by Jim Scarantino | Jul 9, 2022 | General
Suicide and substance abuse touch all our lives. These horrors and tragedies surround us.
In my eight years in this town, I have personally known one young man who hanged himself, and I’m friends with people whose relatives have taken their lives in what should have been their prime years.
I found one suicide victim, a man who had veered off the road intentionally to collide with a tree. I won’t forget opening that crumpled door, feeling for the pulse that wasn’t there and saying a prayer as I awaited the emergency services response. First responders and loved ones and friends found the other suicides and those who died by overdose.
I helped with the funeral service for the young man who hung himself outside Manresa Castle. He had a severe opiate addiction. He was living at the Mill Road transient camp, as it was then known (now called the Caswell-Brown camp after two people found dead in our community.) About 200 mostly young people attended that service.
The young man’s drug dealer was stopped at the door to the church because he attempted to smuggle in a small dog under his shirt. He was there to score, not mourn. Having just been released from jail, he didn’t have any of his own dope. According to a substance abuse expert who was in attendance, about half of the 200 people were addicts. Some had come drunk, and I found an empty vodka fifth in a waste can. Others were high. As I was closing up that evening I noticed two cars parked at the very edge of the church property. I almost tapped on a window but stopped when I saw people inside shooting up.
A funeral for an addict who had died by his own hand or overdose was sadly nothing new. I wonder how many of those troubled souls have since overdosed and/or contemplated or attempted suicide.
Our community’s hidden suffering, hopelessness and despair is expressed in these deaths. Yet the question of whether Lombardy poplars should be felled draws more attention and passion than these tragedies. Trees along Sims Way have been given names; the suicides and overdose fatalities are nameless to the general public.
Maybe in rarefied circles in this community some can claim they have no personal connection with anyone or any family that has lost someone to despair and drugs. I don’t believe them, any more than the city council member who told me he has no one in his family or circle of friends suffering from addiction.
A death like that of Jarrod Bramson, the popular musician whose death was attributed to homicide by his drug dealer, is not far removed from the category of suicide or fatal overdose. It was a fatal overdose, just not administered by Jarrod himself. Maybe it can be considered assisted suicide. Isn’t that descending spiral of addiction and substance abuse little more than a slow suicide? Are not every one of of the dealers handing out Fentanyl pills assisting suicide?
County Prosecutor James Kennedy’s office has provided at my request what is a colorless inventory of suicides and fatal overdoses in Jefferson County. The identities of the deceased are shielded according to state law. Those tables are found below.
Suicides in Jefferson County 2003 to Present
(click here for full table)
Partial screen shot of information complied by Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Office at Port Townsend Free Press request.
Fatal Overdoses, Jefferson County, 2019 to Present
(click here for full table)
Partial screen shot of information complied by Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Office at Port Townsend Free Press request.
Prosecutor Kennedy writes,
“[T]he true picture is murkier than the numbers. For example, it is not uncommon to come across a person who has committed suicide, by gun shot or hanging, for example, where drug (and/or alcohol) paraphernalia is present. We usually test the decedent’s blood for drugs in those cases and the results are almost always positive. We typically classify these deaths as a suicide even though drugs clearly played a significant role in the death.”
Kennedy continues,
“Other times we have come across long term drug users who die after having ingested a significantly higher amount of drugs than they typically use. What they ‘typically’ use is often hard to pin down with certainty — if available it comes anecdotally from acquaintances — but the inference remains that this was a suicide by drug overdose. However, since we cannot be certain, we usually classify these deaths as we would an overdose, unless there is other indicia present like a suicide note.”
Victoria Brown, age 23, is in these tables. She died of an overdose in the lawless transient camp the County Commission permitted to fester for more than a year at the Fairgrounds. The transient camp on Mill Road that the county has established with OlyCAP is named after her, as well as John Caswell. He died during the heat wave in 2021. I am friends with the man who had tried to help him that day and later found him dead by a picnic table off Sims Way.
Caswell’s death cannot be detached from his substance abuse. He had been drinking alcohol in the oppressive heat, and help had been sought at the hospital to cool him down. The hospital put him back on the street. He was scheduled to enter alcohol treatment in a couple of days. In the meantime, he had to stay “balanced” (as chronic drinkers call it) to fight off shakes, withdrawal and DTs. Is his death a fatal overdose and/or a suicide?
How many other deaths need to be added to these tables? How many suicides have been attempted, how many overdoses have been reversed just short of death? (About thirty 10th and 12th graders report attempting suicide in the past year, according to the 2021 Healthy Youth Survey, on which Port Townsend Free Press reported.)
