what a PIU actually is. The appropriate response would have been, “Thank you, I will look into what that is.” Instead, it was summarily dismissed.

Once again, based on experience, a Public Integrity Unit would bring accountability locally when it is needed most. As an example, some years back I knew two people who attempted to report theft by a county employee here. They first went to the Sheriff’s Office and were turned away. They then went to the Prosecutor’s Office and were also turned away. They looked to the State Attorney General, but learned that the AG receives roughly 2,000 cases a month. How would something so small ever be reviewed? What happened? The employee continued the behavior and has now retired.

Has the county ever conducted an assessment of the potential losses this county has suffered — theft, misuse of county vehicles, timecard fraud, and more? Certified fraud examiners estimate losses in government agencies can modestly range from 3–7%. Our county cannot afford any type of loss. Depending on the situation, insurance may cover some of it, but that does not solve the underlying problem. And what about employees who witness wrongdoing but feel hamstrung because they know nothing will be done?

We could easily add such a unit, and of course cost is the first concern raised. But I would ask: how can a county not afford to implement such a unit? A law enforcement officer (even retired) with the authority to execute search warrants and make arrests, paired with a prosecutor on an on‑call basis — no benefits, no full‑time staffing — is not an unreasonable structure. Why something like this has not been included is beyond me. It is something that should be seriously considered in this county.

And now, Recompete. Where do I even begin? To the general public, this program sounds like a pot of gold. But just one layer beneath the surface, it is administratively heavy and deeply concerning. At a recent BOCC meeting, you mentioned that the projected number of jobs had been reduced due to a “change in the program.” That was it. No explanation of when the change occurred, why it happened, or what specifically was altered. Where are the details?

We are now in Phase Two, from my understanding. What program changes were made that reduced — and continue to reduce — the number of people who will be employed as a result of $35 million dollars? Again, we see redundant work, multiple websites, a lack of true metrics, and very little information provided to the public, as though the entire program is a secret.

I will add a positive: the added security in the county building. The first time I walked in the building, I was very surprised there was no security. I worked in a county where an unsecured building used for a Christmas party became the site of a terrorist attack that killed 14 county employees and injured 22. Our department, as well as the county I worked for, worked with the FBI and federal agencies through that process. It was absolutely horrific; I have no words. Security matters. A minor inconvenience is worth protecting employees and the public. Thank you.

In my opinion, this county has far too many NGOs operating with little transparency or accountability. The same circle of people run the same programs with little oversight. The public sees it. And the look does not encourage trust with the leaders in this county.

Commissioner, you sit on the OLYCAP board and many others. I do not expect you to know every detail, but given the volume of public concern, I hope you and the boards are having meaningful internal discussions. That is responsible leadership.

I am not native to this area, but family members have been here since 1972 until they passed. I have spent a great deal of time on the peninsula over the years. I chose to retire here. But the last ten years — especially the last few — have made this county nearly unrecognizable. Families are leaving. I know three personally. These are families we need — small business owners, community contributors — and the policies of this county are driving them away.

I want this county to succeed. I want families to stay. I want small businesses to thrive. I want programs to work. But without transparency, accountability, and competent oversight, this county will continue losing the very people who make it strong.

If you have read this far, thank you. I do not want to be one of the families leaving, but I give this county a couple more years.

Respectfully,
CAS
Clallam County Resident

Hi,

Christine Dunn is the County employee who manages and provides independent oversight over the funding for the Safe Parking Pilot program (christine.dunn@clallamcountywa.gov). A note: I would not have approved the funding for that program if the local church had not been planning on contracting with some local social service agency who had experience and available staff to help them manage the program. I think creating a safe parking location without appropriate oversight and intervention from trained social service professionals would’ve been a mistake. It’s a pilot project, so your point about “is it effective” is a very good point and the results will be evaluated by our Homelessness Task Force, County staff, and the Board of Commissioners.

Our department heads do generally attend our board meetings. Many times, they do so from their offices via Zoom so that they can monitor the meeting while doing other work. It’s also noteworthy that we divide our weekly business into two meetings; on Monday, we discuss each item in detail, with Department heads present to present the issue and answer questions. On Tuesday, we vote on the item (generally with a week in between in case changes are needed and to provide the public more time to provide comment). If you only attend the Tuesday meeting, you’re only seeing half of the process.

Washington State law directs the County Prosecutor to provide legal representation to the County and its elected and appointed officials. When they have a conflict of interest, they state that conflict and arrange for outside counsel. This is normal practice in Washington State.

With regard to OPHS, an organization losing its Executive Director and reducing services and closing facilities does not necessarily mean crimes were committed. In this case, our Sheriff is who contracted with OPHS for animal control services and was in charge of managing the contract. They were the closest to the situation and would certainly have referred charges to the County Prosecutor if they felt that fraud had been committed.

With regard to Recompete, at the meeting your referred to, I provided a long and detailed explanation of why the metrics that EDA and our local coalition is tracking have changed since we first applied for the funding. We proposed certain metrics when we applied; some of the investments we proposed were not funded; in light of that, EDA suggested different metrics which we agreed to. The investments that were not funded were both job creation projects (an expansion of the Port Townsend Boatyard, and an industry-focused innovation center focused on creating jobs in the forest products industry). That left our Coalition with no direct job creation projects, and so our original metric of “how many jobs were directly created” was not an appropriate metric. Instead, we’ve shifted to tracking overall employment in multiple sectors (manufacturing, trades, forest products, maritime services, etc) to see if the investments we’re making in our workforce are translating to more overall employment. I strongly dispute that this program is not being run transparently. Our staff has made multiple public presentations; and we have a public website that displays our annual report with all available data (recompetewa.org/media-reports).

Washington State’s Auditor (sao.wa.gov) is fundamentally a public integrity office. They have statutory authority to provide oversight over public agencies, and investigate fraud, as they did with the William Shore pool situation. In that case, evidence was turned over to the authorities and the AG’s office is investigating. I’ve met with the AG’s investigator multiple times and helped them acquire all the documentation they need to assist them in determining whether or not to file charges. In the case of the County’s ARPA finding, that was one finding that was quickly resolved by the County with a change in policy. ARPA was a very unique program that happened during a very unique time in American history, and I believe that the County has provided an incredible amount of transparency with how our ARPA funding was programmed and spent. Most of that work happened before I was a Commissioner.

Mike French
Clallam County Commissioner
(360) 912-2267

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Last Tuesday Commissioner Mark Ozias read the Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation from the dais. Nobody was there to accept it — for the second year in a row. When asked who requested it and how it began, he and his colleagues said they couldn’t recall. Public records show it began with a 2019 suggestion from Jamestown Chairman Ron Allen, whose tribe has been Ozias’s largest campaign donor.

The Empty Room Ritual

Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Last Tuesday, Commissioner Mark Ozias read the proclamation from the dais, not the podium. No one was there to receive it. Not tribal leaders. Not elders. Not community members. For the second year running, the ceremonial handoff happened empty of indigenous people.

The commissioners still treat it as essential. At a recent forum, Ozias was asked how the proclamation got on the agenda and who requested it. He said he didn’t know if anyone had asked for it and couldn’t recall how it started. He has been on the Board for eleven years. Commissioner Mike French said Ozias explained it well and noted that four federally recognized tribes have territory here; he also didn’t know the origin. Commissioner Randy Johnson’s name sits on the signature block with theirs.

They read it anyway.

The Emails They Forgot

The records are not vague. On July 9, 2019, Ozias emailed W. Ron Allen, Chairman and CEO of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe:

“All three Commissioners are keen to follow up on your suggestion to create an event to recognize, honor and celebrate the culture and history of Indigenous Peoples in Clallam County and to recognize Columbus Day as ‘Indigenous Peoples Day’ in Clallam County this year.

It sounds like you plan to take the lead on organizing the Tribes and encouraging their participation, but I want you to know that I stand by ready to work with this group at any time to ensure we hold an event that has meaning and import beyond the simple reading of a Declaration. It is important to me, as the Chair of the Board of Commissioners, to be personally engaged in this endeavor as it warrants our attention at the highest level. I don’t want to get out ahead of you so please know I am ready to engage as soon as you are ready.”

Ozias did not wait. On September 16, 2019, after a presentation by Jamestown’s Tribal Historic Preservation Officer David Brownell, he wrote:

“Thank you again so very much for the presentation today – it was awesome.

Thanks too for offering to follow up with Ron and Council re: Indigenous Peoples’ Day. At this point, my plan would be to read a Proclamation at our meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 8 which is our regular meeting immediately preceding Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Monday, Oct. 14.

Let me know how I can best work with and support the Jamestown Tribe in shaping a meaningful recognition, including how to best invite participation from the Lower Elwha Klallam, Makah and Quileute Tribes.”

He coordinated dates, invitations, and language with Jamestown staff. He confirmed Ron Allen and three other Jamestown leaders would attend the October 8, 2019 meeting. He mailed formal invitations to the other tribal councils. Jamestown supplied an editorial framing the proclamations as sacred S’Klallam ceremony. They read the first one that fall.

Ozias personally drove the process that began with Allen’s suggestion. The paper trail is public. Forgetting it requires effort.

The Largest Donor Connection

The same tribe Ozias partnered with to launch the proclamation has been his top campaign contributor. Public Disclosure Commission records show repeated contributions from the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe to Ozias’s campaigns. The Tribe funded over half of his last campaign. Ozias has called Jamestown Clallam County’s “most important partner in local governance.”

The suggestion that started the annual reading came from the chairman of his largest political donor. The commissioner who now says he cannot recall the origin is the same one who wrote that he wanted to be “personally engaged” at “the highest level.”

