by Jim Scarantino | Nov 20, 2020 | General, Local Businesses
Promises to the State Auditor that an audit committee would provide enhanced financial oversight were broken. The Fort Worden Public Development Authority’s audit committee was not formally created until earlier this year, and it has rarely met. Even after revelations of irregularities and malfeasance that threaten the organization’s future, the audit committee has canceled its next scheduled meeting.
The Fort Worden PDA has never received a clean state audit. Every review by the State Auditor has found significant problems, ranging from misstating millions of dollars of debt as income to addition and subtraction errors. The response from the PDA has been that it would provide more training and resources to its financial team and that the PDA Board would form an audit committee to ensure that the problems were not repeated.
See Port Townsend Free Press, November 6, 2020, “Fort Worden PDA Finances Plagued with Problems from Beginning” [Photo above: the current condition of Ft. Worden’s $2 million glamping project]
The State Auditor in February 2017 released adverse findings in its audit of the PDA’s first two years of full operation, 2014 and 2015. There was no audit for 2016 yet because the PDA was over a year and a half behind in getting that year’s information information to the State Auditor.
In response to the adverse findings, the PDA pledged that it was “implementing procedures to ensure internal controls are put in place and adhere[d] to in order to address this finding….” The PDA stated that this action was “our priority.” Further, the PDA said that it “has also established an Audit Committee to oversee future annual reporting as an extra measure to make sure accurate reporting takes place.” The State Auditor recommended strongly that staff receive the training and resources needed to do their job of preparing accurate accounts. The PDA pledged this would be done.
Yet, in the Executive Committee meeting discussing the findings by the State Auditor there was no discussion of these pledges and no motion by any Board member nor suggestion by staff to act upon those pledges. Instead, the Board and staff quibbled with and reframed the Auditor’s negative audit to minimize its significance. The minutes of that February 23. 2017 Executive Committee meeting may be read at this link. Indeed, David Robison, the executive director at the time–who held the position for nine years until November 2020–saw the negative audit as a positive reflection on the job his staff was doing.
Dave Robison said that to put things into perspective it should be noted that for a startup organization with complicated finances and operations, to have received only one finding in our first state audit is highly encouraging.
By the time of this discussion, the PDA had been in existence for seven years.
A review of the Board’s meeting minutes for all of 2017 shows no other discussion of the adverse State Audit, nor any action to create the promised audit committee and provide the enhanced staff training and resources strongly recommended by the State Auditor.
The next two years passed without discussion or action by the PDA Board to prevent a repeat of the negative audits for 2014 and 2015. No audit committee was formed. There was no action on upgrading the skills and resources of PDA’s accounting staff.
In February 2020, the State Auditor released negative audits for PDA’s 2016 and 2017 financial statements. In addition to submitting its 2016 data late, the PDA also was six months late in getting its 2017 financials completed and delivered to the State Auditor. Again, the State Auditor could not give the PDA a clean audit. It found $3.5 million in debt that was not reported, mathematical errors, and operating expenses and liabilities misstated for both years, among other problems. “Internal controls over financial statement preparation,” the Auditor stated, “were inadequate to ensure accurate and complete reporting.” Again the Auditor recommended that the PDA’s staff receive the training needed to do their job right. Again, the PDA told the State Auditor that it was forming an audit committee. “The Committee,” the PDA wrote in its response to the Auditor’s findings, “will perform regular review of internal financial controls, process and policies.”
Finally, at its February 26, 2020 meeting the Board took up a motion to create the audit committee. In discussion of the motion, Treasurer Jeffery Jackson claimed that the Executive Committee “has historically served as an audit committee.” {A review of all the minutes of the meetings of the Executive Committee, however, does not show that body undertaking any of the actions normally undertaken by corporate audit committees. They reflect no oversight of financial reporting or internal controls nor participation in the preparations for the state audits.) The motion passed unanimously. An “Ad Hoc Audit and Finance Committee” was born.
It did not meet until April 16. Its first agenda item was a review of financial reports presented by staff. There was no discussion of improving the inadequate financial controls which had led to four previous adverse audits by the State Auditor. There was no discussion of staffing needs or training the PDA’s accounting team. The balance of the meeting was about operations, cash flow requirements and projections, and recovering from the Governor’s lock down order. There was a discussion towards the end about the Auditor’s position that the Fort Worden Foundation, a related charitable fundraising group, should be included in the PDA’s financial reports. That was it as far as it went in responding to any of the State Auditor’s concerns.
