by Mark Grant | Feb 14, 2025 | General
I would like to take this opportunity to review for the citizens of Jefferson County the processes thus far associated with addressing our community-based aquatic facility desires, and to re-evaluate the current plan for the development of a mid-county aquatic facility. I will also consider the options for the decommissioning of the Mountain View Pool, and look at the future and ongoing use of Mountain View Campus as a whole.
The Process Thus Far:
Some Steps Forward, Many Steps Back
There have been many efforts, both performed by the private sector citizenry and public sector elected officials and staff, to maintain and enhance the aquatic opportunities for our community. For the most part, these efforts have been centered on the Mountain View Pool facility in association with the Mountain View Campus.
Through the mostly philanthropic efforts associated with Make Waves, and through the public-private efforts with earlier and current iterations of the Jefferson Aquatic Coalition (JAC) in partnership with the inter-local public agencies (i.e. the City of Port Townsend, Jefferson County, the Port Townsend and Chimacum School Districts, the Port of Port Townsend, the Jefferson County Hospital District, East Jefferson Fire and Rescue), there have been some steps forward.
Unfortunately, many steps backward have mostly neutralized and/or stymied the advancement of bonafide opportunities to develop a reliable community-based aquatic center/pool with its associated programs at the Mountain View Pool facility.
One such effort, performed by the Healthier Together Steering Committee (HTSC), as represented by a mostly inter-local government agency group and with an affiliation with the JAC, was to essentially rebuild the Mountain View Pool facility at a cost to taxpayers of $40-$50 million. This exorbitant project concept was described by many in our community as the “Taj Mahal” version. Due to an apparent lack of public support related to excessive costs and a lack of transparency, this concept fortunately failed, paving the way for more practical and county-wide representative options to be reviewed.
It is important that we, as taxpayers, consider the fiscal impact, let alone the time spent through human effort, that has been invested in the various aquatic facility concepts thus far — especially as it relates to the plans that are currently in motion for the mid-county aquatic facility option. Based on public records made available to me and through my continued involvement with the processes thus far, I have surmised that somewhere in excess of $1 million of taxpayer funding has been invested towards consultants, studies, and overhead (staff time and resources) in pursuit of these concepts.
It is likely that these efforts actually cost the taxpayers quite a bit more than one million dollars, especially if you consider monies that were spent with the earlier iteration of the JAC in association with public agencies during the attempts to locate an aquatic facility on property near the Kah Tai Lagoon. It is my understanding that most of the Make Waves organizational efforts and costs that were associated with refurbishing/rebuilding/improving the existing Mountain View Pool were mostly philanthropic in nature.
The Proposed Port Hadlock Aquatic Facility:
Up a Creek with No Buildable Plans
With the current mid-county aquatic facility plan, through an Inter-Local Agreement (ILA) between Jefferson County and the Chimacum School District, there will likely be an attempt to secure more funding in the form of a state grant (taxpayer money) for approximately $250,000 to be used for pre-design architectural and engineering plans in order to develop and understand the potential true costs for building the currently proposed mid-county aquatic facility. I must emphasize that these will not be buildable plans, and only informative in nature for a potential sales tax increase initiative.
This facility is proposed to be located at the Chimacum Creek Elementary School property, which is owned by the Chimacum School District. This will push the speculative taxpayers’ monies spent thus far to the $1.5 million plus range.
The current project funding methodology being considered is for bond acquisition for construction and for ongoing operations and maintenance funding. This would be facilitated by a potential newly-formed Public Facilities District (PFD) taxing district.
New Public Taxing District Pushes Increase in Sales Tax
The PFD will be the responsible agency for all things related to the new mid-county pool facility, and will draw its funding resources from a potentially voter-approved 0.2% increase to our county sales tax — going up from 9.1% currently to 9.3%.
I have been very vocal in my opinion that I do not believe that raising the sales tax for the construction of a new aquatic facility is the correct mechanism for funding any new development. Sales taxes, by their nature, are a very regressive form of taxation, hurting those who can least afford it.
The last question in the current JAC survey that is circulating asks the survey takers the following question: “Would you support a small 0.2% (20 cents per $100), county-wide sales tax (excluding groceries and prescriptions) that would fund a portion of the cost of constructing a new aquatic and recreation facility in Port Hadlock?”
The JAC survey, found here, minimizes the potential impact of a county-wide increase in sales tax.
Aside from the fact that this is the only question that addresses the fiscal impact that a new mid-county aquatic facility might have on our community, I found the use of the word “small” to be insensitive, disconnected, and manipulative.
Why? For many in our community, there is nothing “small” about a 0.2% increase in local sales taxes. For those who struggle to maintain housing, put food on the table, etc., a 0.2% sales tax increase adds up, and puts family budgets that are already strained closer to a breaking point.
Given that another new taxing district was recently formed, the Transportation Benefit District (TBD), it, too could generate an increase in county sales tax — to 9.4%. So with an allowable 0.2% add by the PFD in the future, the potential net increase could bring Jefferson County-based sales tax to 9.6%. Port Townsend city sales tax would essentially look the same for various and similar reasons.
Neglected Private Option Could Save
Half the Costs with No New Taxes
I have mostly been a proponent of a private/philanthropic funding mechanism for building a new pool and for utilizing a public-private partnership, with a long-term land lease arrangement for land procurement, and for ongoing facility operations and maintenance.
If a practical and functional multi-tank design for the potential new mid-county pool is considered — utilizing, as much as possible, existing technology and modular building systems designs — it would be very reasonable to consider that a new, turn-key, approximately 24,000 square foot pool facility could be constructed for around $10 to $15 million, using private/philanthropic funding for construction.
Aquatic facilities historically operate with a funding/budget deficit, so future annual fundraising along with other forms of municipal support will be required to fill the funding gaps for this important public asset. Using private/philanthropic funding as the basis for the construction, a public-private partnership could then be established for the ongoing operation and maintenance between the JAC and the public entities that benefit from the new facility.
A partnership between the JAC and Jefferson County Parks and Recreation Department could share some of the operations and maintenance costs, and also include other public agencies such as the City of Port Townsend, the Port Townsend and Chimacum School Districts, and potentially even Jefferson Healthcare and East Jefferson Fire and Rescue. All of the agencies would benefit by participating with the JAC and would be doing their part to support this community-based asset.
This privately funded option would also eliminate the need for the formation of the PFD, removing the need for yet another taxing district in our county.
This option is, however, in jeopardy of not being considered as a viable solution for building the facility. With the potential acquisition of state grant/public monies, the new construction of the project would have to be considered as a publicly-funded, public works project. Such a designation would increase the cost to build the new facility by approximately 30% to 40% — even as much as 50%, adding the potential for public works project-related inflated soft costs (A&E design services, project management, etc.) including municipal overhead.
The initial 30-40% upcharge would primarily be based on increased labor expenses as the labor rate for public works/taxpayer-funded projects are required to be set at the current prevailing wage rate. All told, an additional $4 to $7.5 million of public/taxpayer money would be needed for the construction of the new facility.