Government Resources for Ancestral Guilt

None of this requires a yearly proclamation that sorts residents by race, genetics, DNA, skin color, or who their grandparents were. Indigenous peoples lived, traded, raided, and warred on this peninsula long before Europeans arrived. Columbus sailed in 1492. Treaties and federal recognition followed. Those are historical facts. They do not justify using the Board’s time, staff, letterhead, and meeting room to lecture taxpayers about inherited responsibility for events centuries past while omitting intertribal violence, captive-taking, and raids that occurred both before and after contact.

The proclamation language about “ancestral land” and “time immemorial” puts a selective narrative on county letterhead. It does not rewrite deeds. It does not settle tax or land questions. It does create a yearly ritual in which three commissioners—none of them tribal members—read a statement no one requested this year and no one showed up to receive last year or this year, grounded in the personal belief that the public needs a lesson in systemic discrimination.

The Priorities That Do Not Require a Proclamation

Proclamations make the agenda because someone asks. This one began with Ron Allen’s suggestion and Mark Ozias’s enthusiastic follow-through. The emails are explicit. The funding is public. The empty room is visible. The claim that they don't remember doesn't hold.

What does hold is the pattern. Year after year the commissioners scramble to accommodate the calendar, language, and ceremonial framing of a sovereign nation whose chairman first proposed the recognition and whose organization has been Ozias’s largest campaign donor. They confirm the lists, refine the wording, and read it from the dais even when no one is there to receive it. Meanwhile, the constituents who elect them—and who fund the salaries, staff time, and meeting room—watch taxes climb, public safety erode, neighbors stay trapped in addiction, and basic accountability go unanswered.

The Board that cannot recall the origin of a ritual it has performed for years finds time for “ancestral land” language and discrimination lectures. It shows less urgency about the lodging and property taxes tribal enterprises do not pay, or about the residents who show up, pay the bills, and expect their representatives to represent them first. A sovereign government with more than $100 million in annual revenue does not need Clallam County commissioners to perform an annual guilt trip on its behalf. The people who live and vote here do need commissioners who remember who hired them.

The result is an empty room: a private suggestion from a major donor’s chairman, driven by the commissioner who received it, continued as an unrequested ritual. The emails are on record. The funding is public. The voters who hired these commissioners should decide if that is good enough.

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This week’s Social Media Saturday looks at who is being invited into elementary classrooms, who is endorsing whom for county office, and whether long-standing approaches to homelessness, addiction, and animal welfare are delivering results—or simply rearranging the problems.

League of Women Voters Presents Constitution to Sequim Elementary Students

The League of Women Voters recently gave a presentation to elementary students about the Constitution and the 19th Amendment.

Teaching the Constitution is valuable. The League, however, describes itself as an activist organization.

It has pushed for its own materials to be used in local elementary schools—materials that encourage children to participate in Black Lives Matter protests.

Its state website explains that local chapters will acknowledge “the land known as the State of Washington is on the homelands of Native peoples who have lived here from time immemorial and who have long resiliently resisted the ongoing harms of colonialism,” express “deepest respect for and gratitude towards these original and current caretakers,” and work “to listen to and amplify the voices of Indigenous people, to partner with tribes… on policy and other issues… to educate the public about tribal/treaty government and welfare issues and to respect the sovereignty of tribes.”

Is it appropriate for activist groups to teach in elementary classrooms? Should Indivisible be allowed to make presentations? Would the district host a group focused on the Second Amendment? Would the reaction be the same if predominantly white men taught elementary students about gun safety, conservative values, Christianity, or the Constitution over ideology? These are fair questions when two League members serve on the Sequim School Board and activist organizations are welcomed into classrooms.

Jim Stoffer’s Holocaust Analogy

Jim Stoffer is prominently listed as an endorser of Mike French. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Olympic Educational Service District 114 (OESD 114), he also lobbied Sequim City Council to allow three safe-parking spaces at Trinity United Methodist Church — an arrangement under which Commissioner Mike French authorized paying Stoffer’s church more than $118,000 in taxpayer funds.

Now, Stoffer has stated that Jake Seegers wants to “round up people and put them in camps; that was tried in WWII and didn’t go over so well.”

Weeks earlier, he compared Seegers to the KKK; now the comparison is to Nazi roundups of Holocaust victims.

Why does this man continue to be placed in leadership roles across the school district, educational service district, and community organizations while his church receives substantial public funding tied to the candidate he endorses?

Olympic Climate Action Endorses Mike French; Tumwater Creek Tells a Different Story

Mike French announced a key endorsement from Olympic Climate Action because he has “worked hard to pass climate legislation”—legislation that will raise housing costs, increase the cost of living, and restrict private property rights.

After nine years of leadership in both the city and the county, how have the environment and green spaces fared under Mike French? If salmon-bearing Tumwater Creek could speak, it might describe an ecological crisis choked with supplies from the county’s Harm Reduction Health Center—needles, Mylar blankets, uneaten food wrapped in plastic, and crack pipes flushed into Port Angeles Harbor with the next rain.

Asked at a recent county commissioner meeting whether he has participated in cleaning up Tumwater Creek, French conceded he has only “toured” it. There is a difference between passing environmental legislation, touring a problem, and doing the work.

Reshuffling the Same Stack of Cards

“They’ve run the homeless out of downtown” in preparation for Crab Fest this weekend, one Facebook user reported. They appear to have been shuffled to Peabody Creek and the Salvation Army.

Is the current approach to homelessness and addiction working? Is this a long-term solution? Is this compassion? Are you ready for change?

Open Drug Use and Unregistered Vehicle Outside Ballet Studio

Is it legal to drive under the influence? What about driving with registration expired for more than three years? Insurance is highly doubtful.

This was observed in the Red Goose Shoes parking lot: a vehicle associated with drug activity, a passenger either passed out or unresponsive, and a driver openly using drugs in front of little girls entering and leaving ballet. Why is it not treated as illegal to be under the influence behind the wheel, use illegal substances in public, and then drive an unregistered, uninsured vehicle into traffic?

When the non-emergency number was called, the response was that medics would check on the passenger. What about sending an officer to address driving under the influence and the registration and insurance violations? Is this enforcement standard applied to everyone, or only to some?

How Will You Do It?

Fungi Fest

Remember when Jake Seegers interviewed David Rogers? It was a local story of someone not only turning his life around without harm reduction, but going on to found the Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival—an event that now draws thousands to Port Angeles after the summer crowds have gone. This year’s 5th annual festival (October 16–18 on the waterfront) has an action-packed lineup of talks, workshops, forays, vendors, and more; be sure to check out olypenfungifest.com and consider going.

New Substack Examines Olympic Peninsula Humane Society

After years of reported problems and lack of transparency at the Olympic Peninsula Humane Society, readers are encouraged to read the Substack “The Good, The Bad, and the Olympic Peninsula ‘Humane’ Society” by Mega Kittens Revenge.

The piece details alleged mismanagement, financial opacity, poor animal care conditions, and questions about whether donor and taxpayer funds are achieving their stated purpose.

Read It Here!

Homelessness Task Force Member Endorses Jake Seegers

Homelessness Task Force member and formerly homeless resident John De Boer issued an endorsement—not for the chair of the Board of Commissioners he has watched for four years, but for Jake Seegers.

Estela Lopez on Skid Row Drug Busts

Readers are encouraged to check out the Substack conversation with Estela Lopez, Business Improvement Director of Skid Row in Los Angeles.

Dreamland: A Sam Quinones newsletter

Skid Row L.A. and Estela Lopez

After the bust of some two dozen alleged drug dealers from tents in Skid Row yesterday, I decided to talk to Estela Lopez…

Listen now

23 days ago · 18 likes · 6 comments · Sam Quinones

After the arrest of roughly two dozen alleged dealers operating from tents, Lopez—who has worked the area for nearly 25 years—discusses the ongoing challenges of trash, open drug markets, and the gap between city policy and street-level reality. The parallels to local conditions are worth considering.

Documentary Parallels Local Homelessness Conditions

An hour-long documentary set in Bellingham and Olympia shows conditions with uncanny parallels to Port Angeles and Clallam County.

Watch “Inside the Deadly Jungle Where Homeless People Burn Alive…” to see the direction current policies are taking us.

Fixing a Flat

Is “Indivisible - Port Angeles” ready to try new approaches to failed policies? They seem to be at least considering it.

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If you only scroll the official pages, Clallam County looks like a calm place of pamphlets, collaboratives, and “no stigma.” Read the fine print and it looks like something else: a health department telling children they can get pregnancy care without a parent, a city that treats a harbor dump as an “oopsie”, and a Democratic headquarters willing to host the people who want to ruin the economy. This week’s Social Media Saturday is anything but subtle.

A brochure for kids, and a bypass for parents

The Clallam County Health Department was handing out the usual freebies at this year’s fair — foam balls, stickers and a brochure that says to “talk to someone you trust.” Fair enough. Then it listed places to get an abortion and reminded fairgoers that “no matter your age, you can make your own decisions about pregnancy and care. Anyone, at any age, can make their own decision and get care confidentially.”

That is not a vague slogan. Washington law lets a minor of any age consent to contraception and abortion without a parent. So yes: a 12-year-old can walk into the system, get birth control, and be connected to an abortion provider, and the household that is raising her does not have to be told. Is that really the county health department’s job — to route minors around the parents who still have to live with the result? If you are a parent, would you want to know if your daughter was pregnant and weighing an abortion, or if your minor son was seeking birth control? The county’s brochure already answered that question for you.