Two months went by without another meeting of the audit committee. At its June 18 meeting there was no discussion of anything related to the problems identified by the State Auditor. All discussion was focused on budget scenarios, cash flow and the impact of the Governor’s COVID lock down orders.
The July meeting of the audit committee was canceled.
The August meeting of the audit committee was canceled.
No meeting was scheduled for September.
The October meeting was canceled.
On October 28, 2020 Acting Executive Director David Timmons reported alarming discoveries in the PDA’s financial picture. He found irregularities, malfeasance and other problems so severe they rendered the PDA’s finances “a house of cards.” Board members responded with surprise and concern. One Board member said she was “stunned.” See Port Townsend Free Press’s 11/5/20 report.
Despite the PDA’s precarious situation, the Ad Hoc Audit and Financial Committee has canceled its November meeting. No meeting for December is currently scheduled.
Related: “Fort Worden Glamping a Soggy Mess,” PTFP, 11/14/20
by Craig Durgan | Nov 18, 2020 | General
We have a housing crisis. Our Board of County Commissioners declared an Affordable Housing Emergency three years ago. But we have seen no movement on addressing one of the primary causes of our affordable housing shortage: minimum lot size regulations.
Jefferson County’s latest Comprehensive Plan was adopted in December 2018. Under the current development code the minimum lot size for any subdivision is 5 acres. This can and should be changed in the yearly amendment process. Nothing really stands in the way except politics and a conflicting desire by some powerful interests to make Jefferson County an ever more exclusive reserve for wealthy retirees and second-home owners.
The Growth Management Act does not require a 5 acre minimum lot size.
In Thurston County v. W. Wash. Growth Mgmt. Hearings Bd., No. 80115-1, the State Supreme Court ruled that there is no 5 acre “bright line” standard under the GMA. As a result of that decision, the Western Washington Growth Management Board has stated:
“The GMA does not define what constitutes “rural densities”; rather, rural densities are “not characterized by urban growth” and are “consistent with rural character.” “Whether a particular density is rural in nature is a question of fact based on the specific circumstances of each case.” Nor does the GMA dictate a specific manner of achieving a variety of rural densities. “Local conditions may be considered and innovative zoning techniques employed to achieve a variety of rural densities.””
So what is the minimum lot size in rural lands? To answer this question you need to look at the Growth Management Act. The answer waiting there provides hope for affordable housing in Jefferson County.
Under RCW 36.70A.070(5)(b) the GMA states that: “The rural element shall provide for a variety of rural densities….”
RCW 36.70A.030(17) states that: “Rural development can consist of a variety of uses and residential densities….”
And RCW 36.70A.030(18) states that: “Rural services do not include storm or sanitary sewers….”
Lastly, RCW 36.70A.030(20) states that: “Urban governmental services” or “urban services” include those public services and public facilities at an intensity historically and typically provided in cities, specifically including storm and sanitary sewer systems…”
In other words, the difference between “rural” and “urban” is whether there is an available sewer or not.
Under WAC 246-272A-0320 Table X the minimum lot size depends on the type of soils and whether there is public water available. The minimum lot size ranges from 12,500 square feet to 2.5 acres. Requiring a 5 acre minimum lot size is not consistent with the GMA. The minimum lot size could be 12,500 square feet (0.2869 acres). Another section of the GMA states that the determining factor for minimum lot is the type of soils (suitability for septic) and the availability of public water.
It is clearly up to the county itself to decide whether it wants a range of rural residential densities.
I would propose that based on the requirements of septic design under WAC 246-272A-0320 Jefferson could have two more zoning densities, 2.5 acres and a performance based zoning determined by septic capability.
The category of Performance Based Zoning would allow subdivision of property, which is something that was done in the past in Jefferson County, back when we built a good deal of affordable housing.
Affordable housing requires density. It is simply not affordable to build on a 5 acre lot. It is entirely feasible to build affordable housing on a 12,500 to 20,000 square foot lot.
We have a solid, legal opportunity to challenge the Jefferson County Comprehensive Plan. By opening up our land use regulations we can make it possible to again build on small lots around the county. And with that positive change, there will hope for truly affordable housing in sufficient quantity to make a difference.
by Jim Scarantino | Nov 14, 2020 | General
Someone left the cake out in the rain.
