Discontent in Happy Valley
Public office, personal interests
Last year, readers learned that one Clallam County Commissioner used his clout to satisfy the desires of a private interest when he promised tax-funded, automatic, electric gates to one landowner. Readers also gained insight into the same commissioner’s attempts to keep Towne Road closed, and how that aligned with the wishes of his campaign’s top donor, a special interest. Now, recently released documents show how the commissioner used his influence, as an elected official, to satisfy his own personal interests.
When a local business owner decided to initiate the permitting process to reopen a dormant, family-owned gravel pit, concerned residents of Happy Valley and Bell Hill organized to oppose the quarry. An August 9th, 2023, Sequim Gazette article covered the rally:
During a July 30 meeting hosted at Elklandia Farm, more than 100 residents reportedly turned out to share their concerns with Clallam County commissioner Mark Ozias in attendance.
“I share all of the same concerns as the residents,” Ozias said in a later interview.
Ozias said that a resident at the meeting said this operation could be positive if there was a major need for the material being mined, but there isn’t one.
“I have since confirmed that, according to our own documentation, there is no apparent immediate need for the supply of this material,” he said.
A county commissioner’s role isn’t to endorse or disapprove private enterprise, that is determined by due process and the free market. If a business owner were to reopen a family restaurant, it would be inappropriate for an elected official to publicly announce, “I have since confirmed that there is no apparent need for another restaurant in this area.”
Ozias crossed a line when he attended the rally, gave a public statement to the media, and lobbied against the project while attending as a Clallam County Commissioner. As an elected official, Ozias should not use his positional power to broadcast his personal interest at a forum that is only provided due to his elected public office. This is a habit that follows Commissioner Ozias and in the weeks after the “Stop the Happy Valley Pit” rally, he continued to overstep his authority.
Longtime Sequim residents may remember when the Happy Valley gravel pit was operational. For reference, this map shows the gravel pit’s location and the nearby properties.
Note that the southwestern most property within the 600-foot buffer is owned by “Ozias and Boulware.” Mark Ozias wasn’t just attending the “Stop the Happy Valley Pit” rally as a commissioner; he was attending as a nearby property owner and resident. Commissioner Ozias lives less than a quarter mile from the gravel pit.
The quarry’s owner had applied for a “conditional use permit” and the Clallam County Hearing Examiner scheduled its review for September 7th. According to the county’s website, the Hearing Examiner’s role is, “to ensure fairness and due process protection for all involved in the hearing process. Specifically, the Hearing Examiner renders land-use decisions in accordance with local, state, and federal regulations.”
Clallam County follows a civil process for such instances, and the policy allows for the public to provide written and oral input. Weighing factual data, the hearing examiner would then make a ruling based on an array of factors. The examiner could rule that a gravel pit was not appropriate for this location or, they could determine that a small gravel pit could serve the needs of a growing community. This particular gravel pit produced basalt. Apart from being a popular material for driveways and landscaping, basalt’s draining properties make it a commonly used component in the construction of roadbeds and the manufacturing of asphalt.
Two large infrastructure projects, requiring the construction of new roadbeds and drainage areas, are scheduled to begin soon. One, the Simdars Road Interchange, will build a new off-ramp and on-ramp to highway 101. This will include the construction of a frontage road that will link Simdars Road to Happy Valley and Palo Alto Roads. A second project, one that removes the Johnson Creek culvert under highway 101 and replaces it with a bridge, is scheduled to begin this summer. A hearing examiner could determine that a source of gravel, located only a mile and a half from these construction sites, could accelerate the projects’ completion and save taxpayer money.
Resident and Commissioner Mark Ozias didn’t wait for the hearing examiner’s ruling. Almost immediately after the rally, he began abusing his power and utilizing influential connections while shielding his actions from public view. In his role as an elected official, Commissioner Ozias communicated with, supported, and fed valuable information to only his side of the controversy: the gravel pit opponents.
Public records reveal a post-rally flurry of activity from the Commissioner’s County email address. In the example below, Commissioner Ozias edited a gravel pit opponent’s letter before it was submitted to the hearing examiner:
On August 3rd, Mark Ozias and his wife wrote their own four-page letter opposing the gravel pit and submitted it to Bruce Emery, the County’s Director of the Department of Community Development.
