by Stephen Schumacher | Oct 23, 2022 | General
Jefferson County will be alone in its own private State of Emergency if commissioners approve its 13th temporary Covid-19 response policy emergency declaration at their October 24 board meeting. Meanwhile, Washington State and all its other counties (including neighbor Clallam) will have discarded their emergency declarations as of October 31.
County residents have been under the grip of multiple overlapping federal, state, county, and city emergency rules since both Jeffco and Port Townsend declared a State of Emergency on March 16, 2020, joining the February 29 state and March 13 federal declarations.
These unprecedented emergency lockdowns were originally sold by former Jeffco Health Officer Tom Locke and others as short-term measures to “flatten the curve” so it “does not overwhelm medical services,” which White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah Birx recently admitted was an evidence-free deception to “make these palatable” while “I was trying to figure out how to extend it” since “I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.”
In fact, there never appeared “any widespread over-utilization of hospitals, especially in locations with little or no lockdown” (except arguably in New York nursing homes when its governor drove up deaths by forcing them to admit covid patients for six weeks).
A careful peer-reviewed cost/benefit analysis found the emergency “lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid-19 deaths. … The costs were at least thirty-five times higher than the benefits. The reasonable conservative case is that the cost/benefit ratio is around 141 … Lockdowns are not just an inefficient policy, they must rank as one of the greatest peacetime policy disasters of all time.”
So the goal posts for lockdowns and emergency declarations kept moving as each old justification became discredited, eventually landing on little more than public health case-detection funding imperatives, perpetuation of Emergency Use Authorizations for the mRNA spike protein injections, and convenient ramping up for any future actual emergencies.
Public Comment About Extending Jeffco’s Emergency
That brings us to the County Commissioners’ October 17 meeting, whose agenda centered on discussion and potential action “In the Matter of Adopting a 13th Temporary County Policy Based on Emergency Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic”, about which I expressed the following Public Comment:
| I saw that Jefferson County may be keeping its emergency orders even after the other counties and the state lifts them on October 31, and personally I would really urge you not to do that. For one thing, that would be putting you out there special doing this unlike the other diligence from the other counties.
I understand that according to our health officer, “Jefferson doesn’t have the level of population immunity that others do, because it did such a good job controlling the virus before.” And there may be cases now and there may be cases in the future, but I’m not quite sure that constitutes an emergency.
If things happen during the winter, then maybe at that point one could consider calling it an emergency. Part of it is, I really would like us to normalize.
Forgive me for putting it this way, but for your electoral prospects, a lot of information has been coming out that makes the wisdom of these lockdowns look suspicious. To the extent you’re standing out there as the only county doing this thing, that allows you to be saddled with this label of being the “Lockdown Commissioners” or having done it above and beyond what other counties have done. Whereas if you’re just following the same actions as everybody else, at least you’re acting in a more safe way about all of this.
Another thing… a lot of stuff has been coming out in the news, like the European Parliament hearing Pfizer say they hadn’t done any testing on transmission for their vaccine, which was obviously part of the original narrative about it.
You’ve got countries around the world — Denmark, Norway, Australia — abandoning a lot of these recommendations for kids to have this vaccine, so things are changing and the narrative is shifting insofar as what the appropriate guidance should be.
We just had this V-Safe data dump, which shows 33% of their 10 million injections having pretty bad effects from the vaccine. Florida just did an analysis showing 84% increase of cardiac deaths for men under 40 in the first 28 days, so basically advises men under 40 and kids not to take the vaccine and everyone to be informed of these risks.
So you could almost say that this is becoming the emerging guidance. |
Commissioner Responses to Emergency Comment
Commissioner Kate Dean responded:
| One of things I’m most pleased about as we move into this endemic phase, we can start to heal some of the things that have cursed our country and communities. I think we knew all along this was a grand experiment; none of us had ever been through anything like this, and we’re all doing our best. I think it will be years before we understand what was effective and what was the right choice.I feel some hope that the things which have divided us for the last few years, that we can at least all say: we tried, we’re doing our best, we did well in this community. I don’t have regrets, but I’ll say we learned every step of the way.
Our conversation last week will be continued this afternoon regarding the emergency order. I have some concern about continuing it, mostly because I feel there’s a bit of a “crying wolf” situation: If we continue it, we perpetuate the sense of emergency, and then, where there actually is an emergency, it’s harder to rally folks to respond as such.
But I trust very much that the staff who are dealing with the administrative end of this think there’s a lot of benefit in keeping it in place to revisit in a few more months, in part because it’s hard to get stuff going again, so if we were to rescind it, then getting it back in place if we have a surge just takes capacity, when Public Health and the Department of Emergency Management have less capacity.
So I’m going along with staff’s recommendation. We’ll have more discussion about it today, but I anticipate we’ll go ahead with keeping it in place.
But I share your concern; I worry it’s a little disingenuous myself. But it’s a tool for administrative purposes, and we’re not doing any sort of lockdown. Obviously we’re all here today, and we’re glad to have the public back! |
Commissioner Greg Brotherton responded:
| I’m on the screen here today because covid is still with us. I’m on day 6 of my second positive test. While it was a very mild case, we still as a county have to deal with the reality that there is a lot of transmission, I assume over 400 per 100,000 in our community.
And some of the levers that emergency order for us are really critical to come up with extra pay for staff so we can maintain services, and also take care of them so they can stay home when they’re sick.
I’m also feel like it it’s a little bit disingenuous, and we’ll have a robust conversation I’m sure at 1:30, but I’m also like Commissioner Dean inclined to take the staff recommendation and just keep it on a little while longer, not as a lockdown, but to make sure we still have those levers available as we continue to deal with it, as I can attest with firsthand experience. |
Commissioner Heidi Eisenhour responded:
| I’m still evading covid, full stop, thankfully! … I was saying last week, we put all this stuff in place, so what happens if we rip the Band-Aid off now, with the potential cases happening in Europe, that Dr. Berry has been talking about, and how we’ve tended to follow the trend with our cases going up after cases in Europe in the past.
Personally, I know more people with covid right now than I ever have. And so, I don’t feel it’s time to stop having the precautions in place that we do, especially how the things we put in place affect the team here in the county for human resources issues. So It’s something we are going to have more of a conversation about this afternoon. |
Health Officer on Emergency and Everyday Powers
Following Health Officer Allison Berry’s community update, Commissioner Brotherton asked her:
| Where does the requirement to wear masks in health situations come from, could you remind me? |
Berry answered:
| It’s currently a mandate from the state. So there is an order from the Secretary of Health, and the Secretary of Health’s orders extend past the declaration of emergency.
That’s probably worth digging into a little bit. So health officers and secretaries of health always have the ability and authority and obligation to control infectious diseases regardless of states of emergency. Governors only have that authority when a declaration of emergency is in place.
So after October 31, the Governor doesn’t have the ability to issue orders around the pandemic, but health officers still do. We always have had that authority, we will continue to do so. Secretaries of health do too.
Many folks didn’t know we existed before the pandemic, but we have always been here! So if there was, for instance, a measles outbreak, we would issue health orders around that.
And so, as long as we’re still seeing high rates of covid transmission, we’re likely to see health orders related to that, but they’re more targeted now than they used to be, because we’re in a different phase of the pandemic.