Port Townsend Aero Museum
Demonstrates Benefits of Private Funding
To put this in a frame of reference to make it easier to understand and to demonstrate the local real world applications that privately funding a project can have in our community, I would like to draw your attention to the Port Townsend Aero Museum (PTAM) facility located at the Jefferson County International Airport.
Beginning in 2003 with final completion of facilities expansions in 2023, my company, along with other local contractors, built for the PTAM approximately 32,000 square feet of new buildings. This activity included A&E design, permitting, project management, site work, infrastructure expansion, new buildings, testing, and occupancy approvals, all for just under $7 million (including Washington State Sales Tax) without one dime of taxpayers’ money.
The scope of work for the campus has a 24,000 sf main museum building, a 6,000 sf aircraft maintenance hangar, a 2,016 sf wing and fuselage painting and fabric restoration building, stormwater system with filtration vault, parking, 3 phase power, etc. The Port Townsend Aero Museum built this, again, without taxpayer money and without incurring any debt. They are also operationally sustainable through ongoing donations and through their youth mentorship program related aircraft restorations activities. The PTAM has a long-term lease arrangement for their ground with the Port of Port Townsend.
The PTAM facility and program represents a shining example of how a privately funded option for an amazing community asset can happen for our community when you are completely dedicated to the process.
When the founding directors of the Port Townsend Aero Museum were told by many, back in 2003 when their project was first conceived, that “it will never happen,” they took that as a challenge. Look where they are today.
Comparing Pool Funding Options:
Private, Sales Tax, or Property Tax
One other choice for a publicly-funded option is through the formation of a Municipal Parks District (MPD). An MPD can utilize, as its funding source, an increase in countywide property tax. While still a regressive tax, this is considered by some to be a less onerous approach to representative taxation, as those who have more typically pay more, and those who have less typically pay less.
The idea of an MPD was tabled by the Healthier Together Steering Committee due to pushback from various other taxing districts who stated that diluting the tax base potentially jeopardized their needs to raise our taxes in the future. I have a hard time with this concept as the community asset value of a new aquatic facility is considered by many to be an important addition for our community’s health, safety, and well-being.
Teaching our children how to swim, providing other after-school youth-related aquatic activities/sports activities/competitions, providing general public at-large aquatic physical health activities, providing a source of exercise and rehabilitation for our elders, etc., can be perceived as just as essential as some of the services provided by these other taxing districts.
The school districts would use the pool for sports and other youth programs, the hospital district would use the pool for therapy and rehabilitation services, the fire district would use the pool for training and other public safety activities.
All things considered, I would prefer no new taxes of any kind, whether through a sales tax increase (PFD) or property tax increase (MPD). With the philanthropic wealth that our community holds, there is no reason that any new pool can’t be privately built and funded into the future.
Here is my question about funding a new aquatic facility as we near the edge of point-of-no-return decisions:
Shouldn’t we be sure that we have considered, vetted, honestly and transparently evaluated, and educated the public towards what makes the most sense for our community — allowing them to be well informed in clarifying whether the new mid-county aquatic facility should be privately funded, PFD funded, or funded by an MPD?
What About the Mountain View Pool?
Throughout this new aquatic facility review process, the elephant in the room has always been the ongoing operation and maintenance and reliability of the Mountain View Pool. Based on the need for utmost clarity, transparency, and operation in good faith, going forward I have urged the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) to develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that states if and when the new mid-county pool facility becomes a reality, that the Mountain View Pool facility be immediately closed and decommissioned.
I firmly believe that our community is not capable of supporting two potentially competing community-based aquatic facilities. I believe that it is fair to ask for this MOU due to the previous lack of transparency that has occurred though other aspects of this community pool facility engagement process with the public. This MOU should be entered into between Jefferson County, the City of Port Townsend, the Port Townsend School District, and any other private or public agencies that might see some kind of value in continuing the operations of the Mountain View Pool facility.
Finally, I have been portrayed by some as being “anti-pool” based on my involvement and process recommendations in the past. I find this characterization to be unfair and farthest from the truth.
This characterization may have come based on my comments regarding where I feel a new publicly owned pool currently fits into our community responsibilities and priorities. I do believe that an aquatic facility for our community is an important and essential asset, especially given our aquatic geography.
However, especially on these cold winter days as I hunt-and-peck my way through this writing in my warm home/office, I also think about those who, for whatever reason, have been displaced and struggle with housing.
If we prioritize responsibly and efficiently and think outside of the box, there is no reason that our community can’t accomplish two things at once here — i.e. the building of a new mid-county aquatic facility, and coming up with creative and humane ways of taking care of those who are marginalized in our community.
One possible solution could be right under our noses, that being repurposing of some elements of the Mountain View Campus. Not as market-rate housing as has been suggested in the past, but as a housing and campus facility to provide affordable housing and transitional housing for those in need.
The Mountain View Campus has many amenities already in place, i.e. the food bank, cafeteria, classrooms, bathrooms, showers, public services and security through the resources at the police department, developable infrastructure opportunities for potential new affordable housing construction, easy access to public transportation, the hospital, grocery shopping, etc.
We have an opportunity as a community to fulfill important responsibilities here, if we briefly step back, re-evaluate, and reconsider all of the options that could be on the table.
Rush to Tax Disrespects Taxpayers,
Could Mean Another Failed Attempt at Public Buy-in
We should not rush to a solution of our community-based issues just because we think there is some tool available to move in a direction that is not completely thought through. We need to ask what the primary objectives are of our community as a whole, and develop a practical, fiscally responsible, and sustainable path towards accomplishing those objectives.
The BOCC will be given a staff workshop presentation by the Jefferson County Administrator regarding the possibility of forming a PFD at the regularly scheduled BOCC meeting on February 18th (slated for the afternoon session). I do not believe that action will be taken at this meeting, and subsequent meetings and hearings will be held leading up to a meeting on Monday, March 10th. Please make your concerns about this issue known to the commissioners through public comment either in writing (get written comments in a day or two before any given meeting), or by attending one of the meetings in-person or virtually online.
I encourage you as the citizenry of Jefferson County to urge our elected leaders and officials to make sure we have all of these issues well thought out and resolved before taking any further actions related to aquatic facility development… and before it is too late to turn back.
Most importantly, if we think all of this through, publicly and privately together, coming up with the most optimal plan, our community will undoubtedly respond by supporting the decisions that are made in the future on how to move forward with these objectives, and with everyone’s best interests in mind.
I cannot figure out why there is such a concerted effort to ram the current mid-county aquatic facility concept through on the back of the taxpayers. The reluctance to listen to sound advice regarding the thoughtful and thorough considerations of all funding mechanism options — especially the private option — shows a level of arrogance by those who are facilitating the process, and disrespect towards the taxpayers as well.
The dissemination of any new information that has been presented by the JAC and the BOCC for this current mid-county facility direction, has only trickled out at best, and in forums more representative of those who would unconditionally show their support. In my travels through different parts of Jefferson County, if I bring up anything related to the new aquatic facility, most of the time the reaction is that people don’t know anything about it, and that they thought the pool issue was dead.
