Unsustainable. In less than five years, Port Townsend will burn through its reserves and be unable to maintain its current level of services. Its finances will “fall off a cliff.” Those exact words were used by city staff in its presentation to the joint session of City Council and its Financial Sustainability Taskforce on May 8, 2023.
The graph at the top of this article shows what’s coming. Starting this year, the city will begin consuming its reserves. The burn rate accelerates each subsequent year until in 2028 the city starts dropping through the “policy level” that represents its ability to maintain existing services. You might notice that the graph shows a significant peak during the past couple of years. Those were years of a massive infusion of federal and state money and savings due to cutting staff during the pandemic lock downs. It was an unreal time of external munificence that won’t be repeated
The unpleasant and, for many people, painful solution will necessarily involve raising existing taxes and the imposition of new taxes. This will make the cost of living in Port Townsend rise even faster, hastening the shrinking of the city’s middle class and making life ever harder for workers. Taxes get passed through to everyone one way or another. Port Townsend already is not a family-friendly place; things are going to get worse for households on limited budgets trying to raise children. A higher cost of living exacerbates conditions already faced by employers who cannot attract workers or keep on their payrolls younger people who are forced to choose a community that better fits their paychecks. Higher costs in Port Townsend have also driven out some of the creative class. An older, wealthier demographic emerges, including a greater concentration of people moving here to spend their last years and those with surplus money capable of acquiring second homes.
An alternative would be to put ambitious, costly plans on hold and immediately impose austerity measures. This will be the involuntary consequence anyway if, very quickly, something “radical” is not done. That was the message of Steve King, the city’s public works director. He shared hard truths I can’t remember hearing at any previous city council meeting. He informed council that, “Our tax structure absolutely requires growth.” He said that a “radical” change was needed to achieve a significant rate of growth not seen here in recent memory.
The necessary growth would mean, he said, something like building 75 new homes annually — an unheard of accomplishment under the city’s difficult-to-build regulatory regime. Not discussed at the meeting was radically promoting growth by making Port Townsend much more business friendly in order to attract new employers that would create better jobs than those the tourist trade generates. That requires relaxing business and environmental controls, governing with a very light regulatory touch, and dramatically reducing the cost of doing business here — the opposite of our current high taxation, tightly controlled, closely planned, anti-growth dominant culture.
Five years to go before the city launches off that cliff. It took six years to take a first stab at loosening city codes that were making it difficult to add ADUs — even though the need for housing was declared a “crisis” back in 2017. That same year, the city, with the enthusiastic support and advocacy of its current mayor and deputy mayor, began wasting a pile of money, staff time and public resources on the fiasco of the Cherry Street Project. This supposedly “affordable housing” endeavor has sucked up over $2 million in city funds, bond capacity and land. Entering its seventh year, the project provides housing only to rats, raccoons and the squirrels that I have observed entering the building through holes chewed in the building’s eaves. It is also a publicly-funded place for kids to party and do who-knows-what-else inside the vandalized derelict on the hill over the golf course.
“Lean Thinking”
The May 8 meeting partially focused on how to craft a message to persuade taxpayers to accept a higher tax burden. One slide boasted of steps that have been taken to slow the impending launch into a fiscal abyss.
King informed council it would take at least another $1.5 million annually over future decades to start to turn around the city’s dire streets problem. It will take another $750,000 annually just to keep things from getting worse. The touted “efficiencies,” as anyone with some sense of proportion will realize, are insignificant. The cliff up ahead has been visible since at least the time the current city manager began employment. That’s three years ago, yet this is all that can be claimed in the way of meaningful efforts to cut costs.
Notice that “lean thinking” is cited as an example of an efficiency achieved. What is “lean thinking”? Some kind of thought experiment? An image of an unhealthy overweight person imagining a fit, trim twin in the mirror comes to mind.
At the same time it confronts an impending fiscal crisis, city leaders are spending scarce resources on dreams of a grand new pool and exercise facility. Just a basic pool alone, as was stated during the May 8 meeting, will cost $25 million. Opsis, the Portland, Oregon consultant working for the city, pegs the minimal cost at more than $30 million and running as high as $52.7 million.
The city is also tossing around ideas for remaking the golf course, though it has no money to do anything (already needing volunteers to trim the grass).
And even as a poison hemlock forest again engulfs the Cherry Street Project the city is moving forward on its largest housing project ever – the Evans Vista development. The land was acquired with grants, but the city has shelled out at least $500,000 on consulting services while also using considerable costly staff time for a project that may be a decade away from making the faintest impression on the city’s housing market.
In an act that cannot qualify as “lean thinking,” in October 2022 council approved a large increase in compensation for the city manager, John Mauro. They boosted his salary by 10% and threw in a “retention bonus” of $12,500. They also increased his vehicle allowance and doubled the city’s contractual obligation to provide severance pay from 6 to 12 months. Not long after this act of municipal generosity, Mauro went on a five-week vacation.
Mauro’s base salary is now $189,297, up from his starting salary mid-2020 of $156,000. In addition to his base salary, he also gets 13% of his salary contributed to his retirement account, almost $25,000 annually at his current rate of pay. When he was hired, he received a $20,000 relocation allowance to move him here from New Zealand. His current automobile allowance of $6,600 is equivalent to driving more than 10,000 miles, at the current IRS business mileage rate. One could reasonably wonder how and why the city manager is driving more than 10,000 miles annually on city business. How is that possible? For background on Mr. Mauro, please see our report, Who is John Mauro, Port Townsend City’s Manager?, in which his previous employer in Auckland contradicted published claims about the job Mauro held as an employee of that city.
Just three days before the meeting with the Financial Unsustainability Taskforce, city council had to admit it was going to blow its 2023 budget. It approved a “supplemental” budget that recognized the need for an additional $4.7 million above what had been anticipated. Bills from consultants drove the budget-busting, er, supplemental measure. These consultants are being used to advance the Mountain View pool/rec center and golf course projects. Council was also told that expensive consultants were doing work normally done by staff engineers, as the city has been shorthanded in that department.
At the same time it was claiming it needed more money to pay consultants to fill holes in its engineering department (not to be confused with filling holes in the streets), the city hired a new marketing manager. She will work on “engaging the public,” according to a Peninsula Daily News report, on “decisions including the Port Townsend Golf Course, an aquatics center, streets, housing and…” (get this) “financial sustainability.” In other words, she will be working on selling the public on projects the city acknowledges it cannot currently afford and trying to convince taxpayers to accept tax increases for the sake of “sustainability.”
Recently the city sought to recruit a Director of People and Performance, with a salary ranging from $107,00 to just over $130,000. Desperately needed licensed engineers with a minimum of 6 years experience, meanwhile, were being offered jobs starting at under $75,000, with a top range of $92,000. The opening for Director of People and Performance position has been closed. The city is still looking for three engineers and a Deputy Public Works Director/City Engineer. In the meantime, more expensive consultants are doing those jobs and/or services are being curtailed.
As for that Cherry Street Project, in August 2022 it looked like the city would sell the building and property. City staff projected the sale might net $320,000. City council was going to decide whether to impose conditions on the purchaser that required them to build a certain number of “affordable” units, or unload the property for the best deal that could be had. The city has already passed up a $1 million cash offer. City Manager Mauro blew off Keith and Jean Marzan of Morgan Hill who offered to bail the city out of the mess it had created for itself and pledged to build affordable housing on the site (see our report). When Mauro presented the history of the Cherry Street Project to city council last year, he failed to mention that he had rejected this cash offer, which was about three times more than the city could hope for now. I spoke with a council member immediately after the meeting. She said she had never been informed of the $1 million cash offer that Mauro dismissed.
(On May 15, the City Council during its business meeting went into executive session to discuss a real estate sale or lease. The property in question was not identified during the meeting.)
Whether it sells the property or not, until 2040 the city will be making annual payments of $61,896 on its $1.4 million bond principal and interest obligation assumed to rehab the 70-year building barged across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Victoria, B.C. Netting $320,000 from a sale would be swallowing about a $2 million loss (the land alone was valued at $600,000 by the city in 2017).
.