And that one most critical space is health care. We need people to be able to see their doctors, and not get covid from that interaction. And so that’s where we are still requiring masking. Longterm care facilities also fall under that space, because people can’t choose whether or not they need to live there. And it’s really important to protect them in that space. |
Brotherton followed up about the emergency resolution:
| We’re going to be considering our 13th emergency resolution about covid this afternoon, and I’m wondering if you had a chance to look at it, whether you weigh in favor of keeping our emergency resolution or adding a 13th?
We’ve talked a little and had public comment today about it being disingenuous to call it an emergency as we move into an endemic phase. And it does seem a little strange, at the same time, there’s still a lot of important levers that it opens up to us to use. As I can attest, covid is still very high in our community. |
Berry answered:
| Yeah, it’s certainly a challenge to figure out how to move in a seamless way into this endemic phase and not lose all the gains that we’ve made as a community. And I think that’s where these kinds of emergency declarations come in.
The biggest thing that the local emergency declaration makes available is the ability to rapidly fund certain situations or make certain control efforts available.
But again, the emergency declaration doesn’t actually have a lot of bearing over whether or not, for instance, I can issue a health order.
And I think that’s where sometimes people end up having strong feelings about the emergency declaration is that thought that we would no longer have public health authority. And it actually has no bearing on that.
What it does is allow us to fund covid test, or potentially move forward something like the Department of Emergency Management responding to a covid outbreak. So it allows us a little more flexibility in responding to things.
I think it was appropriate, for instance, the federal goverment did just announce that they extended their emergency declaration so that we can continue to use some of the tools we need to fight covid through the fall.
It’s a complex decision whether or not to maintain it. But I think it’s useful to have those tools available and only use them when we need them, but it’s good to have that option. |
Public Comment After Emergency Wordsmithing
Commissioners returned in the afternoon to wordsmith their potential 13th emergency declaration together with public health staff. That draft would then be taken to the closed County Covid Coordination meeting on October 21 for further work. Afterwards I gave another Public Comment:
| I really appreciate you all wanting to honor staff, and if you stop these orders now, you’d have to ramp up and all — I grok that.
But what are the pluses and minuses here? I heard from the health officer that the big advantage was that the emergency declaration would allow getting funds, for example, to pay for additional covid testing and management.
I feel like a lot of this is sort of redundant stuff that is already being covered elsewhere. So there’s funds for more testing?
Why exactly is Jefferson County in a special condition compared to other counties, if we’re the only county that’s going to be doing this? I also heard that it was because we have more cases.
We also had one death recently, which I think was somebody in her 80s with lots of comorbidities who had been vaccinated and boosted but not fully. That’s also a situation in which who’s to say she died from the covid or died from all these other conditions.
So the main thing is the cases. Is this really an emergency any more? I do feel we’re in the endemic stage and not the pandemic stage.
I do feel like it’s disingenuous, as I’ve heard from others to try to be applying emergency things for something that is really just a casedemic here.
It’s not lots of deaths. It’s not the hospitals being overburdened. It’s just lots of cases.
And part of the reasons for all these cases is all the testing. So in a sense, if you had more funds from having this emergency order, then you could have more testing which could possibly provide more cases and make things seem to be more like an emergency.
So I’m concerned that we’re in this walking-on-eggshells mode, where — oh my gosh! — we just had a case, now we’ve got to shut down the whole workplace or have everybody be masking, changing, doing things in different ways.
In a way, I personally feel like it would be better to step back, not have it so easy that we’re just continuing the state of emergency.
Why not just basically say, like every other county is doing, say: Okay, it’s really not an emergency any more.
It’s a matter of concern that we need to be watching; it’s not an emergency. If it is an emergency in the future, then we can at that point make a decision and ramp up.
And then that’d be due diligence rather than it being this eggshelly thing, where on the turn of a dime, we’ll be back in this mode and you’ll never be able to feel you can normalize.
One other thing I’ll toss out: Jefferson County is different in one other way: I saw that there’s 22.6% bivalent boostering, which is more than twice the 10.2% in all the other counties in this state.
Who’s to say, I mean we have a correlation here, not a causation necessarily, between the boostering and the additional cases in this town. We’ve also been told by our health officer we don’t have the same level of population immunity as everyone else. So who knows?
But let’s take a step back and wait and see. |
Commmissioner Dean responded:
| I also came at this from the pluses and minuses, and like you heard me say earlier, I was afraid of the “crying wolf” scenario.
But what I couldn’t get to are what the negatives were. There are some positives that are potential positives, like not having to go through this whole process again.
Should we decide that we are in a state of emergency in a couple of months as we see numbers rise potentially, or if there are funding opportunities that we want to be eligible for, or just need to be able to respond in a true emergency fashion — you see that it takes us a long time!
Our process is very deliberative and includes a lot of people. On Friday, our staff will be meeting again. And so that’s where I felt like the negatives just aren’t there.
I appreciate that we’ve softened the language and really tried to not overstate things in this version, so I’m still happy to move it ahead at staff’s recommendation. |
Commmissioner Brotherton responded:
| I think you may be getting hung up on the word “emergency” like I did as well. And I think this is really just about the preservation of the temporary standards that we have.
I’m supportive of taking this to staff and seeing if everyone agrees, if we can get a consensus from the county coordination meeting this Friday.
I don’t see (as Kate said) any negatives from this. It just allows us to keep paid covid leave, which is critical for some of our staff. I’m in favor of moving this forward to county coordination. |
Commmissioner Eisenhour responded:
| I know covid has hampered all the departments, and now we’re needing to reduce the hours that the transfer station’s open because of capacity issues. It’s not tied to this policy, but it’s tied to people being sick and our county family.
I think taking away tools for managers to provide our team with what they need when they need it – it doesn’t feel like the time for that right now.
But the line of questioning that I had at the beginning of this session, where I was trying to unpack whether there was another place where we could take care of these policy matters … what I heard was that there’s not. So that further shores up my support for us continuing this conversation. |
Commissioner Candidate Kelbon’s Emergency Response
On October 19, Ben Montalbano asked County Commisioner (District 3) candidate Marcia Kelbon this question:
| If you were the County Commissioner now would you vote to extend the Emergency Authorization Act, now before the board? Many of us voters are not sure about you stand on community imposed mandates. |
Candidate Kelbon’s response:
| I do not see a need or defensible justification for a continued state of emergency. There are continued county employee protections that best be addressed by permanent employee policies.
To elaborate, I am surprised that this is even being considered at this point and that the three commissioners have expressed support for an extension.
I highlight county employee protections such as extended sick leave because that is the reason they most discussed, but they acknowledge that this could be addressed through their employee manual.
The other reason stated often is that it is a lot of work to put an emergency measure back in place if there is a surge. Work avoidance is not a reason to limit liberties.
The deputy prosecuting attorney also noted that the current emergency ruling avoids the need for competitive bidding for OlyCap – indefensible.
If there is a surge, people can choose to mask and/or boost if they choose. We need to be out of a police state and get on with life, with individuals and businesses making their own health decisions. |
Government by Law or by Emergency
Pushing back against Health Officer Berry’s maximalist view of her own powers, her public health order on September 2, 2021 requiring indoor restaurant/bar patrons to produce vaccination papers was inapplicably based on WAC 246-100-040:
This quarantine law provides narrow emergency detention powers to health officers for up to 10 days over infected persons posing serious and imminent risk, but only after a long series of provisions and recourses have been exhausted — none of which in any way applied to or authorized Health Officer Berry’s open-ended discriminatory regulation over restaurant/bar business practices, requiring them to demand HIPAA-protected private health information from their patrons.