Reading the Ozias-Boulware letter, it’s hard to believe that a 4.74-acre gravel pit could fill 70 dump trucks predominantly between 7 and 9am on a daily basis, or that the added traffic would compromise the integrity of a culvert. Skeptics of Ozias’ assertions need only to revisit the commissioner’s actions regarding Towne Road to realize that broadcasting disingenuous data to advance his hidden agenda is a common tactic:
Ozias claimed on multiple occasions that the cost of remediating contaminated soil beneath the old Towne Road, and the resulting financial burden on the county, was the reason that the project was halted. However, the full reimbursement of that cost was known before he halted the project.
While outwardly communicating to the public that the road was halted due to financial insecurity, Ozias didn’t mention that the county was poised to complete the project without dipping into county funds. He said during a February commissioners’ work session, “If our alternatives are to build a standard county road or to turn the dollars back, if we can’t redirect some of them into a parking lot or other access areas, I’d rather turn the grant dollars back.”
The commissioner then cited an “upswell of support” to keep the road closed as his reason to stop the project, but that upswell was only 98 signatures. Ozias didn’t mention that 140 signatures, supporting the reopening of the road, had been received by the county.
Ozias then pivoted and said that the road needed to remain closed to honor the desires of one farmer. The commissioner said during a work session, “I’m personally not convinced that we need a road of any kind, especially if the Eberles don’t want it.”
Commissioner Ozias approved the funneling of money, originally intended to complete the road, back to his campaign’s top contributor, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe. He then blamed the incomplete road on a lack of funds.
At a public informational meeting in September of 2023, Ozias promoted the recreational advantages of a closed Towne Road while withholding information that insurance rates for Dungeness could more than double. He didn’t share that the Fire Chief and Sheriff had officially stated that the closure could have a negative effect on public safety.
Most recently, when both the DCD Director and County Engineer explained that funding was within reach to complete the road, Commissioner Ozias waffled and favored a “phased approach” which would install automatic gates. Ozias continues to steer Towne Road away from progress and push for the gates as an interim step. The gated approach would easily fulfill his promise to a private landowner while also satisfying the wishes of his top campaign donor.
These are the actions of an elected official who has sworn to “faithfully and impartially” represent the needs and interests of Clallam County District 1.
Regular readers of the Towne Road saga will remember the email Commissioner Ozias sent to one landowner after a private meeting: “Lastly, would you mind sharing your mobile? I’d like to connect with you NOT on county time or my county device to follow up.” The below email chain shows Commissioner Ozias’ continued willingness to conduct public business behind a veil of privacy:
Before correspondence disappeared onto Ozias’ private device, there was another chain of problematic emails. Watchdog readers will remember that during the Towne Road fiasco, the commissioner willingly conducted county business with a private landowner even though the landowner had notified the county that he was represented by legal counsel – an inappropriate interaction that should have been conducted between attorneys of the county and landowner. Commissioner Ozias was bcc’d in the lengthy email chain below, the subject was “HV GRAVEL PIT LAWYER THREAD”:
Even though the commissioner received emails stating that there was a “need to lawyer up” and that it was “attorney time”, he continued frequent communications with those opposing the gravel pit. He abandoned his duty as a neutral public servant, he continued using his pull as an elected official to lobby for the interests of himself and a select group, and (once again) he exposed the county, and its taxpayers, to the risk of a lawsuit.
The intermingling of Commissioner Ozias’ County business and personal motives continued daily during the first week of August, 2023. The following two emails make no attempt to hide the commissioner’s agenda to stop the quarry – Ozias even furthers his motives by sending his own, personal letter to other allies:
When the dike’s early breach unexpectedly closed Towne Road in 2022, a school bus route was severed. Currently, for the second consecutive school year, that bus driver completes a three-point turn by using the Dungeness Valley Creamery’s driveway. The bus driver then makes a five-mile detour before resuming the route in Dungeness. During the winter, this turnaround maneuver is conducted in the dark.
