by Jim Scarantino | Oct 5, 2020 | General
Over 95% of Michael Chapman’s campaign funds come from lobbyists and PACs representing groups and business from outside his district, according to his latest filings with the Public Disclosure Commission. Of his $103,000 campaign war chest for reelection to the House of Representatives for the the 24th Legislative District, only $2,703 comes from individuals who live in his district. Not a penny of Chapman’s campaign funds came from Brinnon, Quilcene, Port Ludlow, Forks, McCleary, Elma, or Hoquiam. Only 5 individuals from Port Townsend have contributed to his re-election.
Of his top 45 donors, only one, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, is in his district.
Over 23% of his funds came from out of state.
PDC breakdown of Chapman contributions. The blue represents business contributions. Individual contributions are shown in green.
61% of Chapman’s money came from Political Action Committees, 28% from businesses and 6.6% from unions.
Chevron, Microsoft, Enterprise, Weyerhaeuser, Boeing, Amazon, and BSNF Railways (Warren Buffett) gave the legal limit, as did PACs for alcohol interests, auto dealers, and casinos.
Seattle accounts for the largest number of donors and highest amount of donations to Chapman’s campaign, with Olympia coming next.
Chevron alone gave more money to Chapman than he has received combined from individuals in Port Angeles ($503), Sequim ($700) and Port Townsend ($700), the three largest communities on the north end of the Olympic Peninsula. Only two people in Aberdeen and Ocean Shores have given him anything.
As of his last filing, Chapman has spent only $6,000 on his re-election.
Sue Forde
Chapman’s opponent, Sue Forde, has raised just under half of Chapman’s total. According to her most recent PDC filings, of her $46,000, about $30,000 has come from individuals, $14,500 from Republican party groups, ($10,500 from the state organization and the balance from LD 24 GOP county and local groups) and $1,100 from businesses. She has reported expenditures of just under $12,000.
PDC breakdown of Forde contributions. Green for individuals, purple for PACs.
All her funds came from within the district except for six contributions totaling about $2,700, the reverse of Chapman’s campaign which has raised only $2,700 from within the district. Forde has only one donation from Seattle.
[Correction: As originally posted, the article stated that 97% of Rep. Chapman’s funds came from lobbyists and PACs outside his district. The precise figure is 95.44%. I had missed the address on one corporate donor and caught the error when I checked my figures again after publication.]
by Jim Scarantino | Oct 2, 2020 | General
$2,329,961 to remodel and finish 8 modest, low rent apartments in an old building. So far.
At least another $1 million will be required before the first tenant moves into the Cherry Street Project that’s been sitting empty and decaying on a Port Townsend hillside since May 2017.
That’s more than $3.3 million for 5,000 square feet of living space, or $666 per square foot. And it is just a remodel upstairs and building out of small basement apartments. New construction costs half as much. Manufactured housing is far cheaper still.
This is City Council’s idea of “affordable” housing. I will explain these numbers in a bit. First a brief history lesson.
The original plan three years ago was to create a nonprofit organization to finish and lease the building. The new group was called Homeward Bound Community Land Trust. They got a $250,000 short term loan to purchase and bring the building from Victoria, B.C. They got an acre and a half of city owned land for $1. They couldn’t repay that loan, so the city gave them more money and more time.
On May 7, 2018, their existing indebtedness was rolled into a new $834,000 loan to be repaid over 40 years. The city floated a general obligation bond to raise the cash, and made the proceeds available to Homeward Bound. Their total debt, with interest included, came to $925,000. The city included a hidden subsidy. Taxpayers would have to repay the bond in 20 years, and would eat $451,115 in interest, for a total bond obligation of $1,367,355 to be split by Homeward Bound and taxpayers.
And Homeward Bound would get two years off the bat with no obligation to pay anything.
Homeward Bound, and particularly County Commissioner Kate Dean who has been on the Homeward Bound board from the beginning of this misadventure, knew that the estimate used to justify the amount of the loan from the city was “completely bogus.” They would have to come back for more money. They also did not disclose to the city an inspection report showing the building contained asbestos and that its walls had been painted with lead paint.
In November 2019, after nothing more had happened than getting the building off blocks onto a foundation, Homeward Bound told City Council they needed at least another million bucks.
Homeward Bound never made a payment on its loan from taxpayers and was never going to make a payment. We wrote 2.5 years ago that their default was foreseeable and inevitable.
The Carmel House as it appeared in May 2018. It remained on blocks until June 2019.