Our counties’ restaurant vaccine mandate was a pure example of illegal emergency power overreach and the dangers of governance not by laws but by lawless “emergency” orders. Anything goes in an emergency — which is not a good thing.
Emergency declarations risk replacing everything good about our government — laws, rights, and due process — with lawless orders by unaccountable executives and unelected health czars.
They are meant for genuine short-term physical emergencies like earthquakes, and if used to replace normal government indefinitely under the pretext of long-term conditions like flus and climate change, such perpetual emergency takeovers are indistinguishable from totalitarian coups.
———————————
“In the end it’s very simple:
Emergency powers are just another name for lawlessness.
You can be a nation of rights and laws, or a nation of emergency.
You cannot do both.”
– el gato malo
by Stephen Schumacher | Sep 19, 2022 | General
The Port Townsend City Council heard my policing concerns in this Public Comment at their September 6 meeting:
| In past public comments, I regularly asked about police staffing. My underlying concern was ensuring sufficient police if ever Antifa-like gangs threatened to trash and terrorize our town. I hadn’t realized until August 15 that the real question was not “Could the police protect us?” but “Would they protect us?”
Port Townsend city officials earned national disgrace when they directed police to do nothing but watch as elderly women were assaulted by coordinated hoodlums employing blackshirt fascist techniques to disrupt and overwhelm a permitted peaceable assembly.
Chief Olson’s response afterwards was to downplay the criminal gang activity and blame the victims. After admitting to the Peninsula Daily News that multiple blackclad thugs were “carrying police batons” and “suspected to have a concealed firearm” and chiding women that their “agenda was put ahead of safety”, he changed his story for the Leader, insinuating that victims who “suffered multiple physical and sexual assaults” from assailants “armed with pepper spray, batons, and firearms” were making things up.
Olson gaslighted that “there was no property damage” (not counting the victims’ property) and “no visual injuries” (discounting bruises, a sprained ankle, and emotional trauma) and that assaulted women may “feel like they were victims”, but in reality their experience was “similar to being in a mosh pit.” Here Olson pretends that consensual concert activity is the same thing as women being targeted and attacked by a violent street gang while his police did nothing but watch.
As assaults increased, onlookers repeatedly appealed to police to stop the violence and separate attackers from their victims, but videos show police responding that they had been “directed” to do nothing, and if victims “did not feel safe, they should leave.”
Who gave this directive to police? Who decided that, according to Olson, “all of our officers were primarily focused on an orderly council meeting”, so none could stop nearby violent crimes under their watch? Why did police allow the gang to block folks from entering the council building to sign up for comment, so only gang sympathizers could make public comments? Was Olson just following orders or involved in writing those orders?
Given how council glad-handed with gang sympathizers at their August 15 meeting, given councilor Wennstrom’s involvement along with her Facebook campaign threatening women to leave town, given how the city and its police clearly picked a side and let it beat up the other side, the question has to be asked: Were city officials actively complicit with gang organizers or just negligent in allowing this violent gang to assault female elders and violate their peaceable assembly rights?
The city — and at this point, the nation — needs answers to these questions. If the responsible individuals are not willing to fess up and accept the consequences for their actions, then an independent investigation or truth & reconciliation commission may be needed.
In any case, I’m grateful some lessons were learned and proper policing held the violent elements at bay on September 3. But the council and its police still need to be accountable for what happened on August 15, take responsibility for their mistakes, be honest, and stop blaming the victims. |
Staff and Council Response
City Manger John Mauro responded that some of my policing concerns would be addressed in his later city manager report, pointing out the city’s August 11 Mountain View Pool Q&A explaining how the city’s decision-making is based on state law (but not mentioning any policing issues as it preceded the August 15 assaults).
In his City Manager’s Report, Mauro spoke mostly about the September 3 event:
[Police Chief] Tom deserves a lot of kudos, but so do the agencies we work with, East Jefferson County, Sequim, Port Angeles, state agencies like the Washington State Patrol, Federal agencies, specifically working with a lot of jurisdictions and Public Works team … minimizing violence. …
This isn’t a decision to permit or not permit an event … When someone wants to hold a free-speech first-amendment-right rally in any location, they can do so, and there’s nothing the city can do to prevent that.
The event’s permit is a process by which we can glean information about what to expect, how we can resource up, how to prepare, and even ask: do you request police presence? In the instance of 15th, that answer was ‘No’ on that event permit, so we with two-and-a-half working days adjusted accordingly based on a request.
Now we could, of course, deny resourcing, traffic closures, as we see fit. That’s where we have yes/no decision making authority, but we can’t keep someone from assembling to exercise free speech …
That’s something we need to prepare for. There was no injury, property damage, and I would say part of the reflection talking with state and federal agencies was the appropriate but not over-the-top presence of multiple agencies is likely what prevented problems from happening in the first place.
And some of the rules literally according to the organizer killed the turnout, because we were saying here is what you can and cannot bring into a public space for this event.
In his Presiding Officer’s Report, Mayor David Faber drew big laughs with his ironic initial quip:
Not a whole lot has happened over the last couple weeks. No, actually, I had trouble coming up with my list because so much of my mental space has been occupied by other things than what I would normally want to talk about here. …
This last Saturday, the protests … I’m very glad the police coordination there resulted in, as far as I’ve been able to understand, no violence, and I’m glad that it ended up being a peaceful event. Thanks for staff and team for making sure it went off without a hitch.
Councilor Ben Thomas was the only one to touch on concerns about the August 15 assaults, closing off the meeting with these heartfelt words:
I don’t know if this is the time or place, but I don’t know when the time or place is, so I just wanted to acknowledge: We’ve got a lot of emails, in person as well, comments on the event on 8/15.
I wish we could talk more openly and frankly about this stuff and realize it’s not an easy thing to do; it’s complicated. But there are a lot of hurt feelings, possibly worse, for people on how it went down.
And I read every word, and I’m sure other people do too, of everything that gets sent in. It’s not being ignored, there’s just not much we can do about it, going back in the past.
I’m sorry that people went through that. I did see it first hand, and I was disturbed by it. I didn’t think they were treated very well.
Even though, do I agree with everything they were saying? That’s not the point. So that did bum me out.
But also we’re getting a lot of stuff, hearing a lot about chromosomes and stuff, and this is not the body to figure out state law or how chromosomes work and gender. People are leaning on us about this, but I just don’t see it as our role.
I just wanted to say that out loud. Thank you.
Councilor Wennstrom Opens Up After the Meeting
Speaking personally, after delivering my Public Comment, I felt itchy about having singled out Councilor Libby Wennstrom by name. After the meeting broke up, I noticed her walking away alone down the sidewalk, and felt moved to call her name to connect and try to understand where she was coming from.
I started by confessing that I felt bad about singling her out in my comment, I’d found myself respecting her perspicacity and attention to detail during council discussions, so wondered what was going on with her Facebook TERF posting.
Wennstrom expressed feeling that trans people were being threatened, had noticed the TERF image someone else had made (adapted from tsunami warnings), and reposted it on her private Facebook page that was only shared with a few friends.
Unfortunately one of those friends liked or shared her post in a way that made it public for all to see. Wennstrom never intended it to go public, but in retrospect as a public official doesn’t think she should have posted it.