Sexual Health Awareness, brought to you by “she/they”

The same department is out with a new Facebook campaign. September was Sexual Health Awareness Month. The post says sexual health is physical, emotional, and mental health, healthy relationships, and mutual respect, then asks the county to “break the silence”: routine STI testing, prevention, consent, and open talk with partners and providers. “No stigma. Just education, prevention, and empowerment.”

Remember who is steering this. County health officer Allison Berry has publicly treated “she” and “they” as interchangeable. That is the office offering to teach kids about empowering their sexual health. Parents can decide whether that is the messenger they want.

The emperor has no clothes

Jake Seegers posted that he had just read The Emperor’s New Clothes with his daughter Lux. Two fraudsters sell the emperor a suit no one unfit or stupid can see. There is no suit. Everyone pretends, until a child says what is obvious.

Seegers’ version of the parade: Housing First, harm reduction, and “compassion” that tolerates outdoor living and open drug use; an economy relying on government and NGO jobs paid for with grants and taxes. He argues those policies have cost public safety, opportunity, affordability, and freedom, that current leadership will not admit the failure, and that leaders who still cannot see it will be replaced. Change, he wrote, is coming.

Another collaborative, same saturated county

The Sequim Gazette reports that the Sequim Health & Housing Collaborative, formed in 2018 because city leaders wanted agencies to share a limited pot of legally restricted money for “the poor and infirm,” is still meeting twice a month and still centered on food insecurity. Core funded partners include the usual list of NGOs dependent on taxpayer funding.

So we have another NGO coordinating social services provided by NGOs. How is this different from Olympic Community of Health, which is already taking Recompete federal dollars to “connect people” to NGOs? It is another layer in a county already saturated with NGOs, nonprofits, grants, and meetings. Coordination is not the same thing as results.

Your local Democrats, now with socialism

Mitch Zenobi noted that the local Democratic Socialists of America were scheduled to present at Clallam County Democrats headquarters.

Hopefully the slideshow included the parts that never make the flyer. Socialism has a record, and it is not theoretical:

• Shortages, because prices are no longer allowed to tell anyone what is scarce.

• Inflation, because the state prints or borrows what it will not produce.

• Bread lines and empty shelves beside official claims of abundance.

• Black markets, the only place the real price still exists.

• Collapsing productivity once the reward for working harder is taken away.

• Political repression, because a system that cannot deliver has to punish the people who say so.

That is the local Democratic Party platforming socialism. Where is the moderate middle of Clallam County? It might be worth 24 minutes with John Stossel’s The Complete Guide to Socialism vs Capitalism.

Hand the refuge to a sovereign nation, then try to sue

Al Bergstein of People for Protection Island and Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge pointed readers to the Capital Press and a live fight in Snohomish County Superior Court between a farmer and the Stillaguamish Tribe. His point was simple: if Protection Island and Dungeness are turned over to a tribe, every later dispute over access, management, or neighboring land can land in the same place.

Sovereign nations can claim sovereign immunity. That does not make every tribal government wrong. It does make a legal challenge slower, harder, and far more expensive once the transfer is done. Ask the questions before our elected leaders sign off on it, not after.

Upcoming public Seegers/French forum

This will also be streamed live on PABA’s Facebook page.

Your septic is a crime scene. The city’s is a weather event.

Clallam County Environmental Health put out a no-contact advisory for Port Angeles Harbor from September 25 through September 28 after two treatment bypasses: 3,655 gallons and 4,200 gallons. Untreated or partially treated wastewater, including sewage, went into the harbor. The public was told not to swim, wade, or get the water in the mouth, nose, or eyes.

Now run the same facts through a private septic. A minor leak, and code enforcement shows up. The house can be red-tagged. Repairs and fines run into the tens of thousands. Port Angeles gets a little rain, sewage hits the harbor, and the paperwork calls it a bypass. Meanwhile the city and county just added a 36-unit “luxury” homeless project called North View, and Commissioner Mike French, who calls himself an urbanist, wants more density in the cities — that’s adding more strain to a system that can’t handle an autumn rain storm. When it rains in the rural parts of the county, sewage does not go into the bay. It is only fine when the government does the polluting.

Fox wants the conversation Randall has been skipping

Teresa Fox, the Republican candidate for U.S. House in Washington’s 6th District, is holding a town hall on public safety and the transfer of public lands.

Wednesday, October 7, 2026, 6:00 p.m., Sequim Prairie Grange at 290 Macleay Rd. She will open, then turn it over to the room. Incumbent Emily Randall is invited. Fox’s case is that Randall has been missing local forums while campaigning for candidates outside the state, and that the district deserves someone who shows up. She is running as a business professional and emergency manager, not a career politician. Details at foxforwa.com or info@foxforwa.com.

The jail is short. The pipe kit is not.

The Sheriff’s Office says Animal Control Deputy Ed Bauck, a corrections deputy, has been pulled back to the jail through January 1, 2027, because staffing there is critical. Animal calls will still be taken by patrol.

Bauck is doing what a short-handed department asks. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could fully fund and staff the sheriff’s office instead of making sure every drug user in Clallam County had a clean meth pipe and a boofing kit?

A permit to fish a navigable river

The Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation are requiring non-tribal anglers to buy a permit on about 10 miles of the Chehalis River between Oakville and Helsing Junction: $45 to fish from the bank, $500 from a boat. The tribe has said it will cite people who do not pay, and gear or boats can be seized. WDFW disputes the claim.

The stretch is a federally navigable waterway, state law generally protects public use below the ordinary high-water mark, and obstructing lawful fishing is itself a crime. The department is talking to the tribe, the attorney general, and local law enforcement, and for now is telling anglers to avoid the section or float through without anchoring, wading, or fishing from shore. There is no reason this fight stays in Grays Harbor. The same theory can be tried on rivers in Clallam County.

Keep the sidewalk clear, and smile

The weekly Friday Indivisible protests in downtown Sequim are wearing on locals and on the businesses that have to live with them. Internal notes show members asking protesters not to block the sidewalk, and reminding each other to stick to “positive messages instead of more hateful, negative ones.”

If the organizers already know the tone is the problem, the sidewalk is not the only thing that needs clearing.

“Generic,” says the man who wants residents evicted

Indivisible has put Jake Seegers under the microscope for supposedly not supporting public schools.

Alan Clark — Commissioner Mike French’s appointee to the Marine Resources Committee, and a voice for evicting residents from the Three Crabs neighborhood — calls Seegers’ answer “generic” and blames a “lack of experience with public schools.”

A generic answer is not the same thing as a wrong one. And a coastal eviction advocate is an odd choice for arbiter of who cares about local kids.

Also, Jake Seegers is no stranger to public schools.

Inclusive, except for you

Indivisible’s mission statement promises “a real democracy” that is “inclusive, responsive, open, and respectful,” where the rule of law beats any one person’s whim and where “caring, compassion, and common decency” guide officials. Note the word inclusive. The same group posted “Vote Clallam Local, not Texas Local,” a slap at Jake Seegers.

So inclusive does not mean actually including people. Got it.

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Residents are showing up for a candidate on the River Road overpass while the same week shows open-air drug use a few blocks from the courthouse. Online, people are mapping who actually holds the seats, the boards, and the school curriculum — and who gets memorialized on a church sign. If you still think “compassion” is the only word that matters, this Social Media Saturday feed is a hard read.

Show Up on the Overpass

Today, Saturday, a rally for county commissioner candidate Jake Seegers runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the River Road Overpass in Sequim. Park across the street from Applebee’s. If you want a different direction for Clallam County, this is the simplest way to say so in public.

This Is the Fruit

Local League of Women Voters activists helped put a grades 3–5 textbook into schools that walks children toward protest — including joining a Black Lives Matter protest “which aims to prevent more police shootings of unarmed Black people and help our country overcome racism.”

Now look at the League’s harvest. A social-media photo showed Port Angeles High School students at a courthouse protest this year with signs that included “My future will not be dictated by Nazis,” “F**k ICE,” “one abortion could have saved democracy,” and “Nobody is illegal on stolen land.”

The League was founded to help voters understand government, not to draft third-graders into a faction. When a civic group becomes a pipeline for slogans, it stops being a league of voters and starts being a political machine that still gets to use the old stationery.

Who Is Actually Building Institutional Power?

A Facebook comment framed Seegers as part of a Christian Right plan to migrate into small towns, buy property, and build local theocracies.

The well-organized, well-funded operations that already dominate Clallam politics do not sound like Christian Nationalists. They sound like the Sequim Good Governance League, Indivisible, and the League of Women Voters.

How many people in those groups arrived from somewhere else, brought a ready-made ideology, and then ran for office? Look at the Sequim City Council. Count League members on the Sequim School Board. Count Indivisible members on the Charter Review Commission. Count how many Indivisible-aligned appointments Mike French has placed on advisory boards.

Seegers moved here, bought property, and put his name on a ballot. That is an election. The other side already holds the councils, the boards, the commissions, and the appointments. Don’t share the smear. Share the roster: who came from somewhere else, who ran, who got installed, and who already owns the seats that matter.

Remember What This Place Could Be

More people are posting that Clallam still has real potential. What they are tired of is this: question whether the current approach is working, and you are told you lack compassion.

Don’t give up. This county is worth saving.

Small Business Is Not a Prop

One owner said cleaning garbage left by trespassers off the storefront has become a daily chore.

If small businesses are the backbone of the local economy and the tax base for essential services, local government is not treating them like assets. It is treating them like janitors for a policy they did not vote for.

A Takedown on Peabody — and a Choice in November

People driving to Tuesday’s Board of Commissioners meeting watched a police takedown on Peabody Street, where an open-air drug encampment has spread across the sidewalk opposite the Salvation Army. Port Angeles police said a wanted fugitive fled on a bike with a dog in the trailer, crashed, injured the dog, and the dog bit an officer.