If the BOCC, the JAC, and other associated community leaders remain blind to the concerns expressed here, I am afraid that this newly-directed effort will result in yet another failed attempt at public buy-in. That failure will have long-lasting consequences, making it even more difficult in the future to provide a new aquatic facility for our community.
by Ana Wolpin and Stephen Schumacher | Feb 3, 2025 | General
On July 29, 2024, The Food Co-op Board of Directors removed a BLM activist from its ranks in response to his threatening conduct toward the board’s direct employee, its general manager. The board’s self-policing took place in executive session to protect confidentiality of all parties concerned. In later communications, the board emphasized that the removal was:
because of his conduct, not his ideas about equity, belonging, and inclusion. Board members must follow our policies and our Code of Conduct, which all board members agree to abide-by when they join the board. If we do not hold ourselves accountable to our Code of Conduct, we cannot lead the Co-op or fulfill our responsibility to our member-owners. This decision was not made lightly, nor without effort to rectify the problems.
This core issue — that the board was responding to a conduct violation resulting in a hostile work environment — has been obscured in the fog of a harassment campaign, now a half-year in duration. Threatened and delivered by the ex-board member and his allies, the campaign has been waged at Co-op board meetings but mostly whipped up publicly for the past six months through relentless attacks in The Leader.
BLM Retaliation
Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County (BLM-JC) retaliated on August 8 with a long letter to the board packed with ideology, accusations, and demands. “Removing Cameron Jones as a Board Member, ” they wrote, demonstrated the “systemic oppression” of “those who have identities beyond the patriarchal ableist heteronormative parameters of white-bodied supremacy.” Among the demands made by Black Lives Matter “Program Director” Jones and five other BLM directors was the removal of the general manager and board president and a requirement that the Co-op issue public apologies:
1) Replace the general manager and board president as soon as possible.
2) Publicly apologize to all employees, member-owners and board members who have been harmed.
3) Complete an overhaul of their policies and procedures through an equity lens that reflects their published values and operating principles with the guidance of an outside facilitator steeped in equity theory and praxis.
4) Provide ongoing training for employees and board members on matters related to equity and inclusion.
5) Conduct a series of listening sessions with target group members among constituent groups to identity relevant issues and actionable outcomes that will be reviewed quarterly until completed.
The letter closed with the threat that if the board did not agree to these demands within one week, they would “be forced to launch a campaign in response.”
Joining BLM-JC’s campaign were both Usawa consultants, one of whom is also a BLM-JC Director.
We’ve Seen This Playbook Before
Cameron Jones launched a similar campaign under the BLM-JC banner in 2022. A self-proclaimed BLM organizer, Jones had a history of run-ins with law enforcement. Documented incidents include being arrested for attempted residential burglary after trying to force his way into a private home, crashing into the closed Fort Worden gate on his bicycle when drunk, and conduct outside the Bishop Hotel which led to an employee calling police. (See “Black Lives Matter Leaders Generated Police Calls for Help, Investigation and Arrests.”)
These and other incidents culminated in Jones going on the offensive. On July 10, 2022, Jones sent an email purporting to represent BLM-JC to Jefferson County Sheriff Joe Nole and Port Townsend Acting Police Chief Troy Surber. His letter demanded that they pledge to realize a series of “intentions” which included disarming police officers and deputies. An email exchange with Sheriff Nole led to Jones taking his campaign to local radio station KPTZ to levy accusations of racism at Nole on a program called “The Reckoning.”
On July 30th:
“Nole endured Jones throwing at him wild, unsupported accusations such as Nole permitting White supremacy and vigilante groups to operate in the county, five Black men being lynched, and Nole imprisoning 30% of Jefferson County’s Black residents.”
An attempt to set up a Zoom meeting between BLM-JC, Sheriff Nole, Police Chief Surber, elected officials and others was cancelled by Jones, who upped his rhetoric instead. (See “Black Lives Matter Sought to Humiliate Sheriff, Police Chief.”) Jones now demanded that Nole and Surber take out a newspaper ad confessing to racism in “a direct and PUBLIC apology.” It was a classic oppressor/oppressed re-direct, trying to reframe the perpetrator as being the victim, in this case the victim of systemic racism. This saga was reported in the Port Townsend Free Press, but otherwise received little press coverage.
Jones’ attempted smear campaign fell flat when Nole and Surber refused to issue public confessions that they and their departments were racist. They also drew a line over disarming their officers.
The Food Co-op was much easier pickings. This time around, Jones and his BLM posse were abetted in spades by The Leader.
Leader Provides Unlimited Free Coverage for BLM’s Smear Campaign
August 7: The first peep appeared immediately after Jones’ removal in an unattributed 5-paragraph news brief composed entirely of quotes from Jones dissing the Co-op and saying he’d been “unexpectedly removed… without proper notice, documentation, or evidence… my removal seemed premeditated to silence dissent.”
August 14: The Leader followed up with two responses from Co-op Directors. Board President Owen Rowe explained that:
A Board member, Cameron Jones, jeopardized the working Board/GM relationship through his words and actions. From April through June, I and other Board members tried to work with Cameron. He would not acknowledge the damage his actions had done and he rejected repeated requests to repair the relationship. Instead, he continued to undermine every attempt of the Board to hold itself accountable.
By July, with the elected terms of several Board members who had witnessed Cameron’s actions coming to an end, I had determined to ask Cameron to resign from the Board — or ask those same Board members to vote to remove him…
I scheduled an executive session of the Board, giving the advance notice required by our Bylaws. Although some Board members raised schedule concerns, in the end every single Board member attended and participated in the meeting as originally scheduled. The required two-thirds of Board members approved the removal of Cameron Jones.
The lone dissenter Juri Jennings wrote that she resigned from the board afterwards because she disagreed with the decision and process, felt rushed, and wasn’t clear about the grounds for removal, saying “Cameron was a great board member” and listing several good “reasons I asked Cameron to be on the board in the first place.”
August 21: A letter to the editor (LTE) opined, with no evidence, that Owen Rowe’s recounting was “an obvious white-washing of what really happened… the GM convinced four Board members that she no longer wanted to deal with Mr. Jones and he needed to go.” The writer Denis Stearns failed to disclose his role as Registered Agent for BLM-JC, elsewhere suggesting the motive for Jones’ removal was racism: “The board lost two people of color… based on votes of people not of color.”
August 28: The lead LTE alleged that “the only Board Member of African descent was removed because he was supporting a trans person.” The writer said he’s “collaborated with Cameron on multiple projects and he sits on my board… dedicated to racial healing.”
September 11: Two new Leader trends emerged this issue: (1) front-page coverage and teasers promoting the “Turmoil at Co-op” narrative; and (2) lengthy opinion pieces reiterating BLM-JC campaign talking points about “The Co-op debacle” penned by The Leader’s regular “As I See It” columnist Jason Serinus.
The news story summarized Rowe and Jennings’ earlier pieces with commentary from Jones, adding from Co-op Secretary Lisa Barclay that:
“It was Cameron Jones who mistreated an employee, breaking the board’s Code of Conduct. … He was removed for his conduct, not for any other reason.”