Wennstrom graciously continued talking with me, and we covered a lot of ground:
- She related that various councilors and she personally have been flooded with a glut of emails, death threats, obscene images, etc., etc. Tonight was the first time she’d felt safe enough not to be accompanied by someone else for protection to a city meeting. (When she said that, realizing I stood alone about 6 feet away from her on the night-time city sidewalk, I took a step back, but she waved it away and said she didn’t feel threatened by me.)
- Internally the city has been overloaded by these messages and surrounding issues.
- Wennstrom said that a large number of dangerous armed Proud Boys were intending to come to the September 3 event, but were deterred when they heard there would be enforcement of a no-visible-weapons ban.
- The reason police were focused on protecting councilors and the council building on August 15 was because of the threats they were getting after all the media attention.
- Wennstrom said Amy Sousa hadn’t checked on the permit that organizers wanted police protection for her 8/15 event; I countered that the Peninsula Daily News quoted Sousa that Chief Olson had been repeatedly asked for separation from the counter-protesters.
- I told Wennstrom about specific assaults and harms to attendees, mostly from a dozen violent bad actors; she had been under the impression that women were exaggerating, citing a case she had been shown of a woman pointing to bruises on her arm that were weeks old.
- Wennstrom strongly objected to the idea that council had “directed” police not to help women being assaulted under their watch, saying neither council nor mayor has that authority and the city manager provides the police chief general policy. I reiterated that witnesses and video heard a police officer refuse to go into the crowd to help women, saying he’d been directed not to, so the question is who directed him. (That made me wonder whether Olson and/or Mauro might have been so concerned over threats council was receiving that they felt no officer could be spared from protecting council and its property.)
- Wennstrom felt that legally there was nothing council could have done about the pool issues, since it is on property leased from the school district, controlled by the School Board, and managed by the YMCA.
- She wished that Julie Jaman had gone through channels instead of escalating with an outside demonstration, council, Tucker Carlson, etc. resulting in doxxing of council and Y staffers, lives messed up, city disruption, the pool still being closed, budgets being drained that provide protection at events, etc. (I neglected in the time available to go into how Jaman did try to talk to YMCA management first, did try to get the Leader to publish her letter, etc. but was completely stonewalled.)
- Wennstrom courteously heard out my opinion that mistakes might have been made on both sides, particularly that the YMCA messed up banning Jaman lifetime on the spot without due process, and city council messed up on August 1 by dismissing folks as bigots for expressing their honest narrow concerns about women and kids feeling safe in public bathrooms. Wennstrom said she heard someone say “trans people are pedophiles” at council and that set her off; I replied that I don’t think I heard anyone say that, but even if one person did, that’s not what other public commentators were saying, but they were all getting smeared with the same brush.
We’d been talking for a little while and it was getting cold, but as we were winding down three of her friends joined her, so we parted on pleasant terms. I appreciated her taking the time to talk with me and being open to respectful and factual feedback.
On my side, I hadn’t realized the extent to which city personnel were feeling terrorized and overburdened by all the negative feedback, doxxing, and publicity they’d been receiving. I also felt a little impressed how they continued trying to keep a stiff upper lip and take care of city business in a professional way, as seen by generally exemplary disposition of their straightforward council agenda on September 6.
by Stephen Schumacher | Aug 8, 2022 | General
Mayor David Faber opened the Port Townsend City Council’s August 1 meeting by moving public comments to the top of the agenda in consideration of the many members of the public present intending to comment. Nearly an hour of comments concerned YMCA management of Mountain View Pool, the subject of past and future Free Press reports, so here’s what happened during the rest of the meeting.
In non-YMCA comments, disabled musician Mark Daniel Hoskins described the city harassment he’s experienced while performing and in his own trailer. State law allows 71 decibels in mixed residential areas like downtown, so he asks why he is harassed for playing near the ambient loudness in a town that is promoted as being artist-friendly. He is not breaking laws and just wants to be left alone to perform his music.
Jaisri Lingappa remotely attended the July 18 council workplan retreat, but found the audio was incomprehensible leaving no detailed public record of an important all-day planning meeting that covered affordable housing. She noted that currently touted developments on Madrona Ridge and Cook Avenue are almost certain to be unaffordable. She requests a redo discussion at an upcoming council meeting with proper audio, and that councilors make their stands and plans available to the public.
Stephen Schumacher asked how many PT police officers have resigned or retired in the past two years, whether exit interviews were conducted with the departing officers, whether summaries of such interviews are available to the public, and how many city officers have left for Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and Kitsap County positions.
In response to public comments, City Manager John Mauro apologized for the audio at the retreat, but members of public could and did attend in person, materials and minutes have been posted, and the public is invited to participate in the city/county/port/PUD conversation about housing on August 18. Regarding police staffing, he intends to bring a status report to council from the police chief later this summer, having made some good progress there.
Taking Care of Business
Following an executive session to discuss an employee’s performance, the council discussed and unanimously approved several items of new business:
- Contracting with GeoEngineers to perform a seismic stability study (required by the State Dam Safety Office) costing up to $134,000 (all but $47,000 paid by a FEMA grant) on Lords Lake’s poor-condition East Dam.
- Disposing of $31,638 unused COVID-19 Financial Assistance Utility Bill Relief Grant funds ($25,000 from the Utility Fund, $8,138 from community donations, only $1,455 ever used to help people). Staff proposed clearing the books by offering debt relief grants to about 15 utility accounts averaging $1,900 in arrears due to lockdown impacts (2/3 residential, 1/3 landlords or small business), with remaining funds sent to OlyCap. Normally such gifts of public funds would be prohibited, but the State Attorney General allowed public funds to be spent for “promoting public health which may have an incidental benefit on private citizens.” Councilor Libby Wennstrom would like council to learn from this experience, where it set up a large amount of money that couldn’t be optimally used. Deputy Mayor Amy Howard clarified the original program limited grant amounts so the most number of recipients could benefit, but it should have been reviewed after 1 not 2 years.
- Extending deadline from August to October 1, 2022 for proposing to levy up to $900,000 in additional 2023 property taxes out of the “banked capacity” that would have been paid annually to East Jefferson Fire Rescue prior to its 2019 annexation agreement (note $600,000 was levied in 2022).
- Contracting up to $100,000 from the Stormwater Utility Fund to repair extraordinary June 5 storm damage to Walnut Street (between T and V Streets) and to the Logan Street storm pond outfall.
- Relinquishing an unnecessary utility easement to clear title for 346 Logan Street (which should have been done 60 years ago when 4th Street was vacated).
Transportation Improvement Board Grant
Public Works Director Steve King asked council for authorization and guidance applying for this year’s big state transportation grant. From staff’s summary statement:
Every year the City has the opportunity to apply for street improvement grants through the Transportation Improvement Board (TIB). This grant source is one of the primary funding sources for street improvements throughout the last 20-30 years. Projects like F Street, Water Street, and more recently Discovery Road (2021) are largely funded by the TIB. … Small funding amounts are highly competitive under the Sidewalk (Active Transportation) and Pavement Preservation programs. Higher levels of funding are available through the urban arterial program. … Grants are highly competitive. Receiving funding in 2023 will be challenging; however, submitting an application is the only way to ensure the possibility of receiving funds.
Key grant criteria include:
- The street must be a Federal Aid route (arterial).
- For the Urban Arterial program and the pavement preservation program, the street condition must be poor.
- The project will score higher if it addresses a high volume of traffic, pedestrians, and cyclists.
- The project scores higher if it addresses a safety problem or a substandard street.
