The City of Port Townsend did something good. On October 7, 2019 ordinance
3233 was added to section 9.08.020 of the municipal code. Human feeding of wild
ducks, geese, gulls and deer within the city limits is now listed as a public nuisance.
The key species here is deer. Everybody has an opinion of what to do and why the city
has been so slow to address this issue. Should be an easy fix right? I mean out in the
county you can just shoot them, in season of course. Cougars deal with the surplus.
So it should be easy. I have delved into the topic. It is not easy. As a public service to
the community, let me share what I have found.
White tail deer in the United States have experienced an unprecedented recovery,
from a low of about 500,000 in the early 1900’s to as many as 30,000,000 today. Natural predators are mostly gone, especially in urban areas. Lawns and gardens provide an abundance of food. We can congratulate ourselves on saving a species. Then I look out our window to see what my neighbor has nicknamed “rats with stilts” devouring our roses, poppies, lettuce, lilacs, grapevines, tulips, raspberries, laurel, and fruit trees while laying down a layer of manure, flea eggs, and ticks where-ever they linger.
This is not a problem unique to our town. It is happening all across the country. Even New York City is dealing with an over-abundance of deer.
Ask a wildlife ecologist to sum up the impact of this success and you will hear the term apocalyptic more often than not. At an estimated rate of 2000 pounds of vegetation consumed per animal, per year, we have a plague of hundred pound locusts clearing forests of everything except for mature trees and the few plants they won’t eat. This devastates habitat for game birds and songbirds, and can affect these environments for centuries. The impact on the human population is equally severe.
“Struck by cars, trucks, motorcycles, more than a million times a year, with
accidents killing more than 100 people annually and causing more than $1
billion in damage, the human toll makes deer deadlier than sharks, alligators,
bears and rattlesnakes combined.” Out Of Control; Deer Send Ecosystems Into Chaos, by Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times, 2002.
In Port Townsend we have black tail not white tail deer, but that is where the difference ends. Anybody who has witnessed the deer plague develop over the last two decades can see that our homegrown herd has exceeded the carrying capacity of the natural environment and has certainly strained the cultural carrying capacity, the patience of the human population.
Just for reference, U.S. Forest Service Scientists at the Northern Research Station in
Irvine, Pennsylvania have been studying deer impact on forests since the 1940’s. As
a general rule, they found that deer population levels at or below twenty per square
mile allow undergrowth to recover. Port Townsend has a deer density far above that.
Doing nothing is the default. Those of us that drive, garden, and live in Port Townsend can tell you how well that is working. The end result will be all edibles in Uptown gnawed down to bare dirt and up to dead twigs about six feet off the ground, likely to be follow by starvation or disease of the herd. Nobody wants to see that happen.
Capture and release has proven to be ineffective with a high incidence of injury and death to the animals due to the stress of the experience. Sterilization is expensive, short-term results negligible, long-term results hard to quantify, and ineffective unless the herd is contained. Since 2012, Cayuga Heights, New York has spent close to $200,000 to remove the ovaries from 150 does. The animals are captured, one at time, surgically sterilized, and released. City leaders expect only a ten to fifteen percent decline in deer population.
Not far from Port Townsend, authorities in Oak Bay, a suburb of Victoria B.C., have settled on birth control. Deer are captured. Drugs are administered. A booster is required several weeks later so the deer must found a second time and shot with a dart containing additional drugs. Treatments are done on an annual basis. This is happening as we speak so results are yet to be determined. Solid data is probably several years out.
Culling the herd to a manageable level has been used in many locations on the East
Coast. It is the only option that has been proven to be immediately effective, affordable, and can feed the community. Professional hunters are brought in, private contractors or employees with the State Department of Fish and Game. The work is done quietly, and at night. Organic, free range, protein in the form of venison, can be provided to the local food bank.
“Either a community has leadership that drives the decision [to cull] or the
community flounders. When we finish a project, attitudes are the same as well
— people are always astonished by the benefits [of fewer deer].”
Dr. Anthony DeNicola, co-founder of a private, east coast based, non-profit, wildlife
management company.
At this time Washington State has no program for culling deer within city limits. The semi-official stance of the Washington State Department of Wildlife is that humans are encroaching upon deer territory; therefore we must learn to live with wildlife in our midst. Once this message has been delivered you will be referred to the Preventing Conflicts page on the website of the Washington State Department of Wildlife where you will find helpful suggestions such as a recipe for making your own deer repellent, tips for constructing deer fences, and my favorite: “A dog can help keep deer away especially if it is large and awake”.