Most of this news article presented the point of view of BLM advocates. In mentioning BLM-JC’s August 8 “letter to the board with grievances,” it tried to frame the list of demands as “requests, not demands,” neglecting to report the concluding ultimatum that they would “be forced to launch a campaign in response… if these requests are not agreed to by August 15.” And indeed, eight days later on August 16, BLM-JC “launched a boycott and a petition for member-owners to sign.”
Serinus’ column described the pressure campaign’s progress, including “Multiple organizations have called for a boycott of the Co-op and demanded the resignations… at least four informational meeting have occurred… and many Co-op members have aired their grievances at Sept. 4’s monthly Co-op board meeting.” He quoted Co-op GM Kenna Eaton describing Jones’ actions toward her as “threatening”:
“I felt I had to go to my boss, the Co-op board, and say I don’t feel safe in my workplace. His actions negatively impacted my ability to feel safe…
I know my board tried to work with Cameron. He would not accept that. He didn’t want to acknowledge it. And ultimately, I think that the board felt they had a fiduciary responsibility to make the decision they did. I didn’t ask them to do it. That was their decision.”
Serinus ignored workplace safety and fiduciary concerns, concluding “the Co-op erred grievously in removing Jones, one of its most forward-looking and proactive members. A small group of white people ousted the only Black director on the board… I urge the cisgendered straight white folk who govern the Co-op to understand that when oppressed people channel frustration into anger, it’s appropriate for its recipients to pause, breathe through fear, and accept that righting many centuries of harm is a messy but nonetheless essential affair.”
It is important to note that by Sep. 11 everyone involved either knew or should have known that there existed a credible allegation of threatening workplace behavior, which the Co-op staff and board were legally obliged to handle as they did. By all accounts, the Co-op bent over backwards to work things out with Jones… the grievance against the Co-op is that they didn’t bend far enough.
In the view of BLM-JC sympathizers — including the dissenting board member and Leader writers like Serinus — whatever Jones did or might have done doesn’t matter given “hundreds of years of oppression,” while the victimized employee and board members doing their jobs should be disbelieved, blamed, and relentlessly attacked until they bow to BLM.
September 18: In an open-minded LTE, the writer confessed that he came away from Serinus’ column “feeling that I still don’t know what happened… I say this with a great amount of respect: Maybe everyone needs to step back, and avoid suggesting the board is racist or transphobic, or even merely grossly insensitive, until we know everything that happened.”
September 25: A positive “We are listening” update LTE appeared from the Co-op President and GM, along with another blast from Serinus criticizing the board for “jettisoning a Person of Color for sharing ideas in tones that express the very marginalization you pledge to end.”
Regarding the question of “threatening” behavior, Serinus talked “to Jones at length to get his side of events,” eliciting a series of recollections that didn’t directly address the issue. At no point does Jones specifically deny threatening the GM; instead he described his efforts to avoid confrontation at a board meeting and a subsequent interaction where he claimed to apologize to the GM (who doesn’t recall any apology ever being offered).
October 2: The lead LTE identifies several ways Serinus’ last column “skews the narrative, devaluing the Co-op board… The narrative focuses on Cameron Jones’ perspective, portraying him as a victim. There is no room in this rhetoric for repair or redemption, only demands and accusations.”
November 20: BLM-JC continued its campaign by packing board meetings with antagonistic public comments and picketing the store, but The Leader took an election-focused break until Serinus’ column reported that “the ongoing campaign to achieve accountability and redress wrongs” was bearing fruit: Co-op President Rowe said he, “as an individual, will be meeting privately with Black Lives Matter… that will perhaps open the door to a conversation with the Board.”
December 4: An LTE replied to Serinus that “Cameron Jones was removed for hate speech, a code of conduct violation. Period. End of story. Racial politics have no place in a community food co-op… The only thing BLM achieved was burning down black neighborhoods in major cities enticing a self proclaimed race war… Gas-lighting people for having morals and standards is shameful no matter what your political bent may be.”
December 18: The Leader ran a trifecta of opinion pieces critical of the Co-op. Angela Gyurko welcomed that “the Dec. 4 meeting’s 90 minutes of public comment… gave board members and member-owners a chance to talk to each other.” She asked for a board statement along these lines: “We understand now that People of the Global Majority and folks with differing gender expressions in the county have had more negative experiences at the Co-op than we realized… We understand now that we must change our way of doing business, and move away from the rigid bylaws that have bound us… We therefore pledge to reform our bylaws so that they can never again be used to silence dissent.”
Five folks co-signed an LTE to publicly commend Serinus’ Co-op coverage and call the Dec. 4 LTE-writer critical of BLM racial politics a racist, suggesting he be censored and undergo re-education.
Serinus’ “ongoing saga of dismissal and injustice” asked a board member about her resignation, then berated the remaining board for “the potential harm of calling the actions of a BIPOC man in our community less than civil… Are not board members aware that their action, for some, has reinforced images of the big Black boogieman intimidating a poor innocent white woman? Are they not aware that expelling what was then their only Black member has, for some Black people, invoked the trauma of thousands upon thousands of heinous murders and lynchings for perceived offenses?… It is their duty… to set things right by meeting with Jones and BLMJC/WO, making amends…”
January 1, 2025: An LTE (from this article’s co-author, Stephen Schumacher), was “grieved by the continuing series of antagonistic opinion pieces run in The Leader“, where an “internal Co-op personnel matter has been latched onto in order to create a phony scandal via flimsy charges of systemic racism, etc., against the woke Co-op, which The Leader has been credulously channeling… Is it any wonder when confusion, suffering, and resignations result from these dispiriting harassment campaigns? The Food Co-op was founded in an era when color-blindness was the ideal, per Rev. Martin Luther King saying ‘I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’ BLM activists criticize the Co-op and others for doing just that.”
January 8: Former Co-op President Rowe wrote an opinion piece explaining his end-of-year resignation, recanting his past statements including that he was the decider who “had determined to ask Cameron to resign from the Board — or ask those same Board members to vote to remove him.” His new story was that “I was pressured to protect the staff and board from the community… now is the appropriate time to make way for a new general manager… Senior board members should follow my example and clear the way… I apologize for the harm my past actions and statements caused to Cameron Jones, Juri Jennings, Black Lives Matter Jefferson County/Well Organized, and Usawa Consulting.”
Two LTEs defended the Co-op. One praised staff and particularly GM Kenna Eaton for all the improvements and remodeling seen over the past 10 years, saying, “It is easy for all of us who shop there to take for granted our amazing selection of goods available in this small store but it requires outstanding leadership and a dedicated staff working daily.”
The other LTE likewise praised the store for “good food… support to farms and to the Food Bank… courteous, even friendly to all customers… no hate talk or political insults stain their business space.” It asked why The Leader gave Gyurko a featured opinion column pretending to speak for the “community” making demands over undefined “issues”.