Staff described their list of projects that might score well, including 7 to repair pavement:
- W Street — Cherry to Walnut
- San Juan/49th — Admirality to Fairgrounds
- Washington Street — Van Buren to Sims
- 12th Street — Landes to Sheridan
- Tyler Street — Jefferson to Lawrence
- Lawrence Street — 19th to F
- San Juan — 19th to F
… and one to enhance crossings and calm traffic:
- 19th/Blaine Street — Sheridan to Walker
Since staff had concerns about delivering a quality application on the first four (which are much larger Urban Arterial pavement projects), it recommends applying for either the Tyler or 19th Street projects. Grants have a 15% match requirement paid from Real Estate Excise Tax funds.
King emphasized that it’s always helpful to make TIB applications, since they garner helpful feedback even if not successful, but staff feels stressed to get this one in before the August 19 deadline. Ideally the city would receive a big grant like for Discovery Road every 3 years, and a smaller one every year between.
Councilor Owen Rowe asked about possible traffic calming measures on 19th Street, and King answered they “could be islands, raised crossings, bulb-outs, tables … could do safety islands in the middle.”
Rowe also asked about the concurrent Safety Grant for 19th Street, which King explained was for a planning study, saying “If we don’t get the Safety Grant money, then we would need to fund that study to make sure we get it right in the public process, but at least this [TIB] grant would give us implementation dollars.”
Transportation Grant – Public Comment
In public comment, Schumacher asked how patchwork pavement repairs, newfangled projects like Edge Lane Roads (ELRs) preserving not repairing pavement, and big-ticket TIB grants fit together. He’s unclear whether the city has the money to do basic bread-and-butter repairs without depending on grants. There’s general discontent about roads not being fixed; looking at ELRs and the traffic-calming islands put on Washington Street that just make you go a little slower, they look pretty, but don’t seem cost-effective compared to just fixing the roads. So he wonders about the actual realities on the street and how these big grants relate to the city’s regular repair program.
Debbie Yanke commented, “The intersection of 19th Street and Landes is the only place we’ve had a bicycle/car fatality in our city. I’ve sat at that intersection, having cars going both directions on 19th, both directions on Landes, with pedestrians involved, and bicycles, in both directions. And yet on Landes at 14th we have 3 crosswalks within 50 yards on Kai Thai. So I’d really like to see crosswalks for safety purposes at Landes and 19th, and wherever else on 19th it can occur.”
King responded that grant applications are periodic, not part of normal maintenance, but it’s great when a grant can take a big pavement repair job off our list. Rebuilding Lawrence Street will cost an arm and a leg, but if some pavement had been preserved, it would only cost an arm. Safety improvements can be achieved by striping at no additional cost. So the city is trying to get the best outcome it can by marrying grants within its comprehensive maintenance program.
Faber clarified that traffic calming on Washington Street was paid predominantly by neighborhood donations.
Counselor Libby Wennstrom provided an educational response:
I get this question a lot, so it tells me that people don’t understand this. Prior to 2003, municipalities got a great deal of street funding from the state, and with the rollback on car tab fees, that funding disappeared. And that’s the point at which municipalities – and it’s not just Port Townsend, but everywhere in Washington – stopped being able to repair our streets. People say, we haven’t fixed these in 20 years – that’s why.
Port Townsend has a unique challenge, most cities of our size and tax base have far fewer miles of built road. I believe we have 88 miles of paved roads here, and a city of 10,000 people would normally have half that or less. … We don’t begin to have the budget to fix these.
Do we pay $900,000 to pave one mile, or do we use that for grant match money so we get 20 times our amount? So that’s part of our tap dance that’s happening here.
This is how we’re going to be able to fix the streets. And if you’ve got real problems with street funding, you need to take it to the state legislature, because that’s where that’s going to get fixed.
Transporation Grant – Discussion and Decision
As the meeting was running long, Faber asked each councilor which project they’d support on the grant application.
Wennstrom deferred to staff’s expertise, but when pressed went for 19th Street as “the area of greatest pain.”
Rowe said, “These are all fantastic projects, it was when I got to 19th Street – that’s the one we’ve got to do. As Ms. Yanke pointed out, we have actually had a bicycle fatality there, and it’s been recognized as a problem area for a long time. So if we can have any chance of getting funding to address that, that’s the one to go for.”
Amy Howard expressed that, “19th Steet is bizarre, it is built like a race track. I catch myself going down it and going, ‘Oh no!’ and having to brake. And I try to follow the speed limit. … That is a place where we have a known issue.”
Councilor Monica MickHager agreed with 19th Street, since “it hits the most bullet points the way I read them.”
Councilor Aislinn Diamanti also agreed with 19th Street, but would love for the next big project to be on Washington Street.
Councilor Ben Thomas explained, “I pretty much fall with everyone here on 19th. I’m concerned about developing a piecemeal approach to traffic calming. This Washington Street thing has come up a few times, I think rightly so – it’s one of those gifts we’ve given to the public to unite everybody, unfortunately, against us. [general laughter] I don’t know how these choices were made before my time. Do we have a sense of an ongoing strategy for traffic calming? That [19th Street] seems to be the #1 street in town that’s way out of balance with the speed limit and the desired speed there. So it seems really important, but I want to make sure we’re ready to do something that will look good 20 years from now.”
King replied that “The comprehensive street program is going to have a chapter dedicated to traffic calming. There is no one size-fits all on traffic calming, you need to really figure out the psychology of the street and why people are speeding. We want a cohesive effort on 19th Street. And that’s why we applied for the study money to develop a cohesive plan before we implement. We’ll need to do that regardless if we get the study money or not, need to budget accordingly with the TIB grant.”
Thomas asked King “for clarification what we as a city have contributed to the Washington Street roundabouts. The question keeps coming up, and I keep telling people we didn’t really pay for them, but have of course have maintenance to deal with. Am I wrong to say we did not pay for them?”
King answered that “the traffic calming islands on Washington Street were funded by the neighborhood; the city provided staff time, part of that for testing it out. It’s basically modeled after the Seattle traffic-calming circles that they have in their neighborhoods. I try to use the term ‘traffic calming island’ because they are really not a roundabout. They’re really designed to obstruct the line of view, so you don’t have that open runway look on the street. … yes, the maintenance is ours.”
Faber agreed that 19th Street is essential, but wondered what is the cost difference between the Tyler and 19th Street projects. King answered that 19th Street would be a little more expensive.
Faber figured it would have been the other way around, so concluded, “If 19th Street is more expensive, then that settles it. I was going to suggest, if it would be more cost effective to take the same money for Tyler Street, and then just ask that maybe 19th Street could be considered in some of the annexation dollar project so we could do both – but great … do the expensive one.”
However King clarified that banked capacity can’t be used on federal aid routes like 19th Street, whereas TIB grants can’t be used on anything but federal aid routes.
MickHager began moving to support a TIB grant application for 19th Street project with up to $75,000 match from Real Estate Excise Tax funds, when King interjected that the match needed to be increased to $150,000 to correct an error in the staff report. With 15% match, 19th Street could be a million dollar project.
Incorporating this amendment, MickHager moved, Wennstrom seconded, and council approved unanimously.
Request for Reconsideration
As the meeting wound down, I felt uneasy about the decision to focus this year’s big street improvement grant on slowing down 19th Street instead of repairing roads in bad condition, so I wrote council on August 4 requesting reconsideration of their choice:
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Dear City Council,
Thanks for your thoughtful consideration on August 1 about Public Works’ application for a matching Transportation Improvement Board (TIB) grant. The council chose to pursue a $150,000 project for “Sheridan to Walker enhanced crossings at Discovery, Landes, and San Juan [that] could include traffic calming measures on 19th Street.”