Cherry Street Project, May 2023. Top two photos, back of building; bottom photo, front view.
Taxes and More Taxes
Even with the annual 1% increase in property taxes city council always imposes, in five years the city heads into “red ink,” in the words of Mayor David Faber. Just treading water — not demanding more from taxpayers already paying high taxes — means red ink washes ashore very soon. Streets will continue to deteriorate and services will decline. Intermittently and futilely patching crumbling streets guarantees even more costly repairs down the road. Public Works Director King said in the May 8 meeting that replacing a failed street, as Lawrence Street has become, costs 4-5 times more than required to properly maintain a street. He said that F Street and San Juan Avenue “are next” for failure. “We will,” he said, “continue to see those streets go down, and pretty much [then] the whole town is shot, not just the side streets.”
The kind of growth King intimated is necessary to prop up the city’s existing fiscal structure is not going to happen in the time remaining before the edge of the cliff is under city leaders’ toes.
If the city sold all available disposable land identified by city staff, an option discussed at the meeting, it could raise maybe $2 million. The Cherry Street Project was not identified as one of those properties. But even adding the possible proceeds from sale of that failed project, it is still not enough to avert the upcoming cliff dive.
An idea was floated to lease space at City Hall and charge a rental fee for the pool, raising maybe – maybe – $150,000 annually. That’s a big if and would put the city in competition with private landlords for some uses. As mentioned, getting streets into sound condition will cost $1.5 million a year for a long time. The aquatic center city leaders want will require, according a May 10 Leader article, an annual subsidy of $750,000 “for the base option.”
Some “efficiencies” were suggested, along the lines of the “efficiencies” listed above. Let’s be serious. None of this would make much of an impact. Not on the list, by the way, are salary freezes or more modest annual raises. The trajectory off that fast-approaching precipice incorporates maintaining annual 4.5% to 5% raises for staff.
That leaves raising or adding taxes. The Sustainability Task Force and city staff have plenty of ideas on how to get more out of homeowners, shoppers, business owners, renters… everybody.
Those ideas include the obvious: raising property taxes. A proposal was discussed to raise property taxes by $.50 for every $1,000 of assessed value, and adding this to the basis for annual 1% overall property tax increases. That would mean a $250 increase in the first year for a property assessed at $500,000, which would then increase annually thereafter. This would be a permanent tax increase.
Other ideas for bringing in more money to city coffers: raising the water, sewer and stormwater utility tax; increasing taxation of electric and telephone services; a higher B&O tax; charging parking fees on 500 parking spaces (which requires additional enforcement and administrative costs); increasing user fees; imposing a “transportation benefit district” sales tax; imposing a “transportation benefit district” license fee; imposing a $5,000 per housing unit impact fee; enacting a metropolitan park district property tax; imposing a parks and recreation district levy; imposing a parks and recreation service area levy; collecting a public facilities district sales tax; adding an affordable housing sales tax; and raising development service fees.
This was one of the most important city council sessions in years. It received decent coverage by Peter Seagall of the Peninsula Daily News. It was ignored by the city’s own newspaper. Staff’s PowerPoint presentation is here. You can view and hear the entire 2.5 hour meeting at this link. You will hear city leaders laughing and joking. Yet the situation is so serious that having the county take over the city’s police department, parks, library, planning and engineering services was presented for consideration.
Here is the full list of our reporting on the Cherry Street Project since our first article:
The approach to Port Townsend’s gateway runs past the city’s Fentanyl Forest, where addicts survive night to night, fix to fix, saying they have no drug problems unless they don’t have enough to stay high. This is where campers rousted from Kah Tai Park go.
Those kicked out of the county’s Caswell-Brown encampment on Mill Road find refuge there. Colonies of addicts have been living in the dark woods for years, rotating in and out of campsites cleared in the forest, piling up unimaginable heaps of trash and debris.
There are always newcomers, more broken people finding their way into the woods and occupying an abandoned tent or making a new spot for themselves among the thorns and bracken. Fentanyl, those inexpensive, deadly blue pills mass manufactured in Mexico and China, now matches or surpasses the popularity of methamphetamine, the long-running scourge of our community. Heroin has dropped pretty much out of sight.
At least with addicts inhaling the fumes of burning Fentanyl off tin foil instead of injecting heroin there are fewer needles littering the ground. But don’t forget alcohol. There are still plenty of liquor bottles and beer cans around most campsites.
What about the county’s $2 million Caswell-Brown camp set up for the homeless?
Jefferson County’s Caswell-Brown homeless shelter marks the entry to the Fentanyl Forest. It houses fewer than twenty people remaining from those relocated from the chaotic, tragic Fairgrounds camp. Managed under long-term contract by OlyCap, the camp is a gated community in the Fentanyl Forest, but still part of its surroundings.
OlyCap’s Executive Director Cherish Cronmiller maintains that Caswell-Brown hosts 17-23 residents. In April 2022, Kathy Morgan, OlyCap’s Director of Housing and Community Development, told the County Commissioners they were hosting 19 adults and one child.
According to information from the Jefferson County Sheriff Office obtained through a public records request, since April, OlyCap has trespassed — ejected from the camp — at least eight of the residents. If so, only a dozen people may currently be living there.
Reports from the Sheriff’s office and my interviews with former residents reveal that the camp experiences drug use and trafficking on a significant scale. One resident told us that 60% of the residents in the Caswell-Brown camp continue to use drugs. As for dealing in order to pay for drug use, he said, “Everyone has their own gig.”
Cronmiller told us she cannot deny that the campers are using. Abstinence or participation in a recovery program are not required as a condition of living there.
Quite a few of the tents and RVs at the Caswell-Brown camp are empty. Cronmiller told the Free Press that OlyCap is allowed to admit only those people who previously lived in the cleared out Fairgrounds camp. That explains why it has been turning away people despite being less than half full.
This makes no sense to the people in the woods who had hoped for a safe place to set up a tent. It makes no sense, period, but that is how the County Commissioners wrote their order establishing the camp as an emergency shelter.
The Fentanyl Forest stretches south to Mill Road where the multimillion-dollar Caswell-Brown camp is situated, west and north to Sims Way, and east to where Larry Scott Trail reaches the water.
2022 Google map aerial view of large wooded tract north of the mill. Dense tree cover camouflages the sprawling encampments scattered throughout the woods comprising the Fentanyl Forest.
It encompasses the city’s newly acquired Evans Vista parcel and land belonging to the Port Townsend Paper Company (“the mill”), claims the trees around the field with the state Department of Social and Health Services building (DSHS), and ends behind Les Schwab and the other businesses on that side of Sims Way at the first roundabout.
Community angels help dozens in the forest.
I tagged along with crews of volunteers who deliver sandwiches, hot meals and fresh water, but mostly love and encouragement to the forest dwellers. The teams are led by Michael McCutcheon who has been conducting his outreach for over ten years, including four years when he worked for Olympic Peninsula Health Services.
Those helping included an entire family with young children and a man just out of prison. A Marine vet who has overcome alcohol abuse and a woman who recently, tragically lost a child, were also among the volunteers.
McCutcheon knows something about addiction, desperation, withdrawal and recovery. He lost a large construction company — twice — and two wives to 38 years of opiate disorder. He recovered his life, he says, when he gave it to Jesus Christ. With invaluable support from the Food Bank, helping others find their pathway to freedom is what he does now, all the time, seven days a week, 24/7.
The photos I took on those outings tell more than I can convey in words. I have not photographed the inhabitants of the forest out of respect for them. None could be said to be at their best. As telling as the photos are, they don’t impart the sense of surrender and despair, the stench of feces and rotting food, of mildew and mold on everything.
Dishing out love and enchilada casserole
For each outing, the teams prepared food for forty people, the approximate population in the woods around the large grassy field to the east of the roundabout at the city’s entrance. This day’s meal was enchilada casserole. The week before it had been pastrami, ham and roast beef sandwiches. There’s always a side dish or salad, and always homemade cookies. The teams also distribute gallon jugs of water. McCutcheon started doing that after encountering a woman trying to wash her face with alcohol wipes.
