Shrinkage
Disappearing County, "free" climate summit, SERN, and ethics
Clallam County is shrinking.
This month, four additional parcels are set to be converted into tribal trust land, permanently removing them from the property tax rolls. These properties are clustered around the Tribe’s Blyn campus and, if converted, will save the Jamestown Tribe $16,634.67 in annual property taxes. This will affect our community significantly, reducing funding for struggling schools by nearly $8,000, the failing hospital by $700, our libraries by almost $650, and our fire district by over $3,200 shifting this tax burden onto other County taxpayers.
The four Sequim properties are:
193 Zaccardo Road (already tax-exempt)
Over $3,300 will be defunded from the county general and road funds.
Next week, on Tuesday, November 26th, at 10:30 AM, the Commissioners will hold a public hearing to consider passing two property tax increases of 1% for the general and road funds. The hearing is open to the public, and comments are allowed online or in person (more impactful). The meeting will be held at the Board of Commissioners Boardroom at the courthouse in Port Angeles.
The Department of the Interior has contacted the commissioners for comments before considering the transfer: “The purpose for seeking your comments regarding the proposed trust land acquisition is to obtain sufficient data that would enable an analysis of the potential impact on local/state government, which may result from the removal of the subject property from the tax roll and local jurisdiction.”
During recent public comment, the commissioners were asked if they intended to reply to the federal government and communicate the impact of defunding services in our economically depressed county. They did not answer and remained silent.
Over the past nine years, the commissioners have not replied to any of the Department of the Interior’s requests for comment.
The cost of “free”
Last month’s conference on “Energy and Climate Resilience,” hosted by the North Olympic Development Council (NODC), a nongovernmental organization led by its president, Mark Ozias, was billed as a free event with “costs covered by sponsorships.”
However, it wasn’t free for Clallam County taxpayers, who paid $2,497.80 in site rental to 7 Cedars Casino but were not allowed to attend.
During public comment this week, Commissioner Mark Ozias was asked why the County spent taxpayer money to host his organization’s private event at the casino of his campaign’s top donor.
Commissioner Ozias responded, “In terms of location, with the number of attendees, that was really the only location on the Peninsula that has the capacity to handle that number of attendees.”
However, NODC Executive Director Karen Affeld stated during a public meeting the morning of the event, “We had set a registration limit of 100 people for each day given the constraints of the room size, and we are over that 100-person limit on day two, the climate day, and reaching that limit on day one, energy resilience.”
It seems the attendance was approximately 100 guests each day, a number that several other venues on the Peninsula could have accommodated:
The Guy Cole Convention Center, operated by the City of Sequim, can accommodate 335 people with tables and chairs.
Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Sequim has a banquet room with a capacity for 120 people.
Sequim Elks has an industrial kitchen and a banquet room that can accommodate 200 people, the same as the Port Angeles Naval Elks Lodge.
The Port Angeles Red Lion’s ballroom can accommodate up to 280 people. Commissioner Ozias likely knows this, as the County hosted its $30 per person public budget meeting there.
The convention could have been held at another facility that generates taxes to fund the very programs the commissioners are cutting during this historic budget deficit. A local restaurant could have catered for the event, and local hotels could have accommodated visitors during the midweek off-season slump. This event could have brought diners to restaurants, shoppers to downtown, and taxes to depleted county coffers.
DisconSERNing
According to Commissioner Ozias, the second day of the private conference “had to do with climate resilience and was almost entirely focused on generating information and feedback that will be part of the new climate element to the comp plan update as well as an updated hazard mitigation plan which will be part of the comp plan update.”
The Strait Ecosystem Recovery Network (SERN), shown on the lower left portion of the flyer, is one of the nongovernmental organizations aiming to influence the County’s Comprehensive Plan. The plan dictates county residents’ land use, transportation, public utilities, housing, capital facilities, rural development, economic development, parks, and nearly every aspect of daily life.
In 2021, SERN hosted a “Climate Change Resiliency Technical Workshop” planned by the North Olympic Land Trust (NOLT) and the NODC. The workshop determined that an involuntarily “buy back” program to evict residents from beachfront properties was necessary to help “the ecosystem become more resilient.” The workshop specified that “not paying full price for parcels” would be a responsible use of taxpayer funds.