However, I’m concerned this choice would prove a costly waste of resources, which council could avoid by choosing any other project on Public Works’ list.
What’s wrong with the 19th Street project? Every other listed project focuses on our city’s critical need to fix streets and rebuild pavement, but the 19th Street project just aims to interrupt traffic flow and slow speeds on this arterial.
The poster child for the 19th Street project was a cyclist fatality near the 19th and Landes intersection. But that was a freak accident where a driver didn’t notice an adjoining cyclist and turned in front of him. Since the cyclist ran into the car and not vice-versa, reducing vehicle speeds or enhancing crossings would not have affected this accident. So the project does not in fact address “a safety problem or a substandard street” that scores higher on key grant criteria.
As a cyclist myself, I feel very comfortable biking on 19th Street, since it has great visibility with generous shoulders and bike lanes. Its pavement is in good condition, and its crossing lines only need paint touch-ups, not $150K of artisanal enhancements. Our city has many other roads in much worse shape that are crying for attention.
The councilor who moved this project wishes “to lower the speed limit to 20 miles an hour … on all our streets.” Is that really what our city wants or needs? Even if a lower speed might be good in some backwaters, why start with an expensive project to calm speeds on one of our best-designed and safest arterials?
As Public Works said in its submission, these grants are highly competitive and cost staff up to $10,000 to prepare, so the city needs to take its best shot. But the 19th Street project fails most of the key grant criteria that “the street condition must be poor” or “it addresses a safety problem.” If the 19th Street proposal goes forward, I (and likely others) would write to TIB explaining the project’s flaws, further reducing its chance of winning the grant.
Under the circumstances, I urge council to switch its TIB grant application to the Tyler Street Pavement Preservation Project (which was staff’s other top choice) or any other project on the list that actually repairs pavement on our decaying city streets. |
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Speeding problem or speed limit problem?
Years ago I attended a traffic planning meeting where expert consultants advised raising the speed limit on 19th Street to the 85th percentile of traffic speeds per transportation engineering best practices:
Research shows that the speed limit has little effect on how fast people drive. … While many drivers ignore speed limits altogether, others do try to follow them out of a sense of safety or obedience. This difference in speeds is actually more dangerous than if everyone were driving at a faster speed. We’ve all felt the frustration of being behind slow drivers and annoyance at aggressive drivers weaving through traffic. Both of these situations are dangerous and make traffic worse.
Raising the speed limit also has other benefits. It improves credibility of the speed limit sign if it consistently marks a reasonable speed for most drivers, not the speed at which politicians wish they would drive. It also improves relations with law enforcement. Rather than having to reflexively brake when seeing a police car, or worrying about selective enforcement of speed laws when everybody is traveling over the speed limit, rational speed limits mean that average drivers can simply go about their business. No one should have to worry about being pulled over for driving in a safe manner.
I wonder about the rationale now for reducing speeds on this arterial whose speed limit is arguably already too low. Does 19th Street really have a bad safety history over the decades?
Reading old Leader articles about the 2018 tragedy where a bicyclist flew over his handlebars into a car that turned in front of him, an accident that could have happened on any street in town and where car speed was not involved, it seems perverse to use this singular tragedy to prioritize up to a million dollars worth of irrelevant “safety islands”, “raised crossings”, “bulb-outs”, and “traffic calming” on a safe arterial in preference to repairing pavement or widening shoulders on roads that really need fixing.
Much of this is based on the backwards notion that if the majority of drivers have a hard time staying inside the speed limit on 19th Street, that proves there’s a dangerous safety crisis on this arterial — whereas the 85th percentile engineering approach takes this to indicate its speed limit has been set too low.
I drive or bicycle along 19th Street nearly every other day, and I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it having any problems or “speeders” going more that 5 mph over the limit. It’s been probably my favorite stretch of road in town for forty years, and is practically perfect as it is, not Port Townsend’s #1 problem to solve. There is no need to mess with 19th Street and make it worse, at great taxpayer expense.
Give 19th Street some love and some paint and occasional maintenance, and it’ll be okay.
by Stephen Schumacher | Jul 12, 2022 | General
The Port Townsend City Council’s July 5 meeting centered around a potentially wide-reaching project to calm speeds by replacing double-lane streets with single-lane two-way “edge lane roads”, following a revealing Public Works experiment performed on Blaine Street.
The meeting began quietly as council recused itself into executive session for 15 minutes to discuss the legal risks of a proposed action. Upon council’s return, Deputy Mayor Amy Howard as chair opened the meeting up for general public comment.
Stephen Schumacher urged continued attention to police staffing issues. Again seeing only one other unmasked face in the room, he summarized how much-cited CDC mask effectiveness claims are based on cherry-picked data, exposed by a new Lancet review of the full data set showing masks actually increased cases, echoing randomized controlled trials finding masks provide no significant viral infection protection. Lying with statistics undergirds masking propaganda, obfuscating the fact that viruses freely flow through and around conventional face coverings.
City Manager John Mauro responded to public comment by noting that the CDC recommends masking but it is not required, so people can make their own choices.
The first action item was a public hearing on Resolution 22-029 to adopt the 2023-2028 Six-year Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). Public Works Director Steve King explained that each year the city must submit its STIP to the State listing proposed projects and costs so they can be eligible for grants, since needs typically exceed available funding. This year’s STIP identified 47 projects costing $93 million. Councilors Ben Thomas and Aislinn Diamanti moved and seconded, then the resolution passed unanimously.
Idle Ban Again
In unfinished business, Ordinance 3292 banning 3+ minute vehicle idling on property open to the public came back for a second reading, having added emphatic intent language that:
The City Council encourages education rather than penalties in the enforcement of this Chapter, particularly for first offenses.
In public comment, Schumacher said he’s not thrilled about the freedom aspect of criminalizing what people do inside the privacy of their own cars. There are endless good reasons why someone might want to idle for more than 3 minutes to keep warm, recharge batteries, etc., and this measure disproportionately affects elderly and disabled people. It’s unlikely anyone will get charged given the numerous exceptions, but having victimless crime laws on the books is a dangerous practice that can lead to selective enforcement. Perhaps a health case could be made for restricting idling in congested areas like school pickup zones, but not elsewhere. He wished one of the student initiators could have attended council to advocate for their proposal.
Thomas echoed some of this comment, appreciating text added to clarify “the point of this is to educate not to penalize”; he still feels a little torn, but it’s great that kids are getting involved.
Councilor Monica MickHager felt likewise, thanking staff for hearing council discussion by adding a really nice ending sentence under Intent; she shared her surprise finding herself no longer idling while waiting for coffee now that she “got educated.”
Councilor Libby Wennstrom described similar educational benefits seen while waiting at ferries, dumpyards, and banks.
Howard related catching herself doing the same thing; she appreciates this now being in the forefront of her mind and hopes it will land in the forefront of others’ minds as a very small thing that can be done.
MickHager moved, Wennstrom seconded, and the finalized ordinance adding Chapter 10.08 to the PT Municipal Code passed unanimously. Howard drew laughs by quipping, “If the kids were here, they’d give it a round of applause.”