Research hasn’t resulted in any documented concern from Commissioner Ozias about the impact that Towne Road’s closure would have on the Sequim School District – not when the road was temporarily closed in 2022, and not when Ozias halted its reopening in 2023. However, the commissioner did contact the school district about the bus route serving Happy Valley, and he enthusiastically recruited the superintendent as a powerful ally for his hidden agenda:
The Towne Road boondoggle also exposed a close relationship between Commissioner Ozias and his campaign’s top contributor, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe:
The commissioner’s multiple attempts to halt Towne Road’s completion align with the Tribe’s desire to keep the road closed for at least three years so it can serve as an outdoor classroom.
In the aftermath of the Tribes' early breach of the old Dungeness River dike, instead of assisting the County in determining if the Tribe was at fault, Ozias “word smithed” a resolution that reassigned the blame.
That strong allegiance to the Tribe may have proved valuable when, barely a week after the “Stop the Happy Valley Pit” rally, the Tribe was able to complete a study and submit a letter to the Department of Community Development. While the letter didn’t call for an outright denial of the pending permit, it requested that many additional, stringent conditions be met. By default, their stance favored Commissioner Ozias’ desired outcome of preventing the gravel pit from reopening near his home.
Residents of Downtown Sequim and Sequim-Dungeness Way will remember the summer of 2022 as a constant parade of dump trucks that hauled hundreds of loads of gravel from Jefferson County to the Towne Road levee construction site. Despite the trucks trundling through Sequim’s downtown core, creeping through a school zone, and passing residential areas, the Towne Road Levee was constructed without incident and there was no measurable impact to our roads. In the email below, Commissioner Ozias bolsters his cause by courting another powerful ally, the City of Sequim manager:
After weeks of frenzied email exchanges, and an onslaught of covert opposition, the Commissioner finally admitted in an email that the quarry’s owner had the right to apply for a permit:
The Happy Valley gravel pit is not operating today. The landowner voluntarily withdrew the application citing threats to his family and business. The Sequim Gazette interviewed the landowner and published an article on September 13th, 2023:
However, he wrote they did not expect “extreme public defamation of our family’s character, and threats to our family’s way of life. Shots were fired from the public roadway into items upon my own home’s property, less than a few hundred feet of my front door.”
The Gazette also quoted the spokesperson for “Friends of Happy Valley,” – the same resident who had exchanged dozens of emails with the commissioner and persuaded him to take the discussion to his private email address (she also contributed to the “lawyer up” email) – The spokesperson said that the coalition was “thrilled that the application has been withdrawn.”
In the article, Hearing Examiner Donella Clark, “reports that one residence is within 600 feet of the proposed property…” and she recommended denying the project. The map at the top of this article clearly shows the 600-foot buffer zone crossing through the Ozias-Boulware property.
Accommodating the wishes of his campaign’s top donor, promising automatic gates to close a public road, and thwarting the reopening of a gravel pit near his home: it’s clear that Commissioner Ozias is willing to use the power of his elected office to prioritize special, private, and personal interests… but what about the interests of taxpayers and the public?
When a controversial neighborhood of manufactured homes was proposed on Atterberry Road, opponents approached their commissioner for support. According to a resident who organized the opposition, Commissioner Ozias would not engage. Similarly, the commissioner offered no public support when Carlsborg residents attempted to shut down a controversial solid waste transfer station.
In November, a rally was held in Dungeness to support the reopening of Towne Road – the commissioner was invited but he did not respond nor attend. Community members devoted to the reopening of the road know first-hand how absent Commissioner Ozias’ support has been, and how he has deliberately interfered with multiple attempts to complete the project.
It would serve Ozias, and the community he has sworn to represent, if he were to return to the county’s policies and procedures, remain ethically consistent, and honor the spirit of the Commissioner’s elected role. There are over 25,000 constituents in District 1 who are dependent on the Clallam County Commissioner to uphold his oath to “faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of the office.”
EXCELLENT expose'! So many politicians are crooked. It's truly shameful that politics and integrity go together like oil and water, or should I say snake oil and sewer water?
Thanks for your thorough and thoughtful research regarding the Happy Valley connection here. I've wondered WHO was behind the shut down of the gravel pit there - too bad Ozias is such a tool of the $$$ rather than the people!! STAY PESKY!!!!