No deaths, no new cases, ICU’s not overrun, hospital beds open. Where’s the emergency for the Olympic Peninsula?
Neither the Port Townsend City Council nor the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners have discussed at their meetings any plan for getting businesses reopened and people back to work. There have been no proposals for clearing regulatory burdens to make it easier for job creators to create jobs, or just resuscitate the jobs suffocated by the Governor’s shut down order. There have been no suggestions from elected leaders that maybe, just maybe taxes should be cut as a form of local stimulus and a step to make it easier for hard-pressed and suddenly unemployed homeowners hang onto their homes.
Several counties, such as Chelan and Douglas, have passed resolutions providing definition to many of the vague terms in the Governor’s Essential Business decree to enable local businesses to operate while observing safe practices. Elected officials elsewhere have been imploring the Governor to amend his decree to recognize the fact that their communities have never faced and do not face an emergency justifying the destruction of their economies. Many of the pleas from those officials are simply for the Governor to exercise discretion, an even hand, and common sense.
The latest data for the Olympic Peninsula shows that Jefferson County has been reporting no new COVID-19 cases and has not experienced one death. Jefferson County has seen a grand total of 28 COVID-19 diagnoses. Neighboring Clallam County has seen half that number. Far more populous Kitsap County on our southeastern border has topped out at 139 diagnoses, but only 1 death. Mason County to our south has seen 22 cases and no deaths.
But the entire Peninsula has seen its economy and livelihoods instantly destroyed because we have been subjected to the same measures required for the three I-5 counties which account for the bulk of virus cases and deaths.
At the very least, our local governments could write the Governor asking him to modify his order to acknowledge different circumstances and allow our economy to start to recover now. One grade higher would be to start using the Governor’s own order to get people back to work.
In Port Angeles, the construction of a swimming pool will proceed. It has been deemed “essential” because it incidentally will provide for some child care. Safe practices have been established by the contractor. Our local governments could be identifying many projects and businesses around our community as “essential” by creatively, but legitimately working at the boundaries of the Governor’s decree.
But they are doing no such thing. They have no plan. They are not advocating for the county’s and city’s unique interests and situation.
If they wanted to boldly stand up for this community, they could declare the city and county “sanctuaries” against the nonsensical, irrational aspects of the Governor’s order, such as his ban on all residential construction, while allowing large publicly financed projects to proceed. Families have been told work on their houses must stop because the Governor has declared an emergency. Contractors are going to be wiped out. Yet that same administration sent crews to work near Gardiner on the Olympic Discovery Trail just recently .
We have had another crisis in this community. It precedes the Governor’s emergency declaration. In 2017 the BOCC declared an affordable housing crisis. That crisis will be with us whenever the Governor lifts his decree, and it will be worse because of local government passivity and inaction.
Last week the Port Townsend City Council spent its time discussing how to get people to drive less and change their purchasing decisions in order to further reduce CO2 emissions. They discussed raising property taxes to accumulate a pool of money that could be used “creatively” to help the same people whose taxes they just raised. Our report on that meeting is here.
Tonight’s Port Townsend City Council meeting will discuss Earth Day, a bookkeeping measure to move some funds around, temporary furloughs for some City Hall staff, and…. That’s pretty much it. Nothing is on the table to help businesses reopen, workers work, and get our community back to being healthy economically when the data shows that, as far as the virus is concerned, we’ve been pretty physically healthy all along.
The Board of County Commissioner’s agenda for its next meeting has not as of the posting of this article been released.
Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, then launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our "About" page for more information.
I agree with you 100%, let the hospitials get back to normal, have business show a safe work plan to get going again, our democrats want the economy to go down the tubes to make Trump look bad at reelection time, at the cost of the working people.
If Governor Inslee had exempted Kitsap, Jefferson, and Clallam because they seemed an insignificant risk and we had 1000 cases and a bunch of deaths would you be charitable towards him for making the call to exempt us? And if he loosens up and people start to get sick and die will you turn around and blame him for bad timing, liberal thinking or some such.
This just seems like another opportunity to bash a Dem. Why not put up a plan and show us how conservatives would solve the problem.
If the council supports the Govner, and are going along with the program what is the sense of discussing a plan to reopen, we reopen when he says so. I trust him to do what is best for us just like I trust my dentist as he puts that god damn big needle into the roof of my mouth so he can pull a painful and broken tooth. Yeah it hurts, yeah I am paying him good money to hurt me to help me. I don’t have to like it I just have to do it. I have not thrown away
my right to say no, or even get up and walk out. I subvert my comfort to the desired outcome. That is what we need to do now.
This is the SHTF moment so many have prepped for and I think they are missing it. It didn’t come as urbans rushing the rural gates, or starving people trying to get to your food, it came as illness and a highly divisive President. It came as our government failing to prevent chaos and to provide a supply line as only they can do. It came as a divided country unable to coalesce for the common weal. Imagine if this had been a bio attack or a dirty nuke. Look at us. We are a mess. This is the SHTF moment. Thankyou, from a Conservative Democrat.
There was never any actual emergency in Jefferson County. An academic model was used to justify the emergency declaration. The model indicated a POSSIBILITY that health care resources could be overwhelmed. The models used in Washington State are from IHME. This Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is independent research center affiliated with the University of Washington. It was founded in 2007 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Models were used to justify suspending constitutional protections including the Bill of Rights. MODELS! That should terrify everyone. There has been virtually NO discussion of the data and assumptions behind the models.
This is great, we need so much a truthful opinion.