Staffing Resolutions
Several ordinances and resolutions were designed to beef up and reorganize staffing and its compensation:
- Ordinance 3293 replaces the Deputy Clerk (sharing the City Clerk’s meeting and records management duties) with a Public Records Officer (PRO) specializing in responding to increasing Public Records Requests and storing accessible digital records, allowing the City Clerk to focus on meeting management. The timing is good while both Clerk and legal assistant positions are open. Councilor Owen Rowe asked whether Clerk and PRO would be cross-trained, which City Attorney Heidi Greenwood answered affirmatively. Rowe moved to waive council rules to allow approval at first meeting, Thomas seconded while thanking staff for thinking outside the box, and the ordinance passed unanimously.
- Resolution 22-030 further reorganizes by replacing the Finance and Budget Analyst (making $78,090-$99,817 per year) with an Accounting Manager ($83,516-$116,295), and the Public Works Project Manager ($78,090-$99,817) with a Civil Engineer II ($85,706-$102,846). MickHager asked the difference between a Civil and City Engineer, so King clarified that a Civil Engineer II is a licensed engineer with a low number of years of experience, Civil Engineer III has more experience, and City Engineer includes managerial competence. Wennstrom noticed the “pretty big” salary range change, so asked about the budget impact if the city hires at the top end for both of these; Finance Director Connie Anderson responded that increased levels of responsibility justified that, and vacancies this year are helping to cover amounts in 2023. MickHager appreciated the great job restructuring and moved to approve. Diamanti seconded, and the resolution passed unanimously.
- Resolution 22-031 authorized a 2022-2023 Teamsters Union contract for police wages and benefits, as negotiated by Anderson, Human Resources Officer Pamela Martinez, and Chief Thomas Olson (all present for this agenda item). Mauro said collective bargaining agreements are complex, so he was glad to have this team on it. Anderson said the emphasis was on retention and recruitment. Wennstrom noted wages changes start July 1, while benefits became effective January 1. MickHager moved, Thomas seconded, and the resolution passed unanimously.
- Resolution 22-032 authorizes an accounting contract up to $35,000 with CPA firm TDJCPA. Anderson noted the city was missing a Finance Manager since last summer until a replacement was hired in January and Anderson arrived in March, so TDJCPA would help her fill that gap, put in controls, and build her team going forward. Wennstrom asked if this was included in the budget and would be ongoing. Anderson answered it was not in the budget, but the money is already covered by a position not yet filled; whether to renew will be re-evaluated, since TDJCPA provides a lot of services to fill in gaps for small communities. Rowe moved, MickHager seconded, and the resolution passed unanimously.
- Long-line road stripe repainting was contracted out to the low bidder despite being $25,000 over budget due to pent-up demand and significantly higher fuel and paint prices. Wennstrom moved to proceed with reduced project scope per staff recommendation, Thomas seconded, and council approved unanimously.
ADU Parking Relief Delayed
New Planning Director Emma Bolin turned it over to Planning Manager Judy Surber to report back about amendents to PT Municipal Code 17.72 requested by council on March 14 to eliminate ADU parking requirements. The Planning Commission asked to broaden the scope of parking-related changes to include boarding houses, multifamily homes, B&Bs, etc.
Rowe and Diamanti were concerned how slight a delay this would be for their ADU priority, and agreed that anything arising that might bog down the process should be skipped. Thomas wanted a time limit, and Diamanti suggested 3 months.
Wennstrom wondered whether parking places should always be required to be paved with gravel and asphalt; the goal was to make it easier for existing dwellings to add an ADU, but current parking requirements make that harder.
MickHager proposed just keeping it focused on ADUs and doing that well. Diamanti responded that she understands staff’s preference is to combine changes as a more effective use of resources, which Surber confirmed. Howard was disinclined to stop the Planning Commision from doing this work.
Wennstrom moved to task the Planning Commission to explore other parking code amendments in tandem with ADUs with a request to get back to council by November 2022. MickHager seconded and the council concurred unanimously.
Edge Lane Roads Presentation
Public Works Director King and his staff explained Edge Lane Roads (ELRs) as a tool to address public concerns about street repair conditions and traffic calming.
ELRs turn narrow roads where folks often walk into explicitly single lane roads, forcing cars to slow and negotiate any obstacles like oncoming traffic, pedestrians, bicycles, and deer. They work better as two-way roads to make folks more cognizant of slowing down for safer passing. Installation costs are less than adding pedestrian/bicycle shoulders or concrete sidewalks.
Most important for preservation of our pavement, with streets decaying from the outside in, ELRs give the remaining pavement a longer life, as vehicles no longer drive on the edge of streets.
Edge Lane Road Experiment on Blaine Street
Public Works installed an experimental Edge Lane Road on two blocks of Blaine Street between Tyler and Adams at the cost of $1,000 plus $15,000 for initial engineering, outreach, and research.
One thing Public Works would have done differently would be to put the doorhangers up before the temporary lane was put on Blaine. But there were good discussions afterwards and better understanding after explaining this is now just a single-lane road.
Neighbors shared a variety of comments and observations, such as:
- Why do this for an area that already has a sidewalk (not much used because it ends)?
- One of the neighbors saw 4 times that a car sped up to get ahead of a pedestrian.
- Another neighbor said speeds are now higher (perhaps not borne by data readings).
Speed monitoring revealed some curious and troubling results: average speeds dropped slightly inside the ELR Test Area, but grew substantially a block away, maxing out at 75.3 MPH!
King recommended keeping ELRs on streets with volume lower than 2,000 trips a day, at least to start, focusing on high pedestrian streets needing shoulder restoration. Due to the relationship between speed and severity of accidents, there’s big drop-off of dangers at 20 MPH compared to 25 MPH. Edge Lane Roads are a new tool, and staff appreciates feedback.
Edge Lane Roads – Public Comments
In public comments, Dan Burden said he went out three times to record what people were doing and what they thought, which was all positive. But what people saw was no change in speed, which surprised him. What’s wanted with traffic calming is to bring down the higher range of speeds. Burden offered great compliments to staff, since less that 1% of cities are doing this.
Schumacher thanked staff for opening his mind to these new ideas, but he’s concerned about arterials being deprecated. He related his experience attending a traffic planning meeting in the 90s where experts advised raising the speed limit on arterials like 19th Street to match the natural speed most people were driving, but the police chief vetoed the idea. There should be a balance to keep things moving along the arterials while making the backwaters safer. He’s also baffled by the 85% percentile speeds on Blaine from Quincy to Madison going up from 37 MPH (!) to 40 MPH (!!) right outside the ELR test region, since he hardly ever sees people drive more than 5 MPH above the speed limit in town.
Scott Walker said he’s generally supportive of the idea. In Austrialia, outback highways are one lane with shoulders, so if you see a truck coming, you move to the side, which works better than two lanes. He emphasized that paint is not a substitute for a physical separator. Blaine is a highly used street to get to Chetzemoka, so folks shouldn’t be asked to walk in the streets. Howard Street from Hastings to 35th has a huge amount of bicycles and pedestrians.
Edge Lane Roads – Council Comments
Thomas wondered what areas in town have more than 2,000 car trips per day; King replied that Landes Street by Safeway gets that. Thomas also wondered if striping would lead to more parking in ELRs.
Diamanti and Wennstrom asked about the $15,000 engineering cost; King replied that was the budgeted internal cost as if it came from an external engineering department.
Wennstrom asked about the 75 MPH maximum speed detected during the test. King replied it was an outlier, but staff was shocked and checked the equipment was working correctly.
