“The biggest thing that we can do to protect ourselves and our community as we move into the fall is to get vaccinated, both with our Covid boosters and get our flu shot. That’s how we protect ourselves, our neighbors and our health care system as we move into the fall.”
(9-26-22 BOCC meeting)
FACT CHECK:
By now, it is an indisputable fact that the Covid jabs don’t prevent infection or transmission. Admit it — just about every jabbed person you know has had Covid, at least once. The “vaccines” don’t protect granny or the grandkids. On the contrary, latest research shows that they degrade the human immune system and lead to negative efficacy (more on that later). One can only wonder if our public health officer has caught whatever it is that President Biden has.
Delusion and speculation have been the bedrock of nearly all Allison Berry’s pronouncements, like this one from the June 7th, 2021 BOCC meeting wherein she performs the art of magical thinking on the survival of two patients who’d just been in ICU with severe cases of COVID-19:
“In both of those cases, we think the primary thing that has kept them alive was they were vaccinated. They were both incredibly ill prior to contracting COVID-19 and very likely would not have survived if they were not vaccinated.”
Two people with life-threatening comorbidities nearly died, officially from the virus, after their jabs. But they were saved by the jabs. Uh huh.
When the spectacular failure of the new mRNA therapies could no longer be bluffed, senior players got busy reworking the script. Had it not been so tragic, it would have been comical to witness pharma apologists’ gyrations to concoct a new narrative, eventually landing on the wobbly claim that the toxic brews lessened symptom severity and the chance of hospitalization and death. None of those outcomes were part of the trial endpoints, but never mind. The controllers turned up the spin machine to convince the public that the data supported those claims.
Associate Editor at the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr. Peter Doshi had already revealed in an October 21, 2020 editorial that this was nonsense:
Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said, “Ideally, you want an antiviral vaccine to do two things . . . first, reduce the likelihood you will get severely ill and go to the hospital, and two, prevent infection and therefore interrupt disease transmission.”7
Yet the current phase III trials are not actually set up to prove either (table 1). None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.
Five months later, US Congressman Thomas Massie publicly took the CDC to task for lying about the efficacy of the jabs, in order “to strengthen vaccine confidence.” Our public health officer spent years at university learning this stock in trade, and she does not divaricate.
The Medical School Incubation Process
Allison Berry Unthank graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2013. According to her LinkedIn account, Allison Berry is a Medical Doctor who also earned a Masters in Public Health with an epidemiology and biostatistics focus (2010-2011). Her bachelors degree was in biochemistry and music.
In 2018, while she was working for the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in the addiction medicine department, she was appointed county health officer by the Clallam County Board of Health. In July of 2021, authority over Jefferson County citizens was added to her plate by our BOH.
Just eight years out of university, she assumed outsized medical authority over 109,000 residents of the north Olympic Peninsula.
Healthcare provider statistics aggregator Vitals.Com (where she gets very mixed reviews) cites Allison Berry’s specialty as family medicine. They then list as proficiencies, one would imagine — weight loss, contraception, family planning, checkups, influenza and — immunization. Family medicine began revolving around “immunization” after the vaccine makers were absolved of liability for harm from their products in 1986 — just one year after our young medical marvel was born.
Note the color alert in the background: Be Afraid, Be Berry Afraid!
Dr. Berry was anointed as our new public health officer by the BOH at the July 15, 2021 meeting. Oddly, she strove to convince that nest of pharma conformists that she would somehow deliver an element of neutrality to her new position:
“I take public service incredibly seriously and I take the role as an independent scientific advisor for this region very seriously.”
“I’m hopeful that I can bring a lot of strength to the position and that commitment to scientific independence.”
Berry does not have a degree in epidemiology, thus is not an epidemiologist, as some of our commissioners have claimed. She is not a scientist, as she herself intimated in the comments above. Above all, she is not independent. Education at the Johns Hopkins University system is akin to being cultured in a petri dish. Step outside the medium and you shall perish. Berry has brought years of medical-industrial complex indoctrination to her position, not strength.
Medical universities are largely funded by research grants from pharma and pharma-captured government agencies. Medical doctors are not educated about vaccines, nutrition or natural cures. They are taught that vaccines are safe and effective, and that deviating from the CDC schedule is verboten. They are taught to “persuade, not inform” to address vaccine hesitancy. PTFP editor Ana Wolpin provided an incisive overview of the pharmaceutical industry’s grip on medical schools in the local Vaccine Study Group’s 2017 publication, Vacci•nation, for which she was graphic designer and primary author.
Johns Hopkins is only one of those bought medical schools, but it may be the apex in terms of worldwide influence, as they have teamed up with globalist vaccine pushers like the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum to “war-game” pandemic readiness tabletop exercises since 2001, including Event 201.
Say it, say what you said, say it again
Many will recognize that maxim as a time-honored public speaking device used to hammer home a message. It’s effective. More than the mRNA jabs, by a long shot. (Sorry, that was irresistible.) Pharma mavens, including our own, have been deploying that tactic, shamelessly, throughout this charade and it’s been memorialized in various walk-it-back videos people like Fauci and Birx would prefer to forget.
Two years later, confessions reveal: “I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection.” – Dr. Deborah Birx, July 2022.
White House Covid response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx testified in a June 23, 2022 US Congressional hearing that she knew of Covid re-infections as early as December 2020. Asked “When the government told us that the vaccine couldn’t transmit it, was that a lie or was that a guess?” Birx replied, “I think it was HOPE that the vaccine would work in that way.”
Now that the big foot has come off the “pandemic” accelerator, and federal and state funds are drying up, the county budget demands that Dr. Berry’s oversight of JeffCo be reduced to 12 hours a week. The Monday morning perpetual fear campaign euphemistically known as “updates” delivered at the weekly BOCC meetings for the last 2-1/2 years, broadcast to the most receptive audience one could hope for on local radio station KPTZ (it was their most popular “program”), will now happen monthly.
Seeing the Overton window closing, Berry laid it on thick at the October 17th BOCC meeting, pitching the ever more urgent need to be up to date on your boosters because another two elderly, chronically ill jabbed souls needlessly passed away because they weren’t jabbed enough. Loath to miss an opportunity to condemn the unjabbed, she tossed out one of her baseless warnings that we’re only seeing severe disease in the “unvaccinated,” then went on to un-say that and press on with her Birxian fantasy that the heralded new jabs (same contents as the old jabs plus a big puff of hot air from an 8-mice “study”) might prevent transmission. If enough people take it.