A third LTE by Serinus attacked Schumacher’s Jan. 1 letter, misquoting it as having claimed Jones’ alleged abuse of staff happened “repeatedly”, when that word was not in the letter. He also attempted to discredit Schumacher’s perspective with the charge that he “failed to disclose his status as a former Co-op ‘officer'” (thirty years ago).
January 15: GM Kenna Eaton strongly disagreed with Rowe’s “misguided characterization of the Co-op’s, and in particular the board’s actions… Board members represent the interest of all our member-owners, not just a particular subset… no individual board member can act, make promises or speak for the board unless given the responsibility to do so by the board… While the board has been struggling with the criticism of some of our members (most of which has been based on rumor), things are going great at the store: We had record sales last year, gave a bonus to our team members and have $79,000 in our Farmers Fund… to help local farmers.”
She outlined steps the Co-op is taking this year for “creating a culture of diversity, inclusion and justice”:
- “Working with… a DEI consultant… on teaching effective engagement with diverse communities, creating empathy in the workplace, preventing burnout and communication strategies for difficult conversations”;
- “Working with local equity expert Beau Ohlgren, who will help us develop new training programs to make our store more welcoming and engaging for everyone”;
- “A six-session ‘Inclusion Inspiration Lab’ crafted for co-op grocery operations, looking for practical applications of inclusion in the Co-op”;
- “New staff groups for LGBTQIA+ team members… to promote belonging”;
- “Make our product selection more reflective of the changing diversity of our members… that fit our high product standards and are also more culturally rich.”
January 22: Cameron Jones’ guest column asserted “changes at Co-op don’t go far enough to address systemic change,” complained that two women “remain in their leadership roles,” and mentioned he is also part of the ItsMyCoopToo social media campaign.
An LTE expressed that “Co-op boycott ‘activists’ look… performative. There have been multiple articles by a former Co-op board member and other guests who have seemed to delight in the fact that their professional headshot and brooding language has been plastered all over The Leader for months. I attended a board meeting and witnessed white or white-passing individuals berating a board that contains two BIPOC board members… This activist group exists in an echo chamber and refuses to acknowledge the tangible work the Co-op has done in this community… Your activism clearly comes from a place of ignorance and privilege.”
Transparency Over BLM and the Removed Board Member
While the newspaper ran sometimes-weekly attack pieces, there has been NO examination of the attackers and their motives.
Black Lives Matter of JC’s initial threat to “launch a campaign” if their demands weren’t agreed to within a week was never even mentioned. What about this group that issued the August 8 ultimatum — and even attempted a boycott that could have put the store out of business — if the Co-op didn’t immediately kowtow to all their demands?
BLM is not a justice league of do-gooders immune from investigation or criticism, but a “fuzzily applied label used to describe a wide range of protests … or a loose confederation of groups advocating for racial justice” per Wikipedia. The national Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation was founded by self-described “trained Marxists” and evolved into what CharityWatch describes as “a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting” with no financial transparency and no documented board meetings. Its Wikipedia page details its long tangled history of fraud, scandal, and grift, partially recounted by New York Magazine in “The BLM Mystery: Where Did the Money Go?”
The local Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County describes itself as “a collectively run 501(c)3 organization which seeks to eradicate white supremacy, and ableist hetero-patriarchy. BLM-JC formed in 2020 in the aftermath of continued police brutality towards Black people in the United States and a recognition that white supremacist doctrine also manifests in a myriad of other institutions and systems which prevent economic, social, and political liberation for BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Color].“
Among feel-good bullet points like “Invest in Community” and “Economic Justice,” BLM-JC’s website promotes the 2022 campaign Cameron Jones initiated to “Divest From The Police.” That divestment continues to call for disarming the police as well as reducing the size of the police force. While the Port Townsend Police Department did not succumb to pressure to disarm its officers, its force reduced to half size in 2020 (see “PT Police Struggling Below Half Strength and Costing ‘A Lot More’“) as a result of actions by the Port Townsend City Council. The consequence was a department so understaffed, the city has had to pay the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department to cover shifts.
While demanding transparency from the Co-op, BLM communications and Leader columns have danced around the core conduct issues underlying this contretemps, being very careful to shield the person at the center from any criticism or scrutiny.
The Power of a Sensationalizing
Press to Do Harm
It is not to say there are no legitimate issues with how The Food Co-op Board of Directors handled Cameron Jones’ removal. There may well have been improprieties in the process, as alleged.
But early on, The Leader’s story ceased being about the board’s July 29 self-policing incident. Instead it became a relentless campaign to further an activist group’s ideological agenda (see “Culture Wars Besiege The Food Co-op“).
Removing a member from the board who violated its code of conduct — who happens to be a black man — was twisted to redefine the story as one of racial discrimination, once again reframing the perpetrator as being the victim. With The Leader unquestioningly supporting the ongoing attacks — and in the case of their regular columnist Serinus, even escalating them — Jones and his allies’ pressure and smears have had their intended effect.
The board president has resigned, with his requisite public apology issued in a Leader guest column. The general manager has not yet been replaced. But her obligatory newspaper apologia was full of conciliatory BLM jargon, listing all the steps the Co-op would be taking to offer more DEI training and facilitation.
And the latest news, reported in the Peninsula Daily News, is that a group of Co-op employees is attempting to unionize. Claims among disgruntled workers include a lack of workplace safety, wage inequality, and “mistreatment”. An example given was that a manager “shouted at” a worker who “said harsh words” to a customer who had “touched her without her permission.” Given such horrific mistreatment, the worker left not only the Co-op’s employ, but Jefferson County. This is the state of labor/management relations being reported.
Unionizing may be a positive step for the Co-op. Still, what role has The Leader played in fomenting staff unrest and division through its over-the-top publicity of BLM-JC’s ongoing assault? How much goodwill has been lost in our community in the process? And what has this harassment campaign cost the Co-op in real terms?
Operating on the slimmest of margins, a cooperative “Grocery & Deli” is now forced to divert precious resources to high-priced DEI consultants and legal counsel. That means less capital available for store operations.
Beyond financial consequences are impacts that can’t be quantified. For six months now, The Leader has fanned the flames of escalating factions at this small-town community grocery store.
The result? Harm against the Co-op. Distraction from pursuing the store’s actual food-oriented mission: “working together to nourish our community.” Focus redirected toward the BLM agenda. And resignations as the unending harassment takes its toll.
[Disclosure: Ana Wolpin was the first manager of The Food Co-op in the 1970s, and served on its board of directors in the late ‘90s during a period of internal upheaval that involved replacing the general manager. Stephen Schumacher was Co-op president in the early ’90s involved in reforming board/management roles confused by conflicts of interest. Neither have had any role since then except as member shoppers.]
by Keith Early | Jan 25, 2025 | General
What’s going on at the Co-op? Has a local institution that has admirably served the community for over 50 years finally been exposed for being a secret cabal of racist, transphobic bigots?
That, I think, is what a few people are inviting us to believe. So they have taken to the Leader’s op/ed pages in recent months to hurl vague accusations because the power dynamics at the grocery store aren’t operating exactly as these people think that they should.
