Will Washington State Board of Health
Listen to the People or the Politicians?

by Brett Nunn | Apr 26, 2022 | General

Two weeks ago I gathered with a few friends in what will remain an undisclosed location in Port Townsend to watch, via Zoom, the Washington State Board of Health (SBOH) vote on whether the COVID-19 vaccine should be added to the list of shots required for public school attendance. It certainly wasn’t the Super Bowl, but for those of us invested in the health of our children it was the culmination of several months of grass roots lobbying of our state public health officials.

I played a very small part in the effort. As a group it appears we overwhelmed the systems of a state agency that was used to operating under the radar, debating issues that rarely caused any controversy. I mentioned in a previous article one early Zoom meeting of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG), set up to assess the criteria for adding the shot to the required list, had 7,500 people sign up to make a public comment.

For this final meeting, where the SBOH would vote on whether to adopt the recommendations of the TAG, over 1,500 pages of emailed comments were received and entered into the record. The SBOH didn’t state how many people signed in to speak at this final meeting, but the comment period was expanded to an hour and a half, with two minutes per comment. Even with the extra time, fewer than fifty people were actually heard. No one supported the COVID-19 shot for kids.

Like many, I was hopeful, yet ready to be steamrolled by the bureaucracy. As you have probably heard by now the SBOH voted unanimously to not add the COVID-19 shot to the list of required vaccines for kids — for now. The option to reconsider in the future was left open. I will consider the decision a victory against the forces of medical tyranny. In a conversation I had recently with Gerald Braude, a writer for Informed Choice Washington, he describes the decision as a strategic withdrawal. I fear he may be right. You can read his in-depth article about the April 13th SBOH meeting here.

Screenshot of April 13 State Board of Health Meeting

At least for the moment we still have the choice, if only at the public school level, on whether we want the COVID shot for our children. Regrettably, this does nothing for families like mine with older children heading off to our state colleges, also public schools, but at this point offering no choice regarding the COVID shot other than applying for a religious exemption. We may have begun to turn the tide. We must not stop here.

When government does something bad, we have a right to redress of grievances. When government does something good, which has been admittedly rare over the last few years, we should let also let them know, as well as address any concerns they may have expressed during the decision-making process. Here is my letter sent to the Washington State Board of Health after their unanimous vote on April 13th:

To the Washington State Board of Health. Thank you for your hard work over the last two years, and for your latest decision to not add the COVID-19 shot to the list of requirements for children to attend public school. You have made the right choice. It seems a few fragments our democratic system may yet be working.

One of your members mentioned the loss of public trust as being her primary concern in this process. I heartily agree. As a citizen of Washington State, I have lost all trust in my public officials.

This loss of trust began with the Governor seizing power through an emergency declaration and then forcing illogical and arbitrary mandates on me. More than two years have passed and Governor Inslee refuses to give up these powers. His latest reasoning in a long list of ever-changing excuses, the need to keep federal dollars flowing into our state, does nothing to rebuild my trust.

I also lost trust with my state representatives who have looked the other way this entire time, aiding and abetting our tyrannical governor.

The loss of trust continued with the Superintendent of Public Instruction, who clearly stated he was pro-COVID shot, while threatening any disloyalty to his COVID orders with defunding of non-compliant school districts. When asked, State Superintendent Chris Reykdal stated the COVID shot requirement would be made on a statewide basis, undermining the authority of school boards, and therefore eliminating both school administrations and most importantly concerned parents, from the decision-making process.

Finally, public trust was lost by you, the State Board of Health specifically, through continuing to promote only the vaccines for treatment despite the VAERS data showing tens of thousands of deaths, and well over a million injuries to Americans from the COVID-19 injections.

Will the SBOH ever examine whether the vaccines you would be forcing on our children, formulated for the original strain of COVID-19 way back in March of 2021, even be effective against the current mutations? (We can see they aren’t. Why can’t you see that?). Will the board ever discuss the data that clearly shows that children have a much higher likelihood of injury from the vaccine than from the disease? Please look over the latest study from Children’s Hospital in Seattle published March 25th, 2022 in the Journal of Pediatrics. Has the board reviewed the benefits of natural immunity, or other options including the clear success of the Dr. Peter McCullough protocols advocating early treatment with safe, inexpensive, and readily available antiviral medications?

If you were to ask me, I would tell you the restoration of public trust will begin when you give up the mantra of “These vaccines are safe and effective”, and start having a transparent and truthful conversation with the people, not the politicians, of this state. The thousands of comments from thousands of well-informed parents should be evidence that you are not in possession of all the information.

I understand the extreme pressures you are under to support the official government narrative. Yet someday, in the not-too-distant future, we will look back and see this pandemic vaccination program for what many of us believe it to be, a crime against humanity. In the end, I would want to be remembered for supporting the freedom of choice for the individual citizens of this state, and not in support of a governor who puts billions from the Federal Government before the rights of his constituents.

Respectfully,

Brett M. Nunn

I expect my suggestions will fall on deaf ears like just like all of my attempts to pull back on the “safe and effective” curtain here in Port Townsend and to start conversations with our public officials. In watching the SBOH debate this issue, a few of the members seem to be asking the right questions. We need to keep speaking to them until the message finally gets through. I will be presenting this information to the Port Townsend School Board in the following weeks just to make sure they have heard the good news as well.