“We are not seeing a rise in severe disease at this point. It is still too early to tell what the effect will be of the bivalent vaccine on transmission, but we are hopeful it will reduce transmission, but we haven’t seen enough uptake yet. We definitely encourage more folks to go out and get vaccinated. It is really important to reduce transmission as we move into the fall.”
The 8-mouse study, on which pharma pinned its argument for approval of the new bivalent booster, was a complete failure in stopping transmission. When the mice in the Moderna trial were challenged with the Ba.5 variant which the Ba.5 booster is supposed to protect against, all eight of them became infected with Covid. Every last mouse.
The first five jabs that we pinned our hopes on may have let us down, but this next one, jab number SIX — same technology, for which once again there is zero evidence of ability to reduce transmission, only a study that says it does not — this one really really really just might work if we only can get enough uptake… if we repeat our mantra to “encourage more folks to go out and get vaccinated” enough times. So says our hopeful spin doctor.
Negative ‘Vaccine’ Efficacy
Dr. Berry and her ilk continue to attribute to Covid — with singular diagnostic proof coming from the dubious PCR test — deaths which were imminent in the chronically ill, elderly and immunocompromised people (and were most likely hastened by the jabs). Since this population-wide phase III clinical trial began in December of 2020, evidence has mounted that the gene therapies are actually weakening immune systems, exacerbating and reactivating existing or latent conditions like herpes and cancer, and causing new disease. Vaccine spike proteins have been found in shingles blisters!
The more jabs you take, the more likely you are to get Covid. The jury has returned the verdict on negative efficacy. You would think that having their “expert” noses regularly rubbed in the colossal failure of these clot shots to prevent “break-through infections” in just about everyone who has taken them would give one pause to fall back and regroup.
Nope. That would be unwise. Even the New York Timescounseled against that crazy critical thinking business. Instead, dig the heels in deeper to hedge your bets on keeping the scared silly scared silly. There’s great benefit to that tactic, as that team will bat for you till the end. It’s certainly working in much of Jefferson County.
Enough of Allison Berry’s evidence-free pronouncements. Show us the Science!
Our young, unseasoned public health officer instituted the first dine-in vaccine mandate in the country in September 2021. Her power was given lift by her predecessor Tom Locke, license by our county commissioners, and full support from the communities’ population they’d already managed to frighten out of their wits.
That science-free, oppressive and likely illegal diktat descended with tremendous cost. Clallam and Jefferson County restaurateurs lost tens to hundreds of thousands in unrecoverable income, their employees lost wages and endured unrelenting stress, and the unjabbed — whose first amendment rights were fully crushed — lost trust and good will that may never be regained.
As the walls come tumbling down, we can only expect a mad scramble to retain the authority they’ve wielded over the last nearly three years. We have been warned.
This is my dilemma, as I attempt to regain balance after witnessing what I’d previously considered fellow human beings descend into hate-filled and menacing nihilists who felt such righteousness of cause, any questioning of method or motive was well and truly gone.
I am rocked to my core — by the debasement of civil discussion, debasement of the female archetype, and certainly the debasement of what little is left of a democratic process. It wasn’t just the energetic pulse of angry discord and intended chaos. It was beholding advanced societal decay of the most disturbing sort.
Perhaps most heartbreaking was a palpable recognition that there is no longer a place for innocence in childhood. The formative years are and will be managed by dark and sinister forces over which we have no agency. The gains that women have made in the last century are being erased before our very eyes.
Trans activists attempt to obscure women speakers
On Monday evening, August 15th, I arrived at Pope Marine park about ten minutes before the press conference called by local women’s rights activist Amy Sousa was scheduled to begin. Various crowds were milling, it was difficult to discern sympathies of a number of groups — particularly younger (20 to 40-year-old) women — at that time.
Others’ lines were clearly drawn, through costume, signs or position. I observed that a lot of younger gals were unmasked, standing back quietly. They had no visible signs of intention, not making the ruckus that others were ramping up in aural and physical displays. Eventually, though, they did join in the chanting intended to drown out the speakers’ voices.
I and others were walking the perimeter (of what were mostly our supporters) with large umbrellas facing toward the growing crowd, attempting to block the louder shouters and hold some sort of line. A brigade of bicyclists with flags and signs wove dangerously through the thick of the supporters. Some were hit by pedals and handlebars, including Julie Jaman. Our efforts to prevent this were fruitless. The police had disappeared from the park but for one.
When Amy Sousa, the event’s organizer and first speaker, took to the microphone, the staging area at ground level was open and clear. A modest portable sound system, a small bouquet of flowers, and two Suffragette flags adorned the brick wall of the Pope Marine Park building, the site of this city-permitted gathering.
By that time, all of the police who had been milling about left the area and serious agitation began. The open ground began filling with people closing in on the other scheduled speakers and Julie’s supporters. The rainbow-clad and black-garbed agitators honked horns, blew whistles, banged noisemakers, shouted and screamed.
By the time Julie Jaman, the second person to speak, took the microphone, the crowd was growing so menacing that her supporters circled her for protection.
A masked young man wearing a tan shirt that read Discharge sat down not far from the speakers and began heeling himself around on his backside, somersaulting and reeling in circles, constantly trying to get in amongst the women’s legs. No effort to repel him was successful. A 4-minute video by Robert Zerfing captured his antics. A 10 to 12-year-old boy wearing orange camouflage pants, who stayed on his feet, was often his steadfast little lieutenant, providing cover and distraction as he darted in and out of the group.
It wasn’t long before the ever-growing crowd began to move in on us, becoming more threatening and assaultive as they did. Within ten minutes, the speakers couldn’t be heard from 20 feet away. While Julie was speaking, the crowd exploded with screaming and chants. She could not be heard outside her immediate circle at all.
As Jim Scarantino reported late Monday night, “she was assaulted when she finished speaking, with the live feed going black during the scuffle.” The Discharge shirt young man was toppling and shoving people, and Julie was left with a severely sprained ankle. She has filed assault charges with the police with identifying photos.
The videographer who posted the 4-minute clip above covered the entire event, from before it began until police escorted Julie Jaman to her car, catching a short interview with her at the end. Fortunately, he positioned himself close enough to the speakers that you can hear some of what they say.