Unsanctioned camping on a sidewalk. Open-air drug use. Blocks from the courthouse and City Hall. A fugitive, an injured dog, and a bitten officer are not a surprise. They are the product.

In November, voters decide whether they want more of this.

Three Fingers Pointing Back

The county Health Department is back on the “myths and misinformation” circuit warning of cherry-picked data, emotional framing, and one study treated as scripture while a stack of other peer-reviewed work is ignored.

This is the same department whose health officer, Allison Berry, has called cleaning used needles from abandoned camps theft. It does not measure how many people actually leave addiction for recovery. And the harm-reduction model it sells still leans on a 26-year-old needle-exchange study that does not describe what Clallam is doing on the ground.

A reminder for Health and Human Services: every time you point at someone, three fingers point back at you.

PABA Forum: District 24, Live at 7:30 a.m.

Port Angeles Business Association’s next meeting is Tuesday, September 29, 7:30–8:30 a.m. at Jazzy Joshua’s Restaurant & Lounge and is open to the public. The group is hosting a forum for 24th Legislative District candidates. Kaylee Kuehn and Marcia Kelbon will appear in person.

Still Waiting on the Sign

It has been months. CC Watchdog is still looking for a straight answer to a simple question: What does this sign mean?

Jobs on the West End — Credit Fight Optional

Commissioner Mike French says the Riverside Mill is hiring because of Recompete. Mark Ozias’ NGO, the North Olympic Development Council, wants a piece of the credit too. The record shows the company moved from Canada to Forks because of tariffs. Either way, it is family-wage work for west-end locals. Show up Thursday for the hiring event.

Whose Names Go on the Board

A 2023 photo from Indivisible’s headquarters, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Sequim, shows the reader board memorializing George Floyd (Minneapolis), Breonna Taylor (Louisville), Ahmaud Arbery (Georgia), and Atatiana Jefferson (Fort Worth).

Did that readerboard carry the name of infant Otis — born with fentanyl in his system, then found dead in a car seat in the bushes at Kah Tai Park after his father hid the body? Did it name Ted Eastman of Port Angeles, found dead of a fentanyl overdose in his truck, two days after the family buried another brother lost to the same drug? Did it name Sequim artist Richard Madeo, fatally assaulted just blocks from that church by Aaron Fisher, later convicted of manslaughter?

Virtue signaling is easy when the names are national, and the cost is plastic letters. Local deaths require some uncomfortable accountability.

The Audit They Waited to Mention

A Facebook user asked why everyone has “conveniently forgotten” this: inadequate internal controls over financial and accounting reporting in 2022 and 2023; the public not told about the investigation until after the election; City Council members and commissioners, including Mike French, sat on that board knowing they themselves were under the auditor’s review; the matter still referred to a prosecutor and still unfinished.

The Peninsula Daily News story landed in November 2025, less than a week after voters had already been to the polls, and after a local blogger broke the story.

Pay attention to who sat on that board, who still sits there, and what they failed to fix for more than a decade to let this happen.

Read Clallamity Jen

Clallamity Jen’s latest on Substack, “Welcome to the Clallam Zone,” is worth a read. She takes the League of Women Voters apart on moral consistency — not as a civics club that stumbled, but as an ideological shop that will move the goalposts whenever the team needs a new position.

Read it, then ask whether “nonpartisan” still means anything in this county.

One Street, Two Rules

Rita on Facebook caught the Port Angeles split screen: on one side of Park Avenue, encampments along Peabody Creek are not allowed because the National Park Service owns the land. On the other side of Park Avenue, encampments spread because it is city property. The problem is not mysterious. It is unenforced. Port Angeles City Council: this is the part where you listen.

A Blast Near Tumwater Creek

A resident near the Tumwater Creek encampment heard something like a bomb. The explosion rolled across the city. Neighbors also report constant gunfire and fireworks.

Is this the “compassionate” model you are comfortable funding for “our most vulnerable”? Will it take a blast that takes out a council member’s windows? A firework that finds a commissioner’s roof? Until then, it is just another night in Port Angeles.

Help Wanted — Depending on Your Paperwork

The Jamestown Corporation is hiring. For the county’s second-largest employer, the posting is clear: “American Indian/Alaska Native preferences apply.”

That is not a level field. It is a racial screen for the county’s second-largest employer.

There are 17 openings: only seven full-time, five part-time, five per diem with no guaranteed hours. Transport driver (per diem) and peer support start at $20.91. Cedar Greens sales consultant starts at $17.50. The “living-wage jobs” that press releases advertise look a lot like this one: Addiction Medicine Executive Director at Jamestown Healing Clinic in Sequim, $239,937.50–$279,927.00.

“Lead with purpose. Make an impact. Enjoy balance.” That might be easy to do at a quarter million a year. The rest of the workforce is closer to minimum wage.

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Indivisible and the League of Women Voters are grading commissioner candidates by vocabulary. Meanwhile taxpayers are being asked to fund $842,105 “homes,” a hospital under another audit warning, and a youth center with no price tag from a CEO who already out-earns the governor. Here’s the week’s receipts on Social Media Saturday.

“Complex” Is the Tell

With backing from the League of Women Voters, Indivisible has been posting side-by-side stances of County Commissioner candidates Mike French and Jake Seegers.

After reading their climate positions, Janine Blaeloch took issue with Seegers calling climate change a “complex issue.” She warned that when a politician says something is a “complex issue,” it’s usually a tell.

Fair enough. Let’s apply the same test to the incumbent.

French has used that language more than once.

• In a written reply to a constituent about public safety, homelessness, and related policy, he closed by saying he wanted to “move us toward solutions on these complex issues.”

• At a Port Angeles Business Association meeting, after a question about camping and downtown conditions, he answered, “It’s a complex issue,” then turned to legislative limits, jurisdiction, resources, and new revenue.

• The electmikefrench.com Issues page says the issues “are complex and interconnected.”

If Indivisible wants to start policing candidate language, they may be developing a complex of their own.

Clallamity Jen Solves a Mystery

Clallamity Jen started with a scathing Facebook post about a commissioner candidate and followed the trail until it stopped looking like grassroots outrage and started looking like an inside job.

Read “Cozy Connections & The Anatomy of an Inside Job” to find out which county employee the trail leads to. This is what Jake Seegers is up against: a county culture so used to protecting itself that it treats a candidate who might do things differently as a threat. The people who collect the salaries do not like being questioned by the people who actually pay them.

The Hospital Gets Another Warning

Anthony Tomashefsky at the Olympic Herald reports that the Washington State Auditor has again warned of financial risks at Olympic Medical Center. Declining condition, liquidity pressure, and the same pattern of “we’ll fix it later” that never quite arrives. Subscribe and read the article and audit here. Independent coverage of the county’s largest public employer should not be optional reading.

$842,105 for an Apartment in Sequim

When Mike French says he is bringing affordable housing to Sequim, this is what he means: bulldoze 17 apartment units, build 36, spend $16 million—mostly taxpayer money—and call it progress. Net gain: 19 units. Average cost: $842,105 per apartment. Permanent supportive housing for the homeless.

That number is not theoretical. Right now in Sequim, about $842,000 buys a comfortable, above-median single-family house: typically 3–5 bedrooms, 2,100–3,200 square feet, often single-level living, 3–4 baths, half an acre to an acre, frequently with mountain or water views.

Median sold prices in Sequim sit roughly in the $500k–$550k range. Zillow’s typical home value is around $563,000. So $842k is a nicer custom or well-updated house—not a studio with a case manager down the hall.

Nineteen net units. Sixteen million dollars. One house’s worth of public money, per door. Ridiculous is the polite word.

Read the article by Radio Pacific here.

Has Sequim Changed in the Past Four Years?

Dear League of Women Voters: Don’t Disenfranchise Me

Drop Box, Still “Too Late”

Mary Lewis posted the letter. Clallam County Auditor Shoona Riggs: ballot received too late for the April 2026 special and the August primary—either postmarked after Election Day or dropped after 8 p.m.

Lewis’s reply: she put it in the official box in the old JCPenney lot in Sequim well before the 8 p.m. cutoff. “Someone is messing up and it’s not me.”

The same letter admits the system is sloppy. USPS may haul ballots to a regional center outside the county before they are postmarked, so the stamp can land days after you mailed it. The Auditor’s fix is: use a drop box, or mail a week early, or beg a clerk to hand-stamp it.

That only works if a ballot in an official box before 8 p.m. is actually logged that way. Lewis says hers was. The county says it wasn’t counted. Voters are being told the law is simple and the failure is theirs. The letter on the kitchen table says the opposite.

Patrick Murphy: Port Angeles Is Not Safer

District Court judge candidate Patrick Murphy posted the numbers and then the view from the prosecutor’s table. Crimebycity.com, using FBI data through 2024, gives Port Angeles a safety score of 19/100. Total crime above the national average. Ranked 2,417 of 2,974 nationally. 19th percentile for safety—higher crime than 81% of U.S. cities. Rape at 2.6 times the national average. Property crime listed below the state average; murder and violent crime above it.

Murphy’s firsthand point matters more than the ranking fight: as a deputy prosecuting attorney, he says theft, trespass, and controlled-substance possession have skyrocketed, and violent crime is still trending up. Citizens of Clallam County are not safer than they were four years ago. Accountability is the campaign, not a slogan.

Closed for Thee, Open for Who?

A new video from Badger Fishing, posted yesterday, makes you wonder who “saving the salmon” is actually for.