Mayor Faber (Almost) Opens Up on the Cherry Street Project Failure

by Jim Scarantino | Apr 23, 2022 | General

“I wouldn’t change a thing about what we did.”  Mayor David Faber said that about the Cherry Street Project at a December city council meeting. The topic of that meeting was whether Port Townsend should purchase 14.4 acres on the edge of town, the Evans Vista project, to build the equivalent of a separate village of affordable and low-income housing. It would be a massive project that Michelle Sandoval, mayor at the time, predicted would be “incredibly expensive.”

The Cherry Street Project will be five years old on May 10, 2022, yet remains unfinished. Windows facing the street are boarded up; windows at the rear are broken out, the result of vandalism. The city is paying off a 20-year bond with a principal and interest obligation of around $1.4 million. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent. Valuable land is tied up with a derelict building. The last estimate was that another $1.8 million would be required to rehab the old building.

In preparation for an article on the Cherry Street Project’s fifth anniversary, I emailed Mayor Faber regarding his “I wouldn’t change a thing about what we did” assessment of the Cherry Street Project. I asked him,

“What would you say was done correctly in the inception and execution of the Cherry Street Project? Were no mistakes made, since you “wouldn’t change a single thing” in retrospect?”

A fair question, particularly since the Mayor has insisted that he and others have learned from the Cherry Street Project and the Evans Vista Project won’t be a repeat. It is our policy to print in full and verbatim all written responses and statements we receive to our inquiries.

Mayor Faber did respond. But he had conditions. He first wanted an off-the-record “chat” to “set some ground rules.” Here is his complete and verbatim response:

At first I thought this would be a great idea and agreed. (Golly, a chat with the mayor!). But then I realized that agreeing to an “off-the-record chat” to “set some ground rules” was problematic. Why should anything the Mayor has to say about a housing project be off the record? Why did we need ground rules for a Q&A on the Cherry Street Project? I had never had a request like this in fifteen years of writing for a major newspaper or my own investigative news sites.

Mayor Faber,

Upon further reflection, it would be better if you wrote out the ground rules you want for an interview. If they are to govern any future exchange and what goes into a published article, it does no good to have them “off the record.” So, please just send the ground rules you want and we can proceed from there if they are agreeable. I can’t remember any public official ever insisting on an off the record conversation to set ground rules. I don’t seek a free running conversation, just answer to a question but I will fairly consider your proposed ground rules.

I send out written questions and publish the entire answers so that nothing gets misquoted or left out. My written question to you is still open and your response will be published verbatim and in full. A written exchange requires no ground rules. And, if you would like to say more on the Cherry Street Project than my question covers, please add that to your response and it will also be published verbatim and in full.

Awaiting your proposed ground rules and written answer and expanded statement, if you choose to respond. I think this is the best way to proceed to avoid any misunderstanding or accusations following publication.

I am keeping my editors informed of this exchange, by the way.

Sincerely,

Jim Scarantino

Mayor Faber responded the next morning:

I let Mayor Faber know that I was awaiting instructions from my editors and would get back to him. We talked about it and jointly made a decision to reject his pre-condition of an “off-the-record chat” to “set some ground rules.” Here’s the response of Port Townsend Free Press to Mayor Faber’s unusual request:

Mayor Faber,

My editors and I appreciate your invitation to have a conversation with you on the Cherry Street Project. We cannot, however, agree to keeping from the public any statements made by the Mayor of the City of Port Townsend, and, therefore, do not agree to any off-the-record preconditions. (That is why I have not called you, because you seem to have set the condition that that conversation would be off-the-record). Everything said in the interview or any telephone calls is public information and subject to publication.

To ensure there are no misquotes or misinterpretations in any article resulting from the conversation, I will tape our exchange and you are certainly welcome to do the same.

Our invitation to you to publish on our site any statement you wish to make on the Cherry Street Project remains open.This gives you the opportunity to put your best case to the readers directly, without going through a reporter relating what you have to say or not putting it as you would want. As I have stated several times in our exchanges, any written responses to our questions or submitted statements are published verbatim and in full. We recently did this with County Prosecutor Kennedy, by way of example. And we still invite you, if you choose, to provide a written answer to the  questions that initiated this back-and-forth: What would you say was done correctly in the inception and execution of the Cherry Street Project? Were no mistakes made, since you “wouldn’t change a single thing” in retrospect?

Lastly, in your emails you have implied that I have been “misconstruing [your] comments without [your] involvement” and that I have been publishing “half-truths without [your] involvement.” You are invited to include in a statement to be published your explanation of what has been reported at the Port Townsend Free Press that misconstrued your comments or constituted half-truths regarding the Cherry Street Project. Of course, I would hope that in our conversation you will also explain those statements further.

Please let me know how you wish to proceed.

Jim Scarantino, Contributor, Port Townsend Free Press

Mayor Faber has not responded.

Mayor David Faber presiding at the April 4 meeting

There has been no substantive discussion in City Council of the reasons for the abject failure of the Cherry Street Project… ever. It would be useful on the fifth anniversary of the Cherry Street Project for the mayor to offer a few words on why he insists he would do things the same again. Insiders have known, as we have reported previously, that this thing was headed for a train wreck from the beginning. None of our reporting, based on what we have learned from public records requests and documented with photographs, has ever been disputed by Mayor Faber or any other city official. Keeping taxpayers in the dark is not why we publish the Port Townsend Free Press and we won’t participate with Mayor Faber in holding anything back from the people who are footing the bill for City Hall’s mistakes.

Our offer to Mayor Faber to publish his answer to our questions and any other statement his wishes to make about the Cherry Street Project remains open.