Arriving at the field we parked by large cement blocks where the blacktop ended. The spot serves as a trailhead into the undergrowth. There we encountered a man who looked to be in his twenties, groggy and stumbling out of the bushes. He was soaked through after spending the night unconscious outdoors, oblivious to the rain. He gratefully accepted breakfast and McCutcheon asked his clothing sizes so he could return with something dry for the young man to wear.
Temporary home of former business owner.
The week before, we had encountered a man in a hole scooped out of a hillock at the edge of the forest. He shouted paranoid stuff at us when we asked if he needed water. McCutcheon and others in the team knew him. He had run a profitable pot shop but had been taken down by Fentanyl. He was gone a week later. All that was left was a kind of open grave.
Immediately behind the hillock is a derelict RV engulfed by blackberry bushes and mounds of refuse. It reeks of gasoline and solvents. On the first outing we pushed through branches arranged to create a barricade intended to keep out police. We learned that one of the young men in the trailer had OD’d the night before. He’d been saved when his roommate administered Narcan, a medication used to treat opioid overdoses. McCutcheon distributes Narcan and ensures that the camps remain stocked. It is needed far too often.
Four people live in the RV under the tarp.
On our second visit there were three men and a woman in the RV. One of the men had previously lived at the Mill Road Caswell-Brown camp. They were all using Fentanyl and meth. McCutcheon says that everyone out there who uses Fentanyl also uses meth, but not necessarily the other way around. We left water for them.
Several trails lead from here into the woods. Take any fork and you will almost certainly come across an inhabited camp and piles and piles of trash accumulated by current and past residents. How much of the stuff was stolen is hard to say.
There are appliances, welding equipment, expensive tools, rusted knives and axes, upholstered furniture and strollers, shopping carts, makeshift kitchens, small mountains of rotting clothing and bedding. Solar-powered lights and candelabra are nailed to trees along the pathways. There are hundreds of abandoned bicycles in the woods and thousands of bicycle parts.
Levi DuPuy, maintenance manager for the Port Townsend Paper Company says it costs the mill $8,000 to $10,000 to clean up each small to medium size camp. “As soon as we get a spot cleaned up, they’re back two weeks later,” according to DuPuy.
It is very, very grim, a human dumping ground for a county that pretends it doesn’t have a desperate addiction crisis with all its consequences: mental illness, environmental and health hazards, crime, violence and suicide.
But there are rare slivers of light.
We encountered a well-dressed woman walking a trail that would take her deeper into the woods. She had come to visit a friend living in a tent.
“Hi, Michael,” she said. Her eyes sparkled. Her clothes were color-coordinated from the stars on her Converse high tops to the scarf knotted at her neck.
She was the woman who had inspired McCutcheon to add jugs of water to his outreach. I recognized her from the Fairgrounds encampment. I had seen her pass out and crumple onto a muddy road. In the past year she had moved to Caswell-Brown, been trespassed from there, then found her “bottom” in a miserable existence in the woods.
Law enforcement intervened somehow and it turned her life around. She cried out for help and received the care and medications needed for her dual diagnosis of addiction and mental illness. She quoted the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous to McCutcheon and said, “You helped me a lot.”
“You look beautiful,” I told her. “Everyone says that now,” she replied. “Because it’s true,” McCutcheon and I said in unison. He was beaming with joy.
Pictures tell the rest of the story.
The following photos are but a small sampling of what’s under those trees. The featured photo (at the top of this article) shows a sprawling tent complex on city property. It is far too large to capture in one shot. The photo was taken in the approximate center of the complex, with debris and trash in every direction.
People in the photos below are all volunteers, part of the crew bringing food and supplies – not those who are dwelling in the forest.
Typical trash pile, on city property.
Elaborate camp behind Les Schwab.
Soggy tent and trash.
Two people and an undernourished large dog live here.
Choking, sobbing woman given help here.
Trail on city property.
Shelter hidden in the bushes.
Camp on city property.
Trash from large abandoned camp on mill property.
Camp on private property north of state DSHS building.
Camp on city property.
Camp and trail on city property.
Camp deep in woods.
Blue tents seem to be most popular, perhaps donated by some organization?
Huge tent complex on city or mill property.
Small tent at edge of larger campsite.
Kitchen and pantry. Pressurized tanks.
Another large tent complex.
Well established campsite, surrounded by debris. Several people live here.
Dozens of butane cannisters.
Trash just outside tent in lower right of photo.
A glimpse inside a tent.
People living under trash.
Delivering water to RV trapped by years of overgrowth.
“This is not over,” Julie Jaman told the Port Townsend City Council on October 3, 2022.
At that meeting Katie Daviscourt, a reporter with Rebel News, confronted Mayor David Faber with his own words about having sex with dead chickens and a dog, and declaring that, “As mayor, I am legally required to be a pervert and deviant.” Faber has yet to explain using his title as mayor in connection with such statements.
Women’s rights advocate Amy E. Sousa addressed council about sexism and the misogynist lies of transgender ideology. She promised she would be back to seek council’s support for a declaration like the one it issued to “especially” recognize people who have declared themselves a man though born a woman, and vice versa. The forthcoming declaration, Sousa said, would call upon council to stand up for women and girls. Will Port Townsend City Council lift up women and girls as much as it has wrapped its arms around people who say they are transgender?
Earlier that day Daviscourt had attempted to deliver to the YMCA more than ten thousand signatures on a petition circulated by Rebel News to “Let Julie Swim.” But the Y and Mountain View Pool were again closed. Was another day of locked doors and dimmed lights due to lack of staffing or to duck Daviscourt?
The Mountain View Pool has been closed quite a bit since August 2 when we published the first story on how Jaman — an 80-year old woman who had been using the pool for much of her life — was banned for stating her objection to a man in the women’s showers. Jaman encountered “Clementine” Adams in a woman’s swimsuit when she was naked. She states she saw him watching little girls in states of undress. Jaman has also said he was leering at the little girls. She told him to get out and repeated herself to the Y’s pool manager who had entered the room. Unknown to Jaman at the time, this man was a Y employee who in March of this year decided he would henceforth be a woman. He acknowledges he is biologically still quite male and “interested in women.”
Adams, we learned from his interview on a Stitcher podcast, never returned to work. Thus Jaman accomplished her objective of getting him out of the women’s showers. The Y has since been advertising an opening for an “Aquatics Program Lead,” the title of the person who banned Jaman on the spot, as she stood naked and wet from her shower. As we reported, both the male employee in the woman’s bathing suit and the aquatics manager failed to safeguard children in accordance with basic YMCA policy and the common sense of anyone with the slightest concern about the dignity, privacy and safety of women and children.
Adams gave his only public statement in that Stitcher podcast that we wrote about on September 10. His admissions hurt himself and his former employer. Public officials for their part (the pool is public property, owned by the school district and leased to the city) have chosen to hide behind a bland and inaccurate statement drafted by City Manager John Mauro. That statement repeats the smear that Jaman had a history of misbehavior that justified her permanent banishment — allegations never explained or supported by the plentiful documents we were once assured existed. Two months after publicly spreading accusations that Jaman had a history of misconduct, the Y still has not told even Jaman, let alone her attorneys or the media, what horrible things she allegedly did that justified barring an elderly woman from using a public pool to keep up her health and fitness.
The Mayor distinguished himself by excreting infantile and sick comments on Twitter that have made Port Townsend a national embarrassment. His glib and cruel dismissal of the concerns of rape victims prompted the women’s press conference on August 15 that turned into an ugly mob scene more fitting of Portland and Seattle than the “welcoming” laid-back Victorian seaport and arts community of Port Townsend. His comment the day after older women were knocked to the ground outside City Hall — that the previous evening’s confrontation had been “beautiful” — only further fanned flames, leading to the September 3 rally by members of the Proud Boys and Washington Three Percenters who cast themselves as champions of women and free speech.
There was at least one gun among the mob on August 15 assaulting women’s rights advocates. According to law enforcement sources, there were plenty of guns on both sides at the September 3 rally. An overwhelming law enforcement presence, including a police spotter on City Hall’s roof and the Washington Highway Patrol Rapid Deployment Team at the ready, kept things quiet and even comical. At one point, a burly Three Percenter danced with willowy counter-protestors to The Village People’s iconic “YMCA.” A more recent version of that tune, adapted specifically to the Julie Jaman/YMCA controversy, was released this summer by comedian Mr. Menno. Called “Y Chromosome.” It’s cringey and wickedly funny.