Prosecutor Kennedy has suggested running down further information from law enforcement and emergency services, saying “this is a really important issue. Thank you for paying attention to it.” I will be seeking to obtain further information on our county’s attempted suicides and non-fatal overdoses for a future report.
by Jim Scarantino | Jul 2, 2022 | General
Twenty-five percent of Jefferson County high schoolers made a plan to kill themselves in the last year. About 30 tenth and twelfth graders tried to kill themselves.
These and other alarming reports of severe mental health problems among the county’s high schoolers were released as part of the 2021 Healthy Youth Survey conducted by the Washington Department of Health. 354 Jefferson County students participated in the study, which also covers all counties statewide.
Our county’s youth report crushing hopelessness. 36% of tenth graders reported feeling so sad or hopeless that they stopped doing their usual activities. That pall of debilitating malaise rose to 44% among 12th graders. The DOH’s statewide results show that youth sensing no or only slight hope are twice as likely to consider suicide as youth with a moderate to high sense of hope.
83% of 12th graders reported feeling nervous or anxious in the two weeks preceding the survey, and 71% of them were unable to stop worrying in that time period. The numbers for 10th graders are only insignificantly better.
Among 12th graders, 26% reported (24 students) considering suicide during the year, 10% (9 students) reported making a suicide plan, 8% (7-8 students) reported attempting suicide. Among 10th graders, 21% (30 students) reported considering suicide, 25% (36 students) made a suicide plan, and 13% (19 students) reported attempting suicide.
Statewide, according to DOH, substance abuse reporting is down over 2018, but mental health problems are more widespread and severe. The 2021 survey found that statewide 74% of 10th graders reported feeling nervous, anxious, on edge, or not being able to stop or control worrying, 20% reported they seriously considered attempting suicide, 16% reported they made a suicide plan, and 8% reported they attempted suicide in the past 12 months. The rates for planning and attempting suicide by 10th graders are higher in Jefferson County. Jefferson County 12th graders reported considering suicide and attempting suicide also at rates higher than the comparable state rates.
Readers are encouraged to read the Fact Sheets from the survey for Jefferson County high schoolers. Much more data, some broken down by demographics, is available. You may use this link: Healthy Youth Survey 2021. Click on the Fact Sheets link at the top of the page, then select “county” and pull down Jefferson County. From there you can access many fact sheets on mental health, substance abuse and other indicia of teen health. The 134 pages of survey results cover 6th, 8th, 10th and 12th graders.
Dozens of graphs in the Healthy Youth Survey 2021 show detailed analyses of mental health indicators, substance abuse and other well-being factors in our community. This breakdown shows a higher incidence of bullying experienced in Jefferson County as compared to Washington State, at every grade level.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Washington teens 15-19 years old, the survey explained, and most youth suicides occur at home. Suicide attempts among children even as young as 9 years old is on the rise. As reported by Hannah Furfaro, a Seattle Times mental health reporter:
“A pair of new national research studies and Washington data help confirm what Marshall and many others are seeing in hospitals across the Pacific Northwest. Use of medications or other poisons to attempt suicide or self-harm are rising among youths as young as 9, and the largest increases are among those ages 10-12. The number of kids in that age group who ingested some type of poisonous medication or other substance to attempt suicide increased by 4.5 times from 2000 to 2020, according to one of the national studies, published in JAMA Pediatrics in March, compared to a 2.4-fold increase among older adolescents.”
The 2021 survey found a slight decrease in drug use that may only be temporary. According to Dr. Maayan Simckes, an epidemiologist with the Washington Department of Health, drug use could well increase as teens go back to more normal lives, which involves being able to gather with peers, and potentially partying.
Jefferson County’s Board of Health Response and Action
The 2021 data is nothing new. At its April 2019 meeting, Dr. Tom Locke, then the public health officer, told the Jefferson County Board of Health that the 2018 Healthy Youth Survey results “showed concerning findings in the youth mental health category.” At the following month’s meeting, team members from the Substance Abuse Prevention Program at the Health Department were supposed to provide “a more in depth look at the data from the Healthy Youth Survey.” (Reporting on substance abuse among high schoolers was also cause for concern.)
The Board of Health never returned to the mental health crisis among Jefferson County high schoolers. Instead of considering data that was supposed to be provided by the Substance Abuse Prevention Program, the Board spent its meeting time discussing nuclear disarmament. In the past three-plus years since the county’s public health officer informed the Board of Health of “concerning findings” about youth mental health, the subject has never been an agenda item. The 2021 Healthy Youth Survey results were released in March of this year but have not been discussed by the Board of Health.