Assaulting a tattooed bodybuilder’s vagina
What are we to make of a guy who obviously splits his time between the gym and tattoo parlor, and shows up at a trans rally insisting that we wanted to assault his vagina? What kind of toxin is in his mind to be thinking or saying such a thing? I told him “Apparently you’ve already done that to yourself. You genitally mutilated your own body.” He slithered away wordlessly. Before long, he returned with a vengeance, body-slamming me from behind. Soon after, he returned and knocked Rachelle Merle to the brick pavement.
After body-slamming me from behind, the tattooed bodybuilder knocked Rachelle Merle to the ground.
He was the loudest and most persistent, with only seconds-long breaks between shouted taunts. He marched through the crowd with a huge Pride flag, often holding the flag and dragging the stick so that it was hitting people, including Julie. He banged a noisemaker on the ground.
What are we to make of his tee shirt sporting the slogan “Hang in there, BABY!” with the illustration of a Ku Klux Klansman hanging from a tree? (See photo at top.) Is the klansman image a cover for the real message — death to babies?
The assaults ramp up.
Many of the rabble-rousers seemed to be practiced operators, setting little brush fire melees here and there. Some involved real assault, others just threatening and intimidating. A small male wearing a gator burst out of nowhere and slapped the phone out of the hand of a protector standing next to me. It landed ten feet away, the assailant was gone. One of our group sprinted after him without luck.
Gabrielle Clark, a Black civil rights worker who was one of the speakers, used her body to shield the sound equipment. Others tried to create a human ring to shield the speakers.
A number of us, myself included, ran across the street to beg the police, who had gathered at the stairs of City Hall, to come help protect us.
Serve and Protect?
Repeatedly asked for help, law enforcement hung back, refusing to cross the street and stop assaults.
The police refused to move from their positions, saying that if we didn’t feel safe, we should leave.
Here is a full report from one of Julie’s supporters:
“I observed the city police officers withdrawing from the edge of the press release/rally area until they were all clustered around the front of city hall.
As the trans support crowd became increasingly violent, I ran over to the police and pleaded for help explaining that the crowd was pushing and assaulting a number of people. The police chief responded ‘we’ve been given our directives and if you feel unsafe you should leave.’
I turned to one of the other policemen standing there that I recognized as having been at the perimeter of the rally area and asked ‘you were over there before, why are you not there now?’ And he said ‘we’ve been given our directives and I stayed as long as I could.’ (reading between the lines I believe he was implying that he had been ordered to leave).
Also, in my recollection, the City Police didn’t engage until the State Police showed up and went directly into the area where trans protesters were being violent towards the rally participants.”
She wrapped up with the following, which she was firm in clarifying is only her opinion and not (yet) proven fact:
“It’s clear to me that the rally/press release participants were the object of a city endorsed ambush.
My heart is broken in the face of humanity’s erosion to — once again — condoning violence against women from men — particularly that the strategy of assault was set in play by city officials.
…I’m speechless and shell shocked.”
Police Chief Tom Olson
Hmmm. “We’ve been given our directives.” By whom? Asking for a friend…
Another videographer caught police response on camera. The Chief stood back cooly, choosing to leave it to his minions to speak, as the side he’d already taken a stand for was right there behind him.
About a minute in, you’ll hear concerns from a couple of men regarding the lack of police presence near the speakers. After a stunning period of Who, me? moments, officer Kamal Sharif responds, “Please let the folks there know that if you don’t feel safe being there, you’re free to leave.”
Officer Kamal Sharif, at right, explains their current directive.
That’s nice of the PTPD, to return one of our own messengers with the message that we’re “free” to leave. Defending the cops, a woman with a Pride flag opined “It’s okay, they have to look out for themselves, too. It’s not safe for them…” as the audio trails off, becoming difficult to decipher.
“Communication is essential towards building public trust. The Port Townsend Police Department will always strive to be open, transparent, and work together with the community to ensure our citizens are heard and valued. I passionately believe in the sanctity of life, meaning every person, no matter what their circumstances, is valued and their life is sacred.”
As Ana Wolpin observed in her last article,“All people are entitled to basic respect, but some people are more entitled than others.”
The speakers tried to carry on as the fury of the crowd intensified, along with the physical and verbal abuse. Jim Scarantino reported going back across the street to the police. “I asked them if it was their policy to do nothing. They said they wanted both sides to be able to “protest.” I told them things were getting violent. They did not move.”
He returned to the speakers and saw the assaults continuing. He recalls, “At that point I called 911 and described the escalating violence. The dispatcher said words to the effect, ‘Law enforcement is on the scene.’ I replied, ‘No they’re not. They left.’”
Within minutes, State Patrol officers filed in with some PTPD officers in tow. They went to the pier side of the speakers and hung back for a very long time, after announcing that they were going to clear the area in ten minutes. They watched along with the crowd around them as the Dispatch teenager, squatting to the ground, planted his head against the crotch of one of our defenders.
The 10-year old lieutenant courageously covered him.
An ever-present black-masked man who appeared to be in his 50’s wearing a ball cap—the only identifying aspect was a little pigtail poking out from shaved sides of his head—leaned into the inner circle behind those kids. He sported a black tee shirt with a gruesome graphic that said Capitalism is a death cult.
Why and what was he doing there? What is that man’s investment in this project? Is he a paid provocateur? Antifa?
Finally the Troopers took action, and began waving back the trans horde in a time to get going manner. I could not hear what they were saying. I was on the north side of the speakers’ circle, so didn’t see what transpired after that, but video documentation reveals some details.
Police attempted to grab the Dispatch young man, but he ran off without pursuit.
The child with the camo pants continued moving through the crowd. They handcuffed the man wearing the Capitalism is a death cult tee shirt and took him away. Did he spend the night in jail? The JeffCo Sheriff’s roster doesn’t indicate that to be the case. Did they take him down to the ferry dock and let him out of the car with a firm finger wagging? That would not surprise at this point.
Were any of these troublemakers local residents?
The tattooed bully claimed to be a local, screaming at the woman in front of him “You came to my town to protest, and you’re telling me I’m harassing you?” I’ve never seen him, nor any of the other belligerents, before.
Where did all those bicyclists come from? Do they live here? Was this protest coordinated by some Seattle or Portland trans lobby organizer? Did the mayor help facilitate it? A Public Records Request has been filed to find the answers to those questions. Do we have reason to trust the city to return truthful records requests? I wonder.
Isn’t it interesting how beneficial the last two years of mask theater have been to this particular angle of the ‘new world order’ agenda? Faceless perpetrators of criminal mischief and violence that the police refuse to be even bothered by.