Deer-ravaged hedge near my house
So we are left with repellents, prison camp style fences, and big, lively dogs. I like dogs, but that is where it ends for me. I have had hundreds of dollars of landscaping devoured, fences broken, and hedges left with leaves only above the six-foot mark. The trees and shrubs that aren’t eaten, are damaged by bucks scraping their antlers on them. The pleasure of walking in the green grass of summer is long gone, unless you like the squish of deer feces working it’s way between your toes. I am not asking for anyone to cry a river for me. I am asking for a deer population that is appropriate for the carrying capacity of my neighborhood, like it was when I moved here twenty years ago, before there was a game trail through my front yard.
The city has made a good start with the no-feeding ordinance, but it is just a start.
The City of Port Townsend bought and imported at significant cost a nearly 70-year old building that had just failed a Canadian hazardous materials inspection. The presence of asbestos and lead in the troubled building has been disclosed only recently as the group behind the “affordable housing” project seeks a State Environmental Protection Act (SEPA) permit, and the projected costs of completing the building’s eight apartments break the $3 million mark.
This and other information that will be reported in upcoming articles came to light in response to another public records request filed by Port Townsend Free Press. Our past reporting has exposed the soaring costs of the project, subsidies hidden from taxpayers and knowledge by the City and project developers that the amount of the City’s loan to complete the project was inadequate from the start.
In May 2017, the City of Port Townsend purchased a mid-Twentieth Century wooden building that had been standing in Victoria, B.C. That building was later barged across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and settled onto stacks of wood, known as “cribbing,” off Cherry Street in Port Townsend. It sat on those stacks of wood for over two years until the Summer of 2019 when it was finally provided a permanent foundation.
The City gave more than an acre of land, valued at over $600,000, and a quarter of a million dollars to a non-profit group called Homeward Bound Community Land Trust. It was at the time a defunct organization with only one member. The public was told that the cost of rennovating the building and adding four small single bedroom units at ground level would be less than $500,000. Since then the City has loaned the group $834,000 and provided a nearly $500,000 additonal subsidy and other grants and services free of charge. An upcoming report will detail how the projected cost now exceeds $3 million, more than six times the original stated cost.
Because the building had been slated for demolition, a hazardous materials study was conducted in February 2017 by Island EHS of Victoria, B.C. Their investigation found asbestos insulation on pipes and elbows. Asbestos was also found in kitchen flooring. The levels of asbestos concentration significantly exceeded Canadian standards for environmental exposure. Removal of the flooring was deemed “high risk.”
Lead at unsafe levels was found in the interior wall paint and exterior trim.
When Port Townsend Free Press reviewed the City’s records more than a year ago, this hazardous materials report was not in any of the permit or correspondence files. It was turned over to the City only in September 2019 during the process of obtaining a SEPA permit, a necessary step before further work could proceed. Correspondence reviewed by Port Townsend Free Press shows Homeward Bound only disclosing the findings after being informed that its SEPA application must address any hazardous materials in the building. The report was provided in what appears to have been an attempt to assure the city that hazardous materials were not an issue. But upon receipt of the report, a city building official immediately noticed and informed Homeward Bound that the report indicated the presence of asbestos and lead. At that point, the correspondence in the SEPA permit file ended on this issue and it remains unresolved.
Homeward Bound has not responded to any questions posed by Port Townsend Free Press as to how long it has been aware of the presence of hazardous materials in the building and whether it has any plan for dealing with them. They did not answer our question whether the costs of asbestos and lead mitigation or removal are included in the original or latest budgets.
As of now, Homeward Bound has not submitted a complete SEPA permit request. We did not find any applications for other necessary permits to take the project beyond where it is now–an empty building needing major electrical, plumbing, carpentry, and civil engineering work before it is ready to be occupied.
The scope of work submitted by Homeward Bound in its November 12, 2019, presentation to City Council (see video and related documents by clicking here) states that the building will receive all new plumbing, drywall and kitchens. These are the locations where the dangerous levels of asbestos and lead were found. Demolition of those contaminated features will require special procedures and permitting and will be costly. Their scope of work notes asbestos in the subfloor that will be repaired. The submittal to City Council does not mention that the pipes and elbows to be replaced are all encased in asbestos.
Unsafe Conditions Within
The public has repeatedly been assured that, despite its age, the building is in excellent shape.
Those statements have been misleading, if not false.
During the first week of August 2019, city building official Angela Garcia and Assistant Fire Chief Brian Tracer entered the building and gained access to the upper floors via a ladder they found on site. She reported, according to an email in the City’s files:
“[W]e observed multiple hazardous conditions such as holes in walls and floors large enough for a person to fall into.”