The members of the Board of Health are County Commissioners Greg Brotherton, Heidi Eisenhour and Kate Dean; Libby Wennstrom, Port Townsend City Council Member; Kees Kolff, Public Hospital District Commissioner; Sheila Westerman, Citizen-at-Large; and Denis Stearns, Citizen-at-Large.
by Jim Scarantino | May 19, 2022 | General
Above is a glowing view of San Francisco’s gorgeous Golden Gate Bridge, constructed in under 5 years from 1/5/1933 to 5/28/1937.
What other architectural wonders took less than 5 years to build? A Free Press reader sent us the following list. (Note: The Cherry Street Project is not on this list.)
The Empire State Building, built in 11 months, 3/17/1930-5/1/1931
The Hoover Dam, constructed 4/20/1931-3/1/1936
The Eiffel Tower, constructed 1/1887-3/31/1888
Seattle Space Needle, finished in about 400 days on 4/20/1962
The Pentagon, constructed 9/11/1941-1/14/1943
Disneyland, 1/16/1954-7/17/1955
Transcontinental Canadian Railroad, constructed 1881-1885
The Sears-Willis Tower, built 1970-73
And the tallest building in America since the Sears-Willis Tower was built fast and steadily enough that the Chicago Tribune captured a time-lapse movie of its 2005-2009 construction:
All these marvels got completed in less time than the Cherry Street Project – a rehab of an existing 5,000 sq.ft. building that has been blighting our fair town for 5 years (and counting).
Related: Unhappy Birthday: Cherry Street Project Turns Five Years Old
by Jim Scarantino | May 9, 2022 | General
Port Townsend’s most ambitious, costliest “affordable” housing project. Barged from Victoria, B.C. the Carmel House, the building at the center of the Cherry Street Project, sits empty and blighted above PT’s golf course. The 2022 work plan for the City of Port Townsend includes no work on the Cherry Street Project except paying down the $1.4 million indebtedness the city incurred to get the thing rehabilitated. The building has been vandalized and is home to rats and raccoons.
The lessons of this abject failure run throughout our coverage since 2018. The first lesson is, simply, don’t believe what you read in The Leader. From the beginning, the newspaper “of record” has done nothing but act as a stenographer for city leaders and activists. It has been a willing participant in every PR effort to put lipstick on this pig. The Leader has never reported the true cost of this boondoggle, or any of its many failures.
Its most frequent tack was to proclaim “Progress!” even when failure was painfully clear to everyone. The Leader has never asked a hard question of the city or the housing activists — the former Homeward Bound Community Land Trust, recently rebranded as Olympic Housing Trust — who defaulted and wasted millions of dollars in public largesse. The Leader has never looked behind the candied words of the project’s backers, nor dug into public records that show taxpayers have been misled and lied to. Instead, the Free Press has done the work our city’s newspaper should have been doing.
The second lesson is in the dysfunction of an ideologically and politically homogeneous legislative body that operates by peer pressure and virtue signaling. The ultimate failure of this project was evident from the beginning. The city failed to inspect the building before purchasing and floating it across international borders.
Lo and behold, there was a Canadian hazardous materials inspection detailing the presence of asbestos and lead paint the city never saw until a couple years later. The project never could “pencil out” as a viable affordable housing project — not that numbers, which represent taxpayer dollars, seemed to matter to council members. It was more important to make a show of doing something grandiose and kind of artsy about affordable housing than it was to crunch numbers with an eye to reality.
Most shocking of all, the city’s own pro forma for the large loan it extended to the activists showed they would default in a couple years. Council shushed up the lone council member who noticed that and rushed the loan through. By the way, we found and reported that the loan contained a $400,000 hidden interest subsidy that was to be shouldered by taxpayers.
How could an unavoidable, predicted default not matter to City Council? That leads to lesson number three, the antidote to the problem observed as lesson number two.
There must be real diversity in a legislative body to make it work. The City Council that saddled taxpayers with the Cherry Street Project all came from the same political and ideological petri dish. They were a clique of the elite and the woke. It was more important to them to get along, reinforce a narrative, repeat feel-good/look-good buzz words, and nod in agreement than it was to get things right. Someone strong who stood outside the clique and didn’t seek their approval and friendship was needed on council to fight their headlong rush into failure.