As the event wound down, the ironic chant coming from the cacophonous mob reverberated throughout the entire waterfront —
NO HATE HERE!!! NO HATE HERE!!! NO HATE HERE!!!
Top photo: Jim Scarantino.
Additional images captured from videos taken by Crystal Cox and Robert Zerfing.
** I wish to acknowledge and thank Ana Wolpin, my co-editor and dear friend, for making this article possible. It was her idea for me to put my witnessing of this event into words at a time that I was so raw, so rattled by what I experienced that night, it was the last thing on earth I wanted to consider. That is what good editors do. She spent the better part of two days exploring various footage and taking most of the screen shots that appear in this article, as I wrote my recollections. Without Ana, you would not be reading this today. Now is also a good time for me to express my gratitude to Ana, Stephen and Jim, without whom the Port Townsend Free Press would not exist. While I’m at it, thank you all, readers. You are why we continue to volunteer to do this work. ~ Annette
*** 11/23/22, correction made to all references of the Dispatch shirt-wearing male: he is in his early twenties, not a teenager.
This article is the first in a series that will shine light on the inner workings at our local hospital system. Administrators at Jefferson Healthcare would have us believe that all is well within their institution, particularly as they return to the taxpayers, hat in hand, to fund their next dream of upgrades to the Sheridan Street facility. With the backdrop of a looming global financial crisis, materials shortages and supply chain ruptures, how viable is this $100 million-plus gamble? What will it actually cost when all is said and done?
Jefferson Healthcare is struggling mightily to retain and recruit nurses and other patient-facing staff, and as this exposé will reveal, significant roots of that problem are internal. Through personal accounts from insiders, public records requests and investigation of current federal funding mechanisms, we will take a deep dive into the contemporary condition of Jefferson County’s hospital system.
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“We concluded years ago that we are in the trust business… Hospitals are nothing but fancy buildings with expensive technology if we don’t have a great employee base. So we are very focused on — one, recruiting and bringing in the right people for our team, and then once they are here, working really hard to provide a work environment that is satisfying both personally and professionally and allow for providers to grow and develop.”
Jefferson Healthcare CEO, Mike Glenn at the May 12, 2022 Community Presentation
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We have come to expect glowing reports of good deeds and great intentions when public agencies are selling a property tax increase. But how much truth is contained within Mike Glenn’s flowery assessment above? Is the view from the ivory tower the same as it is on the patient floors? What degree of “trust” exists within “the team” in the medical institution so many in this community count on?
Anyone who has lived here for long has personally, or has family and friends who have received stellar care at Jefferson Healthcare facilities. I have, my partner has. The nursing and support staff get rave reviews again and again, as do most providers.
However, the Free Press has been contacted on multiple occasions by hospital workers who feel an urgency to sound the alarm on what they see as chronic mismanagement that puts nursing staff and patients alike in potentially dangerous situations. The aim of this article is to give voice to those who have not been heard, despite their years-long efforts to improve the work environment through dialogue and negotiation. Management responds with platitudes like “let’s continue to work on solutions together…” as they neglect the reforms most requested by staff — regular schedules and part-time employment.
I sat down with one of those whistleblowers recently, and listened to her story. She’s asked that I use a pseudonym to protect her identity, understandably concerned about retaliation.
Suzanne is a Registered Nurse (RN) who came to work at Jefferson General Hospital over twenty years ago. She loves her work — that is to say, she loves taking care of people.
The era of healthcare facility mergers and acquisitions ushered in new and improved bean counters and fancy new nomenclature to distinguish upper management from the rest of the pack. Jefferson Healthcare birthed its own Strategic Leadership Group (SLG) approximately fifteen years ago. The current SLG is pictured below.
Strategic Leadership Group(from top left): MIKE GLENN, MHA, Chief Executive Officer; JOSEPH MATTERN III, MD, FAAFP & HMDC, Chief Medical Officer; TINA TONER, RN, MSN, MBA, CENP, Chief Nursing Officer; BRANDIE MANUEL, MBA, CPHQ, Chief Patient Safety and Quality Officer; JENN WHARTON, PT, MHL, Chief Ambulatory and Medical Group Officer; JACOB DAVIDSON, MHA, FACHE, Chief Ancillary and Support Services Officer; TYLER FREEMAN, MSA, CPA, CHFP, Chief Financial Officer. (Not pictured, ALLISON CRISPEN, Chief Human Resources Officer)
Suzanne describes a gradual and insidious decline in staff morale that’s emerged since 2014-2015, most notably when the SLG Chief Ambulatory and Medical Group Officer began restructuring the clinics and family practice offices. Then the hospital stopped hiring part-time nurses.
Using ever sharper pencils, the SLG further streamlined by cross-training, deleting existing part-time positions (firing those who couldn’t work full time), cutting overall positions in each department and not hiring new staff — even when there were qualified applicants, Suzanne reports. Set schedules, the likes of which make life predictable for days off and family time, were eliminated. Plans to attend important rites of passage like graduations, weddings and funerals became a luxury of the past.
Scheduling and the loss of part-time positions created wide-spread disgruntlement throughout the facility. Complaints from staff were met with “you just need to figure out why you want to work here, or you can leave.”
Senior nurses pleaded with management for more staff and part-time positions, citing their own recognition that if their concerns were ignored, there would be an escalation of safety issues that could harm patients and the hospital’s bottom line and reputation.
There was also the phenomenon of what has come to be known as “compassion fatigue” in overworked and under-supported staff. Suzanne says “We’re caregivers. We don’t want to make the hospital look bad.” So the nursing staff shouldered more and more responsibility, working long days without breaks, sacrificing their own welfare for the sake of patient care and hospital optics.
She reports that managers began to look for excuses to ship patients out for care. Surgeons were being pressured to hurry it up. Staff witnessed nurse managers asking, mid-surgery, “how much longer do you think this will take” and providers being told “you’re taking too long to do surgeries.” Adding to the pressure, in recent years the number of surgeons has increased as the number of support staff has been eliminated.
The lack of respect and increasing demands have resulted in “running off 20 nursing assistants” in the last few years, according to Suzanne. They were being asked to care for too many patients. Changes that could be implemented to maintain staff and improve morale — set schedules, retention bonuses, compensation for extra shifts — have not been forthcoming.
“Human resources,” a risible term for working people, is at a crisis point in healthcare. Efforts by institutions to run lean has led to many nurses abandoning the security of steady work in a familiar place close to home in favor of hitting the road and hitting it big with travel nursing.