Our reports starting in 2018 explaining why this scheme was bound to fail, and bound to burn taxpayers without producing anything, are linked below. The articles provide links to city records and other supporting documentation. The reports detail massive incompetence and misfeasance, starting with City Council’s decision to approve acquisition of the building without having it first inspected.
At its September 28 Special Business Meeting, City Council faced the fact that its Homeward Bound dream was a bust. It was going to have to take the project back. Now, what to do with a decaying building that is blighting the neighborhood and had already attracted at least one homeless camp? The city’s pretty much broke. It doesn’t have money to fix its streets, let alone come up with another $1 million to fix a building that needs asbestos and lead removal. It’s also a political headache for city leaders who know taxpayers are fuming.
Tearing it down will be a huge embarrassment and admission of failure. So would selling it for whatever price it could bring and using the proceeds to pay down the bond debt. City Council needed a white knight to get them out of this mess.
Enter Bayside Housing & Services, a nonprofit that has been renting one of the buildings of the Old Alcohol Plant in Port Hadlock to provide transitional housing for people who might otherwise be homeless.
City Council in a 6-to-1 vote rejected the idea of selling the property and cutting its losses. It authorized the City Manager to negotiate a transfer to Bayside of the entire Cherry Street project. That includes the old Carmel House and approximately 1.5 acres of land with utilities mostly in place. Gary J. Keister, who has been representing Bayside in the preliminary negotiations, insisted upon the property being transferred clear of debt, and it looks like City Council will give him what he wants. Taxpayers, who were to be repaid by Homeward Bound for $925,000 of the debt, will now shoulder the entire $1,367.355 million expense.
Plus, City Council wants to give Bayside $307,606 cash as an additional incentive and boost to getting the project restarted. That is the amount of the bond proceeds that have not been spent by Homeward Bound. Instead of paying that back to lenders, taxpayers will have to come up with another $307,606 to replace the funds given to Bayside.
All Bayside will be required to do is to complete the remodel of the Carmel House building, add 4 small one bedroom apartments on the ground floor, and rent them as affordable housing units.
Once that it is done, they are free to use the rest of the 1.5 acres however they want, including developing it for market rate housing and turning a profit on those units.
You can watch the September 28 City Council meeting by clicking this link.
Not everyone jumped at this idea. City Councilor Monica MickHagar, the lone “no” vote, had some questions.
She wanted to know how much the city might make by selling the land instead of giving it away a second time. The proceeds could be used to pay down the bond, which requires an annual payment of $65,000 for 20 years. The funds saved could be used for public services.
The City Manager would not tell her how much the land could be sold for. In so doing, he was also withholding this information from taxpayers. Only in executive session would he disclose that information.
We have previously reported that, according to documents in city files, the land was valued at $600,000 at the time it was sold in April 2017 to Homeward Bound for one dollar. Mayor Michelle Sandoval, a real estate broker, has described this land as “valuable” land.
Now that we have a value for the land we can calculate what the cost is to taxpayers of the proposed transfer to Bayside Housing:
Bond debt: $1,367,355
Land: 600,000
Cash: 307,606
Subtotal: $2,274,961
In addition, the city gave Homeward Bound a $30,000 “organizational grant, $25,000 in project management services, free utility work (replacing and laying water lines), payments to PUD to lower and raise power lines as the building was moved through the city, and waiver of permit fees. In all the public records I have reviewed, I have not been able to ascertain the dollar value of the last three items. But, just with the $55,000 in miscellaneous costs we can determine, the total expense to be incurred by taxpayers in the proposed transfer to Bayside Housing would amount to at least $2,329,961.
Bayside will get all this for maybe $1.00.
Council member MickHagar had some questions about Bayside and their ability to get this job done. Those were questions deserving answers. After all, a lot more money was going to be required. Did Bayside have the resources to get the job done? Would this project again come back to the city as it had with Homeward Bound?
Her questions were blocked by other members of City Council. Such information was “confidential,” she was told.
In our next installment, we will attempt to answer those questions.
Related Articles
These reports, based on documentation from city files, provide a compete behind-the-scenes picture of this debacle.
Cherry Street “Affordable” Housing to Cost More than $2 million, May 28, 2018
The Tragedy of the Cherry Street Project, December 12, 2018
What’s Happening with the Cherry Street Project? October 29, 2019
“Completely Bogus” Numbers–More Problems and Delays for Cherry Street Project,
Cherry Street Project Welcomes First Tenants, February 28, 2020
Default the Cherry Street Project Now, April 22, 2020
Multi-Million Dollar Fraud on Taxpayers: The Cherry Street Project Unmasked, June 27, 2020
by Jim Scarantino | Sep 28, 2020 | General
A school shooting might have occurred at Port Townsend High School if it weren’t for the school’s police officer.