Shot on the Quilcene River, it shows a tribal fishery in progress. The caption is blunt: this river was supposed to be closed for recreational and treaty fisheries.

Ballots That “Shouldn’t Have Been Late”

A couple received letters from the Clallam County Auditor: their April 2026 special-election ballot and 2026 primary ballots arrived late and were not counted. They say they fill out ballots within days of receiving them and drop them in official boxes or USPS immediately.

The Auditor’s office told them USPS sends ballots to Tacoma to be postmarked before they return to Clallam. County rules say a ballot counts if it is postmarked by Election Day 8 p.m. or in an official drop box. That is not what happened for them. A supervisor suggested signing up for the tracker at vote.wa.gov—text when the ballot is received; if no text within two days of dropping it, call.

They were also told late ballots in the August election jumped from a “normal” 60 to about 200. They had never had a late ballot before. Every vote is supposed to count. Check registration and turn on the tracker: vote.wa.gov. Then vote like the county has to prove that they received it.

PBH’s Next Feel-Good Project Has No Price

Peninsula Behavioral Health’s last big project—housing billed as help for the homeless and addicted—ran more than $12 million. Now comes a Youth and Family Services Center: 22 clinical offices, four group rooms, play, sensory, and art therapy, a family room, gathering space, outdoor rec. The pitch is healing and hope. The invoice is missing.

Remind yourself who is selling it. PBH CEO Wendy Sisk’s reported compensation has been in the high $200,000s—more than the governor of Washington. The last project was expensive. This one will be too. Ask what it costs before the ribbon-cutting language hardens into another taxpayer obligation.

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A former Sequim school board member and current French endorser just compared the Calico Cat Club, Jake Seegers, and Clallam County Watchdog to the Ku Klux Klan. French was given a deadline to say whether he stands by that endorsement. He stayed silent — while the same relationship helps move more than $118,000 in county money through Stoffers church and into French’s NGO. That, and more, this Social Media Saturday.

History Isn’t Repeating. A Smear Is.

Last weekend the Peninsula Daily News published a “Back When” column on the rise and fall of the Klan on the North Olympic Peninsula. Sequim resident and Indivisible activist Jim Stoffer commented: “Looks like History is repeating itself via the Calico Cat Club, Jake Seegers, and CCWD.”

The Calico Cat Club holds public candidate forums. Jake Seegers is running against Commissioner Mike French. CCWD is this publication. Stoffer compared all three to the Klan.

Stoffer was twice elected to the Sequim School Board and twice elected to the charter review commission. His endorsement is featured on Mike French’s campaign website.

On September 8, Clallam County Watchdog emailed Commissioner Mike French seeking comment about Stoffer’s post, but French did not respond.

French needs Stoffer, who is Safety Chair at Trinity United Methodist Church. As commissioner, French approved more than $118,000 in payments to TUMC for the county’s safe-parking program, which has struggled with enrollment. The church then pays French’s NGO, OlyCAP, to manage the program.

Once the money leaves the county, public transparency disappears. French is not answering questions about where the $118,000 went. Neither is the church. Neither is OlyCAP.

Stoffer’s church is the pass-through from the county to French’s NGO. It is a closed loop. It still does not justify labeling a political opponent, a public candidate forum, and a local blogger as heirs to a history of racial terror. Stoffer is also a leader in the local Clallam County Democrats. French still features the endorsement.

Voters can decide what that silence means.

Kids Watch the Adults

On the one-year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death, Port Angeles High School made regional news after students were photographed in blood-stained shirts and fake neck wounds.

Kids learn from adults. When a former school board member treats disagreement as a license to tie people to the Klan, do not act shocked when teenagers treat political violence as costume theater.

According to Brandi Kruse, the Port Angeles School District said clothing that “depicts, promotes, or celebrates violence is not permitted or tolerated,” but would not say what discipline, if any, followed.

Adults do not have to act like children. Especially school-board veterans.

Same Name. Same Highway. Two Years Later.

The Olympic Herald reported that officials were asking for the public’s help finding a Port Angeles man after a Friday morning chase on Highway 101.

According to the Sheriff’s Office, 42-year-old Brian J. Arnold drove away from deputies near the Jamestown Longhouse Gas Station in Blyn after they suspected drug use and told him he was detained. The pursuit headed west on Highway 101 at speeds near 120 mph, including travel into oncoming lanes. A supervisor ended the chase at Blue Mountain Road. About two minutes later came a two-vehicle hit-and-run at Deer Park Loop. The other driver was not injured. Arnold’s vehicle was found abandoned at Deer Park Road and Wall Street. A search warrant turned up suspected methamphetamine, digital scales, and drug paraphernalia. Deputies said they had probable cause for attempting to elude, hit-and-run, possession of methamphetamine, and obstructing.

He was not in custody. The public was asked to help find him.

Now look at the Peninsula Daily News from almost exactly two years earlier. On a Friday night in September 2024, Brian Joseph Arnold — then 40 — led deputies on a chase that topped 85 mph from Old Olympic Highway to Barr Road, U.S. 101, Taylor Cutoff, and Lost Mountain Road. A passenger tossed items from the window. He was booked on investigation of driving under the influence of drugs, eluding, driving with a suspended license, and possession of a controlled substance. Methamphetamine and paraphernalia were found.

Same man. Same drugs. Same highway. Higher speed the second time.

This was not a surprise. It was a sequel. When the system treats a high-speed, drug-fueled eluding case as a booking instead of a turning point, the next chapter is a 120 mph run, a canceled pursuit, a hit-and-run, and a wanted flyer. Soft-on-crime policy does not stay in the courtroom. It shows up on Highway 101.

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The Olympic Herald

Jefferson County Is Looking at the Exit

The Port Townsend Leader reports that Mike French’s NGO, OlyCAP, is preparing to step away as lead agency for roughly $2.2 million in state homelessness funding. Jefferson County may take over the role in 2027.

Executive Director Holly Morgan told the Jefferson County Housing Fund Board on September 3 that after months of discussion, “maybe it’s time for that.”

OlyCAP is the lead grantee for the Consolidated Homeless Grant. Jefferson County can decide in early 2027 whether to take the next two-year cycle.

Maybe Jefferson County is noticing what Clallam County is starting to notice: an organization that can move more than $118,000 through a church for a handful of safe-parking spaces may not be the most efficient use of public money.

“Permanent” Is the Word They Hope You Skip

Peninsula Behavioral Health is selling Permanent Supportive Housing as “a foundation for recovery, stability, and hope.” Housing First in nicer language.

Permanent Supportive Housing is… permanent. The public obligation does not sunset. The client does not age out of the subsidy. The model assumes ongoing taxpayer support for housing plus voluntary services, indefinitely.

The claims are familiar: less homelessness, better health, fewer ER visits, more stability. The part that rarely makes the flyer is the dependency. “Everyone deserves the opportunity to thrive” is not a budget, a performance metric, or an exit plan.

Change Is Only Good When Hope Williams Wants It

Indivisible activist Hope Williams is warning voters not to support Jake Seegers because he represents “change,” and that is supposedly why people voted for Trump.

Linking a Clallam County independent to Washington, D.C. is lazy politics. Six years ago, Williams was telling people to “vote for change” to replace Trump.

The rule is simple: change is virtuous when it delivers her outcome. Otherwise it is dangerous.

Indivisible Polls the Megaphone, Not the Neighborhood

Indivisible activists are surveying members on whether to keep using the megaphone at weekly protests.

Some want the bullhorn while they “save the world” and defend the “rule of law” — a rule that apparently did not apply to Indivisible activist Tim Wheeler, filmed causing thousands of dollars in damage to public DNR land and walking away.

Much of the fight is over Lewis Bennett’s bullhorn.

Bennett is the same activist with a blood-streaked yard sign about Jake Seegers.

While Indivisible argues about megaphone volume and national talking points 3,000 miles away, downtown businesses live with hours of bucket-banging, blocked sidewalks, and protest signs driving customers away.

Indivisible: Poll the shop owners. Read the room.

Want to Hear What Dispatch Hears?

Clallam and Jefferson County scanner traffic is now live — police, sheriff, State Patrol, and EMS — with timestamps and transcripts, not just raw audio. Pursuits, welfare checks, overdoses, and the calls that never make the next day’s brief.

Check out the Clallam and Jefferson Scanner here.

Kissing the Ring

State House hopeful Kaylee Kuehn was photographed at a local coffee shop with three-term Commissioner Mark Ozias.

If you have ever wanted Ozias’ ear and gotten silence, the shortcut appears to be running for office with a “D” next to your name. What a candidate learns from a commissioner with nearly 11 years of special-interest politics and collapsing public trust is anyone’s guess. The photo suggests she intends to find out.

PBH “By the Numbers” Does Not Add Up

Peninsula Behavioral Health posted a “by the numbers” graphic. The timeframe is unclear.

If the agency served 4,000 people, the slide implies:

• 23.7 services per person

• 4.2 therapy sessions per person

• 4.2 telehealth sessions per person

• 1.9 crisis services per person

• 34 total services per person

• and 0.3 appointments per person

The last line breaks the rest. Either the categories overlap, the population is wrong, or the graphic is a decoration. An agency that lives on public money should be able to publish math that survives a first pass.

If San Francisco Can Drop the Ideology, Can Clallam?

Former Seattle Councilmember and interim Mayor Tim Burgess asks whether “the San Francisco miracle” could work in Seattle. San Francisco hit bottom, then Mayor Daniel Lurie traded slogans for results.

Clallam County is not San Francisco. It is watching the same Housing First, harm-reduction, and NGO pipeline produce full jails, unmanaged encampments, and disappearing accountability. Ideology is optional. Outcomes are not.

