Speech at commissioners' meeting

Delivered December 5th, 2023

My name is Jeff Tozzer, I live in Sequim, and I want Towne Road reopened to through traffic. I originally read this speech two months ago but Commissioner Ozias left during my speech and my microphone was turned off, so I’m reading it again for the public record. I’d like to read the four pillars of the Commissioners’ mission statement:

1) Putting the translated desires of our residents into action through effective communication. The degradation of communication began 10 months ago in this very room when there was no public notice that the completion of a massive public works project had been halted. Effective communication continues to be absent today — a vast majority of residents still don’t know that the original promise of Towne Road has been scrapped. As for residents’ translated desires: we desire safe egress during an emergency, we desire that our tax money is used efficiently, and we desire that promises made by County leaders are kept.

2) Providing comprehensive and exemplary public service levels in a prompt responsive manner. Commissioners are fairly responsive until the discussion begins to push back or difficult questions are asked. If a response doesn’t serve to paint a Commissioner in a positive light, the first attempt is usually to supply unreliable information that makes the Commissioner look favorable. If that option isn’t available, tough questions are generally disregarded. It’s impossible to appreciate exemplary public service and prompt responses while being lied to or ignored.

3) Maximizing and enhancing our environmental resources for sustainability and legacy expectations. The Towne Road levee was built with sustainability at the forefront of every decision and the legacy expectation, promoted by County leaders, is that this road, which has served as a vital, rural link between two communities for over 100 years, will reopen to through traffic.

4) Celebrating the diversity and inclusiveness of our residents’ contributions to our quality of life. The thousands of residents affected by this closure are diverse indeed — some enjoy walking and cycling, some are housebound and reliant on quick responses from emergency services. Some are business owners who depend on through traffic to keep their enterprises afloat, and some are delivery drivers and farm workers who have incorporated a 5-mile detour into their daily life. When a narrow selection of residents petitioned that Towne Road remain closed, when special and private interests lobbied for County taxpayers to be banned from using a public road that the County taxpayers had paid for (and continue to pay for), the broader interests and concerns of our diverse and, usually inclusive community, were ignored.

The County is setting the dangerous precedent that a small number of petitioners, and a handful of special interests, are able to compromise the needs and safety of everyone. We want to know why a handful of special and individual interests can influence 3 Commissioners to halt the completion of a $20 million dollar, decades long, public works project intended for everyone’s benefit. We want to know how 98 signatures can close a road that once saw 180,000 cars per year. Your delay caused the County to lose hundreds of thousands in grant funding and caused the project's final price tag to inflate by over a million dollars. We want to hear the justification for why we, the Clallam County taxpayer, must now cover that cost caused by your delay.

If the Commissioners had viewed this project through the lens of their Mission Statement, we wouldn’t be having this discussion about transparency and accountability.

My original speech: [Notice that Ozias turns off his Zoom feed and my mic is cut. My speech begins at 1:22:00]

https://clallam.granicus.com/player/clip/1921?view_id=2&redirect=true&h=7ae6fe34a3f28fe93503d9d5caf71142