The fourth lesson is that Port Townsend Free Press was needed back in April 2017 when council rushed into the Cherry Street Project by buying the Carmel House sight unseen. At least we’ve been hounding this story since we launched in May 2018 with our first article focusing on Cherry Street. Now taxpayers know the ride that has been their misfortune (there’s 17 years left on the bond that funded the defaulted loan, so the ride’s not done).
According to The Leader‘s uncritical reporting, the Cherry Street Project was to have been finished and occupied in the Fall of 2017 with a renovation price tag of only a couple hundred thousand dollars. We did the first of many public records requests and dug into the financial documents to get the real story, published May 28, 2018, just a little after the Cherry Street Project’s first birthday: “Cherry Street “Affordable” Housing to Cost More than $2 Million.” The latest cost estimates put the total cost of the project above $3 million. With the spike in construction costs, count on the price tag being higher today and in the future.
Still a mystery is why the city turned down a $1 million cash offer in September 2020 to bail them out of this mess. Not one city council member ever publicly raised a question about why the city manager gave the back of his hand to Keith and Jean Marzan when they offered to take the mess off the city’s hands and actually build some affordable housing on the site.
The Leader‘s last article on Port Townsend’s hugely disastrous, most expensive, most ambitious affordable housing project was October 1, 2020, when it proclaimed that “Port Townsend will forge ahead with the troubled Cherry Street Project, but with a new nonprofit partner.” The paper accommodated the city’s need for some positive spin on the heels of the activists’ default on their generous loan.
Since that rosy proclamation by The Leader, the only work on the project has been repairing some of the vandalism when teenagers launched a refrigerator through a window and broke out almost all the glass in the blighted 1950s asbestos-and-lead contaminated derelict. Oh, and putting up some fake “this site under video surveillance” signs.
Here is the full list of our reporting on the Cherry Street Project since our first article:
The Tragedy of the Cherry Street Project, 12/12/18
What’s Happening With the Cherry Street Project? 10/29/19
“Completely Bogus” Numbers–More Problems and Delays for Cherry Street Project, 12/2/19
Multi-Million Dollar Fraud on Taxpayers: The Cherry Street Project Unmasked, 6/27/20
Cherry Street Welcomes First Tenants, 2/28/20
Default the Cherry Street Project Now, 4/22/20
Latest Cherry Street Giveaway Hits Taxpayers Harder, 10/2/20
Cherry Street Project Handover “Not a Done Deal,”10/19/20
Accomplished Developer Will Donate Time and Services for Cherry Street Project, 10/20/20
Cherry Street Handover: Red Flags About Bayside Housing, 3/3/21 (and related articles)
Happy Fourth Birthday, Cherry Street Project! 5/10/21
Cherry Street Project Costs Soar in Bayside Housing Proposal, 6/23/21
New Majority on Council Should Kill the Cherry Street Project, 11/27/21
Cherry Street Project Vandalized, 1/4/22
“Incredibly Expensive” Housing Project Follows Cherry Street Debacle, 1/6/22
Mayor Faber (Almost) Opens Up on Cherry Street Project Failure, 4/23/22
by Jim Scarantino | Apr 23, 2022 | General
“I wouldn’t change a thing about what we did.” Mayor David Faber said that about the Cherry Street Project at a December city council meeting. The topic of that meeting was whether Port Townsend should purchase 14.4 acres on the edge of town, the Evans Vista project, to build the equivalent of a separate village of affordable and low-income housing. It would be a massive project that Michelle Sandoval, mayor at the time, predicted would be “incredibly expensive.”
The Cherry Street Project will be five years old on May 10, 2022, yet remains unfinished. Windows facing the street are boarded up; windows at the rear are broken out, the result of vandalism. The city is paying off a 20-year bond with a principal and interest obligation of around $1.4 million. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent. Valuable land is tied up with a derelict building. The last estimate was that another $1.8 million would be required to rehab the old building.
In preparation for an article on the Cherry Street Project’s fifth anniversary, I emailed Mayor Faber regarding his “I wouldn’t change a thing about what we did” assessment of the Cherry Street Project. I asked him,
“What would you say was done correctly in the inception and execution of the Cherry Street Project? Were no mistakes made, since you “wouldn’t change a single thing” in retrospect?”
A fair question, particularly since the Mayor has insisted that he and others have learned from the Cherry Street Project and the Evans Vista Project won’t be a repeat. It is our policy to print in full and verbatim all written responses and statements we receive to our inquiries.