Councilors brainstormed other parts of town they’d like to install ELRs, springing off of staff’s recommended list.
MickHager was glad Landes was taken out, but would like ELRs added in the areas around Castle Hill, Howard Street, McPherson Street, and Hancock Street near Memory Lane.
Wennstrom suggested one on Sheridan Street between Hastings and Umatilla. Rowe suggested around Cherry and Redwood Streets; he supports continuing with this and hopes it does become something accepted in town.
Thomas asked whether these are as good as a two-lane road with bike lanes on each side for safe bicycle usage. King replied that depends on the specific situation and condition of the shoulders; for streets like F Street it’s important to have separated bike lanes per Walker’s comment.
MickHager said she’s for this idea, and was very surprised that she didn’t get one positive response from anybody in her community! She wonders how to spread ELRs diversely to the community out into places like Castle Hill and North Beach, because most of the sites on the list are in the older part of town. She thinks people could get used to them if they were put in popular roads like 14th Street.
MickHager continued jokingly that she’s glad “you’re going to lower the speed limit to 20 miles an hour; please could we do that on all our streets? That’s how I feel about it. My family does not talk to me anymore, because that’s how I feel about it. They think I’m crazy, but I’m not!”
Wennstrom said that having cars parked on the side of streets in residential neighborhoods helps with traffic calming. She noted that 80% bicyclists on San Juan Avenue ride on the sidewalks rather than on the bike lanes. She laughed in incredulity that, “Wow, we took out all this parking and built these big huge bike lanes, and right on the sidewalk!”
Diamanti said that feedback has been a lot more favorable than the infrastructure committee was afraid of when they first started talking about ELRs. She thinks it’s a really smart option and a chance to be leaders.
Howard joshed that “she sincerely hopes whoever was driving 75 was experiencing some sort of an emergency, and not having a temper tantrum because we forced them to do something new.” She did try driving it herself, and the hardest part was the signage, which was too small if you were driving, so you had to slow down to look at it.
Howard added that the biggest problem is Americans are fiercely individualistic and try to get their car in front of others’, so we need to make this a community culture thing where we share our streets and make them accessible to everyone, which should be part of the messaging. She would like it if ELRs discourage giant delivery trucks: “Maybe narrowing it they’ll have a harder time and won’t use that one as much, preserving that pavement quite a bit.”
Wennstrom concluded that “it’s an educational opportunity. I remember, when we were first talking about putting in roundabouts, the screaming and yelling… and now people have pretty much got the feel for the roundabouts and see the value. So getting past that initial ‘whoa, that’s scary and weird,’ and some familiarity before it happens in your neighborhood, I think is a great idea.”
Closing Reports
Deputy Mayor Howard announced her election to the Board of Directors of the Association of Washington Cities.
City Manager Mauro reported about recruiting clerk, public records, and police officers. The city’s 2023 Workplan Retreat is being held Monday, July 18, 10am-4pm at the Northwest Maritime Center, and any member of the public is free to attend. The city is part of an electric network consortium getting a $4 million grant to build up fast chargers for electric vehicles.
Mauro ran through updates on large capital projects including Discovery Road, Kearney Street, Lawrence Street, Chetzemoka kitchen shelter, library, golf course, and optimizing City Hall for comfort and efficiency.
by Stephen Schumacher | Jun 21, 2022 | General
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UPDATE and CORRECTION: After talking this afternoon with Amy Yaley (JHC Director of Marketing and Communications), it appears likely that your medical data is NOT being sent to Facebook through Jefferson Healthcare’s MyChart portal, even though Facebook Pixel Code scripts are present on their regular web pages.
My original article statements were based on recollecting having seen Facebook scripts while inspecting my personal MyChart patient data, but the screenshots below that have evidence of Facebook scripts show the web address “jeffersonhealthcare.org“. If this page had really been from inside MyChart, then the web address would have been “wamt.myonlinechart.org“, as seen in the feature image above.
There are still some unanswered questions, and I am waiting to connect with the person who can answer them. I will update this story with any further clarifications.
What we are left with is that many hospitals around the country have websites that compromise patient data to Facebook, but at this point Jefferson Healthcare does not appear to be one of them.
[Original article text follows:]
Nonprofit technology watchdog The Markup discovered that “a tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites (33 of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America) has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information — including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments — and sending it to Facebook. … We found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook a packet of data whenever a person clicked a button to schedule a doctor’s appointment.”
This Meta Pixel tracker was detected inside password-protected patient portals such as the MyChart system provided by Jefferson Healthcare. Data breaches uncovered by the crowd-sourced Pixel Hunt project included:
When one real patient who participated in the Pixel Hunt study logged in to the MyChart portal…, the Meta Pixel installed in the portal told Facebook the patient’s name, the name of their doctor, and the time of their upcoming appointment.
When another Pixel Hunt participant used the MyChart portal…, the pixel told Facebook the type of allergic reaction the patient had to a specific medication.
Clicking on one button prompted the pixel to tell Facebook the name and dosage of a medication in our health record, as well as any notes we had entered about the prescription.
Clicking the “Schedule Appointment” button on a doctor’s page prompted the Meta Pixel to send Facebook the text of the button, the name of the doctor, and the search term we used to find the doctor: “Home abortion.”
When The Markup clicked the “Finish Booking” button…, the pixel sent Facebook not just the name of the doctor and her field of medicine but also the first name, last name, email address, phone number, zip code, and city of residence we entered into the booking form.
In addition, if a patient is logged in to Facebook when they visit a hospital’s website where a Meta Pixel is installed, some browsers will attach third-party cookies — another tracking mechanism — that allow Meta to link pixel data to specific Facebook accounts.
After learning about this potential problem, I signed in to my own Jefferson Healthcare MyChart account, which I’m told “offers secure online access to portions of your electronic health record”. By right-clicking and choosing the “Page Source” or “Inspect” option, it was easy to verify that Jefferson Healthcare’s MyChart webpages are laced with Facebook connections and scripts. See this screenshot:
Here’s another screenshot showing Jefferson Healthcare explicitly including “Facebook Pixel Code” for the Meta Pixel tracking software:
Note that HIPAA law “prohibits covered entities like hospitals from sharing personally identifiable health information with third parties like Facebook, except when an individual has expressly consented in advance or under certain contracts” — which has certainly not happened in this case.
I originally learned about this nationwide problem from Dr. Robert Malone’s substack, where he writes:
I was struck that patients should demand that their data not be entered into such systems. That a movement to return to data entry systems that are not corrupted by Meta, Facebook or Google needs to be jump-started.
As late as 2017, the government was actually worried about medical systems being hacked. But now? Where is our government in protecting patient’s rights?
Clearly, “we” the people can not rely on the US government. Therefore, we have to protect ourselves. Our doctors and hospitals are being encouraged to buy cloud-based, software solutions to “protect us.”
These medical providers also need to be educated — these large cloud systems-based solutions have been corrupted. The medical providers must understand that patients should be given a choice to opt-out of the system. The right to privacy extends to healthcare in its entirety.
The Free Press reached out to Jefferson Healthcare to inform them of this concerning situation and ask for comment. Despite being occupied in an all-day staff meeting at press time, Jefferson Healthcare was able to issue the following statement: “Our goal is to provide exceptional patient care to every patient we serve. Jefferson Healthcare complies with all laws and regulations protecting patient data. We are actively investigating.”
[Editors’ note: The Free Press will update this article as more information becomes available.]