Fort Worden’s $2 million glamping project is a soggy mess. I walked the hillside where the glamping project was supposed to have 19 luxury tents completed by June. The clouds were spitting rain and the wind cut like a knife. I counted only 16 sites under construction. Only one luxo-tent is completed. That is the model home for the development, so to speak. The rest are in various states of being somewhat done to just started.
I saw no evidence of the “event center” that was going to anchor the development. From what I can tell from public documents, the fancifully labelled “event center” was to be just a large mess tent.
16 tents for $2 million.
The platforms were sited to utilize extant sewer and water lines from the days when the military housed personnel on this hillside. The lines were fixed and upgraded. Electricity was run to each tent platform The rest is canvas and rope, lumber, plywood, nails, screws and PVC.
Those are indeed luxury tents: $125,000 each. That kind of money could have rehabbed quite a few rooms in Fort Worden’s existing inventory of buildings. It could have bought super-attractive tiny homes from GreenPods on Sims Way that could be rented as cabins year-round. These tents on that blustery, chilly hillside would be unheated and available for rent only during our summer months.
The project is deteriorating without bringing in any income. The tents last only ten years. For those few bundles of canvas that have been spread over frames, they will have one winter less in their life-span before they see their first glamper sipping Chablis and snacking on Brie and crackers.
It is doubtful this project will ever see completion. Acting PDA Manager David Timmons has discovered that $600,000 of the $2 million loaned by Kitsap Bank specifically for the project was diverted to other uses without Board approval.
I wrote that Fort Worden has been hit by the Cherry Street Project Disease. Examine the photos below. Similar causes, I wrote. Similar symptoms, too.
Delayed From the Start
A review of the minutes of the Fort Worden PDA Board of Directors shows that the glamping project fell behind even in the conceptual stage, which began in 2015. Three years later it got a Power Point presentation in February 2018. It was originally supposed to have a “soft open” in March 2020. That was critical to its financial viability. Then it was to be June, and there was talk of August. Now it’s opening date is no longer even under consideration.
By way of comparison, during the 4-5 years the Fort Worden PDA has been talking about and stumbling forward building some tent platforms, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe started and finished its multi-story hotel at its Blyn casino.
Governor Inslee’s lock down order stopped construction temporarily in mid-March, although government projects that provided housing were permitted to move forward. The PDA, curiously, did not try to shoehorn its project into this exemption. (A swimming pool in Port Angeles used the fact that it had a room for day care to continue construction as a government housing project.) Then, when a couple months later the Governor allowed construction across the board to resume, the PDA didn’t have the money it had borrowed for the project. In violation of the terms of its bond from Kitsap Bank, the PDA had diverted those funds elsewhere.
So the project sits empty, stalled out in cold, winter rains with water pooling on plywood platforms. It’s sharing that exposed, weathered plywood look with the Cherry Street Project.
The PDA’s loan to Kitsap Bank is due the first quarter of 2021. The PDA doesn’t have the money to pay what it owes. Kitsap Bank reportedly financed the $2 million glamping loan internally, which means our local bank will also a take hit due to the PDA’s malfeasance. Like a bank that lends to broke nations, there does not seem to be any collateral that can pay off some of the bad debt loss. And its not just that the PDA has fallen short; it violated the terms of its loan by spending the funds on things besides the project for which the loan was extended.
A Pipedream
Why did the PDA ever think that its costly glamping project made financial sense?
In a March interview with The Leader David Robison, PDA’s Executive Director for the past 9 years (but now retiring), said that Fort Worden’s glamping facility would be just like the one where he had stayed in Friday Harbor up in the San Juan Islands. The glamping facility there is the Lakedale Resort at Three Lakes.
Robison said that the PDA’s glamping tents would be almost exactly the same as these. I was able to peek inside the model tent (The vent was open. I zipped and snapped it shut after my look-see.) The single finished model does appear roughly similar to the Lakedale resort tents, but not as elaborately decorated.
The major difference is the surroundings. The Fort Worden setting is not comparable to Lakedale’s lakeside isolation. The PDA’s glamping sites, for which they had hoped to charge from about $170 to over $220 a night, are squeezed behind old Army buildings along black top roadways.