It has been an interesting past couple of months, and as Jaman promised, it’s not over.
On October 6, Daviscourt returned to the Mountain View Pool with a camera crew, Sousa and Jaman. Daviscourt was attempting again to deliver more than 10,000 signatures on the petition calling for the Y to “Let Julie Swim.” As of this writing the signatures on that petition now exceed 11,000.
Daviscourt checked to make sure the pool would be open. It was, but minutes later, a sign went up banning media from entering. The doors were locked and it went dark inside. When Daviscourt knocked, a business card for the Y’s communication director along with the sexist pink and blue banner of the trans movement (remember when boy/girl stereotypes were condemned?) were slipped through the door. Minutes after that the Y called police and the women were ordered to leave and threatened with arrest if they returned. Daviscourt’s video report may be viewed here.
Enter Councilor Wennstrom
Port Townsend City Councilor Libby Wennstrom
Which brings us to Port Townsend City Councilor Libby Wennstrom. Following the August 15 mobbing of older women who were calling for respect for women’s dignity and safety, she posted on her Facebook page a call to expel all “TERFS” from Port Townsend. That acronym for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists has become a sexist term used to justify violence and threats against women who do not buy into the fiction that a man or boy — human males — can magically become a woman or girl — human females — by snapping their fingers and switching around the blue and pink in their wardrobe. Ana Wolpin covered that bit of hate-mongering from Wennstrom in her article, “City Officials Lead Hate Campaign Against Women.”
Wennstrom’s Facebook post with the tagline “Libby Urner Wennstrom updated her cover photo.”
Wennstrom removed the post once The Free Press reported on it here and at our Facebook page. Her comments, which were partially preserved by one of our readers, show an even deeper malevolence, particularly towards Sousa. Wennstrom later said she “never intended it to go public, but in retrospect as a public official she doesn’t think she should have posted it.” She only meant to share it among friends, not publicly, as if that excuses her actions. If she does not want her actions to be those of a public official, she should not have accepted elected office.
Shortly afterward, Wennstrom participated in the Stitcher podcast released September 1 that revealed much about the YMCA’s failures to safeguard children, including Adams’ bizarre, unsolicited claim that he was so blind — due to not wearing his eyeglasses, though he was on duty as a children’s caretaker — he had trouble seeing around the women’s showers.
The podcaster, a fellow named Garrison, repeatedly expressed his misogynist contempt for women. He’s a man who says he’s been taking hormones for a year, presumably testosterone suppressants. Somehow that qualifies him to judge which women are really feminists and which are “so-called feminists,” the latter identified as any woman who does not embrace transgender ideology and holds to biological truths about men and women.
The podcast also interviewed some anonymous local residents who disclosed they’ve been training themselves in “gun clubs” with members of the “queer community” and people who say they are trans. They claim they are “getting this really good organic network building throughout the community” to kick Jaman “out of their businesses on sight.” Despite all the calls for calm and the prudent discretion of other city officials (with the exception of the warped Mayor), Wennstrom chose to participate in this broadcast.
Contrary to the desires of anonymous thugs on Stitcher, Jaman has not been kicked out of any Port Townsend business. She is not having to do all her shopping and dining in Silverdale and Sequim. Instead, she has been given surprising support from local businesses. I was interviewing her when she received well-wishes from the head of one of downtown’s largest business operations. On that same day she had received several letters of support, including one envelope with a gift of cash. The only operation that has excluded Jaman is the YMCA.
Lies and Agitprop
According to Wennstrom’s podcast statements, Julie Jaman “attacked” the young man in the women’s shower area and “made a jerk of herself.” Further, the Port Townsend Free Press itself was responsible for causing the mob scenes, the Proud Boys event, the months of disruption and civic discord and PT’s bad international press. “Right wing media” piled on and Amy Sousa tried “to force her way” into the Mountain View Pool to film patrons as they were undressing, Wennstrom lied. And, Proud Boys are everywhere, also PTFP‘s fault.
Wennstrom uttered so many false, derogatory and inflammatory statements in her few minutes in the interview, it’s difficult to believe anything she said.
She is apparently greatly impressed by Port Townsend Free Press’ impact. She thinks we have the ability to ignite a global firestorm about the trampling of women’s rights in little Port Townsend. She says we got “so many” facts wrong, and in the same breath accuses us of not reporting that Adams was a YMCA employee. Hold on, councilor Wennstrom… that’s contradicted by the fourth sentence of PTFP‘s first report about the incident, which states: “The woman [Jaman] had to stand naked in the presence of the male, a YMCA employee, despite her pleas that he leave.”
In blaming — crediting? — Port Townsend Free Press for igniting the firestorm Wennstrom completely ignores the broader coverage — much of it original — from the feminist and LGB media (that’s lesbian, gay and bi-sexual, and no “T” for transgender). While PTFP wrote the first story, it was the widely-followed Reduxx that launched it nationwide. Reduxx describes itself as a publication of “pro-woman and pro-child safeguarding and commentary.”
While Adams’ name was available in the police reports (that’s how we identified the man in the woman’s bathing suit described by Jaman), Reduxx was first to publish a photo of Adams in connection with the story. They didn’t have to dig very deep. Adams has published his photo for the world to see on a GoFundMe page, where he is asking for money so he can pay for amputation of his penis and testicles and cutting of his vocal chords.
And though our photos and initial reporting were sometimes used or mentioned, coverage by Matt Osborne of LGB United (a lesbian, gay and bi-sexual platform) propelled the story even further. Post Millenial journalist Andy Ngo and Substack commentator Mattie Watkins were the first to uncover Mayor David Faber’s sordid, sick alter-ego in which he identifies himself as a “chickenfucker,” discusses sex with a dog, defends child pornography and public masturbation, and aligns himself with a YouTube character who calls for decriminalization of child pornography and lowering the age of consent so adults can have sex with children. Then Mandy Stadtmiller, a New York magazine and former Penthouse columnist, asked aloud in an article by the same title, “Why is Self-Described ‘Pervert and Deviant’ Mayor David Faber So Excited About Terrorizing an 80-Year Old Woman Who Doesn’t Want Men in Little Girls’ Changing Rooms?”
We did not write the first coverage of the mobbing and bullying of women permitted by the City of Port Townsend on August 15. Osborne beat us to it. He had his story up within hours of Julie Jaman and her daughter being escorted to their car by four Highway Patrol officers.
We did enjoy unprecedented traffic to our website, far more readers in those days than the Peninsula Daily News and The Leader regularly attract. But our big numbers pale in comparison to the readership in the hundreds of thousands of the Twitter posts and stories by Osborne, Sousa and Watkins, and the more than a million hits we understand Reduxx got on its Twitter posts.
Left Wingers Now “Extreme Right Wing”
That was all separate and independent of what Wennstrom may consider “right wing media,” unless she dumps women’s advocates, lesbians, gays and bisexuals fighting against pedophilia and the sexualizing and grooming of children into her mental “right wing” basket of deplorables. Mayor Faber apparently does, as he dismisses all those concerned about men around naked women and girls — including rape survivors — as suffering from “right wing moral panic.”
Wennstrom labelled The Port Townsend Free Press as “extreme right wing” and “the blog of one person.”
If that’s not it, maybe it’s the in-depth reporting that undermined the imposition of dictatorial decrees by the Governor and local health officer, coupled with commentary favoring liberty and personal choice? If that’s not it, maybe it’s reporting on how the YMCA banned a family from its facilities for reporting the display of child pornography. And if not that, maybe we’re “extreme right wing” because of those articles opposing turning over public parking spaces to a handful of downtown businesses, and exacerbating the already severe parking problems in our fair city’s commercial core?
One last shot in the dark: were we “extreme right wing” because we were the only media reporting on the human tragedy — the drug abuse, crime and suffering — in the troubled encampment at the Fairgrounds that left one young woman dead and led to another suicide? That’s it… writing about the suffering of the homeless and how they were ignored by the city makes us “extreme right wing”!