Read Tim Burgess’ article here.

Attract the Chaos, Pay for the Beds

Sheriff Brian King says the Clallam County Jail hit 100 inmates over the holiday weekend, up from an average daily population near 80. The jail has 120 beds, but behavioral-health cases force separations, so capacity tightens before the building is full.

King says the care load is “like operating an ER.” The jail books about five people a day. Officials discussed booking restrictions but did not impose them. Planning continues for a possible new jail west of Port Angeles.

When policy draws in addiction, repeat crime, and untreated illness, the bill arrives as overtime, medical staff, and a bigger jail.

Read the article here.

No Money for Hatcheries. $4.75 Million for Electric Tribal Boats.

From Badger Fishing: the state cannot fund hatcheries or fishery monitoring, but it can find about $4.75 million for electric tribal monitoring and fishing boats.

Reported examples include:

• Quinault Indian Nation: $352,000 for an all-electric test-fishery boat in waters where recreational anglers cannot fish without a tribal guide

• Samish Indian Nation: $886,000 for a 26-foot all-electric landing craft

• Lummi Nation: $1.18 million to convert a commercial fishing vessel to electric

• Colville Tribes: $1.13 million for a community tour boat

• Swinomish Tribe: $1.18 million to convert a commercial fishing boat to electric

Taxpayers fund the boats. The tribes get the assets. The recreational public gets the lecture.

Filing Week Is Coming

After Port Angeles Deputy Mayor and French campaign manager Navarra Carr pushed sweeping critical-areas expansion that would choke development, residents are already looking to next year, when Carr’s term ends.

Filing week is this spring. If you want a different Port Angeles, run.

TAFY Is Not Just Serving Youth

TAFY — The Answer For Youth — boasts 294 sleeping bags, 206 tents, and 727 bottles of propane distributed in a one-year window.

TAFY is no longer just a youth agency. It supplies homeless adults. The tents on Peabody Street, the sleeping bags in Tumwater Creek, and the unsanctioned camp stoves did not appear from nowhere. Propane in illegal camps is not compassion. It is fuel. A neighborhood fire is not a hypothetical.

Habitat Has a Native Liaison. Where Are the Others?

Habitat for Humanity’s Native American Housing Liaison, now going by Sylvan instead of Rick, met with the Quileute Housing Authority. A commenter hopes to “see cedar bark lodges” again.

Habitat takes county taxpayer dollars. If the organization needs ethnic liaisons, where is the White liaison, the Latino liaison, the Asian liaison? Public money, private books: that is the local NGO model. Habitat is not the exception.

Narcan for Everybody, Profit for the Same Companies

Narcan is no longer marketed as an emergency tool for overdoses. It is now for toddlers, teenagers, tired parents, grandparents, and strangers.

The same industry that flooded the country with opioids is now flooding every demographic with the antidote. That is not a public-health victory. It is a second product line.

They “Raised” $37 Million. You Paid It.

Native Peoples Network says the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe “raised” $37 million to restore the Lower Big Quilcene River.

Not from the casino, the golf course, or the cannabis shop. From taxpayer-funded grants drawn from tax systems many tribal enterprises do not pay into. You raised the money. They got to cut the ribbon.

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On September 11th, 2001, I was a 22-year-old American Airlines flight attendant based in Washington, D.C., dreaming of a life above the clouds. Three years ago, another September 11th sent me walking a river trail in Clallam County and quietly changed the rest of my life. This is the story of how both days stripped away easy assumptions and left something stronger in their place: a belief that this country, and this county, are still worth the work.

Above the Clouds

I graduated from the American Airlines flight attendant academy in July 2001 and was assigned to the Washington, D.C., crew base covering Reagan National, Dulles, and Baltimore. I was twenty-two and certain I had landed the best possible. American had just acquired TWA and was the largest airline in the world. My office rose above the weather every day. No matter how gray things were on earth, I always saw the sun at 35,000 feet.

I was reminded of rising above the clouds on September 9th when I flew from Reagan into JFK. New York sat under a thick blanket of fog. The only landmarks that broke the cloud layer were the twin towers of the World Trade Center. That was the last time I saw them.

The Day the Phones Wouldn’t Work

I was off duty on September 11th. Five of my classmates shared a house with me in Alexandria, Virginia. Two American jets were involved in the attacks; one of them, Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, belonged to our crew base. I remember the phone lines were jammed that day as I tried to track down roommates and friends based in D.C. and Boston. Eventually every roommate and close friend was accounted for.

Flight 77 was the morning transcon flight to Los Angeles. It was a high-seniority trip none of us with two months on the job could hold. We flew reserve—filling in when others called out or were on vacation. Many of us had worked that flight before 9/11 and would work it again. None of us worked it that morning.

The regular crew on Flight 77 knew their business passengers the way a family knows one another: who took coffee with cream, which newspaper they preferred, who wanted to be woken for the meal and who wanted to sleep. American’s D.C. base was small, and the sudden absence of six colleagues left a hole you could feel.

I also thought of one Boston-based crew member. Our paths had crossed a few months earlier. His last name was so close to my mother’s maiden name that we joked we were probably related. He was not a close friend—just a colleague I hoped to fly with again. He was on American Flight 11. That crew, based in Boston, was on the first plane to strike the towers. He did not come home that day.

We barely had time to feel any of it. Within days, the airline announced a 20 percent workforce reduction. Twenty-five thousand flight attendants would become twenty thousand by month’s end. Those of us at the bottom of the seniority list turned in our badges on September 30th.

A Walk Along the River

My second September 11th arrived three years ago. My cousin was visiting. It was a beautiful late-summer day, and Doug and I decided to walk with her along the Dungeness River. This time we would walk the soon-to-open roadbed of Towne Road.

On the way, we passed a notice stapled to a stake that was fluttering in the breeze. I walked past it. Doug photographed it.

At home, he read the picture aloud. The county was considering several designs for Towne Road—or possibly never reopening it at all. There were officials to contact: the Board of Commissioners and DCD Director Bruce Emery. I wrote to both. I asked a simple question: why wouldn’t the road open?

Commissioner Ozias replied promptly and courteously. Contaminated soil had been found; the unexpected cleanup cost had left the project without money to finish.

Emery sent a link to a recorded meeting. I had not known county meetings were filmed. In the video, staff told the commissioners that a grant had already covered the entire cost of removing the contaminated soil. The county engineer added that Towne Road could be completed without using a single dollar of county funds. Commissioner Ozias pushed back, saying he had received hundreds of signatures asking that the road stay closed, and the commissioners pulled the plug on finishing Towne Road.

I asked Director Emery about the petitions. He said he didn’t know the details and suggested a public-records request—my first. The records showed not “hundreds,” but just 98 signatures opposing reopening Towne Road. There were 122 supporting it.

That discrepancy was the first small crack. I began posting the correspondence with Commissioner Ozias on Nextdoor.com. The posts did not stay quiet for long. Moderators objected. One of them, Jim Stoffer, took particular issue with my sharing correspondence from his friend, Commissioner Ozias. The conversation grew sharper, then it ended. I received a lifetime ban from Nextdoor, and I decided to create my own website about Towne Road.

When I asked Doug whether the site should be TowneRoad.com or ReopenTowneRoad.com, he suggested something broader. I thought the idea was unnecessary.

I am glad I listened.

What Came After the Road

The work widened. Public records showed Commissioner Ozias using his office to oppose a family business that wanted to reopen a dormant gravel pit across from his driveway—while the county hauled gravel from Jefferson County and struggled to create local jobs.

Other stories followed.

• Olympic Medical Center, our largest employer, dropped to only five days of cash on hand before most residents heard a word about it.

• Quiet emails showed talks with a major campaign donor about “taking over” the Dungeness Recreation Area, the beloved county park above the spit.

• Public money moved toward projects that raised fair questions about priorities and fairness, including $118,000 sent through a church to Mike French’s NGO to create three safe-parking spaces.

• And when Sequim artist Richard Madeo was fatally assaulted, the legacy media had nothing to say while a neighbor’s life and work slipped by in silence.

Some of those stories sound sensational because the facts themselves are striking.

In 2022, a section of the old Dungeness levee was opened before the county’s new setback levee was finished. Public records show the county then declared an emergency so work could be rushed ahead of flood season. The Tribe warned of a mass casualty event. The first draft of that emergency resolution placed responsibility for the early breach on project partner Jamestown, which had removed the dike. After Jamestown offered $500,000 tied to new wording that would clear the Tribe of blame, the adopted resolution shifted responsibility to the Army Corps of Engineers, and the County covered it up.

All of this is documented in public records. Reporting these nearly unbelievable stories is not a smear. It is an invitation to look at the same documents anyone else can request.

I have been called many names along the way: a MAGA extremist, a Trumper, a racist, a bigot, a member of the KKK, a transphobe, a Republican. Doug and I have been accused of bringing Latino prostitutes into our open marriage. I was even written into a local play as a dog who eats human feces.

Labels and rumors travel faster than reading public records.

I do not expect every reader to track three years of detail. I ask only that newcomers judge the work by the documents—not by how loudly, or how inventively, some people react to them.

Two Worlds

Flight crews still talk about life before 9/11 and after. Before: shoes stayed on, visitors walked to the gate, a 90-minute flight from Seattle to San Francisco still came with a real meal. After 9/11: plastic utensils, longer lines, and a new watchfulness.

Clallam County has its own before-and-after story. Before Towne Road, many of us assumed that when a road was designed, engineered, funded, and promised, it would be a road. We assumed public comments mattered and that public servants were, at the very least, serving the public. After Towne Road came a harder, more necessary question: what else have we taken on faith?