Mayor Faber did respond. But he had conditions. He first wanted an off-the-record “chat” to “set some ground rules.” Here is his complete and verbatim response:
Hi Jim,
I’m happy to have a conversation with you, provided we first have an off-the-record chat to set some ground rules. If you can’t agree to do that, then please, by all means, continue misconstruing my comments without my involvement as is your right, even if you are needlessly creating division for clicks.
Give me a call whenever you want: (360) 821-9374.
Best,
David J. Faber
At first I thought this would be a great idea and agreed. (Golly, a chat with the mayor!). But then I realized that agreeing to an “off-the-record chat” to “set some ground rules” was problematic. Why should anything the Mayor has to say about a housing project be off the record? Why did we need ground rules for a Q&A on the Cherry Street Project? I had never had a request like this in fifteen years of writing for a major newspaper or my own investigative news sites.
Mayor Faber,
Upon further reflection, it would be better if you wrote out the ground rules you want for an interview. If they are to govern any future exchange and what goes into a published article, it does no good to have them “off the record.” So, please just send the ground rules you want and we can proceed from there if they are agreeable. I can’t remember any public official ever insisting on an off the record conversation to set ground rules. I don’t seek a free running conversation, just answer to a question but I will fairly consider your proposed ground rules.
I send out written questions and publish the entire answers so that nothing gets misquoted or left out. My written question to you is still open and your response will be published verbatim and in full. A written exchange requires no ground rules. And, if you would like to say more on the Cherry Street Project than my question covers, please add that to your response and it will also be published verbatim and in full.
Awaiting your proposed ground rules and written answer and expanded statement, if you choose to respond. I think this is the best way to proceed to avoid any misunderstanding or accusations following publication.
I am keeping my editors informed of this exchange, by the way.
Sincerely,
Jim Scarantino
Mayor Faber responded the next morning:
No, I think it would be best for us to have a conversation. If you disagree, then fine, enjoy writing half-truths without my further involvement.
Best,
David J. Faber
I let Mayor Faber know that I was awaiting instructions from my editors and would get back to him. We talked about it and jointly made a decision to reject his pre-condition of an “off-the-record chat” to “set some ground rules.” Here’s the response of Port Townsend Free Press to Mayor Faber’s unusual request:
Mayor Faber,
My editors and I appreciate your invitation to have a conversation with you on the Cherry Street Project. We cannot, however, agree to keeping from the public any statements made by the Mayor of the City of Port Townsend, and, therefore, do not agree to any off-the-record preconditions. (That is why I have not called you, because you seem to have set the condition that that conversation would be off-the-record). Everything said in the interview or any telephone calls is public information and subject to publication.
To ensure there are no misquotes or misinterpretations in any article resulting from the conversation, I will tape our exchange and you are certainly welcome to do the same.
Our invitation to you to publish on our site any statement you wish to make on the Cherry Street Project remains open.This gives you the opportunity to put your best case to the readers directly, without going through a reporter relating what you have to say or not putting it as you would want. As I have stated several times in our exchanges, any written responses to our questions or submitted statements are published verbatim and in full. We recently did this with County Prosecutor Kennedy, by way of example. And we still invite you, if you choose, to provide a written answer to the questions that initiated this back-and-forth: What would you say was done correctly in the inception and execution of the Cherry Street Project? Were no mistakes made, since you “wouldn’t change a single thing” in retrospect?
Lastly, in your emails you have implied that I have been “misconstruing [your] comments without [your] involvement” and that I have been publishing “half-truths without [your] involvement.” You are invited to include in a statement to be published your explanation of what has been reported at the Port Townsend Free Press that misconstrued your comments or constituted half-truths regarding the Cherry Street Project. Of course, I would hope that in our conversation you will also explain those statements further.
Please let me know how you wish to proceed.
Jim Scarantino, Contributor, Port Townsend Free Press
Mayor Faber has not responded.
Mayor David Faber presiding at the April 4 meeting
There has been no substantive discussion in City Council of the reasons for the abject failure of the Cherry Street Project… ever. It would be useful on the fifth anniversary of the Cherry Street Project for the mayor to offer a few words on why he insists he would do things the same again. Insiders have known, as we have reported previously, that this thing was headed for a train wreck from the beginning. None of our reporting, based on what we have learned from public records requests and documented with photographs, has ever been disputed by Mayor Faber or any other city official. Keeping taxpayers in the dark is not why we publish the Port Townsend Free Press and we won’t participate with Mayor Faber in holding anything back from the people who are footing the bill for City Hall’s mistakes.
Our offer to Mayor Faber to publish his answer to our questions and any other statement his wishes to make about the Cherry Street Project remains open.