The current editors of this publication (I started the Free Press in 2018 but handed it off more than a year ago) would laugh at being called “extreme right wing.” They have been fixtures of PT’s progressive, liberal and peace activist community for decades. And as for this being “the blog of only one person,” this site has published articles by over two dozen authors.
We haven’t surrendered our critical thinking abilities. We do our own research, believe what our eyes and ears tell us, and reach our own conclusions. We’re independent thinkers still capable of seeking objective truths. We are not helplessly, blindly “woke.” To Wennstrom, that equates with “extreme right wing.”
Proud Boys Under Every Rock
Anyone who doesn’t toe Wennstrom’s ideological line is “right wing,” and probably a Proud Boy, too (even if female). For example, Wennstrom brought up the Back the Blue rally organized by wives of local law enforcement. She had been asked if Port Townsend had seen much in the way of large-scale protests, and this was what came to her mind.
As we reported on August 31, 2020, a car and truck parade in support of law enforcement stretched over six miles from H.J. Carroll Park in Chimacum to downtown Port Townsend. I personally counted about 400 vehicles in the cavalcade. A former judge, local business owners, law enforcement families, members of the Rakers car club, and local citizens participated in showing support for law enforcement during a summer when they were under attack by the Port Townsend City Council.
Mayor Faber, then a city councilor, had wanted city police disarmed and there was serious talk of defunding and cutting the police department. Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County (now virtually defunct, along with the international, multi-million dollar scam umbrella organization) tried to humiliate our sheriff and police chief. A KPTZ travesty of a radio program subjected the sheriff to fantastical, delusional accusations from a BLM leader who, in addition to having a long history of substance abuse-related incidents — including crashing his bicycle into the Fort Worden gate and urinating himself — had just months before been arrested for trying to break into an occupied Port Townsend residence.
So the community rallied in huge numbers for the men and women of the Port Townsend Police Department and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office… about which Wennstrom deceived podcast listeners by calling it a Proud Boys event.
That Evil Amy Sousa and Inciting A Mob
Wennstrom has some grudge against Sousa. She leveled personal attacks against Sousa in Facebook comments to her now-deleted post (preserved partially by one of our readers) calling for the expulsion from Port Townsend of all women who don’t like having men in their bathrooms. She implied that Sousa was in this fight just for the money and insinuated that Sousa had caused a young child’s suicide — then disingenuously distanced herself from her own words.
In the Stitcher podcast, she said that Sousa, accompanied by a camera crew “tried to force” her way into the Y’s locker rooms while they were being used by patrons. Wennstrom admits she wasn’t there, but makes the accusation anyway, just as she spread the rumor that Jaman had “attacked” Adams.
Katie Daviscourt, the Rebel News reporter mentioned previously, did politely ask to film in the Y and left when her request was denied. Daviscourt recorded this in her report and you can see her request to film at the 2:22 mark.
That’s not the only lie Wennstrom has spread to inflame people against Sousa, Jaman and her boogey-men of the “right wing media.” In her comments accompanying her hateful “TERFS Out of Port Townsend” call to action, Wennstrom wrote:
“The narrative that’s circulating is that a ‘known pervert’ (sometimes it’s a ‘sex offender’) was masturbsting [sic] and touching/undressing little girls in the locker room. Which is a crime, and would be charged as such. But that’s not even remotely what happened.”
I’ve read almost everything published on the Jaman matter, but I have never seen any allegation anywhere that Adams was masturbating or that he was a sex offender. Jaman distanced herself from claims he had touched the little girls. It was Adams himself in his later Stitcher interview who admitted to touching at least one young girl as she was dressing/undressing.
Wennstrom condemned herself in her own comments when she wrote that “creating outrage from a false or misleading story is part of a larger political playbook.” She herself helped organize the counter-protests against Jaman at the Y and whipped up the crowd that turned into the mob that tore down suffragette flags and called women TERFs and c-nts at the same spot where previous Women’s Marches had rallied.
Indeed, This is Not Over
Conflicts between women’s rights and men invading women’s spaces are being repeated across the country. In Vermont, most of a girls’ high school basketball team was banned from their own locker room because they dared express their true feelings about having to undress in the presence of a young man who calls himself trans, and having to be with him as he undresses and showers. Lawsuits challenging men invading women’s sports are pending in many jurisdictions. A growing number of states are not tolerating the nonsense of men gaining access to women’s private, vulnerable spaces by putting on a bit of make-up for the day.
Wennstrom and other council members will be asked to issue a proclamation in support of the dignity, safety and privacy of women and girls, as Sousa will be coming back to City Council. It was Wennstrom’s suggestion to issue the proclamation declaring that the city is “especially” supportive of people who call themselves trans. Faber and council members Owen Rowe and Amy Howard have cheered on Adams’ quest for funds to cut off his penis by giving him money to pursue “gender reassignment” surgery. Where will she and the rest of city council stand when called upon to affirm by official proclamation that women’s rights are human rights?
The meme “Trans Rights are Human Rights” is on yard signs across PT, along with the slogan “Science is Real.” But it is biology that stands in the way of men magically becoming woman. As Mr. Menno’s fun parody song drives home, that persistent Y chromosome that makes men men resides in every cell, sinew, muscle, bone, nerve and speck of brain matter. It does not go away when a man puts on women’s attire and cosmetics — the truly sexist equivalent of blackface.
One last time. If you haven’t watched Mr. Menno’s message, take a few minutes. This is a very gay man speaking through his music and comedy, not someone Wennstrom can blithely deride as “extreme right wing.”
When a skeleton is unearthed, its very structure speaks “male” or “female”. Transgenderism is denial of science and biology. It is ideology pulling us back to the dark ages when logic, reason and the scientific method were suppressed in service to tribalism and religious orthodoxy. Indeed, transgenderism is best understood as tribalism and a faith system. Only by pounding it into people’s heads — by indoctrination of the impressionable or the intimidation of mobs like those Wennstrom whipped up screaming “Trans women are women” — can this lie take hold. It is the stuff of totalitarianism rooted as it is not in any immutable, verifiable, objective truth, but in a fabricated narrative imposed by various manifestations of force.
J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has become a leading opponent of the trans agenda that erases women and sexualizes and victimizes children. She has stood up to attacks far more vicious and threatening than those Wennstrom has leveled against local women. The horrors of the trans agenda now coming to light in the United Kingdom are proving her right. Rowling’s challenge to the “genderists” can be leveled with equal justification against Wennstrom and her fellow council members.
On the heels of revelations about the massive injuries inflicted on children by puberty blockers and mutilating surgeries, Rowling recently wrote in response to the exposure of pedophilia in Britain’s “establishment” trans activist lobby:
“You know, I thought things were pretty bad when you were arguing to put convicted rapists in women’s jails, when you shrugged off masked men roughing up lesbian protestors and tried to shout down de-transitioners talking about what was done to them by ideologically-captured doctors. Women, gay people and vulnerable kids have suffered real harm and you? You cheered it all on. You still prefer wilful blindness and four word mantras to considering you might have got this badly wrong. You became part of an authoritarian, misogynist, homophobic movement and you didn’t even notice. Enjoy the sense of your own righteousness while you can. It won’t last.”
Unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution, making false statements, misleading the prosecutor.
A California Federal District Court jury ruled that Art Frank and another Glendale, California police officer unlawfully arrested and caused the malicious prosecution of Edmond Ovasapyan. The case arose out of a 2005 home invasion in which a teenage son was murdered in front of his mother. The federal jury in 2009 found that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest Ovasapyan, misled the prosecutor and withheld exculpatory evidence from her.
The case has surfaced in Jefferson County as Frank campaigns to unseat his boss and incumbent Sheriff Joe Nole. Frank serves under Nole as a detective and previously held the number two position in the Sheriff’s Office under Nole’s predecessor, Dave Stanko, another former Califiornia police officer relocated to Jefferson County. Stanko hired Frank and made him Deputy Sheriff, ousting Nole from the position he had held under Stanko’s predecessor, Sheriff Tony Hernandez. During Stanko’s years in office Nole served under Frank. When Nole defeated Stanko’s bid for re-election and was elected Sheriff, he moved Frank over to a detective position and made Andy Pernsteiner Deputy Sheriff and his #2.