They’ve talked about “harm” being done to employees and shoppers, without providing evidence or description of said harm. They’ve listed the management’s shortcomings in the realm of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — again without providing examples, and in the hope that we haven’t noticed that DEI has proven to be a somewhat problematic set of concepts that not just corporations and educational institutions are starting to reconsider, but which prominent black intellectuals like Glenn Loury of Brown University, John McWhorter of Columbia and author Coleman Hughes have for a long time openly criticized. For an excellent critique of these concepts, read McWhorter’s book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America, or Hughes’ The End of Race Politics.
In a recent op/ed, Cameron Jones who is a leader of Black Lives Matter Jefferson County (BLMJC) — and who has been alleged to have demanded the removal of an Hispanic man from his BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) yoga class because the man’s skin color was not quite dark enough for inclusion to this class — reiterated previous claims with the same lack of specificity.
He alleged “harm” but didn’t bother to detail the harm… or bother with the notion of evidence at all. He decried a lack of commitment to DEI and to community values without specifying examples. In short, he added to the smear campaign of Co-op leadership in a public format without evidence, perhaps hoping that he could persuade people to boycott the grocery store on the basis of his allegations alone.
Mr. Jones was forced off the board of The Food Co-op because a disagreement occurred between himself and the management.
Excerpt in The Food Co-op Board of Directors minutes book (available in the front of the store), from letter to BLMJC in 9/4/2024 meeting packet.
And now he wants you not to shop there until they satisfy his requirements that they are diverse, equitable, or inclusive enough.
Enough for whom? Well, Mr. Jones, of course — who has appointed himself the moral arbiter of Port Townsend.
If he can tell a man that his skin isn’t brown enough for BIPOC yoga, why can’t he tell a grocery store that they aren’t DEI enough?
As we all know, a cultural shift has happened over the past several years that has signaled that America hasn’t done enough to remedy deep-set racist, sexist, transphobic, or ableist attitudes and that people aren’t going to stand for it. Nor should we.
As Americans we can be proud to be living in the land of Frederick Douglass, MLK Jr., Harvey Milk, Elijah Cummings, Susan B. Anthony and so many others. We know we ain’t perfect, but we strive to be better.
For some people, striving to be better simply isn’t cutting it. This group demands that we adopt their views of the world, their way of communicating, and that we challenge power in the ways that they prescribe. In short, they demand adherence to an orthodoxy of their creation and when we don’t conform, we are accused of demonstrating serious moral shortcomings.
Who are these people?
Some — like Professor McWhorter — call them “woke,” or “identitarian.” They used to be called “politically correct.” They are a fundamentally illiberal movement. Regardless of the fact that we don’t seem to have an apt or well-fitting label for them at this time, I have observed that they seem to share similar hallmarks and can be detected by their methodology:
- Always focus on power differentials and view the world through the framework of oppression. There are only two types of people: the oppressed, and the oppressors. Use “victim” narratives as much as possible;
- Make everything about groups and not individuals. Make pronouncements about people based on their skin color, sexual orientation, gender etc. rather than the content of their character;
- Make vague accusations of harm (where those harmed are always members of a historically marginalized group). You needn’t bother with specific evidence because “words are violence”;
- Employ Mob Mentality: Use social media to try to get someone cancelled when they don’t adhere to your dogma;
- Appoint yourself as the authority on morality and virtuousness;
- Use diversity, equity, and inclusion as a cudgel you get to wield because your identity gives you insight that others don’t have so that you can demolish power structures and reorganize them according to your own values;
- Police other people’s language. Demand they use your vocabulary and prohibit them from speaking in ways you don’t approve;
- Rely on the collective guilt of gullible people to give your weak claims cover.
So, what’s actually happening at the Co-op?
You can’t really tell from all the accusations, recriminations, and moral bullying underway in the Leader and elsewhere, but for my money it seems pretty clear that someone with a particular ideological framework is attempting to force his views of the world onto other people who have different ideas in their head. And for the crime of thinking differently about notions of fairness, equity, justice, kindness, dignity and respect, this person is attempting to cancel them and/or get them fired, and enlisting any allies he can to do so.
Because their way of thinking — which is to say the old, liberal way of thinking — just isn’t good enough anymore. There is a new way of thinking now, an absolutist, intolerant morality that sees the ugliness in all of us, all of the time. It demands a purge of the old ideas, and it’s starting with a local grocery store.
Think about that for just a second. The culture wars have come to The Food Co-op.
As a public educator in a “progressive” school district, I’ve encountered these ideas frequently, and witnessed firsthand their impact on colleagues and students alike. While not yet a resident, I have property in Port Townsend, spend half of my summers with family in the area, and shop exclusively at the Co-op when I am there. I have a stake in the town and feel a deep connection to the place. I was moved to write because I feel what is happening to General Manager Kenna Eaton, the Co-op and the community is the result of really bad ideas finding a foothold in society.
In the end, regardless of what an asset it is to Port Townsend, the Co-op is simply a grocery store. If Mr. Jones wants to insist that others follow his moral instruction, then maybe he should aim his sights a bit higher and run for public office. Let the voters decide if they want to get embroiled in another round of identity-based politics. Good luck to him.
by Rod Stevens | Dec 2, 2024 | General
In the 1965 movie “Flight of the Phoenix,” the survivors of a plane crash in the Sahara make a new plane from the old one and fly it out of the desert. It was ten years ago this fall that I went to the new director of the Fort Worden Public Development Authority (PDA) and suggested that he needed a similar strategy for it to “fly” financially. Little did I realize then that it would take so long to crash and that the failure would begin so immediately.
Cleared For Takeoff
The PDA was an independent public agency set up by the City of Port Townsend with its own board of directors appointed by the city. Former city manager David Timmons put former planning director Dave Robison in charge of negotiating the transfer of Fort Worden from state government to the PDA. Robison, perhaps because he was eager to get the PDA director job, agreed to an onerous deal: that besides operating the core buildings, the PDA would also, in several years, take over the maintenance of dozens of old and unneeded buildings.
Using the “Flight of the Phoenix” analogy, I proposed to Robison that I would help him get a grant from state government to create a business and investment plan for financial sustainability. I believe that the PDA used about two-thirds of the grant for preparation of a site plan later used to justify glamping and Makers Square. The PDA had already begun to fail.
Not Enough Lift
Even with a greatly-reduced budget for the business and investment plan, I still took a deep dive into the numbers, analyzing where visitors came from, reconstructing the accounting statements to determine the relative profitability of different departments, and profiling competitors which went after the same group business.
I found big problems in the operations: that the accounting systems were almost useless for making management decisions about day-to-day operations and that the margins on those operations were grossly out of line with industry averages. The margins on the rooms, for example, which provide the bulk of operating cash flow for almost all hotel operations, were half the industry averages, and food and beverage operations were a negative 15 to 20 percent, and not near zero as they should have been. Overhead was twice the industry average.
Besides the management and accounting problems, I found two big problems with the property itself that meant that without substantial and carefully targeted investment, the PDA would never be able to improve the buildings, much less maintain dozens that were unnecessary.