According to this 2016 article on the trade website TravelNursing.org, nursing shortages began with the 2008 financial crash. The CEO/president of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) was quoted back then, saying:
“At AACN, we are most troubled by the shortage of nurses prepared at the baccalaureate and graduate levels since research shows that having enough of these nurses is important to lower patient mortality rates, reducing medication errors and realizing other positive care outcomes.”
At the time, nursing schools were turning away qualified applicants because the schools lacked “faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, preceptors and [had] budget constraints.”
Fast forward six years and the unnatural disaster surrounding Covid, and those highly trained, veteran nurses — the shortage of which so troubled the AACN — now often find themselves working alongside novices with decades less experience who are being paid three to four times as much.
Raises for Me, But Not for Thee
The battle for pay increases at Jefferson Healthcare has been epic, with mediators arguing on behalf of nursing staff for the most niggling little bump. Management maintained that “it’s not sustainable to pay more.” Retention became a major issue, with experienced staff leaving to work elsewhere for single digit increases and the perennial issue of scheduling. During labor negotiations in November 2021, the contract was delayed because the SLG was
“philosophically opposed to raises
for nurses in the top five steps.”
Philosophically opposed. Well, at least they had a philosophy.
There is a seniority tier system in nursing, with the tiers varying from hospital to hospital. Each year of experience is called a “step.” There are 32 steps to reach the apex of the nursing world at Jefferson Healthcare. Random steps are called “ghost steps,” a pause year that precludes pay increases.
After another grueling round of mediated negotiations, the latest contract was finally ratified three weeks ago, on June 22nd, 2022. Despite management’s philosophical opposition, all of the nurses got at least a 4% raise. Ghost step years now pay modest increases instead of none.
Suzanne reports, “The time spent to get there was very disappointing and disheartening. The nurses were made to feel unworthy and expendable.”
In stark contrast, CEO Mike Glenn’s 6% raise three months earlier sailed through the board with only one commissioner, Matt Ready, opposing. [Ready maintains a creative blog of his experience as a Jefferson Healthcare Commissioner.]
Glenn’s pay package is now around $380,000. The rest of the SLG incomes range from a quarter to a third of a million dollars, most of them paid as much or more than Washington’s Governor.
In addition to public record request responses from Jefferson Healthcare, the Free Press has received news tips from stressed nursing staff, current and former, all of them requesting anonymity for obvious reasons. The following are excerpts from a variety of these sources:
“The ACU Staffing Crisis is management created. The Restructure and the stress of Covid-19 are not the root causes of the mass exodus…”
“I understand staffing ICU, especially at night, has been a challenge, however untrained and unqualified staff are being used to staff ICU in unsafe ways that risks liability and patient safety especially when taking into account ICU patient census and telemetry monitoring obligations. It seems the expected standards for ICU care have become adulterated recently with untrained staff for the amount and the acuity of patients we have been having. As I mentioned above, I am all for cross training willing and able nurses to ICU, it just needs to be done correctly with consideration to ICU census, patient acuity, telemetry patients, and number of qualified staff. I’m more than happy to discuss this further and assist in any way. My apologies for the long winded email, I’ve been stewing on this for a couple days now. I can only imagine the amount of similar emails you have been receiving. I’m just rather concerned for the reasons listed above; and my co-nurses, I am sure, share the same sentiments as well.”
— ICU RN, Feb. 2022
“I came onto shift this morning as Charge RN and am receiving no report on the patients. I have never come on and gotten no report in 7 years. Last night one set of patients had 3 nurses covering in succession. When I came on shift Monday the same thing happened and the set of patients I received had 3 different nurses in a 12 hour period. I had to round to the patient and family members who were upset because the care plan was not followed and a comfort care patient inadvertently had oxygen placed on her, which they did not want. I had to explain it was because of the staffing that information did not get across as it should have. This patchwork planning is having impacts on our patients and our staff. It is unsafe. We also have a new nurse for ICU who was put on the floor with no orientation. He spent hours running back and forth to ICU getting supplies because he did not know where they were on ACU [Acute Care Unit]. The standard of nursing care here is actively deteriorating and it makes me uncomfortable.”
— Charge Nurse, Feb. 2022
“The staffing on night shift is unsafe. From the time of the restructure, travelers not fully oriented to our hospital have had to work independently monitoring tele [telemetry] , managing FBC [Family Birth Center] or ACU RNs in the ICU. During many of those times, Telemetry was not documented per policy…
The restructure and the administrations refusal to set templates, or allow self-scheduling, forcing part time employees to take full time positions have left us relying on per diem RNs and travelers. In the ICU, we now only have 3 full time RNs and 1 part time. The rest are employees who have switched to per diem in order to control work-life balance. We are woefully understaffed because of their hubris and arrogance.”
— ICU RN, Feb 2022
“I am not sure if you are aware of this, but the current ACU and ICU staffing situation is very bad. Dayshifts and nightshifts.
It is difficult to see that there is any management involvement in providing real solutions. We just hear about increasing ratios. That will NOT be safe. Over night we had a very busy floor with lots of cognitively impaired impulsive fall risk patients, and only one CNA [Certified Nursing Assistant] available as the other one is stuck as a sitter with our 1:1 resident. The ICU was slammed all night last night and needed assistance that I could not always provide while also assisting the floor. There was an FBC nurse sitter there silencing Teles because the ICU Nurses were so busy.
This feels very dangerous. What is going to happen next week when surgery goes up to full speed and you lose another full-time nurse? We’re drowning here.”
— RN, Feb. 2022
“From 2017 onward, as management initiatives evolved and pressures increased, morale began to decline and the scheduling method changed. As time went on, I watched as we hemorrhaged CNAs (30 in less than a year at one point) and the nurses continuously expressed their discontent and began to leave too…
The lowest hanging fruit to improve morale and to retain staff is to give the nurses a REGULAR SCHEDULE… Please know that the [employment] contracts are attached to PEOPLE. People with lives and families. Well-educated and hard-working people who care about taking care of patients. People who actually WANT to work at Jefferson Healthcare (and would come back) except they just can’t take the mismanagement anymore. They are exhausted by the irregular schedules… and the disregard shown for their work-life balance… nurses that are left are disheartened and do not believe that there is any hope for change. Some of them biding their time prior to retiring, others are actively looking around at other hospitals. I am watching as warm bodies are leaving, first year nurses be pushed into the Charge Nurse Role, being robbed of developing their clinical foundation. Doesn’t this seem dangerous to you?