Public Streets and Public Process Subverted

by Annette Huenke | Apr 17, 2022 | General

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.

———————————-

“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

———————————-

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.)

From the March 14th powerpoint presentation:

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:

Segregated Port Townsend

by Jim Scarantino | Apr 2, 2022 | General

A community divided by class and social status. In the 19th century there were two distinct Port Townsends. In Uptown and Morgan Hill, the prim and proper wives of captains, bankers and customs officers never had to rub elbows with the roughnecks and Chinese along the waterfront.

Crime was confined to the lower reaches of the city, where prostitution, drugs, alcohol, violence and shanghaiing were not only common, but economic pillars. Looking down from the widow’s walks on their Victorian mansions, captains could see their ships at anchor, accompanied sometimes by rowboats ferrying landlubbers pressed into virtual slavery as involuntary crew for voyages that might last years.

“Bloody Townsend,” our fair Victorian seaport and arts community was known up and down the west coast. But that moniker did not apply to the genteel, refined, abstemious upper class on top of the hill and bluffs.

Stairs to Port Townsend’s Victorian Uptown

Maybe for a period of time the city escaped its segregationist past. People who have been here for decades talk wistfully of a less stratified Port Townsend. But in recent years, Port Townsend has returned to being a segregated city, and it is getting worse. How we got here will be the subject of future articles on why Port Townsend is far from being a “strong town.”

Not really a “progressive” city

Port Townsend has undergone economic class cleansing, reestablishing the higher elevation areas of the city as the very exclusive domain of the well-to-do. Now even downtown has been swept of lower-economic status residents. Workers have been driven to the city’s edges or to the Tri-Area or even further away. A growing number of Port Townsend workers commute from homes in other counties because they cannot afford to live here.

The policies of “progressive” city councilors and county commissioners are only making the segregation worse. For the past twenty years the city has accomplished economic segregation by exclusionary zoning and building codes.

The prized Victorian neighborhoods were not planned. Those mansions were not built after waiting endlessly on building permits or having to pay city employees a high hourly rate to explain codes and regulations. But now they and the entire city are subject to a straitjacket of codes, regulations, and ordinances that stifle the more intensive and dense development of PT’s urban center.

Social policies have exploded building codes and made every type of construction more expensive. It is not all about safety and structural integrity. There are aesthetic elements in those thick codes, as well as the products of lobbying and policy aspirations.

“Snob” zoning hit Port Townsend about the same time real estate interests gained control over local government. Preserving or enhancing real estate values was a goal of these exclusionary and barrier-raising regulations. Real estate appreciation has been pushed as a major economic engine in and of itself. Planners suddenly had much more power.

The burdensome regulations had the effect of making new construction and remodels more expensive, or prohibiting up-zoning so that old buildings could not be repurposed for multi-family units. Manufactured housing, the portal to affordable housing for tens of millions of Americans, was excluded from most areas of the city. Regulations that sounded innocuous, such as requiring so much off-street parking per unit, drove up prices and restricted supply.

In the face of a housing emergency declared five years ago, only now, at its March 24, 2022 meeting has the city Planning Commission done its “first touch” on considering loosening the off-street parking requirements for ADUs. It is worth noting that prior to 2007, city codes did not require an off-street parking space for an ADU. That requirement was added in 2007. Fifteen years later, city government is only now “considering” revising that habitation-killing requirement.

Historic building designations are perhaps the most exclusionary regulation — only those with the resources to meet the astounding costs and legal requirements (and legal fees) for maintaining a historically-designated, preserved property can get in. If you want to avoid having poor, even middle-class people for neighbors, move into a historically designated neighborhood.

The regulatory framework leveraged more power over development by allowing homeowners to impose their will on other property owners and get in the way of building affordable housing. Page back through The Leader’s archives and you will find incidents where proposals to provide more affordable housing have been stopped by opposition from private citizens who already “had theirs.”

Snob Zoning on Steroids

City councilors, joined by county commissioners, are now concentrating the poor people and working families on the south side of the city, away from the moneyed hoods on the hills and up around North Beach and Fort Worden.

Lower income housing is already heavily concentrated near the QFC and blocks to the south. That’s where you will find the mobile homes and most apartment buildings. That’s where the county gave land to OlyCap to build its multi-story affordable/low income apartment building.

Olycap’s low-income housing project under construction across the street from mobile home park

Not far away, the city approved the “wooden tent” encampment called Pat’s Place. This love-driven project was built by volunteers and private donations. They had to creatively shoehorn the project into a narrow slot in city codes. There is no “tiny homes” zoning allowed in Port Townsend, but there is an emergency tent encampment exception to the strict prohibitions against camping anywhere beyond a few select locations (e.g., the Fairgrounds). Hence, “wooden tents” appeared instead of “tiny homes.

The city charged the group $52,000 in permit fees for a settlement that under current regulations is limited to 180 days plus one 60-day extension. The good people behind the project raised the funds and built the project on faith that the city would relax that time provision. It has still not been relaxed, though City Council is supposed to take this issue up at future meeting, after it has worked its way through a thicket of other procedural steps. This critical correction was only at the “first touch” stage for the Planning Commission at its March 24, 2022 meeting. City Council has to wait for the Planning Commission to make its recommendation on what to do with this ludicrous obstacle to providing emergency shelter for people who otherwise would be living under tarps in the wet woods or in their cars.