Garcia requested that measures be taken to safeguard the building from unauthorized entry to protect anyone who may wander inside.
Three days after receiving Garcia’s request, Homeward Bound on its Facebook page posted photographs of its Board members putting up plywood sheets across the openings on the ground level. Homeward Bound stated this was being done “because our insurance company needed assurance that it wouldn’t be damaged while we carry on to Phase 2.” No mention was made of the City’s request.
Homeward Bound in its latest presentation to Council stated that it will have to replace floors, all electrical systems, all plumbing, all windows and all drywall–in contradiction to previous representations regarding the building’s condition.
Growing Problems with Neighbors
We have previously reported about problems being caused for the homeowner who lives in front of the building. She told us that Homeward Bound’s plans block her driveway. The SEPA permit file also reveals increasing concerns by Grace Lutheran Church, which has been a supporter of the project since inception.
A two-page, single-spaced letter from Pastor Coe Hutchinson dated September 17, 2019, details multiple inaccuracies in the SEPA application (e.g., getting the grade of slope wrong, pointing out that the planned exterior wheelchair ramp could not be going to the third floor and could not possibly be at a 12% slope). He also raised concerns about erosion that started when the building was moved in and much of the area scraped and excavated. “Water is running off Cass St. and down through the area used for parking by GLC. The runoff is not going into the current catch basin in the Cass St. right-of-way,” he wrote.
Those concerns have not been addressed in the past months. This author upon a recent visit observed the erosion damage from almost three years of failure to appropriately channel runoff.
Pastor Coe also raised concerns with what appears to be inadequate access to the building once it is occupied, including the possibility that a proposed gravel roadway from Cherry Street up the hill would not handle all the building’s anticipated traffic, as well as use by GLC. (The alternative is paving, another considerable expense which does not appear to have been included in existing cost estimates, already grossly inaccurate. Homeward Bound, in its presentation to Council, was hesitant to include “street work” in its latest $1.83 construction estimate. More on that in an upcoming report).
Lastly, Pastor Coe shares that GLC is now facing a “parking dilemma.” Homeward Bound’s plans pose the possibility that they will lose parking they have been using for the past 50 years. This is a similar concern to that raised by the neighbor, mentioned above.
How serious are the issues raised by Grace Lutheran Church in its comments on the SEPA application?
Correspondence from Homeward Bound’s consultants in the city’s files shows an acknowledgment that conflicts with the neighboring church, including an unresolved water line issue, may hold up project permits. The SEPA permit application had been scheduled to be delivered by October 17, 2019. It has not yet been submitted.
A Long Way to Go
In its November 20, 2019, article on the soaring costs of the Cherry Street project, the Port Townsend and Jefferson County Leader reported that the project was “75% complete.” Just the fact that the project lacks at least $1 million with no source of additional funding in sight, should have been enough for the reporter to know this statement was false. But the reporter more likely misunderstood what was said by Paul Rice, Vice President of the Board of Trustees of Homeward Bound, in his November 12 presentation to the City Council. He stated that Homeward Bound was “75% of the way to permitting.”
The files reviewed by Port Townsend Free Press found nothing to substantiate that claim. Indeed, it appears Homeward Bound is already off its own timeline for permit application.
It is no wonder this has been and will continue to remain a troubled project, with no foreseeable upward limit on the taxpayer investment. It is now clear that the City purchased this building blindly, without inspection or a professional estimate of what it would cost to make the old structure up-to-code and habitable. For years, both the City and Homeward Bound have known this project would cost far more than they had been telling the public or The Leader and the Peninsula Daily News.
Homeward Bound is headed for default on its loan from the City. It was granted a two-year grace period at the start of its forty-year loan term during which time it would not be required to make any principal or interest payments. That grace period expires in July 2020. Homeward Bound has not only indicated that it will be unable to make its first payment, but will be back to ask the City Council for $1 million or more in additional funding.
The public may be surprised because they have not been told the truth. But neither City leaders nor Homeward Bound trustees can claim to being caught unawares at this turn of events. They’ve long known this project was in trouble.
City files contain a printout of an email from Monica Bell, a former Homeward Bound Trustee, to her fellow Trustees, all members of City Council and other persons in the homeless services and affordable housing communities. She questioned the “deal” between the city and Homeward Bound and wrote that the person then serving as project manager, the person in the best position to know what lay ahead, had called the numbers then being given for the project’s cost “rushed, slapped together” and “completely bogus.”
Only now are taxpayers learning how true those words are.
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