The ACU Staffing Crisis is management created. The Restructure and the stress of Covid-19 are not the root causes of the mass exodus…
I understand that this is just part of a very complicated issue with this hospital system and there are many pressures from all sides, but it is tough to run and grow and maintain a basic safety level if your staff is gone.”
— RN, Nov. 2021
“I left as I didn’t want the Jab, nor did I want to put a religious exemption in as I fully believe that my right to choose not to have the Jab was exemption enough… employee health is struggling as they don’t have enough staff… I wish more nurses would come forward.”
— former Care Team Specialist, JH Home Health & Hospice, Oct. 2021
Management Response
SLG Chief Nursing Officer Tina Toner offered this response to emails she’d received from nursing staff, including some of the above:
“I want to acknowledge the real challenges we continue to be faced with in terms of staffing. Please know, it is ever apparent that you and everyone of our team is doing all they can to help support their department and care for our patients. I hope that you know that as nursing leaders we are also doing all we can to support staffing, recruitment and retention. When we do have days with less-than-optimal staff our staffing coordinator, the House Supervisor Team and department leaders are all aware. Each morning at 0815 our team comes together to discuss staffing for the next 24 hours so we can collectively work on solutions. This is in addition to time spent looking ahead over the several days and weeks into the future and evaluating the need for additional staff. I know that this is hard, everyone is working hard, and we are all tired. Please, let’s continue to work on solutions, together, I know we will find them. Thank you for all you are doing!”
In the past, nursing and other staff could reach out to board members to share issues and concerns that weren’t being dealt with by their supervisors. Apparently, as the complaints increased, management’s tolerance for that approach trended in the opposite direction. Late last year the board passed a new bylaw that requires all staff complaints and concerns to be copied to the board chair and/or the CEO, thus making the complainant a potential target for retaliation from the very people who aren’t fixing the problems being complained about. No wonder staff dummies up, or leaves to work elsewhere.
A public records request I submitted recently disclosed that Jefferson Healthcare conducted a survey entitled “Employee Engagement 2020,” covering the time period of October 20, 2019 to October 20, 2020. The resulting 46-page document revealed gratitude for co-workers, a modicum of satisfaction and appreciation for the facility, and a substantial amount of frustration and mistrust towards management.
Granted, that was a singularly difficult year for everyone, particularly those in healthcare fields. However, the vast majority of complaints were not Covid-time specific, rather referenced embedded institutional norms of disparity and upper echelon cliques that have resulted in a disabling rift between the worker bees and the bosses.
I’ll share that document with our readers and highlight key aspects in the next installment of this series shortly, along with an overview of the Jefferson Healthcare’s proposed “Campus Modernization & Expansion Project.” On July 20th, the SLG gives one more update to the board before they vote on Wednesday, July 27th, whether or not to take this project to the voters in the form of a bond measure in November.
One can only imagine how beleaguered staff choked on the CEO’s words at the top of this article. A demand for transparency is in order. Should the administration be required to get their house in order before they build another house?
The following is an update from the Poplars Alliance, sent May 7th to the City’s Engage PT, Port and PUD electeds, The Leader, and the Port Townsend Free Press
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Dear Engage PT and Elected officials,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
It appears that the 9 member Stakeholder Committee that is supposed to have an open mind about our Gateway Poplars already has a predetermined bias against the Poplars. A majority are already on record to cut our community trees down.
The City’s website still says that one of the project goals is to cut the trees down.
• Replacement of Lombardy poplars, an emerging and eventual need for the City
The Port informed us that the selection process for the Stakeholder Committee was an open one, available to the general public. We were also told that all options were on the table. We subsequently requested copies and/or documentation of that notificiation to the general public for this committee formation…and the City was unable to provide us with any announcement for openings that was made available to the general public. The Stakeholder Committee members appear to have been hand-picked and with an existing bias against our poplars.
The Parks Board was able to choose 4 of the 9 members, and the City indicated from the outset that the Admiralty Audubon would be invited. The Port was guaranteed a spot as well. The general public was not allowed to serve on this hand-picked committee, which has been stacked with anti-poplar votes.
We expect our elected officials to engage in truly democratic processes backed by democratic principles. Clearly that is not what has occured.
Below are the slides from the Gateway Poplar Alliance workshop held on April 23, illustrating just this issue, one of many about this ill-conceived project. The entire presentation is available for download here.
By contrast, in a comment submitted ahead of the April 12 Stakeholder Committee meeting, committee member Joni Blanchard pushed back against the narrative that any future PUD trenching would need to kill the poplars. (Consulting arborist Katy Bigelow was contracted by the Port to provide assessment reports in 2013 and again in 2022.)
I just read Katy Bigelow’s Poplar tree assessment report.
I needed clarification on her remark in her summary that stated to the effect that ‘no matter where PUD undergrounding occurs, critical root damage would occur and likely cause the trees’ demise’. So, I wrote to her and asked for clarification. Here are my questions and her responses in blue:
If the PUD trenches along the existing Port fenceline (one of their options), which is 25′ away from the Poplars and beyond the 3′ stormwater ditch, that has already been dug between the Poplars and the fenceline, would it still likely kill the Poplars? No.
If the heavy machinery worked from the Port side to dig the trench and stayed off the main roots closer to the tree, wouldn’t that be a safe option for the PUD trenching? Sure.
I just thought that was an important correction that needed to be known as all options are still being considered for this whole project.
It is also good for us all to know that her assessment summary stated that ‘the Poplar trees will likely stand with low but increasing risk‘, and ‘I did not observe any large trunks or bases of trunks with a high potential to fall onto a target‘. (By the ISA hazard rating chart, which she used, low risk means: Insignificant minor issues with no concerns for years to come, and the eventual moderate risk to come would be: no concerns for 10 years or more). That ISA hazard chart was listed at the end of her 2013 Assessment report. Although she suspected basal rot in the 2013 trees, also, they were still classified as ‘low risk‘ of trunk failure.
Her suggestions for maintaining the health of the Poplars and mitigating their offenses (root invasions, sucker sprouts) were also quite helpful. Can be found at the end of her 2012 Assessment report, also. Perhaps if any trees are left standing, these suggestions could be heeded.
I agree with her in that it’s an unlikely location for any kind of a substantial wildlife habitat being a busy work area with lots of noise, along with all the busy traffic.