Vigilance can become a habit. A watchdog can bark at shadows. Three years in, it is possible to live in a place where even well-intentioned leaders are met with suspicion. That is a real loss. It is also a reminder of what we let grow thin: the everyday trust that makes a place feel like home has been broken.

America let its guard down in the years before 2001. Clallam County let its guard down in the years before a simple road project refused to stay simple. In both cases, the answer is not bitterness. It is the decision to stay engaged.

A Place Worth the Work

The first September 11th ended my career and pointed me toward another. After a few detours, I found myself trading planes for trains.

September 11th taught me that freedom is not a finished gift. The work that began 250 years ago has to be taken up again by every generation.

The second September 11th taught the same lesson closer to home. This county—its rivers, its roads, its hospitals, its small businesses, its people who still believe public records belong to the public—is worth the effort. Watchfulness does not have to be angry. It can be an act of hope: the belief that sunlight still matters, that neighbors still deserve straight answers, and that a place this beautiful is worth protecting for the people who will walk its trails long after we are gone.

That is the story I bring to newcomers. Two September days, twenty-two years apart. Both asked the same question, and both received the same answer:

Keep going.

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Facebook is the county meeting nobody adjourned. This week it ran from a Port Townsend interview asking how you’d “deal with privileged white males,” to Emily Randall’s “look at white men,” to a woman thrown toward the Laurel Stairs and a stolen wagon that still had the meth in the receipt. Here’s what hit the feed this Social Media Saturday.

“How would you deal with privileged white males?”

On Port Townsend Life, a resident said a Jefferson County Conservation District interview asked her how she would “deal with privileged white males.”

That is not a skills question. That is a loyalty test. If a public agency is screening applicants that way, every other applicant should ask who wrote the script.

Randall’s special projects

Three Crabs residents are staring at another flood season after the Jamestown Tribe and Clallam County removed an armored dike. Meanwhile, Rep. Emily Randall posted about working to secure $1.2 million for a new tribal Natural Resources building—only four decades old, it’s described as unsafe due to tsunami and sea-level risk.

One commenter wrote, “It’s always special groups with you, how about working with all our citizens!” Randall’s reply: “Do you mean ‘why don’t I see more posts from you about white men?’”

Swap the group (White men) in that sentence with (pick any other race) and watch the political fallout. That is the point.

On January 7, 2026, Randall used a House Oversight hearing on Minnesota fraud to pivot to White men and crime stats, arguing Congress should spend more time “looking at White men,” including the president.

Critics called it a dodge. On local Facebook it read simpler: flood victims get a shrug, the tribe gets a tax-funded new building in the name of climate change, and a constituent who asks for equal treatment gets a lecture about White men.

Identity politics sorts people into oppressors and oppressed, then scores every policy as a loyalty test. League of Women Voters scorecards and the commissioners’ annual anti-colonizer proclamation run on that script. That does not build a county. It divides us into teams.

OlyCAP’s housing director and the men problem

Viola Ware chairs the County’s Homelessness Task Force, runs housing at OlyCAP, and dodges questions about her NGO’s safe parking program, which takes $118,000 dollars in county funds to operate.

French sits on the OlyCAP board.

Ware posted that homeless people account for 11–15% of violent crime and men for 79–81% of violent-crime arrests, then suggested maybe men should lose public space and taxpayer services—later saying she was reducing the homelessness argument to absurdity.

If you start locking groups out of parks and public money because of a crime share, there is no off-ramp. Next it is 18-to-34-year-old men, then a zip code, then anyone with a prior. OlyCAP’s housing director just drew the map for locking people out of parks. She also chairs the county Homelessness Task Force. Mike French sits on her board.

Ware is not arguing policy. She is defending the setup that employs her. Change is the threat.

Keep them addicted. Keep them homeless. Keep the jobs.

Port Angeles is not as calm as the talking point

Commissioner Mike French says he feels as safe as he did four years ago. The Port Angeles Police Department page told a different story.

Wednesday: high call volume, Assault 2/DV, trespass, wrecks—and a stranger grabbing a woman on the Laurel Stairs and trying to throw her down.

Cameras caught it. Officers found the suspect at his apartment and booked him for assault.

Joseph A. Bell, 46, a familiar name downtown, drew 33 months in prison after a July 3 burglary: homeowners walked in on him, fought him, and ID’d him. He pleaded to burglary 2 and assault 4.

Thursday: a woman reported her wagon looted outside a store, including “crystal meth wrapped in a store receipt.” Officers opened the receipt. The meth was still there. After a scuffle, she went to jail. For a day.

Doorbells

Jake Seegers is building a canvassing team. Email volunteer@jakeseegers.com with your phone number, neighborhood, and whether you can travel to knock on doors. Campaigns that live only on Facebook lose to campaigns that walk the block.

Gold lawns for thee

Health and Human Services is partnering with the Jamestown Tribe on drought messaging: short showers, reuse household water, “embrace the gold lawns.”

The tribe owns The Cedars at Dungeness, a 122-acre golf course, kept green through Sequim’s dry summers. Residents can brown the yard. The fairway does not have to.

A dump on the shoulder

A Facebook post described a woman with her pants down “taking a dump” on the side of the road.

French wants a public-safety tax and says it’s up to residents to reclaim their public spaces. Fine, Commissioner French — Walk that Facebook commenter through the reclaiming process.

Addiction, pipes, casino, and a lager

The tribe runs a MAT clinic to address addiction. That is on the record. The same ecosystem also pushes harm-reduction tools through health boards, runs a cannabis shop and a casino, and is now in a Fremont Brewing collab on 6-Killer Native Lager with Jamestown.

Helping people off opioids and selling them the next vice in the same commercial cluster is a heck of a branding strategy.

Portland ran a task force. We ran a proclamation.

Portland police, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney stood up “Project Portland” and talked about shutting down fentanyl dealers.

Clallam’s Board of Commissioners recently answered overdose concerns with a weak “Overdose Awareness” proclamation.

Portland went after dealers. Clallam went after a proclamation.

The kittens

Someone hit a west-side Port Angeles apartment and took two five-month-old cats—service animals that alert before seizures—plus cards and belongings.

Petty theft pays for the habit. The county still hands out the pipes. This time the take was two service cats and a woman’s seizure safety net. That is not a property crime. That is someone losing the animals that keep her alive.

“Prefer tribal members”

Kwitsen Grill, next to Lower Elwha Food and Fuel, posted it would “prefer to hire tribal members.”

Flip the sentence to “prefer Caucasian applicants” or “Americans only” and watch the HR melt down. Rules that only run one direction are not rules — it’s discrimination.

And the person who wants tribal hires first. Here’s the face behind the policy:

Twenty-two committees and a chairmanship

A Facebook post asked the only question that matters: when does public service become concentrated power?

County listings put Mike French on about 22 committees and boards—Board of Health chair, OlyCAP, Clallam Transit, ORCAA, finance, housing alternate, chambers from Forks to Neah Bay, WSAC, William Shore Pool, tribal liaison slots—plus District 3 commissioner and BOCC chair.

Citizens get three minutes, but the same power brokers keep meeting after the meeting. Mapping who sits where, who funds whom, and who votes is not a conspiracy theory. It is homework.

The Seegers signs

Port Angeles signs: “A vote for Seegers is a vote for Trump.” Someone explain the logic. Please.

If the argument is that anyone who isn’t French equals “MAGA”, that is not an argument. That is a scarecrow.

The NGO payroll problem

Teri put it plainly:

Seegers wants “is it essential, is it effective?” A lot of contract-funded NGOs do not want that test. If your budget depends on the county never asking hard questions, you will vote to keep the questions soft. How many feel-good contracts survive a real cut list while the levy talk gets louder?

Leia’s line

“If you want more of the same, vote French. If you want things to get better, vote Seegers.”

That is the whole election in eighteen words.

From the Scanner

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A capacity crowd of 200 packed the Sequim Prairie Grange Thursday night for the Calico Cat Club’s candidate conversation, leaving others outside as doors closed early. Challenger Jake Seegers repeatedly cited local data and common-sense alternatives while Commissioner Mike French defended existing programs, higher fees, and new taxes. Voters now face a clear choice: change, or four more years of the same approach.

A Packed Grange and a Clear Choice

The Calico Cat Club’s Candidate Conversation drew a standing-room-only crowd to the Sequim Prairie Grange on Thursday evening. Organizers admitted 200 people before closing the doors, leaving others waiting outside.

A technical glitch prevented a live stream, but the full recording is available on YouTube.

Two Different Opening Messages

Both candidates kept opening remarks brief. French highlighted his local roots, small-business background, and desire for housing and jobs across the income spectrum. Seegers, who moved to the peninsula 7 years ago to raise his family, said he is running to restore public safety, economic growth, fiscal responsibility, affordability, and trust in local government through common-sense leadership.

Respect for Public Comment—in the Room and Online

Public comment drew a sharp contrast. French said he values public input and models respect after 8½ years in office (12:00). Yet as chair of the Board of Health, he previously posted on Facebook that it was “incredible” the public “really think their nonsense should be convincing. Like, if the Board of Health had had a public hearing and let them voice their positions, the decision would have been different?”

The statements undercut his claim of respect for those who take time to participate.

Public Safety, Overdoses, and Who Pays the Bill

On public safety and drugs, Seegers cited specific county numbers: overdose deaths rose more than 500 percent from 2018 to 2024, far outpacing state and national increases, and remain more than 200 percent higher despite a recent dip (31:31). He argued current harm-reduction practices enable rather than reduce harm, pointing to 12,000 encounters versus only 27 inpatient assessments (16:21 and 1:11:00).