Likely knowing that Clallam County would undergo an extensive comprehensive plan update in 2024, SERN determined that its goals would be best achieved by influencing local governments “in advance of their work to update their respective Comprehensive Plans.”
Who funds the agency that intends to evict Clallam County residents and pay below-value prices for their beachfront homes?
SERN’s website states that the Jamestown Tribe is their fiscal agent. Their homepage offers a land acknowledgment that reads, “Through disease, unfair dealings, oppression, and attempted erasure of their culture, these people have endured and continue to honor their cultural traditions… Colonization has shaped the reality of everyone here today.”
This ideology, separating groups into “colonizers” and “colonized,” is promoted by the ICLEI, a German nongovernmental agency to which the Jamestown Tribe and NODC belong.
Ethics
This week’s Clallam County Commissioner board meeting was canceled as all three commissioners are at a leadership conference hosted by the Washington State Association of Counties (WASAC). The following email was sent to 160 attendees and support staff.
Dear Washington State Association of Counties members,
Your work for Washington's 39 Counties is paramount to the State's success. However, there is a member of your Executive Committee who may compromise the integrity of your organization.
Clallam County Commissioner Mark Ozias has developed a pattern of unethical and deceptive conduct that contradicts your Comprehensive Policy Manual and the “County Code of Ethics" published by the National Association of Counties (NACo). As a result, special, private, political, and personal interests are being prioritized over Clallam County’s public interests.
The following examples are not alleged; these are factual instances of unethical behavior sourced from public records that can be substantiated.
As president of the North Olympic Development Council (NODC), a nongovernmental organization, Commissioner Ozias gave funds and responsibilities to the NODC and its partners to make decisions on behalf of Clallam County. When the NODC drafts comprehensive plan policies, often collaborating with special interests (one being a sovereign nation), laws mandating government transparency are circumvented, insulating Ozias from voter scrutiny. As president of the NODC, Ozias is positioned to craft public policy outside the public’s view, which the NODC presents to Clallam County for implementation. Returning to his role as Commissioner, Ozias has approved the policies his NGO and its influencers have proposed. This has resulted in his top campaign contributor receiving kickbacks, like the construction of a cellular tower.
For example, the NODC, under Commissioner Ozias’ leadership, was tasked with administering a program designed to involuntarily “buy back” beachfront properties under the guise that it helps “the ecosystem become more resilient.” The program aims to change the County Comprehensive Plan and intends to “not pay full price for parcels.” It is a conflict of interest for Commissioner Ozias to influence policy while also heading an organization that will assist in confiscating private property.
Commissioner Ozias used his elected office to prevent a family-owned local gravel pit from reopening near his primary residence. Despite obvious name recognition, he wrote a letter to the County as a “citizen” yet spoke at an anti-gravel pit rally as a “commissioner.” He alleged that the gravel pit would cause health impacts “ranging from high blood pressure to speech and hearing problems to sleep disruption.” He also relied upon his campaign's top donor, The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, to help defeat the family’s enterprise by issuing a letter that said the gravel pit may infringe on the Tribe’s treaty rights. A family's dream of creating four family-wage jobs and reopening their generational business vaporized when the family withdrew their application after threats of violence and a shooting at their home. For an economically distressed county, Commissioner Ozias' attack on small businesses has contributed to our stagnant GDP, which has been outpaced by our neighboring county, state, and nation over the last decade.
Commissioner Ozias’ top campaign donor, the Jamestown Tribe, partnered with the County to build a levee but unexpectedly and deliberately breached a dike holding back the Dungeness River. This unilateral action endangered hundreds of lives and exposed an entire downriver community to flood risk. Ozias arranged for an emergency declaration to be altered, which absolved the Jamestown Tribe of any blame despite records showing that the Tribe had caused the breach. The declaration was altered after the Jamestown Tribe wrote a letter to the County demanding they not be blamed for breaching the dike and after private discussions were held with them. The engineer’s estimate to respond to the breach was over $10 million in taxpayer funds, but the Tribe was not held accountable.