I also read the Kah Tai ’86 Landscape Plan where it is recommended to selectively thin the Poplars to keep an open view into the Park, and to do pruning and sucker mowing to keep the Poplars healthy and contained. This recommendation is keeping with the following Gateway Plan approved after in 1993 that the Kah Tai group were a part of creating. The Plan that Page 18 of 20 recommended replanting any aging or compromising Poplars with the younger ones that were purposely planted.
Thank you for providing such a comprehensive list of references for everyone’s overall understanding. This information will provide a good basis for working out a compromising plan for the better good of our whole community.
The streatery pictured above is in the lot off Tyler Street, behind the Mount Baker Block building. The city gave a no-cost temporary lease to the Cellar Door in February 2021. City officials told the owner they would likely allow the streatery to remain after Covid restrictions were lifted, which made investing in a creative, attractive space a reasonable risk. Clearly, the city had a plan back then that they were keeping very close to the vest. Was city council aware of this deal?
Business owners in the area watched as those previous parking spaces were graded and transformed into an outdoor patio dining area for an underground restaurant that opens when the dominant business activities cease. Throughout the busy day, the restaurant is closed and that dedicated space is glaringly empty. People still try to park around it, causing major headaches for already parked cars, residents in neighboring buildings and businesses, and delivery vehicles.
To be clear—this has nothing to do with the business or owners of the Cellar Door. Honest, hard-working people, they’re simply trying to survive insane times and reactive policies. Please support this restaurant if you dine out.
This is about city administrators operating in the shadows, choreographing the emergence of their preordained, desired scheme that will appear to have sprung naturally from public endorsement.
“Streateries” are dining areas in public rights of way, replacing valuable parking spaces with customer seating. They are restaurant-specific, catered to by that restaurant’s staff, and prohibit non-customer seating during operating hours. “Parklets” are open to the public 24/7.
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“About the opportunity [for the public] to speak, to have their three minutes, they will have that at the two public meetings we’re going to have on this topic … if this goes off the way we want it to.”
Mayor David Faber, March 14, 2022 Special Business Meeting of the Port Townsend City Council
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In nearly all aspects of our lives today, the tendency of government agencies to abandon the Constitutional bedrock “of, by and for the people” in favor of rule by diktat is expanding at alarming rates. We vote for local leaders expecting them to insure that we have honorable processes and adherence to democratic principles. We do not elect them to make important choices for us, then to simply pretend afterwards that our considered opinions matter to them.
This is exactly what has occurred in the battle over the streateries. At the March 14th “workshop,” council decided to move forward with a “long term streateries program,” tasking Main Street to create a survey and open house, and Public Works to begin developing changes to municipal code. Oddly enough, the PowerPoint prepared by Public Works Director Steve King entitled “Parklets and Streateries Next Steps: Moving to a formal and long-term program?” claimed “No decision” would be made there. As we can see from promising assurances given to the Cellar Door in 2021, the decision had apparently already been made.
Screenshot of slide 19 from Public Works’ power point presentation at the March 14, 2022 council ‘workshop’
A careful review of the March 14th meeting shows an orchestrated effort to portray long-term (permanent) streateries as widely popular and more critical for the community than a parking management plan. While opposition was significantly downplayed throughout, King’s presentation hyped, to an eye-rolling degree, the positive public response to “surveys” Main Street posted to their membership and Facebook page in October 2020, June 2021 and November 2021. (Director Mari Mullen told me that there are 140 members, however their member directory shows only 85.)
10/2020 — PT Main Street Survey demonstrates high degree of support (217 respondents) but also some concerns about permanence after COVID
6/2021 — More feedback per PT Main Street survey (322 respondents), with over 70% support for program continuation
12/2021 — November survey (270 respondents) indicated over 79% support for extension and over 59% support for more solid structures
Over 79%, over 59%? Average response of 270 respondents per Facebook ‘survey’? How can this be taken seriously? A small select group had agreed to allow restaurants temporary private use of public parking spaces in an emergency.
Let’s recall that until June 30th, 2021, restaurant occupancy was severely restricted by public health authorities’ so-called “social distancing” protocols. Logically, dining outside throughout the summer would appeal to those who would have ordinarily dined in.
In November 2021, jab refuseniks weren’t even allowed inside restaurants and pubs. The composition of this minuscule population of survey respondents will be left to our imagination, as Mari Mullen has told me I shouldn’t expect access to the surveys’ raw data, only the summary provided above.
More emergency management
It was framed as an emergency by staff and council members. If we put the parking plan first, we’ll never be able to get a permanent streateries program approved. Why this is so was never explained.
At the March 14 meeting, Steve King acknowledged that:
the city’s informal survey of businesses revealed concern that “the streateries would get pushed into a permanent program;”
streateries “are a temporary use of public space for private purposes;”
parking is a chronic problem;
Port Townsend has a “tourist economy.”
As it turns out, we already have a viable parking management plan (read on for more details). City taxpayers forked over a lot of money for a professional analysis back in 2004. A Public Records Request forced it out of the dustbin of PT history and it appears to be as relevant today as it was almost two decades ago. The firms involved in its production are national transportation advisors.
Mari Mullen and well-known restaurateur Kris Nelson were operating in advisory capacity during its creation. It’s been referred to in public meetings, so its existence is known to all. Why haven’t Mauro, King and council members combed through this document to glean a broader understanding of the historical elephant in the room, aka “parking?”
There is an agenda here. Commitment to the agenda requires a particular set of blinders. You must believe that automobiles are bad, walking and biking are good, and that streateries are the answer to “activation in the downtown.”
In response to Steve King’s acknowledgement that streateries “are a temporary use of public space for private purposes,” Faber took his turn to opine, offering this puzzling perspective:
“Regarding use of public space for private benefit, the only really significant use of our rights of way is for people to leave their very significantly large personal property — their cars — sitting around for who knows how long. Which is pretty ridiculous to me, that that is the one allowed use of our public spaces, our rights of way, for people to just use and use up space. People are using the sidewalk as a means of conveyance to get from their car to a store or a restaurant, and you don’t see people out and about.”
Recording of March 14th Special Business Meeting
As King said, Port Townsend relies on a tourist economy. Our primary (city limits), secondary (county) and tertiary (Clallam, Kitsap, Mason and beyond) consumer base relies on vehicular travel to get downtown — for restaurants, retailers, theatre, you name it. Have you observed a dearth of “people out and about” on the sidewalks and in the various waterfront parks aside from very inclement weather? The spin applied to this issue to promote the city’s desired outcome doesn’t cease.