Pat’s Place

The city did waive the outrageous mountain of fees. This was a project sponsored by a nonprofit dedicated to providing low income and transitional housing. The city can get around the state-law prohibition on gifts to private entities under an escape hatch for charitable works. Private individuals seeking to build an affordable home or an ADU don’t get this gracious treatment from the city. Their effort at building something affordable runs head on into the city’s crushing building fee demands.

A little further southeast, at Mill Road and just outside city limits, the county bought about 30 acres in order to relocate the open air drug market and homeless/transient camp that had taken over the Fairgrounds inside the city. Plans are in place to expand the Mill Road development to be a “housing hub” for services and accommodations for the unhoused and those seeking transitional housing.

Mill Road encampment

The Mill Road camp also allows city law enforcement to remove the homeless from downtown PT and transport them to the city’s edge, or send them packing in that direction. The drugs that plagued the Fairgrounds (now mainly Fentanyl) are still prevalent in the county-sponsored camp to a shocking and depressing degree.

People surviving out there are not getting better. Many, maybe most, are enslaved by their addictions and killing themselves slowly or dramatically (the young man who hung himself outside Manresa Castle) or harming, even killing others (the young man who murdered two of his family members earlier this year).

For the rich and privileged of Port Townsend, the problems are out of sight, out of mind, handled more neatly and cleanly than when the Victorians could not avoid seeing Bloody Townsend at the bottom of their hill. Very, very few of PT’s upper crust will ever see the Mill Road camp or even be aware of its existence.

In November 2021, the city bought 14.4 acres directly across Mill Road from the OlyCap development. The city hopes to build its own low-income planned community. This concept is currently known as the Evans Vista Project. Upon completion, it will go a long way toward finalizing the concentration and segregation of the city’s remaining indigent, working poor and low to lower-middle class households in an out-of-the-way location removed from the city’s elites.

The city has land in the affluent areas of town. It could be driving a bulldozer through the morass of codes, regulations, permit fee schedules and time consuming procedures to clear a path for a radical change in the city’s housing and demographic landscape.  It could be doing something other than resurrecting the segregated Port Townsend of the 19th century.

It isn’t.

Next: Why Port Townsend is Not a “Strong Town”

Strangulation by Streateries?

by Ana Wolpin | Mar 30, 2022 | General

Political players at the City of Port Townsend have made no secret of their desire to eliminate vehicular traffic in the city’s primary business districts in favor of a more walkable, bike-able, maybe even pedestrian-only commercial hub. When John Mauro was hired as city manager to replace 20-year manager Timmons, it was on the strength of his “green” credentials. As reported in the Free Press in October 2020 (Who is John Mauro, Port Townsend’s City Manager?), in his prior position as Chief Sustainability Officer for the city of Auckland, New Zealand:

“He gave interviews and wrote climate action plans and plans for planting trees and adding bike paths and eliminating cars from Auckland streets.”

A green and sustainable environment may be a laudable goal. Is the elimination of parking in PT’s Historic Districts — by awarding use of publicly-funded street rights-of-way to some business owners, to the detriment of others — the right way to achieve that goal?

When pandemic response began dramatically changing our local landscape, temporary “streateries” were developed to enable restaurants to relocate their indoor dining to parking areas outside their businesses — literally on the city streets. Naturally, the loss of valuable parking spaces meant potentially reduced traffic for all other businesses along those streets. But, hey, this was an emergency, and the burdens on folks in the food industry were especially onerous.

The emergency is past. It’s business as usual again. But the restaurateurs who have benefited from the expanded real estate do not want to lose it. The city is now proposing that these “streateries” are granted permanent status — benefiting a small coterie of restaurant owners while the majority of the business community suffers the loss of even more already-limited parking options for their customers.

Water Street “streatery”, removing 46 feet of parking, as well as public sidewalk space.

The city posted notification of an “Open House on Streateries” on their website. The presentation took place yesterday evening. According to the timeline on the city webpage, this is the fast-track schedule to codify their proposal:

• March 21, 2022 Survey noted above distributed by Port Townsend Main Street
• March 29, 2022 Open House at 4:30 at the Cotton Building
• March 31, 2022 Survey closes
• April 4, 2022, City Council Meeting reviews public feedback
• April 18, 2022, City Council Meeting – Council will be presented with proposed code and receives public feedback
• May 2, 2022, City Council Meeting presents any revisions of ordinance for the proposed code

Where was the public notice?

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. Will next month’s newsletter announce this plan, after the survey has closed and the City Council has already reviewed public feedback?

A press release is linked on the city’s page noted above, but we can find no mention in the Leader of this proposal or process. Nor did Main Street’s Word on the Street publicize it, though the timeline above states that Main Street distributed a survey.

That survey is also on the city’s website, here. It consists of 13 questions. Question 5 is “Do you support the establishment of a long-term program for streateries and parklets?” Free Press editor Stephen Schumacher responded:

“This feels like a theft of public streets by converting ‘temporary emergency’ outdoor dining into permanent space for preferred businesses at the expense of others, who may not have been given legally required public notice. These outdoor street structures are ugly and unnecessary and impinge on parking and reinforce the false narrative that some kind of ongoing ‘emergency’ is going on or may soon be resumed.”

Additionally he wrote, “I reject the premises of questions 6-11 because these illegal takings of public properties for private insider benefits need to be terminated not perpetuated.”

The only public notice of this proposal we were able to find other than the page on the city’s website was a March 16 article in the Peninsula Daily News (PDN), Port Townsend to consider permanent ‘streatery’ program. It notes that a Main Street survey conducted last year found that business owners complained about the loss of parking spaces “and about the way some of the streateries look.”