None of the tents pictured are finished. Their platforms are incomplete. In some, utilities are not connected and all are unfinished inside–just bare plywood for flooring, wires hanging from rafters, etc. (You can see some of this through windows that have been left open. I did not step inside any tents.) You could say that the few with canvas are just hiding all the work that’s been left undone.
As for the $125,000 luxo-tents in the trees (“incredibly luxurious,” Robison claimed), this is what they look like now.
But the Guard Shack is done–Or what’s with the Peninsula Daily News?
The Leader ran with a large front-page story about the financial crisis at Fort Worden. The widely read Jefferson County Facebook page, the on-line news outlet of Patrick Sullivan, former Leader editor, and Joe D’Amico of Security Services Northwest, provided expanded coverage on the crisis. The Port Townsend Free Press has run two stories about the impending collapse of the PDA’s house of cards and its years of dodgy finances (here and here). Not a word from the Peninsula Daily News. This is kind of, like, you know, a pretty big deal. The Fort Worden PDA is a pillar of Port Townsend’s creative community, it houses Centrum’s festivals, and it is one of the county’s largest employers with 170 on its payroll.
Two weeks after the alarming news broke, the PDN finally had news on Fort Worden. This was a front-page story!
(Photo, Zach Jablonski, Peninsula Daily News)
The old guard shack has been restored.
[It was pointed out to us since publication of this article that the PDN did have a story on the financial malfeasance at Fort Worden. But the information about the improper shifting of funds, credit card abuses and defalcations was buried deep into the article, and it took the PDN a full two weeks to acknowledge the crisis. And, to be clear, the guard house restoration was a project of the Friends of Fort Worden, which has been untainted by the financial scandals of the PDA.]
In closing, for your listening pleasure and reflection, here’s Richard Harris’s iconic ballad about how it feels when reality sets in and can no longer be avoided.
by Gabrielle Guthrie | Nov 13, 2020 | General
I’m not conceding this election AT ALL. Unless you can show me evidence of President Dewey and President Gore, you will understand that the media does not choose our president for us. They called those elections, too. They both flipped.
But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to say is that No, we will not be holding hands and singing kumbaya. There will be no “healing and restoration.” I will not be playing hashtag “unity” and hashtag “community goodwill.”
I have just spent the last four years being demonized and disrespected by immature bullies who did not get what they wanted and used that as permission to call me uneducated, deplorable, brainwashed, hateful, a racist, a bigot, and other assorted names.
I’ve just spent 7 months practically locked down in my home over a complete lie. I’ve now barely got an income and I’ve watched far too many small businesses die. I’ve seen people lose their homes. I’ve watched people overdose on drugs and struggle with mental health and suicide issues and I’ve suffered tone deaf public officials and local leadership that just doesn’t care.
I’m not interested in forgiveness, instead I’m ready to see some people go to prison. What has been done to us is a human rights violation.
Don’t even get me started about “the church” at large. Some of the most vicious attacks have come from that direction, from the tolerance teams and the woke ones. I sure sucked some sour grapes today (November 7) reading those very same people trying to claim, NOW we need to pray for our leaders, we all just need to be more Christ-like!
No. Your authority is completely revoked. If I need to be more Christ-like, He’ll tell me.
I’ve grown up, I’ve learned a few things and I’ve gained some self respect. I will never again compromise my beliefs or my values just to help other people feel better. Relationships with people are no longer important to me and I won’t waste one moment investing in them. I’d rather be alone.
It’s a good place to be.
[Originally published November 7, 2020 at insanitybytes blog]
by Gene Farr | Nov 11, 2020 | General
In a June 30, 2020 article in The American Thinker Charles Battig points out that Planet of the Humans, the recent film produced by Michael Moore, shows how the reality of needing to provide 24/7 reliable electricity to consumers requires that fossil fuels remain the world’s primary energy sources. This is because of the failure of wind or solar to provide power if there is no wind or insufficient sun. Renewables cannot displace reliable fossil-fuel power plants. And consumers’ energy bills do not go down, but go up, when renewables are imposed.
With his recent book, False Alarm, Bjorn Lomborg continues to straddle the fence on global warming, aka “climate change.” As the original “skeptical environmentalist,” Bjorn has argued that there are more productive ways to aid humanity than spending billions trying to influence planetary climate change. He has argued for improving sanitation, clean water supplies, basic nutrition, and providing paths out of poverty for the millions living in underdeveloped countries. In this book, he continues to press for a concerted effort to alleviate these ills, rather than accepting the decades of panic-driven calls for “fixing the climate.”