That was one of the reasons why PTHS principal Carrie Ehrhardt urged City Council to keep a School Resource Officer stationed with her students and teachers. In a letter to be considered at tonight’s meeting of Council’s Ad Hoc Committee on Public Safety and Law Enforcement, Ehrhardt pushed back on suggestions to end the SRO program. Sharp questioning of the Police Chief by members of the committee at an earlier meeting, and the removal of police from other school districts as a “reform” or “reimagining” of law enforcement have prompted fears that Port Townsend may end its successful police in schools program that has been in place, except for 4 years during the last recession, since Ehrhardt arrived as a teacher in 2001.
“There is a natural link between safer schools and safer communities,” Erhardt told council. When the SRO program was discontinued from 2006 to 2010, “our community saw a significant increase in crimes being committed by teenagers.”
In 2015, the current SRO, Officer Jeremy Vergin, was able to obtain the police records of a student who had enrolled in PTHS. They showed he had such a violent history that the school put him on a home based program and did not permit him on campus. Unhappy with this arrangement, the family moved. This student committed the North Thurston High School shooting a month later. It took an extremely brave and fast thinking teacher to tackle the student as he was firing a .357 pistol.
A year later, a teacher with severe mental health issues returned to school and his former classroom filled with students. Officer Vergin was able to diffuse the situation quickly because he was on campus. “If not for Officer Vergin,” Erhardt asks, “what would have happened during the additional minutes waiting for law enforcement to arrive?”
“In closing,” wrote Ehrhardt, “my hope of the committee is that you make decisions based on the community we live in, and want we want for the citizens and youth of Port Townsend, instead of reacting to emotions based on circumstances in other cities, that do not represent PT.”
You can read Ehrhardt’s entire letter by clicking on this link.
by Jim Scarantino | Sep 25, 2020 | General
Confess that you are racists. Take out a newspaper ad to proclaim your guilt, demanded Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County of the Sheriff and Port Townsend Police Chief.
Port Townsend Free Press has obtained emails between Cameron Jones, who has identified himself as an organizer of Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County (BLMJC), and Jefferson County Sheriff Joe Nole and Port Townsend Acting Police Chief Troy Surber. Purporting to represent BLM Jeffco, Jones made these demands in a July 10, 2020 email. In addition to a public confession of racism, Jones demanded that the public statement from the Sheriff and Police Chief “acknowledges BLMJC’s intentions” and “pledged to work with the community and BLMJC on realizing the intentions stated in our letter.”
One of those “intentions” was disarming police officers and deputies.
Much of the list of “Intentions” was vaporous stuff like agreeing that “Black lives matter.” Nobody disagrees with that unassailable statement, but then you get pulled into endorsing the political agenda of Black Lives Matter, Inc. and all that entails.
Sheriff Nole responded in general terms. “I am in total agreement with the Values of BLMJC,” he wrote to Jones on July 17. He was also in agreement with most of the items on their “Current List of Intentions, i.e., Invest in Community, Economic Justice, Protection of the First Amendment Rights and Protesters, and End White Supremacy and the War on Black People.” Who is not for investing in our community and protecting First Amendment rights? Who’s not against a war on Black people — if it exists? Who’s not against White supremacy — the dumb idea that White people are superior to everyone else by virtue of nothing more than skin color?
Sheriff Nole drew the line at agreeing with the demand to disarm the police and other matters controlled by union contracts and civil service rules.
And he did not agree to publicly flagellate himself and his deputies by confessing the sin of personal and institutional racism in a newspaper ad.
The demand for public humiliation was an escalation in Jones’ demands. Writing on behalf of himself, fellow BLM Jeffco organizer Sean Vinson and the group as a whole, Jones had cancelled a conciliatory Zoom meeting between BLM Jeffco and the Sheriff, Police Chief, County Commissioners Greg Brotherton and Kate Dean, Port Townsend City Councilor Ariel Speser and others and upped his demands.
I have not found any response from PT Acting Police Chief Troy Surber to Jones’ demand in the documents made available to me by the City of Port Townsend and Jefferson County. The cancelled Zoom meeting was not rescheduled. Neither the Sheriff nor Police Chief have issued the public confession demanded by Jones.
Who is Cameron Jones? Who is Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County?
Jones fired back at Sheriff Nole in a condescending and accusatory email a week after Nole did not accede to all of Jones’ demands. He rejected every effort at conciliation unless Nole issued “a direct and PUBLIC apology.” He accused Nole’s deputies of having within them “insidious behavioral mechanisms” acquired during prior military service. (Jones says he served in the military at Guantanamo Bay.) No matter what Nole did, Jones wrote, nothing mattered until Nole published an apology for his own and his department’s racism.