Unless a resident regularly reads the PDN or frequents the city’s website, one wouldn’t know this giveaway was in process.

The issues with parking, to which the city has turned a blind eye for years, have been an ongoing nightmare for some Port Townsend businesses. Harvey Windle, owner of Forest Gems, anchoring the busy downtown intersection of Washington and Adams, has been a vocal critic of the parking morass for eight years and has written the city multiple times about this proposed commandeering of public property.

His most recent letter, emailed today to Port Townsend’s city attorney, city council and mayor, and City Manager Mauro, questions not only the fairness of serving special interests in this city street giveaway, but the public process itself.

“Besides the negative proposed removal of even more parking spaces for insider special interests, the process looks to be extremely flawed.

My manager knew of the proposal only because she signed up on a mailing list.

Monday with only a few days before input cut off on the 31st I took what little time I could spare and spoke with 2 neighboring businesses. Bergstroms and the new owner of the Antique Mall.

Neither were aware of the proposed unknown final number (problem there as well) Streaterie and Parklet conversions and were shocked at the proposal.

Claims were made that businesses were given information. Where is the checklist of businesses contacted?

Why was this not in the local paper weeks in advance with both sides of the issue covered?

Robin Bergstrom asked me if there was something he could sign in protest. A class action lawsuit is where this is headed.

I contacted the City Attorney then and am now.

I believe most do not know of what is going on. Especially after speaking with other business owners.”

Today Windle spoke with even more downtown business folks.

“Stopped into Gooding O’Hara Mackey. Receptionist knew nothing about plans. Was disgusted that the streatery across the way has not been removed. Never used, she said. Also commented that she has to find parking daily.”

He also visited another business on Taylor “which was bustling.” The owner told him she went to last night’s meeting and “expressed that she did not want the streateries to continue or grow in numbers.”

There is also a safety issue. These are not quaint sidewalk cafes, they are in the roadway. Until (if) all vehicle access is eliminated, diners are literally feet from traffic negotiating the often busy uptown and downtown business districts. A side order of gas and diesel fumes with your meal, anyone? There isn’t even a curb providing a few inches of elevation to deflect a wayward car from careening into unprotected diners.

“Streatery” below the curb, in the street. Grills on the table tops and propane tanks at your feet. Puddles. Cars driving just inches away, some trying to park at the edge of the picket fence. A safe and pleasant dining experience?

The PDN states “streateries are taking about 10 parking spaces out of the downtown-Uptown equation.”  Windle conducted his own survey and estimates that about a dozen spaces are being lost to these “temporary” outdoor dining spaces at present. But there are only three streateries currently installed — one outside of Alchemy on Washington at the end of Taylor Street, two along Water Street (photos at top and above). You can bet that with official city code inviting eateries to annex the street parking outside their properties, there will be many more to come.

Alchemy “streatery”, eliminating 5 or 6 parking spaces

If this proposed plan is codified, these three would likely be the tip of the iceberg. Taylor Street alone could have several streateries. Windle noted that until recently, there were “many others”, outside Sirens and Elevated Ice Cream among them. His letter to the city continues:

“In this case restaurants will think they benefit but where do their customers park?… Where are my special woodworkers spaces? And auto shops? And antiques? When restaurant owner Kristin buys a 6 million dollar parking-not-enforced building I think her losses are manageable without taking from me and others…

Several restaurants are owned by the President of Main Street, run under already compromised Mari Mullen under the influence of Mr. Mauro.

Mauro has a widely known lack of qualifications and has ignored parking issues from his beginning here. It is hard to claim that was not pre-arranged…

Mr. Mauro has no business further damaging limited parking. The City Council is responsible to keep him in his place and doing his actual job.

I am attaching 2 photos for the record of Mr Mauro and Mari along with restaurant owner Kristin’s attempt to close Taylor…

Even restaurant customers need parking. This is insanity. Helter Skelter Insanity against all visitors and business…”

Windle’s comment about “Kristin’s attempt to close Taylor” is in reference to the owner of Alchemy.* These are the photos he provided:

“Open Streets Initiative” on Taylor Street. 
All photos: Harvey Windle

If this “Open Streets Initiative” is the direction this current proposal is headed, there will be far more than a dozen parking spaces lost on Taylor Street alone.

The survey on “Long-term Proposals for Port Townsend Streateries and Parklets” — which the city didn’t announce in its newsletter and the Leader never reported on — closes Thursday, March 31.

*Correction: Past owner

Masks: The Great Face-Covering Psyop

by Ana Wolpin | Mar 27, 2022 | General

“i get to have a face.
you do not.”

——————————————

Spring of 2020. Mere months before the Leader began censoring all perspectives that did not align with health department messaging, I wrote a concerned, fact-based letter to the editor challenging the mask campaign we were being bombarded with daily. Along with everything else Covid, I had been researching the effectiveness and dangers of masks intensively, and offered a counterpoint to the dominant narrative which was being parroted by neighbors and friends.

By that point, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the public was being lied to. Anthony Fauci, along with the CDC, had flip-flopped so often — and so much fear and anxiety had been generated around the “killer virus” — people were already falling into the mass delusional psychosis that we did not yet have a name for. (See my two prior articles here and here for an overview of the delusional state psychiatrists and psychologists have also called “mass formation”.)

The coordinated campaign being broadcast à la Orwell’s 1984 was already talking its toll, creating a level of hysteria resulting in the shattering of community bonds. “Generating fear that unmasked people are now a threat is one of the many ways communities are being fractured,” I wrote.