On two documented occasions, Commissioner Ozias has taken conversations regarding public projects onto his private "non-county" devices. This was done while opposing the gravel pit (to organize neighborhood opposition before a public hearing) and during his attempts to convert a public road into a campaign supporter’s private driveway (during a discussion to install taxpayer-funded automatic gates for a campaign supporter).
Towne Road, a public county road funded and used by Clallam County taxpayers for over a century, was closed unexpectedly and needlessly (due to the dike breach) for over two years. Public documents confirm Commissioner Ozias' intent to spend over $125,000 to install three electric, automatic, taxpayer-funded gates that would effectively turn Towne Road into an exclusive driveway for a handful of his supporters who were demanding that it be left closed despite it being designed, engineered, funded and promised to remain a public road (never to be closed for one day) which Ozias initially approved. During the course of the project, especially after his largest campaign contributor breached the dike, Ozias changed his stance, objecting to reopening the road.
Commissioner Ozias reasoned that the completion of a multi-million-dollar project should be halted because the county had received “hundreds” of signatures from “several” petitions requesting that the road remain closed. Public records show that only 98 signatures from two petitions had been received. Commissioner Ozias omitted that 140 signatures had been received supporting the road’s reopening. This false and misleading statement caused the project to be delayed for over two years, which endangered the community due to increased emergency response times and drove up project costs.
Commissioner Ozias initiated a month-long investigation against the supporters of Towne Road by instructing Clallam County's elected Prosecuting Attorney and Sheriff to investigate County residents. He has politicized or weaponized at least seven County departments or organizations in his efforts to appease special interests.
Commissioner Ozias halted completing a decades-long, multiagency, $20,000,000 infrastructure project. Once it became apparent that grant money would expire if unused, he funneled it to the corporation that had funded 53% of his last campaign.
While the Sheriff, two Fire Chiefs, the Community Emergency Response Team, the State's Tsunami Program Manager, the County Chief Engineer, the County Biologist, and the Department of Community Development Director advised the Commissioners to reopen Towne Road, Commissioner Ozias inexplicably upheld the opinion of the Trails Advisory Committee to keep the road closed. Commissioner Ozias' decision to keep Towne Road closed contributed to one home being lost to fire, pets lost, and a family left homeless because the fire department had to detour five miles.
Our commissioners promised, via resolution, to a gallery packed with concerned residents that Towne Road would be completed this year. Commissioner Ozias then voted against completing the project three times.
Commissioner Ozias has violated his oath to “faithfully and impartially discharge the duties” of his elected office, which would have likely triggered an ethics investigation if he had been a state employee or a public official in most other counties, including Kitsap County, which has a comprehensive ethics code. However, County Commissioners deliberately altered Clallam County's Code of Ethics years ago. They removed an investigative mechanism and civil penalties, leaving citizens no recourse for address.
To quote your parent organization, NACo: “The legitimacy of a democratic government rests on its ability to gain the trust of its citizens. Corrupt government officials and staff who fail to uphold basic standards of ethics completely undermine the role of public service. At the core of decisions, officials are expected to keep the interest of the public — not themselves — in mind.”
Similarly, WASAC “requires board members, committee members, employees and other representatives to observe high standards of business and personal ethics, practice honesty and integrity and comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the conduct of their duties and responsibilities.”
As professional organizations, Clallam County relies on WASAC and NACo to engage ethically in representing the public. To maintain the integrity of these organizations, an ethics investigation should be conducted into Commissioner Mark Ozias’ behavior. I hold evidence of the wrongdoings described and would be willing to meet with your investigator to discuss them. The professionalism driven by the expectations described by your organization is needed and appreciated.
Your aim is on the mark, Jeff! You are absolutely on target by calling out the location of the climate conference being held at the casino. During Monday's work session, you asked Comm. Ozias directly why weren't other more accommodating locations used. He couldn't answer. With the unchanged political climate here and throughout Washington state, we will continue to wallow in the same stagnate quagmire. However, if we keep becoming more aware, informed, and involved we can make it to safety and prosperity.
I am overwhelmed with disgust that special interest is more important than the residents of the county.