Word of the case against Frank has been quietly circulating for months. On September 16, 2022, Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney James Kennedy issued a letter to criminal defense lawyers notifying them of a judicial ruling of misconduct by a law enforcement officer that could impeach the officer’s testimony. Kennedy restated the jury’s findings, but also said he believes the jury ruled incorrectly. Nonetheless, the jury verdict poses a headache for Frank’s effort to persuade voters to put him in charge of the Sheriff’s office, as well as possibly giving defense lawyers ammunition in any case where Frank is a witness for the prosecution.
Edmond Ovasapyan versus Art Frank, et al.
Jefferson County Detective Art Frank
Frank has addressed some of the facts in the case when asked at election forums what his biggest regret is in his 43 years in law enforcement. Frank has served with distinction through those decades in many positions, from patrol officer, to working on a SWAT team, to training other officers, to accomplished detective work. He has saved lives and taken killers off the street. He saw his partner die next to him. He has seen the worst side of humanity in his years in Los Angeles County, and, let’s be honest, also here in Jefferson County. Though he is opposed in his bid for office by local first responders and all the men and women he serves with in the Sheriff’s Office, I am told by some of those same people that he is respected for his skills as a detective. But they do not think he should be Sheriff and do not want to work for him if he is elected to that position. Those feelings are strong, and account for the unprecedented support among first responders and law enforcement for the re-election of Sheriff Nole.
The Ovasapyan case was as bad as anything he had encountered. Frank has in campaign forums related how five men invaded a home and how the teenage son was shot in the chest in front of his mother. He says he regrets that Ovasapyan spent months in jail for something he didn’t do and says it was he who eventually exonerated Ovasayan.
Frank has left out of those accounts the fact that a jury found he had engaged in very serious misconduct, so serious that the trial judge deprived him of law enforcement officer “qualified immunity.” That means Frank was held personally liable for the judgment because, as the court found, no reasonable law enforcement would not have known that the conduct in which Frank engaged was illegal. This is an uncommon finding by a trial court judge.
Ovasapyan was awarded $1.16 million in compensatory damages. The jury also awarded him $75,000 in punitive damages against Frank and $75,000 against the other officer. The trial court awarded the plaintiff $271,495.57 in attorney fees and $5,543.85 in costs. Frank was ruled jointly and severally liable, meaning personally responsible, for all but the punitive damages against the other officer. The City of Glendale paid the judgment, attorney fees, and costs though it was not legally required to do so. It paid approximately $1.7 million after unsuccessful appeals.
The trial court denied Frank’s motion for judgment as a matter of law, meaning that the court found there was enough evidence to support the jury’s verdict. The judgment was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which specifically ruled that the District Court was justified in finding enough evidence to support the jury’s verdict.
Prosecuting Attorney Kennedy Says the California Jury Got it Wrong
JeffCo Prosecuting Attorney James Kennedy
In his letter to defense attorneys, Kennedy wrote that “it has recently been brought to my attention” that Frank was found liable for misconduct in a civil case. Kennedy stated that he conducted a public records request of the City of Glendale, spoke with a Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney familiar with the case and obtained and reviewed the entire trial transcript.
Kennedy told defense lawyers he had concluded that the jury was wrong. He concluded that Frank had been blamed for actions taken by others. He concluded that the evidence Frank allegedly withheld was, contrary to the jury’s ruling, already in the possession of defense counsel and not of any material exculpatory value. Frank allegedly failed to investigate alibi evidence; but Kennedy concluded that alibi evidence, even if true, would not have ruled the plaintiff out as a participant in the crime. Lastly, Kennedy credited Frank with ultimately exonerating the plaintiff when DNA evidence pointed to another individual whom Frank tracked down. Frank learned from that individual that Ovasapyan did not participate in the crime and relayed this information to the DA who then dropped charges. By then, Ovasapyan had been in jail for about eight months.
“In conclusion,” Kennedy wrote, “it does not appear that Det. Frank personally authored any reports or directly engaged in any aspect of the investigation that lead [sic] to the false arrest or malicious prosecution of the Plaintiff. Contrary to the findings made by the jury… it appears that Det. Frank’s actions are what actually lead [sic] to the charges being dismissed against the Plaintiff.”
Res Judicata
The matter has been decided. Res judicata is a legal principle that “a decision by a competent court in a case fully and fairly litigated is final and conclusive as to the claims and issues of the parties and cannot be relitigated.” Prosecuting Attorney Kennedy may be absolutely correct that Frank got a raw deal from a California jury. The verdict against Frank may have been as great an injustice as the wrongful imprisonment of Ovasapyan. Justice is sometimes ill-served in our judicial system. Maybe Frank’s lawyers were incompetent. Mr. Kennedy said in an e-mail that the city of Glendale chose to use its in-house lawyers instead of contracting with more skilled and experienced outside counsel, and those lawyers did “a pretty poor job.”
However wrong the Ovasapyanjury may have been, its decision was upheld by a United States Federal District Court judge and later by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The argument that there was insufficient evidence to find that Frank did the things he was accused of doing was rejected by both courts.
Kennedy’s independent review of the records may blunt the impact of the Ovasapyan verdict outside of court. The reputation Frank has built since moving here may remain intact, though bruised. Frank can point to Kennedy’s conclusions in defending himself on the campaign trail. But when Frank testifies in court, and the defense seeks to impeach him with the Ovasapyan verdict and findings, the trial judge will likely not entertain arguments that the Ovasapyan jurors and several federal judges messed up or that Frank was screwed over by his lousy lawyers. Relitigation of the facts of that case will in all likelihood not be permitted, and Mr. Kennedy’s conclusions–regardless of how well they may be reasoned–will not be allowed in a court of law.
Frank Responds
Good morning Jim,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Ovasapyan case. The civil verdict is just one part of the story and has to be viewed in the context of the original investigation in order to be properly understood.
Though it is one small event in my 43-year career and history in law enforcement it is something voters should consider. I have always been transparent about it. I have spoken about it openly and publicly during the campaign, including at the Democratic Party forum and the League of Women Voters forum, both of which were recorded and are available online. I have answered questions about it from voters and community leaders. Both the fact of the verdict and the underlying investigation were fully known and understood by my opponent prior to my hiring in 2016 as he was the person who hired me. He has never raised it as an issue in the campaign because he understands the facts.
Like any career or life experience the case investigation itself did have an impact on my leadership to the extent that it reinforced that it is always important to follow the evidence no matter where it leads and that as police officers, with power comes responsibility. In this case I had the responsibility to see the investigation through to exonerating and freeing Mr. Ovasapyan, which I did. This is a value and ethic that I live and work by and I would instill and expect from all of my staff if elected.
I did not pay any part of the judgment or costs because the investigation was part of my official responsibilities as an employee of the City of Glendale.
Regarding how the fact of the verdict reflects on credibility, the elected Prosecutor has reviewed both the civil trial as well as the facts of the underlying investigation and concluded that the allegations regarding any wrongdoing on my part are not supported. I expect his letter re same will be released next week. The fact that I saw the investigation through to exonerating and freeing Mr. Ovasapyan proves my commitment to transparency and justice and should reassure voters that I will always do the right thing.
In my experience you have been fair and given me a full opportunity to respond. In this case I would appreciate it if you would wait to run any story on the case until I can provide the letter from the Prosecuting Attorney. You have a powerful voice and it is important that you have all of the information before running a story.
I will send the letter from the prosecutor as well as a more full response as soon as I have the letter, which should be early next week.
As always, thank you for your interest in the campaign and in the truth.
Art
———————————-
Mr. Frank subsequently sent a longer statement and other materials when notified we had obtained Mr. Kennedy’s letter to defense lawyers.
———————————-
Mr. Scarantino,
To best understand what happened in this case it is necessary to know some of the facts related to the crime and original investigation itself, which I have outlined below.
There were at least six individual suspects involved.