More and more letters were being published engaging in a new phenomenon: mask shaming. All of the letter writers echoed memes being promoted in the mainstream press. There was a carrot-and-stick combination of bogus feel-good soundbites like Your mask protects me, my mask protects you, alongside charges that anyone who didn’t comply was a potential murderer, not doing their part to help save lives.

The finger wagging ratcheted up over the months, with one writer opining that “to not wear [a mask] is selfish, irresponsible and sometimes deadly behavior.” The letter exemplified the kind of blaming and shaming that growing numbers of terrified residents were repeating to vilify those who challenged the narrative.

I had already experienced the schism developing in our community after writing privately to a few friends in an effort to initiate a conversation about the propaganda that was circulating. In response I received… nothing.  No interest in discussing the issues, no debates, no response at all. Soon the mass psychosis would sanction removing discussion of any conflicting information from the public square entirely.

My letter to the editor, which focused on actual science, resulted in responses attacking my position for weeks afterwards. Some letters simply repeated media slogans. Some were outraged and angry assaults. One old friend (and a current Board of Health member) tersely dismissed my reference to harms from masks well-established in the medical literature as “ludicrous”. People I didn’t know, as well as decades-old friends, called my perspective “dangerous”.

In nearly half a century here, I’d never been so harshly attacked in this community. The certitude and righteousness were off the charts.

Not a single response addressed the substance of my letter — meta-analysis reviews of research showing that masks do not stop the transmission of viruses, and evidence that, in fact, masks themselves create health risks. Those two aspects of this most fractious divide are incontrovertible and will be examined in future parts of this series.

But this first part is an exploration of an element not addressed in my letter two years ago: the devastating mental, emotional and psychological repercussions of a masked populace.

Not protective, but a good reminder to be afraid of human contact

Concurrent with my letter, a May 2020 perspective published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) regarding universal masking in the Covid-19 era acknowledged: “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection.” A month earlier, a meta-analysis review of the most relevant studies of laboratory and real-world performance of masks by the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health had come to the same conclusion:

“We do not recommend requiring the general public who do not have symptoms of COVID-19-like illness to routinely wear cloth or surgical masks… There is no scientific evidence they are effective in reducing the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”

Masks, however, were proving to be a great tool for prompting people to be anxious and fearful. The NEJM authors suggested that even though they didn’t stop the spread of Covid, there was ancillary value in public masking:

“Masks are visible reminders of an otherwise invisible yet widely prevalent pathogen and may remind people of the importance of social distancing and other infection-control measures.”

So masking was really a visual cue to keep the public in a state of anxiety over the invisible virus. Masks reminded us that fellow humans were not safe to be around, that we needed to remember at all times that a deadly virus was in our midst and to fear any contact with one another. While the NEJM authors opined, “one might argue that fear and anxiety are better countered with data and education than with a marginally beneficial mask,” that sensible voice was drowned out by more powerful forces driving the narrative.

The greater the fear and anxiety generated, the more demoralized a population, and the more easily the masses can be manipulated and controlled. For the global “leaders” and institutions calling the shots, the opportunity to further enhance their power was too good to pass up.

Dehumanizing society

The masking of our faces was arguably the most dehumanizing aspect of the Covid mass hypnosis.

Mental, emotional and psychic damage, especially to our children, has been incalculable. In addition to generating fear of invisible pathogens and fellow humans, masking is known historically to be an effective element of torture programs.

Prisoners at U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

It’s long been recognized that both isolation and masking are tools of sensory deprivation. For decades, CIA “enhanced interrogation” experts have employed the forced wearing of surgical masks to increase discomfort while undergoing torture, to break a prisoner’s will.

The military has learned that if an enemy combatant looks different than a soldier, it’s 40% easier for the soldier not to feel things like fear, compassion, empathy and other human emotions. If the combatant has a face covering, it’s 60% more difficult to connect with that person. That’s just how we are wired.

Long before it was marketed as a talisman of safety and virtue, the mask was a symbol of subservience. It removes individuality, depersonalizes, and denotes submission.

The photo at the top of this article and the quote below it — I get to have a face. You do not. — comes from the piercing, insightful Bad Cattitude post Your Mask Ennobles Me / public health as a pretext for hierarchical validation. While the delighted adults all beam for the camera, you tell me if a single one of those children’s eyes are smiling.

“Masks are signs of subjugation. They dehumanize. They alienate.”

Bad Cattitude examines the hypocrisy we have seen repeatedly throughout this pandemic response. As universal masking was implanted into the mass psyche, a component of class privilege began to emerge.

Rules for thee, not for me: political theater

The ruling class demanded the plebes comply with a set of rules that did not apply to them. We saw politicians, corporate bigwigs and celebrities—thought leaders—put on a show of covering their faces for public displays while gathering in their private enclaves without masks or social distancing. There were the hot mic gaffes of public figures when they thought the cameras weren’t rolling, chuckling about how masking is just “political theater”.

When she thinks she is not being recorded, Pennsylvania state rep. Wendy Ullman tells Gov. Tom Wolf that her mask is just for show: “I’m waiting [to take it off] so we can do a little political theater (laughs)…
So, that it’s on camera.”

“City Council Mask Rituals. Before city council meetings begin, people mingle without masks. When the meeting is called to order, all city councilors… and staff put on masks. But people who testify and attend don’t wear masks. Sometimes the masks come off when staff talks, then go back on. City Councilor Amy Howard wears a mask when alone during Zoom meetings. These are the people in charge of Port Townsend.”