“Right now, since this basic first step seems so problematic, how can you ever imagine we’d have any confidence in your ability as a leader to create a culture within law enforcement that leads to substantial and meaningful policy and doctrinal change?” were Jone’s parting words.
Nole had agreed as part of his conciliatory efforts to participate in the KPTZ radio program “The Reckoning” which was broadcast a few weeks later. We wrote about that travesty in “Reckoning with the Reckoning.” Nole endured Jones throwing at him wild, unsupported accusations such as Nole permitting White supremacy and vigilante groups to operate in the county, five Black men being lynched, and Nole imprisoning 30% of Jefferson County’s Black residents. Nole handled the attacks with his usual courteous aplomb. Anyone who has interacted with him knows he is a patient, kind man. He was being humiliated, but he did not respond in kind, a code of conduct his own deputies have demonstrated to the people of this county over the years.
Nole could have, but did not object to being besieged by a man who was arrested in March for trying to break into an occupied home in Port Townsend, and has had frequent problems resulting from substance abuse that have led to police involvement. We wrote about those incidents in our August 25 report, “Black Lives Matter Leaders Generated Police Calls for Help, Investigations and Arrests.” That report was limited to incidents within the boundaries of Port Townsend. Cameron Jones is the individual in that report who was arrested for attempted burglary, who did not understand it was wrong to break into someone else’s home, who lied to and verbally assaulted police officers and who insisted he could not be questioned unless police brought his parents to the police station (Mr. Jones is more than 30 years old). Mr. Jones is the individual in that report who was stopped repeatedly, but not arrested, for a variety of traffic violations that placed his own safety at risk. He was the individual whose conduct outside the Bishop Hotel led to an employee calling police. He was the individual who crashed head first into the closed Fort Worden gate, lied about his identity and was obviously intoxicated while bicycling.
We have just received records from Jefferson County about contacts between leaders of BLM Jeffco and law enforcement occurring outside Port Townsend. Our request to Clallam County is still pending.
Jefferson County records reveal numerous contacts going back years. They document an automobile theft followed by a high speed chase where the fleeing felon hit a horse, threats and assault, malicious mischief, driving multiple times on a suspended license, warnings about dangerous driving, arrest on warrants, and other matters.
But not one complaint that law enforcement conduct had anything to do with race. We asked for all complaints for anything close to racist conduct going back a decade. There are none, particularly none from any of the current Black Lives Matter leadership that has had many interactions with deputies.
Why no complaints of deputies mistreating anyone because of their race? Because it appears that, while doing their job to enforce the law, deputies also genuinely cared about people struggling with considerable problems and challenges. They searched for a BLM Jeffco leader who went missing after an anger management session. They made a mental health welfare check and searched for troubled runaway teen who later became a BLM leader. They cared when they found someone who became a BLM Jeffco leader unresponsive under the guard rail of the Highway 104 overpass above Center Road.
In a story published by the Leader, the BLM Jeffco leader found under that guard rail said he would not want to encounter Deputy Sheriff Andy Pernsteiner out of fear that he would be mistreated because of his race. It was Deputy Sheriff Andy Pernsteiner who saved that BLM leader from possibly dying of exposure on a cold, wet February night.
Sheriff Nole has declined a personal and departmental public confession of racism with good reason. It would not be true.
by Jim Scarantino | Sep 24, 2020 | General
You’re not going to die. Seriously, the chances of dying from COVID-19 are remote and not much worse than the flu.
On September 10, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its updated “Infection Fatality Ratio.” It calculates the survival rate based on all they’ve learned from the onset of the COVID crisis. The numbers likely won’t matter to those people driving around with windows up, gloves on in their own car, peering over their mask at the world. I’ve concluded that their get up is some kind of body armor for people with problems that will never respond to even the most effective COVID vaccine.
But for the rest of us, the CDC’s conclusions are terrific news.
You’re not going to die. The chance of COVID felling you falls in the category of those extreme scenarios like a brick falling on your head as you walk through a city. It may happen. It has happened. But the chances of it happening are so minimal we don’t shut our cities down the way the COVID panic and government orders have.
The CDC’s lead-up to its conclusions rolls out various scenarios, parameters and qualifications. Go ahead and take the time to read the full report for a deeper understanding. Thankfully, they reduce the verbiage to a “current best estimate.” Here’s their table. We’ll concentrate on the column entitled “Scenario 5: Current Best Estimate.”