The initial victim, a mother of two adult men, was home alone. She heard a knock at the door and looked out to see a man who she recognized as a construction worker and associate of her older son who had done tile setting work for her at her business.
She opened the door and a group of men – including the man who knocked at the door – forced their way into the house and tied her up. They then demanded money indicating they had some familiarity with her older son, using his name.
Minutes later, her younger son walked into the house from the rear driveway access door and confronted the home invaders. He fought with the invaders to save his mother and one of the men – though not the one who knocked on the door who she recognized as her son’s acquaintance and tile setter – shot her son in the chest. He died at the scene.
All the invaders fled the house. Typical of a case of this seriousness, several detectives were assigned to work various aspects of the case. Some of the evidence they gathered: Mr. Ovasapyan had done tile work at the mother’s business in the past. Mr. Ovasapyan had a dispute with one of her sons over a construction project. Witnesses identified at least two vehicles outside, including a dark colored Honda sedan. Mr. Ovasapyan was known to drive a Black Honda. The mother was shown a photographic lineup by a detective which included Mr. Ovasapyan’s photo. She told him it looks just like him, but younger, but maintained it was the tile setter. While running from the scene one of the suspects (not the man who knocked at the door) dropped an item of clothing. DNA analysis of this item of clothing provided a lead that identified the possible shooter. There was no DNA evidence left by the suspect the victim believed to be Ovasapyan.
I was assigned to gather all of the various reports from the group of detectives who worked the case and to present the case to the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor’s decision to file charges in the case was based on an evaluation of the totality of the evidence and not solely the photo identification of Ovasapyan. As the case moved through the court system Mr. Ovasapyan maintained his innocence. I did not rest and I continued to investigate the case, and when the DNA results returned they provided the lead that helped me to exonerate Mr. Ovasapyan prior to any trial or conviction.
I am including a letter from Steve Dickman, a prosecutor intimately familiar with the original case as well as the civil trial that followed. His letter is in the form of an endorsement written earlier this year in which he touches on the case and from which this case can be seen in the continuum of my entire career.
I am also including a motion written by Mr. Dickman which discusses the case in detail and explains why the result of the civil trial has no impact or bearing on my credibility as an investigator or witness. Every court that heard this motion did not allow evidence of the verdict or my role in the investigation to be presented to any jury on the issue of my credibility because there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Art Frank
———————————-
The letter from Mr. Dickman is available on Mr. Frank’s campaign website. The motion Mr. Frank mentions is a 27-page legal brief from one party in a criminal case, not a judicial ruling. We have not been provided the motion to which this brief was filed as a response, the reply to this brief nor the ultimate ruling by a court. We print in full all written responses to questions we pose, but publishing this full brief — without knowing anything about the surrounding case and the court’s ruling — is beyond the scope of our policy.
Sheriff Joe Nole has not responded to a request for comment on the statements made by Mr. Frank. I specifically asked Sheriff Nole about Frank’s claim that Nole hired him and was aware of the Ovasapyan verdict at the time. Frank’s account would mean that Nole, not then Sheriff Stanko, hired Frank as Stanko’s second-in-command and demoted himself from the position he had held under Sheriff Hernandez and put himself under Frank’s supervision. Nole, as Frank states, has not used the case against him in debates.
———————————-
[Update to original story] It appears that the Ovasapyanveridict was known at the time of hiring, and the information was passed along to Sheriff Dave Stanko, who made the decision to hire Mr. Frank. Sheriff Nole provided the following answers to the questions we posed last week. He just got back to us after publication of the story. We can also now provide Mr. Kennedy’s full letter to defense counsel.
Q & A with Sheriff Nole:
Q: Was the judicial ruling against Mr. Frank known at the time of his hiring?
A: Yes. Mr. Frank’s pre-hire background investigation developed information on the ruling and that information was discussed with Mr. Frank.
Q: How could he have been hired with this matter so recently in his background? (He was hired a few years after the 9th Circuit upheld the verdict).
A: The information developed in the background investigation and discussed with Mr. Frank regarding the judicial ruling was presented to then Sheriff Dave Stanko, who made the hiring decision.
Q: How does the case impact his ability to do his job?
A: At this point it does not impact his ability to do his job.
Q: Does it detract from his credibility as a witness when he must testify?
A: It could, depending on the circumstances presented at trial and a judge’s interpretation.
Q: How could this detract from his ability to lead the Sheriff’s Office and defend against charges of misconduct?
A: How it could detract would be dependent on the particular situation occurring at the time.
Covering its tracks, lawyering up. Olympic Pride got a lawyer to demand that Port Townsend Free Press remove photos showing its interactions with children. The lawyer said it was about copyright. But the same images have also been removed from Olympic Pride’s own website and social media. What was in those photos they don’t want you to see?
Ana Wolpin’s The Dark Underbelly of the Trans Movement: What is Olympic Pride Promoting? prompted the scrubbing and lawyering up. Wolpin’s article took a close look at how Olympic Pride is sexualizing children and promoting transgenderism to kids. That means moving children towards macabre mutilations and a lifetime of taking hormones that can harm their brain development, cause abnormally low bone density and induce severe depression and suicidal ideation. The FDA recently issued a warning that puberty blockers in minors can cause brain swelling and loss of vision. The damage caused to minors by puberty blockers is no longer considered reversible — bad news arriving too late for many young and middle-aged adults.
The mutilations may involve a greedy surgeon cutting flesh from a young girl’s arm or elsewhere to make a fake penis that will be sewn onto the pubic area where her vagina and uterus once were (they’ve been scooped out and sliced away). Many more surgeries and follow-up treatments may be required. Synthetic sex identity is big business. Surgeries can cost $300,000 and up. Just 100 minors on Lupron (a testosterone suppression drug also used to chemically castrate sex offenders) produces $27 million in sales in just seven years, and a lifetime will be required to make the “transition” stick.
Joey Maiz is a woman who at age 27 underwent sex change surgery and took hormones to try to make her man. Here she weeps for the children being sucked into the same literal meat grinder that ruined her life. [This video is still mostly available off the Gays Against Groomers Facebook page. Try this link.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfDLS0xLU6A
Pressure from Olympic Pride’s Attorneys:
Mayor Faber’s Law Firm
On September 13, 2022, the small company that hosts the Port Townsend Free Press website received a demand letter from attorney Sam Feinson, of Faber & Feinson. That is the two-man law firm of Port Townsend Mayor David Faber. He demanded that six images be removed from Wolpin’s article for alleged violation of copyright laws.
Most of the images showed Olympic Pride’s engagement with children, some appearing to be of kindergarten age. These images disappeared from their website after Wolpin’s article. One of the photos was screen-grabbed from a Facebook post of a person not represented by Feinson. Images posted on Facebook are not protected by copyright, particularly when they are posted to allow sharing.
But making these arguments would require engaging an attorney and exposing the web-hosting company to the costs and disruption of legal process. They would be caught in the crossfire. Wolpin took down most of the images, and will be replacing them with others to give readers an idea of what it is Olympic Pride does not want seen by an audience wider and more diverse than the one that hangs around its website.
Grooming 101 and Gays Against Groomers
What exactly is in those images that Olympic Pride does not want seen? Did they show Olympic Pride and its supporters engaged in grooming? Grooming, according to a Wikipedia definition, is “befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a minor, and sometimes the child’s family, to lower the child’s inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. Child grooming is also regularly used to lure minors into various illicit businesses such as child trafficking, child prostitution, cybersex trafficking, or the production of child pornography.”
Before the photos were removed you, the reader, could have judged for yourself whether the photos were evidence of grooming. Apparently, that is a judgment Olympic Pride does not want you making.
Gays Against Groomers opposes indoctrinating and sexualizing children under the guise of “LBGTQA+.” They state, “our community that once preached love and acceptance of others has been hijacked by radical activists who are now pushing extreme concepts onto society, specifically targeting children in recent years.” The featured image at the top, from a gay pride parade, is an example. Olympic Pride is the local sponsor of transgender promotion to children, and the sponsor of Jefferson County Transgender Support. Photos of transgender promotion and celebration with young children were among the photos Olympic Pride demanded The Free Press take down.