First, there simply weren’t enough salable beds that with good margins would generate cash flow. The engine in the plane simply did not have enough cylinders. Barracks that could have been renovated to generate cash flow were given away to Peninsula College or left unused.
Second, there was nothing to do on rainy days at the Fort and there were no quality meeting rooms, which meant that the PDA could not sell off-season. I recommended good AV equipment, rainy-day amenities, and covered picnic shelters with fireplaces on the bluff where families could make memories together.
Flights of Fancy
Pétanque court installed on back lot.
My recommendations fell on deaf ears, for the new model for the Fort already seemed fixed: McMenamins hotels, which are targeted at adults who spend much of their stay eating and drinking. Close to a million dollars went into converting an old brig into a bar, and a new pétanque court went in on a back lot. The lowest cost for an individual booking soared to hundreds of dollars per night.
Using grants, donations, and a big loan from Kitsap Bank, the PDA put the big money into glamping and Makers Square, both fads of the time. Those projects not only distracted the board and staff from essential operational and accounting improvements, but used up the financial capacity for additional lodging, the financial necessity.
Interestingly, the PDA did hire consultants to prepare pro formas for glamping and Makers Square, but they were designers, not business people, and they made unrealistic or bad assumptions. For example, the pro forma for Makers Square projected that it would barely break even, but would justify itself by increasing room sales. The problem is that most of those sales would come in the peak season when those rooms were already sold. The cost overruns on glamping speak for themselves.
The $2 million glamping project featured these “luxury” tent sites projected to cost $125,000 each. Installations were never completed and though their expected life is ten years, only a few years post-installation the unused tents are already deteriorating.
Moral Hazards, But No Control Tower
The high and unpayable debt resulting from glamping and Makers Square highlights a moral hazard in state law: cities can set up PDAs that may benefit them, but they are not liable for the debt they may take on. This encourages them to take risks for which they do not bear the consequences.
Had the city been responsible for the PDA’s debts, it might have paid more attention to the original deal that made the PDA responsible for maintaining all those old buildings. It might have commissioned a detailed business and investment strategy before closing on a deal. It would have hired experienced professionals to review new debt. And it would have made sure that the PDA board was doing its job.
A board’s primary responsibility is to hire and fire the executive director, to make sure that director is doing their job. The PDA board had too many retired professionals unwilling to be independent and put in the necessary review time. One spent much of his time doing building inspections. I wrote another with an impressive background in finance and the travel industry about my concerns for the PDA’s viability. They did not respond.
In 2021 the board pushed out long-time director Robison, but not without considerable angst about its reputation. A 3/18/21 Port Townsend Leader article quoted an email from board treasurer Jeff Jackson saying, “I get we’re transitioning but not fast or clear enough and the three of us look partially ineffective.” That article quotes a press release from co-chairs Todd Hutton and Norm Tonina saying that Robison’s tenure was, “Ending on a high note.”
Rearranging the Flight Deck
Management blamed the PDA’s crash on Covid, but conditions were already precarious. The embezzlement and diversion of funds took time to clean up after, but there does not seem to have been a plan for how to repay the restructured debt. It is anybody’s guess why the PDA spun hospitality operations out into a separate entity when those operations didn’t make money in the first place.
Fort Worden will now go back to the state, which, with its budget challenges, probably won’t maintain buildings even at current minimal levels, much less improve them. Don’t expect a big turnaround in operations, for the state had no real business strategy when it previously operated the buildings. Fortunately, core users like Centrum provide a base of business, but all those long-term questions about how to compete and sell off-season room nights will still exist.
A Way Forward
For decades now there have been kumbaya retreats at Fort Worden about the meaning of “lifelong learning.” This misdirection resulted in a lack of focus on the improvement of day-to-day operations, which brought the Fort and the PDA to where they are today. There are ways of improving this property such that it would be financially self-supporting. However, the big challenge isn’t the business operation of the Fort — it is its governance.
Simply put, does the community care enough about the Fort Worden complex to put the right people in charge? The experience with the pool and the PDA show that city government is not up to this task, but another form of governance could work if there was enough of the community watching out for its future.
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PHOTOS: Stephen Schumacher
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Earlier Port Townsend Free Press reporting on the Fort Worden PDA:
Fort Worden PDA To Go Broke, Lose Executive Director in Next 90 Days
Fort Worden PDA Out of Money, Must Privatize to Survive
Criminal Investigators Called into Fort Worden PDA Mess
Fort Worden’s Promised Financial Oversight Never Happened
Fort Worden Glamping A Soggy Mess
Fort Worden PDA Finances Plagued With Problems From Beginning
Fort Worden Hit By Cherry Street Project Disease
by Stephen Schumacher | Nov 21, 2024 | General
Jefferson County Public Health exposed sensitive patient data to worldwide view for three years due to accidental misconfiguration of its Tableau visual analytics platform hosted in the cloud and offered on its website.
This breach of confidential patient information offers lessons on the insecurity of cloud data storage, even as the City of Port Townsend just migrated its finances to a Tableau-integrated cloud system.
Perhaps more significantly, it also exposes some of the ways Public Health may be promoting false narratives by withholding, distorting, and cherry-picking its data disclosures.
Data Leak Raises Questions about Public Health Messaging
The data leak opened a revealing window into the questionable data sources that Public Health has used to justify its narrative that COVID-19 is “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
Compare that CDC messaging, promoted by Public Health, to the reality of Jefferson County COVID-19 deaths age 65 or older revealed in this anonymized summary (from the leaked Tableau screenshot of county deaths as of April 19, 2023):
Jefferson County COVID-19 deaths age 65 or older. Exact ages have been redacted to preserve anonymity.
The Vaccination Status was “None” for only seven out of the 30 county COVID-19 deaths in this dataset. The other 77% were fully vaccinated or boosted or twice boosted, but hardly protected from infection, hospitalization, and death.
Note that two of the unvaccinated deaths were in 2020 before vaccines were available, while the other five “None” deaths might NOT actually have been unvaccinated, since Public Health may mark Vaccination Status as “None” if:
1. Vaccination took place in a pharmacy, supermarket, or other location not sharing records with Jefferson Healthcare;
2. Death took place during the typical 3 to 8 week wait between first and second vaccinations before “Primary Series Completed”;
3. Death took place within 2 weeks after the second vaccination to give “the body time to establish a strong immune response after the second dose.”
These statistical shell games also apply to the seven county COVID-19 deaths aged 55 to 64, only one of whom had “Primary Series Completed,” since it is unknown how many of the other six deaths were vaccinated one or more times in ways that Public Health has chosen not to count.
Another point to note about the leaked age 65+ dataset is that 23 out of 29 (not counting one death marked “Unknown”) were known to have serious Health Conditions including cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, and diabetes.
That 23 includes two of the “Unvaccinated” misidentified as “Null” under Health Conditions, whereas one was chronically ill in hospice and the other was hospitalized for multiple serious comorbidities and surgical complications unrelated to COVID-19. The other six “Null” deaths also likely had various health conditions judging from their case notes.