Faber admitted at the meeting that he is a fair-weather utilizer of those streateries he is so determined for us to have, seventy degrees being the temperature he finds ideal. He made it clear we shouldn’t expect to see him there in April, May, October or the rest of those other winter-side months.
2004 Downtown Parking Management Plan
The 2004 Downtown Parking Management Plan
This 18-year-old strategic analysis evaluated the existing ‘parking system,’ non-motorized access options and key issues dogging us at the time. Little has changed in those categories.
One paragraph in the document stands out conspicuously, in light of various city staff and council members’ claims that it’s not all about money, that ‘activating’ the downtown with in-street dining is ‘a greater good’ than parking, and that the restaurateurs who do manage to secure a treasured extension of their interior square footage may only have to pay as little as $2,000/year for the privilege:
Short-term parking is intended to accommodate people in town to shop, dine, or other recreational activities. The Main Street association has estimated that each downtown shopping space generates approximately $150 to $300 per day in retail sales revenue. As such, preserving the short-term parking for shoppers should be a priority for Port Townsend.
Mari Mullen doesn’t remember exactly how her office arrived at that estimated value of $150-$300 per day per short-term parking space. Perhaps the national office, she says.
Before the city uses more staff time on code adjustments, they have fiduciary duty to conduct a watertight analysis of the current contribution of each parking stall considering all elements of the downtown business landscape. This isn’t about just retail. Revenue generation also comes from those doing business with services including medical, insurance, financial, legal, the theatre… every single entity that relies on public parking to connect with their customers.
Adjusting for inflation using government calculations, at $300 per day, a single space contributes to downtown’s fiscal vitality $169,987 annually. Two = $339,975; the triplets in front of Alchemy and in the Tyler St. lot are worth $509,962 per year.
City leaders are prepared to sacrifice this revenue for the sake of this pet project; at the same time, Mayor Faber argues that “we have extremely limited public resources to address [a parking plan].” Is that so? Interesting that they managed to find the public resources to fund a sham let’s get’er done PowerPoint, along with the post-decision “survey” and Open House.
Moving forward — the fix was in
At the April 4 council business meeting, Manager Mauro acknowledged that “it is [putting the] cart before the horse… ideally, we would do parking management and how the streateries fit in… we’re doing this backwards, partly by timing and unfortunate circumstance.”
Free Press editor Ana Wolpin wrote to council, Mauro and King on April 13th, highlighting the performative theatre of the post-decision survey and open house, pointing out that:
“David Faber made it clear a month ago at your March 14th meeting—before the survey had even been created, before the poorly-attended open house to sell the proposal resulted in near-total opposition which was ignored, and before opposing the intended outcome was characterized as a loud and angry minority—“if all goes as planned” the agenda to make streateries permanent was a done deal. It appears you are simply going through the motions of fulfilling legal meeting requirements. Rather than listening to business and public feedback that this streatery proposal should not move forward, you are deciding program details instead…”
“The public was never notified of this significant proposed change to city code in the newsletter that is included in all city utility bills each month. It was not mentioned in reports from either the mayor or the city manager.”
Her 3/13 letter continues:
“Not only were residents not informed of this fast-tracked proposal, it appears that Main Street did not even notify all the business owners who would be most affected. The survey was written with an overt slant to skew the responses in favor of making the streateries permanent, with only one question out of 13—#5—asking ‘Do you support the establishment of a long-term program for streateries and parklets?’ Every other question following it is marketing the proposal — Where are other streateries you like?… How many streateries should be allowed?… Should there be an annual fee?… etc.
At the 4/4 meeting David Faber applied pressure to continue on this predetermined path saying, ‘We talked two weeks ago about moving forward with a permanent streateries program… it’s frustrating when… we task staff with something and then we pull back.’ It would appear that consideration of staff’s efforts supersedes the public you are elected to serve and justifies ignoring overwhelminglynegative feedback.”
Faber warned that “Stopping the streateries now is only going to stall this out and make it more complicated.” Dealing with parking is too complicated, so let’s kick it down the road again and permanently remove at least a dozen of those precious parking spots while we’re at it.
Throughout the April 4 meeting, Faber hammered his left hand on the table to emphasize numerous points, beginning with this one, where he raised his voice in a surprisingly authoritative tone:
“I’d like to remind people as much as possible — do not [be] beholden to the loud minority.”
Never mind that every feeble attempt at reaching out to the citizenry by the city and Main Street has yielded a pathetically small number — a real minority — of respondents. Never mind that these efforts never utilized the sole communiqué that reaches every resident who pays for water and garbage services in the city — the newsletter. Never mind that any support found for the agenda proposed is puffed and promoted, while those opposed are continually denigrated (loud and angry) or marginalized.
It is easy to imagine that the mayor’s aggressive style is intimidating to other council members and discouraging of opposition.
The deal cut with the Cellar Door operators, unbeknownst to them, has created an undeniable Wizard of Oz moment for all to see. The agenda looks to have been to codify the streateries as “long-term” i.e. permanent, at least as far back as February of 2021. Were all the machinations—the surveys, PowerPoints and open houses—pure theatre, designed to obfuscate and give the appearance of due process, when nothing could be further from the truth?
Call to action: In the Long-Term Program, Next Steps: PowerPoint slide at the top of this article, you can see that we are perilously close to the planners’ end game. Here is the agenda for the Monday, April 18 6:30 meeting. As the streateries are on the agenda, do not use the opening public comment period to share your thoughts, rather wait until it is raised in the discussion under “new business.”
Public in attendance and webinar participants will be able to provide up to three minutes of public comment during the meeting. Public comment will also be accepted by email and will be included in the meeting record, provided emails are received two hours before the start of each meeting. Please send public comment to: publiccomment@cityofpt.us. *
* The city’s public comment link is bouncing back a message that says “Thank you for your email. Haylie Clement is no longer with the City of Port Townsend. Please direct City business matters to Joanna Sanders at jsanders@cityofpt.us.” I inquired to Joanna Sanders, here is her reply:
“Your comment has been received. This is an auto reply to emails still directed to Haylie Clement – such as the publiccomment@cityofpt.us which come to both of us. Haylie Clement was the deputy clerk but has recently left the city.” She thought it had been fixed so no bounce back would occur, they’re working on it.
They watched along with the crowd around them as the Dispatch teenager, squatting to the ground, planted his head against the crotch of one of our defenders.
The 10-year old lieutenant courageously covered him.
Why and what was he doing there? What is that man’s investment in this project? Is he a paid provocateur? Antifa?