Keeping much of the world in poverty while billions are thrown at a climate change crusade is even more unjustified because the scientific data does not support alarms of an existential climate emergency.
Climate Change CO2 Theory Failures
When all the dozens of temperature prediction models driven by CO2 levels are run with real data starting in 1979, they grossly over estimate the global temperatures.
This was presented to the Environment And Public Works Committee of the United States Senate in 2013 by Roy W. Spencer, PhD of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Buried 774 pages into the UN IPCC’s Third Assessment Report summary, is this disclaimer regarding the existence of scientific certainty. It stated: “In research and modeling of the climate, we should be aware that we are dealing with a chaotic, nonlinear coupled system, and that long-term predictions of future climate states is not possible.”
It should also be noted that it is these grossly exaggerating temperature prediction models are the same temperature models that drive the sea level increase models.
Looking at real world data we see that glacier melting and ocean lever rise started long before our heavy use of fossil fuels started.
Looking at the “Greenhouse Layer” in the upper atmosphere we see that the models fail miserably when compared with real data from UK Hadley Center atmospheric balloon data. Similar results are found in data from satellites.
Deceptive Use of Data
Claiming we are seeing more drought conditions by only looking at data after 1940 totally ignores the extreme drought conditions of the 1930’s. Here is all the data from NOAA.
Then there is the claim that global warming is causing more fires. The data runs counter to that claim, as shown by data collected by the National Interagency Fire Center. And using “acres burned” as a stand-in for fires is highly deceptive. Most forest management experts indicate that the increase in acreage burned is due to mismanagement.
Also, it should be pointed out that during the last 600 million years, there where times where global CO2 levels were as much as 10 to 20 times higher than now and times when global average temperatures were as much as 20F higher but nothing dastardly happened.
A joint NASA and MIT research effort reported in 2019 as having identified and quantified a feedback effect in tropical cloud formations that dumps excess heat into outer space.
NOAA Hurricane and Tornado data shows no increase in severe weather events and WHO data shows a phenomenal decrease in world-wide per capita deaths due to extreme events.
Topping all this off, the UN IPCC 2012 Risk Assessment Report found no metrics that indicate a problem associated with the slight warming we have experienced since the 1970s.
What is Going on Here?
As my daughter once asked: “Why are the politicians lying to us?” The answer was provided by the journalist and social commentator H. L. Mencken decades ago when he wrote: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Or expanding on what President Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said, “Don’t let a good crisis go to waste, even if you have to invent one.
by Jim Scarantino | Nov 10, 2020 | General
Thanksgiving will not be stopped by COVID. The Tri-Area Community Meals Team will have hot meals available for pickup. Count on the same wonderful turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce and roll they been serving up every year to people wanting a little community on this holiday. Instead of a busy dining room inside, they will be handing out the meals from tents erected outside the Tri-Area Community Center. Reservations are required.
They will be serving from noon until 2 p.m. on Thanksgiving day. Deliveries are available for the homebound or those without transportation.
“We won’t need as many volunteers as in the past since we won’t be serving food or cleaning tables, etc.,” says Rita Hubbard, one of the organizers. “We’ll need volunteers on Wednesday late afternoon/evening to peel and cut potatoes, open cans of sauce, package cookies, etc. Thursday will be for serving only. Food handlers cards are not required but would be appreciated – those of us in the kitchen have cards.”
To make a reservation to pick up a Thanksgiving meal, or to arrange delivery, call 360-379-4228. Follow the recorded instructions, leave a message and the Tri-Area Community Meals Team will call back to confirm details.
Sponsors of this year’s Thanksgiving meal include First Security Bank, Jefferson Healthcare, OlyCap, GBF (“God Bless Food”) Catering, Hadlock Building Supply, and the East Jefferson Rotary Club.
“I found out we have 30 residents at the homeless shelter at the American Legion,” says Hubbard, “and was told there are at least 70 people in tents and cars at the fairgrounds – this includes children. I’m not sure yet how we’re going to get food out there – if it’s requested – but we’re working on it.”
More details and contact information is available at the group’s Facebook page, linked here.
My wife and I are hoping to again join in as volunteers. We will terribly miss that bustling dining room and music from Chicago Bob and friend. Here’s our story from last year. And here is the flyer for this year:
