News Briefs & Quick Takes – Ebb & Flow
Ebb and flow happen everywhere – in natural tidal rhythms, in social structures, and in the cycles of individual lives. Staying at high tide all the time is unsustainable.
These past 3 years, deadly lockdowns and incessant propaganda campaigns have propelled the world into a perpetual state of emergency, but things change. Paranoia and persecution over yesterday’s virus are thankfully waning, so folks have a breather to recuperate and tend their own gardens. Quoting my pastor, “now in this time of relative peace, let us build up in preparation for the next storm that may come.”
Likewise we editors at the Port Townsend Free Press find ourselves recharging after years publishing at fever pitch. Nobody’s going anywhere, but newsworthy local events, contributions arriving over the transom, and our own personal juice to write articles have dipped to a simultaneous low ebb.
This is to acknowledge what some loyal readers may have noticed — that content is sparse as we take a break. But whether or not new articles are published, we remain committed to maintaining a platform for open and uncensored community dialogue. Our monthly Off Topic! letters forum will continue to welcome your participation.
We do have some provocative pieces in the pipeline. And starting with the news briefs below, we’ll be posting “shorts” as they accumulate.
We also want to renew our call for reader contributions. The easiest way is to post a comment to the monthly Off Topic! letters forum, but if you’ve got some interesting local news, experiences, or insights to share in an article, don’t be shy… feel free to Contact Us!
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Where’s the Emergency? An Update
As previously reported, Jefferson remains the only County in Washington State still huddling in its own private State of Emergency.
But County Commissioners and staff have acknowledged they no longer see any impediment to terminating their 13th (!) consecutive temporary CV emergency declaration. That was made clear at their January 23 meeting when Human Resources Director Sarah Melancon reported the rate of infected staff had really declined and the need for employee CV leave and emergency help was questionable.
Nevertheless, their current thinking expressed by Commissioner Kate Dean at the March 13 meeting is: “We are still very much considering when to rescind our emergency order. The federal order, of course, is set to end on May 11th. So I think that that’s a good time frame for us to be targeted to.”
My own thinking expressed at January 23 public comment: “I appreciate your being open to normalizing it. … Just from an integrity point of view, an emergency is an emergency. When there’s an emergency, the captain can do whatever he wants, but when it’s not an emergency, things should be done by the rule of law.”
Whatever the practical excuse, governing by emergency powers when no emergency exists is abuse of office and a slippery slope to tyranny.
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Closed Door Policy at Jefferson Courthouse
Jefferson County Courthouse moved its courtroom security checkpoint down from the second floor to the basement in 2020 to enforce lockdown mask mandates throughout the building, in the process shuttering the beautiful main entrance doors on the first floor.
This forces everyone entering the building to walk through a metal detector and be searched by sheriffs for weapons (including keychain pocket knives) — perhaps appropriate for courtrooms, but time-consuming, invasive, and expensive overreach when it comes to folks just wanting to pay a tax bill, renew a license, or ask a question.
On February 21, 2023, Commissioners held a hearing to update courthouse weapon security practices. Multiple attorneys and courthouse employees gave Public Comment explaining why their jobs should exempt them from security screening, while one outsider advocated screening 100% of the time without favoritism.
Treasurer Stacie Prada commented the quiet part out loud:
I do appreciate that [screening] is at a public entrance for the full building. We’ve had a lot fewer tense incidents on the first floor since we’ve done this. We do have Assessor, Auditor, Treasurer, and while they sound administrative, people get pretty heated. And so we do not have to call security as often, because they already know they’re in the building and they’ve gone through security. And we also know that or can trust that they don’t have weapons on them, where we couldn’t before.
My comment was that there’s little benefit for employees continually having to go through checkpoints to take care of routine business, but the same is true for their customers. Both problems have the same solution: move the courtroom security checkpoint back up to the second floor next to the courtrooms where it always was!
Courthouse staff might like having their customers go through sheriff security checks as an attitude adjuster, but court rules and defunct mask mandates are disingenuous pretexts not enjoyed by public servants in other office buildings. Respect is important, but needs to cut both ways.
Moreover, any desire by staff to discourage unruly customers is irrelevant to the legal issue at hand. RCW 9.41.300(1)(b) requires “The restricted areas do not include common areas of ingress and egress to the building … when it is possible to protect court areas without restricting ingress and access to the building. The restricted areas shall be the minimum necessary.”
Since “it is possible” to do so by returning the checkpoint to the second floor near the courtrooms where it was for decades, this should be an open-and-shut case.
Like our county’s continuing non-emergency State of Emergency, the issue is one of integrity: not to skirt or ignore the clear letter of the law. The public needs to be able to walk freely through the courthouse entrance doors instead of locking them down like in a police state.
But Commissioners kept those doors closed for now by approving Ordinance No. 01-0227-23 on February 27, which just tweaks the old policy by adding a weapon security locker and exempting attorneys and employees from screening, keeping the public in line.
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Streatery Departure Lets the Sunshine in at Quimper Sound
While enjoying the vibes at Quimper Sound on March 14, proprietor James Schultz told me how his business doubled the same day the streatery shack blocking his storefront came down, his January sales rose atypically higher than last summer’s streatery-blocked levels, and his attitude is much brighter now that sunshine through his window is no longer blocked!
During the bad old days, Quimper Sound’s window was almost completely obscured.
I joked with James about when he might expect a hefty refund check from the city and/or the blocking streatery restaurant for his years of lost business revenue. The twelfth of never?