Seegers called for returning to one-for-one syringe exchange plus Narcan, prioritizing detox and inpatient treatment, ending outdoor living on public land, and measuring outcomes such as recovery and self-sufficiency instead of inputs like pipes and syringes distributed. (42:05).

French described harm reduction as the “practical” approach backed by evidence and pointed to investments in treatment plus upcoming Port Angeles police officers paid for by a new sales tax. He said the county should consider a similar tax increase (17:00 and 40:51). Seegers argued the opposite: prioritize public safety by reducing the $33 million law-and-justice burden through enforcement and treatment that actually moves people off the street, rather than asking taxpayers for more (1:16:36, 1:56:25).

French observed that addiction causes people to do things they would never otherwise do (1:47:12). He nevertheless supports a county program that provides shower vouchers to active drug users who are homeless so they can use the William Shore Pool, a family facility.

Tariffs, the Forks Mill, and a Record of Competence

French denied that the Riverside Forest Products, a Canadian-owned mill soon to open in Forks, was driven by tariffs, attributing it to the company’s internal decisions (46:50). However, Peninsula Daily News previously reported Clallam County Economic Development Council Executive Director Colleen McAleer telling commissioners the company faced “tariff issues and supply issues” and that locating in Forks was of benefit for those reasons.

French said the public is “yearning for competence” (46:22). That line resonated with attendees familiar with his record. He served on the William Shore Pool board during a period when the executive director was found to have taken tens of thousands in public dollars; the State Auditor cited a lack of basic financial controls. French also declined grant funding that would have allowed Towne Road to be surfaced at no cost to the county, resulting in a $1.5 million bill for local taxpayers.

Housing Promises Versus Delivery

French cited Habitat for Humanity’s veterans project as a code-enforcement success story that transferred blighted private property to an NGO for affordable housing (59:01). At a Port Angeles debate last month, he described the process more bluntly:

“When I was on the city council, I advocated for the city to take a more active role in blighted properties. That resulted in the city attempting to forcibly acquire a property on Fairmount Avenue. That, us making the push, you know, saying ‘we’re going to take this property from you through legal means because you have failed in these ways,’ that motivated the property owner to sell to Habitat for Humanity. It’s now a fourplex that’s going to be veterans’ housing… when markets don’t have an answer for it, the public sector does, sometimes, have the ability to step in and say ‘hey, this is how we’re going to get it done.’ Those are the tools that I have experience using and I think that we should continue to use.”

That is the model French is proud of: government pressure to “motivate” a private owner to sell to an NGO, with seizure held out as the next step. Code enforcement and, in some cases, the health officer already have tools to address problem properties without elected officials deciding whose investment should be taken and handed to a favored nonprofit.

Habitat purchased the main Fairmount Avenue lot in February 2022 after a November 2021 bid. An adjacent lot followed in November 2023. Groundbreaking was expected in early 2024. Four years after the first purchase, the four-unit Ketchum Veteran Cottages still are not complete. That is the timeline French calls success: slower delivery than the private market, after government leaned on a property owner to sell.

In other words, Mike French believes in property rights, as long as you are using property according to his standards.

Grants, Tribes, and Public Lands

On the Recompete grant, Seegers noted that 25 percent of the funding ($8.2 million of $35 million) is directed to 5 percent of the population in the tribes and asked why local small businesses could not have received similar help, such as a hydroseeding truck (1:02:30). French offered no rebuttal.

Asked about transferring the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge into tribal trust, French said he could not comment without seeing draft legislation (1:31:42). Seegers answered immediately: “I don’t need to see the legislation. It’s an easy answer. I don’t support it” (1:32:44). Seegers also noted that, “the Jamestown tribe already owns the refuges. We all do. It’s for all of us. Leave it that way.”

Ideology, Canvassers, and What Happened Outside the Door

French repeatedly accused Seegers of approaching issues from an “ideological” perspective while describing himself as practical (35:18). Seegers repeatedly cited county-specific data and conversion rates. French, running as a Democrat, has relied on Indivisible—an organization known for ideological messaging—to produce stickers and conduct neighborhood canvassing. Indivisible’s local effort is backed by the League of Women Voters.

Indivisible members attended the event and attempted to steer discussion toward the 2020 federal election and national topics rather than county issues. One questioner asked both candidates whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen (1:49:25). Another asked about personal contributions to the Heritage Foundation or Project 2025-aligned groups (1:42:00). Seegers declined to answer questions he viewed as intended to divide the county along party lines (1:51:03).

French did not condemn the Indivisible “Handmaidens”, who lined the Grange entrance wearing masks and holding signs such as “Beware of MAGA posing as independent” and “Keep Texas $ out of Clallam County.”

The “Shotgun Sermon” and Free Speech

French, who has described himself as a free-speech absolutist, demanded an apology from Seegers over a 2024 church talk widely circulated as the “skunk sermon” or “shotgun sermon.” Seegers explained it was a metaphor for voting and civic engagement, not a call to violence (50:14). French returned to the clip multiple times rather than staying on current local topics.

French called on everyone to condemn violent rhetoric and said public officials should calm the temperature rather than divide people (48:05). He has not applied that standard to stickers comparing Seegers to Charlie Kirk or to blood-stained signs comparing his opponent to Trump.

While French and Indivisible spent much of the night circling a 2024 church video, no one asked French about his past support for property destruction in the name of societal change.

The focus stayed on Seegers’ metaphor rather than on whether the incumbent’s own record matches the civility and respect for property he claimed on stage.

Church, State, and a $118,000 Parking Deal

Asked about separation of church and state, French said he believes in it as a longstanding American ideal (1:24:05). That principle looks different in county contracting. French approved a county contract sending more than $118,000 to Sequim’s Trinity United Methodist Church for a “safe parking” program that covers just three parking spaces—nearly $40,000 per space.

The church then pays OlyCAP, the NGO whose board French sits on. The arrangement moves taxpayer money through a church and to a favored NGO, outside public view. Voters can decide whether that matches the separation of church and state French described on stage.

Change or More of the Same

The evening repeatedly returned to a single question for voters: do they want change or more of the same? Seegers argued that current approaches have made Clallam County a destination for homelessness and substance-abuse problems while raising fees and taxes. French pointed to incremental investments and collaboration. The recording lets residents judge the contrast for themselves.

Stay Engaged: Westbay Development

Westbay developer Casey Roloff and the Seabrook team are asking residents to show up at the Sequim Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday, September 1 at 5:30 p.m. in the Sequim City Council chambers. The proposed 600-home development near John Wayne Marina has drawn sharp debate over water supply, ecological impacts, and large-scale building in a rural part of Sequim. Whatever side you are on, consider attending so you can hear the facts firsthand and stay involved.

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When a man in the grip of psychosis sits outside a local grocery store, cursing at invisible enemies, is the answer really just a sandwich, a bottle of water, and a quiet patio? Or does the problem run far deeper—into policies that hand out the tools of addiction and call it compassion? This reality check shows why one candidate for county commissioner is making public safety the non-negotiable foundation for everything else.

At a February 17 Board of Health meeting earlier this year (timestamp 33:40), Health Officer Allison Berry stated:

“When you see someone on the street who’s shouting at somebody who doesn’t appear to be there, often the solution to that is not jail. It’s a sandwich and a water and a quiet place to be.”

Now look at this video (contains explicit language).

A man appears to be in the midst of a psychotic episode, likely caused or intensified by drug use. He is cursing and sitting outside a local small-business grocery store. He is eating something (whether it is a sandwich is unknown). He has a quiet place to be—a patio outside a boutique grocery store. Yet he is still experiencing a mental breakdown.

Is the missing piece simply a bottle of water? Or is the deeper issue that he lives in a county whose Health Officer will place foil, needles, crack pipes, and “boofing” kits in his hands and encourage him to return to the woods to continue using the illicit street drugs that trap him in addiction?

Harm reduction, in practice, has become harm expansion. This person is not getting better. Our community is not getting better.

The County’s Harm Reduction Health Center receives more than half a million dollars in funding each year. It carefully tracks inputs—how many needles were distributed, how many meth pipes were handed out, how many snorting kits were given to people trapped in active addiction. Yet the health department does not measure outcomes: how many people entered treatment, how many transitioned into recovery, or how many returned to the workforce.

Over half a million dollars spent, and we have no idea whether it is producing any positive effect at all.

In the race for county commissioner, one candidate—Jake Seegers—states clearly that public safety is the cornerstone for everything else, including economic development. He argues that if a business is going to invest time and money, build here, generate taxes, and create jobs, it must know that local government will act as a partner and protect that investment.

Who would want to walk past someone in the grip of this kind of psychosis and still frequent this small grocery store? Who would feel comfortable purchasing food and a soft drink and enjoying it on that patio? Who would feel safe?

In 74 days you will make that choice. You will decide whether this county will be a genuine partner in protecting the investments of local businesses—or a tax-consuming bystander that sits on the sidelines while businesses and business owners close their doors and move to places where local governments actually value and protect them.

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This week, Clallam County Watchdog is on a temporary hiatus while volunteering at the Jake Seegers for Commissioner booth at the Clallam County Fair. Stop by today through Sunday and say hi to Jake and Jeff near the Yellow Gate (West Entrance). In the meantime, enjoy this short article that clearly highlights the difference between the two commissioner races.

Jim Stoffer updated his Facebook profile picture this week.

In it, he is holding a container of salsa and wearing a pin on his shirt that reads “We Are Salsa Picante.”

Salsa Picante is the anonymous blog that has falsely claimed my husband and I have an open relationship with young Latino men whom we pay for sex. The blog published AI-generated text messages to “substantiate” the lie.