Masks Off / Masks On – Port Townsend City Council Meeting, 3-21-22
Top: City Manager John Mauro chats with attendees just a few feet away, bare-faced, before the meeting starts.
Middle: The meeting officially begins; Mauro (seated at left, now distanced) puts on his mask and joins the theater.
Bottom: City Councillors protecting the public or virtue signalling?

Bad Cattitude calls this “performative virtue signaling.” And he points out the even more blatant hypocrisy of elites openly dispensing with their own face coverings in staged photo ops while requiring the workers around them, the lower class, to be masked for the camera. He says:

“Masks are not about public health.

Masks are about hierarchy.

They not only represent a high visibility in-group/out-group tribal marker, but they have wonderous potential as a form of separating the powerful from the powerless, the nobles from the commoners, the dictators from the dictated to.

It has become the opiate of the classes.”

This class stratification appears to be in full display in Jefferson County. A friend having dinner at a popular local cafe following the lifting of the mask directive was disturbed to see that while diners had faces, all the staff remained masked. She asked the owner Why?

“It makes the customers more comfortable,” was the reply.

Do some of those customers feel elevated by this “opiate of the classes” as the post suggests? The mass psychosis persists and some folks genuinely remain petrified that an unmasked person can kill them… but then why are all the bare-faced diners around them not dangerous? Is the working class whose livelihoods depend on their patronage the new unclean caste?

Teaching compliance

Most chilling is the imposition of this madness on our children. Bad Cattitude believes it to be another power play by those in control, contending that the subjugation, dehumanizing and alienation caused by masks are “WHY they are so attractive to so many.”

“This is why forcing them on kids to dominate them and force them into compliance with state over self or even parents is such a high priority goal for those that have collectivist plans for their futures. It establishes precisely who is in charge.”

Masks exemplify the number one demand of the Covid era: COMPLIANCE. The plebes have been divided into the compliant (good) and the non-compliant (bad). Children have little choice in the matter.

Kids in Head Start, for example. While authoritarian rulemakers are free to enjoy unmasked lives, the federal government mandates that millions of 2- to 5-year-old children in Head Start programs wear masks. As in the featured photo at top, the privileged think nothing of shamelessly flaunting that they “get to have a face” while the children they tower over do not.

Bad Cattitude unpacks this staged photo op with Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams at an elementary school in Atlanta. Again, how many smiling children’s eyes do you see in this picture?

“Stacey Abrams is pro mask and pro vaxx mandate. And yet here she sits, the only one in the photo with a face… She does not believe a word of her own rules. It did not even occur to her how this might look…

Imagine what these experiences are teaching children about their place in the world and their relationship to authority figures.”

Then there are those situations with children where adults are also masked. That, too, is highly damaging, especially for our youngest in the critical early stages of development. It’s taken two years for the fallout to be so blatantly obvious that even the mainstream press is asking “How long will we continue to torture kids?” In the NY Post’s opinion piece, Making kids wear masks in school is torture, not safety, their Editorial Board writes:

“Doctors and psychologists are just beginning to study the effects of mask-wearing on kids, but the early signs aren’t good. Younger children in particular are missing facial cues and social development…

Democrats have tried to gaslight Americans by saying that masks are not an inconvenience, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a murderer…

Panic has replaced common sense.”

Damaging a generation of kids

Beyond terrorizing kids with fear that if they don’t mask they might kill Grandma, cognitive decline caused by masks has led to normalizing lowered standards for development. Autism specialist and certified speech-language pathologist Maija C. Hahn writes, Instead of Admitting Mask Mandates Harm Kids, CDC Lowers Expectations for Speech Development. Whereas children over the age of two typically have mastered significant vocabularies, she says, the updated CDC guidance states that a two-and-a-half-year-old child is now expected to say only 50 words.

“I am appalled the CDC would quietly lower long-held pediatric language expectations by normalizing significant language delays as “the new normal.”

Hahn says that special needs kids have been so severely impeded by mask mandates that they could be set back “for a lifetime of therapy.” But all children are suffering from the damage:

“The CDC’s mask mandates have severely affected an entire generation of American children and we are just now beginning to see the long-term consequences. Kids who were born in the era of COVID-19, have no idea what a world without masks is — we should expect to see even greater speech and language deficits in these children in the coming months and years.”

In October of 2020, a German university set up an online registry for parents, doctors, teachers and others to record the side effects of masking children that they observed. In less than a week, data on nearly 26,000 children had been recorded. From the article First results of a Germany-wide registry on mouth and nose covering (mask) in children:

“The average wearing time of the mask was 270 minutes per day. Impairments caused by wearing the mask were reported by 68% of the parents. These included irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), less happiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44%), malaise (42%) impaired learning (38%) and drowsiness or fatigue (37%).”

Psychiatrist Mark McDonald, M.D., author of United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis, sent a letter to his patients in February banning child masking in his practice. Forcing kids to mask, he says, is child abuse.

“My first ethical responsibility as a physician is to do no harm to my patients, and allowing children to mask their faces has caused and continues to cause tremendous harm to them physically, emotionally, psychologically and developmentally. Any argument to the contrary is naive and irrational.”

——————————————

——————————————

“Masks… may not leave physical scars (although they often result in painful skin infections that can lead to permanent facial disfigurement),” says Dr. McDonald, “but they do cause significant and possibly permanent damage to a child’s brain, retarding speech and language development, crippling social skills, and inciting a vicious cycle of emotional dysregulation leading to major depression, self-harm, and substance abuse. We would never allow someone to do this to our children directly, so why do we condone it through the vehicle of a facemask?”