Now we’ll do the math for you:
If you are no older than nineteen years of age and you become infected with the virus, you have a 99.97% chance of surviving.
If you are twenty to forty-nine years of age, you have a 99.98% chance of surviving a COVID infection.
If your are fifty to sixty-nine years of age, your chance of surviving is 99.95%.
And, even at 70 years and older, your chance of surviving a bout of the latest novel Chinese virus is 94.6%.
Whew. Those odds should make any sensible person feel a whole better than they do after watching the always breathless evening news.
Now, that is not to say we shouldn’t continue to be responsible and compassionate. For every 100 of the most elderly senior citizens who get the virus, about 5 of them may die. That is a serious stat.
The rest of the CDC’s table shows the need for continued precautions to protect our most vulnerable population.
The “Current Best Estimate” column is again to the far right. Forty percent of people infected may suffer no symptoms, such as coughing, shortness of breath, blue lips, confusion and fever. But the infectiousness of asymptomatic people is very high and the percentage of transmissions occurring prior to the onset of those symptoms also can’t be ignored.
Those of us who pass for “younger” in Port Townsend need to be careful. Nobody wants to get the virus, and we don’t want to pass it to our most senior citizens. Their struggle will be much more difficult than what we can expect, especially those who have serious other health conditions. It is those already sick elderly who are the most at risk.
But let’s cheer up. This is not the Black Death or the Spanish Flu of WWI. Two hundred thousand Americans’ deaths are considered COVID deaths, but we know that COVID itself accounts for only a tiny number of those fatalities (something like 6%). Those lives ended because COVID interacted with obesity, renal failure, chronic respiratory diseases, heart disease and compromised immune systems. But those lives were precious lives and we must grieve and take precautions so no one else leaves us sooner than they otherwise would, without regard to how close they may already be to death’s door.
You’re not going to die from COVID. Nobody around you will likely die, either. But someone might. It doesn’t make sense to continue to destroy healthy lives, jobs, businesses and communities to protect against such remote risks. We don’t have those imaginary bricks raining out of the sky. There is no justification for Jay Inslee’s ever-changing, micro-managing, playing-favorites, always arbitrary and irrational dictates that have been a cure worse than the disease. The vulnerable elderly should be the ones to take the most energetic precautions and the rest of us should resume normal life in every aspect, while demonstrating our care for those few at risk of a rare fatal encounter with the COVID virus.
by Jim Scarantino | Sep 23, 2020 | General
Families’ ability to mourn and remember, to honor and celebrate lost lives is being crippled by the Governor’s arbitrary rules on funerals.
Funerals of more than 30 attendees, regardless of where they are held, inside or out, are prohibited.
You can assemble hundreds of people outdoors to rage and rant, but in the same space Inslee won’t let nearly as many people gather if their purpose is to mourn and remember.
Effective September 16, 2020, the Governor allowed funerals to resume. He now allows indoor and outdoor funeral services but attendance must not exceed 30 people or 25% of maximum building capacity, whichever is less.
Inslee had previously prohibited all funerals. Unlike buying pot–which was never restricted– he had declared that mourning death and celebrating life was a non-essential activity. You could hire gravediggers to slip the wife of fifty years marriage into the ground, but you and your family could not be there to weep. In cold, indifferent words Inslee restricted cemetery services to “delivery only.”
Even the spreading of ashes with others around was illegal for the past six months.
Inslee has graciously allowed us to begin to mourn our dead again in public. But like other exercises of what has become dictatorial power, this is another example of Inslee’s arbitrariness and irrational decrees.
Churches may hold indoor worship services of up to 50 people. But if the service is instead a funeral they must turn away everyone at the door starting with number 31.
Even if the funeral service is held outside in a huge open field with social distancing observed, Inslee’s order still limits the mourners to 30 in number.
If the church building is small and holds only eighty people, the maximum number of mourners for an outdoor service on church property would be less than the thirty that would be permitted if their building were larger. They are restricted to the lower number because Inslee’s order imposes a cap of 30 people or 25% of a building’s capacity, whichever is less.
Governor Inslee has had gatherings larger than that for his own media events.
Thousands of maskless people have gathered for protests in front of the Governor’s mansion. Throngs have spread on the lawn and steps around the State Capitol for hours and hours. That was okay.
Everyday you can find a lot more than 30 people in the aisles and lines at Costco, and that’s okay, too.
But more than 30 people gathered for an hour when their purpose is mourning, prayer and expressions of love is prohibited. The COVID virus doesn’t distinguish between people’s intentions or the content of their speech. Jay Inslee does.