From Gays Against Groomers FB page
According to Gays Against Groomers, “The overwhelming majority of gay people are against what the community has transformed into, and we do not accept the political movement pushing their agenda in our name. [T]hese radicals aim to restructure it entirely in order to accommodate a fringe minority, as well as seek to indoctrinate children into their ideology.”
They are talking about groups like Olympic Pride.
“There are millions of gays within the community.” Gays Against Groomers continues, “that want nothing to do with this Alphabet religion and join the fight with parents and concerned people everywhere to protect children. We also aim to return sanity and reclaim the community we once called our own. The gay community is not a monolith. Those pushing this agenda do not represent or speak for us all, nor do we want to be associated with them in any way. What we are witnessing is mass scale child abuse being perpetrated on an entire generation, and we will no longer sit by and watch it happen.”
Gays Against Groomers recently helped defeat trans ideology indoctrination in Florida schools. Their truck was photographed in Miami outside a critical school board hearing. They recognize evil and speak out against it. Raising concerns about the life-long damage done to children by the promotion of trans ideology and what it physically entails cannot be dismissed as homophobia.
Olympic Pride aggressively seeks contact and interaction with children. It sponsored the recent “Queer/Trans Pool Party,” where it occupied the entire Mountain View pool and locker rooms. It was an “all ages” event. Olympic Pride sponsors the Rainshadow Youth Collective, which specifically targets those under 19 years of age. The “Collective” (an interesting choice of a Marxist term) promoted the “Queer/Trans” all ages pool party to kids and holds a variety of ostensibly innocent events for children.
Remember Joe Camel?
Marketing experts know how to get kids’ attention. The makers of Camel cigarettes once employed the character of Joe Camel to entice children to try its carcinogenic product. He was one cool, fun dude and everyone liked him. Food marketers use cartoons to entice kids to eat junk food. Toy companies have long used cartoons to sell their products to kids (or parents, pressured by kids). The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism states, “Many different organizations, ranging from governmental health agencies to cigarette companies, develop specific campaigns that are designed to appeal to children. These advertisements may target youths’ interests and attention in many ways, such as through the use of cartoon figures or the promise of maturity.”
Among the images Olympic Pride demanded be taken down were the cartoons it uses to promote transgenderism to children. Their lawyer’s demand letter stated that these images were “illustrations and graphics created to advertise Olympic Pride events.” They are more than that. They are Olympic Pride’s advertising tools to reach children.
Fair Use and Facebook
Use of the images objected to by Olympic Pride’s lawyer is arguably “fair use” and not a copyright infringement. As Facebook explains, copyright “laws allow people to use, under certain circumstances, someone else’s copyrighted work [for] criticism, commentary, parody, satire, news reporting, teaching, education and research.”
That’s what Wolpin did. The images she used were already out there, and she used them for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching and education about what Olympic Pride is up to. But being right does not end a fight with lawyers. Vindication comes through sometimes expensive and burdensome litigation. The Free Press did not want to get its hosting company or its contributors and editors consumed in legal wrangling that would distract from its mission of reporting and commenting on what is happening in our community. We think that by demanding that the images be hidden from the public Olympic Pride is telling on itself. Their attempt to erase the evidence gave us an opportunity to draw more attention to what they are up to.
Olympic Pride also demanded that photos from someone else’s Facebook page and website be taken down. Those photos depicted Beau Ohlgren, who runs Olympic Pride’s Jefferson County Transgender Support Network. Ohlgren is also director of Family Ministry at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Church (QUUF). The photos Olympic Pride demanded be removed were Ohlgren’s head shot from the QUUF website and a photo of Ohlgren in a leotard with waist-length hair from another person’s Facebook page (which had enabled sharing). Wolpin declined to take down these photos.
Why Mayor Faber’s Law Firm?
David Faber’s selfie on Twitter, in a toilet stall
Mayor David Faber has written on his social media that, “As mayor, I am legally required to be a pervert and deviant,” and also “absolutely filthy.” He has described himself as a person who has sex with dead chickens and discussed having sex with a dog. He has written that Pee Wee Herman, who was convicted of possession of child pornography and public masturbation, “did nothing wrong.” He has embraced Vaush, a YouTuber who argues for the decriminalization of child pornography and lowering the age of consent. New York magazine contributor and former Washington Post reporter Mandy Stadtmiller,Andy Ngo and other journalists have recently dug into Faber’s troubling, creepier alter-ego.
Faber’s selfie, published on his Twitter account for the world to see, shows him wearing eye liner in a bathroom stall. What is that about? Ugh.
Feinson, Faber’s partner, is well aware of Faber’s social media revelations and has engaged with him on the same Twitter account Faber used to issue these abhorrent declarations. This has been established by Substack researcher and commentator Mattie Watkins. Her two articles are here and here.
This is the law firm Olympic Pride chose to use to demand that the Port Townsend Free Press remove photographs that may show evidence of grooming and aggressive marketing of transgenderism, and all that entails, to children. Faber has even encouraged the teenager at the center of the Julie Jaman/YMCA controversy to cut off his genitals by giving him $200 through his GoFundMe page towards what is euphemistically called “bottom surgery.”
Tweet from David Faber
Olympic Pride has helped organize and lead the protests against Julie Jaman and women who have called for safe, dignified spaces where they change, shower and go to the bathroom. Olympic Pride, as did Faber, had a large hand in whipping up the crowd (mob) that bullied and roughed up mostly older women at the August 15, 2022 press conference. Rape survivors and a Black woman pleading for the same consideration trans people claim faced a crowd screaming that they were “c*nts” and TERFS, a sexist slur used to justify violence.
Faber fanned the flames — indeed, the press conference had been organized in response to his taunting rape survivors and women’s rights activists. Faber wrote on his Twitter feed, where he makes official statements in his capacity as Mayor (including his perceived job requirements about being a pervert and deviant), that what happened to the older women, whom he has also called TERFS — was “beautiful.” Council member Libby Wennstrom subsequently called for the expulsion from Port Townsend of all women who did not agree with her that men can become actual women and belong in women’s showers and bathrooms.
Olympic Pride was asked if it condemned such hate speech. It has remained silent despite its self-proclaimed welcoming “inclusive” mantra.
Olympic Pride Doesn’t Want You Knowing Their “Pride Partners”
Wolpin’s article copied a collage of logos of the local businesses Olympic Pride says are its “Pride Partners.” Their lawyer demanded that image be removed. One would have thought Olympic Pride would want people to know about the businesses supporting their indoctrination and grooming of children so they might choose genital and other bodily mutilation and a lifetime of hormone treatments. Or maybe not. Maybe those businesses have been hearing from customers following publication of Wolpin’s article, and they’ve passed that ire along to Olympic Pride.
It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words. Olympic Pride doesn’t want us using pictures, so we’ll use words. And we won’t need anywhere near a thousand to wrap this up. Here is a full list of Olympic Pride’s “Pride Partners,” who wittingly or unwittingly are endorsing its marketing of transgender ideology to children, which includes surgical and chemical “transitioning”:
![$1.5 Million Judgment Against Art Frank for MisconductWeighs on Campaign, Prosecutor [Updated with comment from Sheriff Nole]](https://i0.wp.com/www.porttownsendfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/ovas2blue2.jpg?resize=835%2C488&ssl=1)
ys Against Groomers recently helped defeat trans ideology indoctrination in Florida schools. Their truck was photographed in Miami outside a critical school board hearing. They recognize evil and speak out against it. Raising concerns about the life-long damage done to children by the promotion of trans ideology and what it physically entails cannot be dismissed as homophobia.
Olympic Pride also demanded that photos from someone else’s Facebook page and website be taken down. Those photos depicted Beau Ohlgren, who runs Olympic Pride’s Jefferson County Transgender Support Network. Ohlgren is also director of Family Ministry at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Church (QUUF). The photos Olympic Pride demanded be removed were Ohlgren’s head shot from the QUUF website and a photo of Ohlgren in a leotard with waist-length hair from another person’s Facebook page (which had enabled sharing). Wolpin declined to take down these photos.