In his post, Masking Children is Child Abuse, psychiatrist McDonald adds:

“Since children began wearing masks at school, on the athletic field, in airplanes—essentially everywhere outside the home—I have seen a significant decline in their ability to make eye contact, speak clearly, and initiate face-to-face communication with other human beings. Emotional resilience has dramatically declined. Children have become dull and slow in their thinking.”

In Port Townsend, the irrational masking of children continues in our schools. The lifting of mandates created a mix of the masked and unmasked, leading to teachers at the high school talking of segregating the two groups and even of arbitrarily forcing students to remain masked. On March 11th, a group of Port Townsend parents wrote an urgent letter to the district’s superintendent, principal and board after learning about this from their kids.

“Many students said their teachers stated they ‘can make students wear masks if they choose to.’ Also stated was if there was a shortage of desks [unmasked] kids would be forced to sit on the floor.” (Parents Appeal to PT Schools: Are Students Facing Mask Segregation?, PTPF 3-12-22)

The mask theater, penalizing those who do not comply, also extends to school staff. There is pressure being applied to require unvaxxed teachers to continue masking, a source told us: “Despite the mandate being lifted, the PT School District is trying to bully non-vaxxed teachers into wearing masks still.” It is undisputed that the shots are a dismal failure in stopping Covid’s transmission, yet we see another message to students (and teachers) that the non-compliant will be persecuted.

Mask measures are not and have never been about public health. This is an exercise in social engineering — rewarding compliance, punishing outliers, and conditioning the masses to obey authority.

And “with the advent of the mask craze, mental illness is no longer invisible in the public space,” says Dr. McDonald. “What was once reserved for only a psychiatrist’s ears is now on flagrant display to any citizen with eyes to see it.”

Dealing with No-Mask Anxiety

After two years of this insanity, we are really in a bind. Not only has the disastrous global response to Covid traumatized a generation of children, but now a significant portion of the public have anxiety about being UNmasked.

The mental health team at Good Therapy tells us this psyop has been so successful that according to the American Psychological Association, “nearly half of Americans admit they have concerns about resuming in-person interactions.” They are afraid to bare their faces again. They have a newly-coined mental issue, “no-mask anxiety”:

“No-mask anxiety is a condition where people are scared about the prospect of taking off their masks in public.”

They “feel uneasy when they themselves don’t wear a face covering, and they can also be uncomfortable around others who are not wearing masks.” These are the folks who were so successfully brainwashed by the narrative, the mask is now their security blanket. Believing that masks protect against viruses, they remain in a state of fear and anxiety over the invisible threat.

Dr. McDonald notes that many adults in his psychiatric practice are beyond anxious, they are literally addicted to hiding behind face coverings:

“In my adult patient population, many have developed a fear addiction.  I strongly encourage them to remove facemasks whenever possible, including when visiting my office, as a necessary first step in overcoming this fear addiction.”

In a post just this week — Masking the problem / once the needle goes in, it never comes out — Bad Cattitude discusses a segment of maskers so dependent on this fetish, they are equivalent to alcoholics or drug addicts. Those with untreated “social anxiety disorder” have gotten hooked on covering their faces.

“The anxious, agoraphobic, neurotic, and OCD have always been with us and always been among us… They hate being out in public and interacting with people.” Or they fear “disease or dirt” to such an extent, they engage in “extreme hygiene.”

Conditioning the public to believe masks represent safety, virtue, and societal duty provided a socially sanctioned way to alleviate some of that anxiety. “They could do what they wanted but had always feared to do because what had been low status behavior was suddenly elevated to high status.” Continuing the drug addiction analogy Bad Cattitude warns, “The needle went in. Getting it back out will not be easy for these folks.”

He addresses the current conversation about how to respond to people who demand that for their peace of mind others around them also wear masks. Is perpetuating paranoia or mental instability a kindness? Some provocative thoughts regarding the mask addicted:

“No one would feel like they were being respectful if an alcoholic asked them to ‘just get drunk with me, it makes me feel comfortable.’

Doing so would have bad outcomes.

Well, so does ‘just mask up with me, it makes me feel comfortable.’

People try to spin this as ‘being respectful of the needs of others’ and ‘just be considerate, just be kind’ but it’s not. It’s giving tequila to a drunk…

Imposing peer pressure to drink upon an alcoholic is abhorrent. But that is exactly what the mask enablers and alleged allies here are doing to the mask addicted.

I know it sounds cruel, but really, the best thing you can do for these people is to help them keep their sobriety.”

Are local businesses who require their staff to remain faceless because it makes even unmasked customers “more comfortable” sanctioning abuse and discrimination of the working class? Does indulging irrational patrons’ fears help them… or just reinforce the mass psychosis?

Whether out of fear of lost business or out of perceived kindness, those enabling this madness are giving power to a perverse lie.

At what cost, kindness? Architects of this insanity like Fauci and Gates promise us the next virus is just around the corner. By indulging paranoia, mask anxiety/dependence/addiction, or any other form of mask-related mental illness today, the pump is primed for even greater mania the next go-round.

This has been a psyop—”a psychological operation,” in military parlance, “designed to influence the perceptions and attitudes of individuals, groups, and foreign governments.” In this case, the psyop has been worldwide, using relentless information warfare to undermine the morale and will of humanity, local to global.