Given their precarious conditions, an unknown number may not actually have died “from” COVID-19, instead merely “with” a COVID-19 diagnosis stemming from an unreliable PCR test result. For example, the case notes say one of these supposed COVID-19 deaths actually “died of cancer. Hx heart block, chronic resp. failure.”
According to the CDC, 95% of COVID-19 deaths involve an average of four other serious comorbidities.
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So nearly all the county’s supposed COVID-19 deaths age 65+ were likely suffering from an average of four other serious health conditions that might really have killed them.
And at least 77% of them received multiple vaccine injections — increasingly a pandemic of the vaccinated as the last 8 deaths in the leaked data (from May 2022 to April 2023) were vaccinated, including one boosted and two boosted twice:
Leaked data reveals that May 2022 to April 2023, all supposed Covid-19 deaths recorded in Jefferson County were vaccinated individuals, contrary to Public Health disinformation.
That’s a very different picture than what Public Health messaging represented to the public, categorizing all but three of these 30 deaths simply as “Not up to date” or “Unvaccinated” to justify deadly lockdowns, mandates, endless boosters, and vaccine discrimination.
How County Patient Data Was Exposed in the Cloud
Throughout much of the lockdown era, Jefferson Public Health maintained COVID-19 Updates on its website:
The updates regularly posted charts showing county COVID-19 case rates, hospitalizations, and deaths, generated by Tableau software based on COVID-19 patient details uploaded to the cloud by Public Health:
These charts included a Tableau menu bar in the bottom-right corners. Hovering the cursor over the down-arrow-box icon offered a live option to “Download” the underlying patient data in various file formats:
This screen shot shows the live option to “Download” underlying patient data which should have been private.
Tableau offered access to confidential patient data and case information either using its web app or downloaded as a “Tableau Workbook” for later offline study using its free-trial Tableau Public desktop app:
Here is what one of these Public Health charts looked like when opened as a Workbook inside the Tableau app:
… along with an easier-to-read zoomed version:
Underlying each chart are tables filled with private patient data in dozens of categories including First/Last Name, Admit/Discharge/Death Date, Age Group, Health Conditions, Vaccination Status, and Case Notes, accessible simply by right-clicking on a chart and selecting “View Data”:
Finally, here is a Tableau table showing specific examples of the private patient data that Public Health exposed on the internet about county deaths involving COVID-19:
Blue areas have been redacted for this article to preserve anonymity.
Note that I redacted this screenshot to block out identifying information such as names to preserve anonymity, but other details are shown to allow verification and indicate the nature and scope of the data leak.
This table represents only a small part of the patient data that Public Health exposed to the web via multiple insecure Tableau charts uploaded throughout 2022. Such data is required to be kept private according to HIPAA Privacy Rules, but Public Health assumed was safe to store in the cloud.
None of this data was obtained by “hacking” or any nefarious activity. Instead, a sharp-eyed Port Townsend Free Press reader stumbled on the “Download” invitations beneath Jefferson Public Health web charts, followed the instructions provided by Tableau, and discovered the trove of patient data being freely offered to all comers.
This reader contacted me, then I verified the information and took the above screenshots back in 2022 for possible use in future stories.
Was Jefferson Public Health Alone in its Data Leak?
Tableau pioneered “visualizing a pandemic defined by data” so was adopted by many county and state Public Health websites to provide a scientific-seeming veneer for their propaganda messaging (as documented October 23 by Congress).
In late 2022 when I surveyed various northwest health department Tableau-based websites, I noticed that some — like Oregon Health Authority — excluded access to underlying chart data, instead just allowing the charts themselves to be downloaded in various formats such as an “Image” or “PDF”:
Others were similar to Jefferson County Public Health in that they enabled “Download” access to their underlying data. For example, Clark County Public Health likewise allowed anyone in the world to dive deeply into its COVID-19 case and death numbers:
Similarly, Washington State Department of Health webpages continue to this day to enable free access to underlying “Data” via the “Download” icon on its Tableau menu bars:
Where Washington State, Clark County, and other Public Health departments differ from Jefferson County is that they were prudent enough to upload only anonymous general statistical data to the cloud.
By contrast, Jefferson County Public Health was the only one I found shoveling easily-identifiable confidential patient data to the cloud — complete with names, dates, health conditions, case notes, pretty much everything. By doing so, it is potentially subject to HIPAA penalties for its negligent practices and risk assessment failures.
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Along these lines, when Jefferson Healthcare received a Public Records Request (PRR) about the vaccination status of a county COVID-19 death, it refused the request on April 27, 2021 “because the individual could be identified from the information and is protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) patient privacy laws.”
Then when a follow-up PRR asked for unidentifiable death statistics instead, Jefferson Healthcare pivoted on May 6, 2021 replying: “We have checked with our data analyst team and they report that we do not have reports or documents/records that would address the information you have requested above.” That claim is disingenuous given there were then only three such deaths, so it would have taken their “data analyst team” just a few minutes to provide the requested information.
Public Health proceeded to keep unidentifiable data about COVID-19 cases under wraps on privacy pretexts, even while negligently spilling identifiable data to the cloud and cherry-picking data in media and meeting statements to spin prejudicial vaccination narratives.
For example, at a County Commissioners meeting on December 13, 2021, Public Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry had it both ways saying she “can’t confirm or deny any individual patient’s experience” due to “very stringent rules around patient privacy,” but went on to claim “what we do know” is that the “long-term disability” experienced by an individual patient is “truly false” — gaslighting a 27-year-old Port Townsend resident who had gone on record with documentary evidence from Virginia Mason that she had two heart attacks and 70% loss of function caused by COVID-19 vaccination.
Jefferson Data Continued to Leak for Three Years Until Today
When public health departments around the country stopped updating their data dashboards in early 2023, Jefferson County likewise stopped updating its COVID-19 data charts, then removed them from county webpages soon afterwards. So I assumed its year of spilling patient data was a thing of the past and water under the bridge, no longer an ongoing HIPAA violation of patient privacy.
But while wrapping up this story, I was surprised to learn at least ten of Jefferson Public Health’s Tableau charts were still live and leaking until the present day on the county’s cloud repository at public.tableau.com for anybody to “download or make a copy for inspiration”:
Patient data updated April 19, 2023 was still offered for download as a “Tableau Workbook” for offline study using the free Tableau Public trial app. My app from 2022 opened the data immediately despite being unused for over two years and its trial period long expired:
Example of Tableau charts still offering data in November 2024 before article publication (now visualizing arbitrary “up to date” distinction instead of booster status)
Moreover, patient data was still exposed to viewing on the web even without the Tableau Public app, just by clicking the upper-right “Make a copy” icon, signing into a free Tableau account, and right-clicking “View Data” on any chart:
“View Data” option allowed confidential information to be exposed on any chart.
Same as in 2022, Tableau’s county cloud repository offered a choice of what personal patient data fields to show, including “Sex at birth,” “ZIP code or Tribe,” and a new category “Vaccination status simple” introduced by Public Health to obscure the large number of so-called breakthrough infections by reclassifying vaccinated and boosted individuals as “Not up to date”:
Jefferson County Public Health was informed about its data-leaking web charts so they could be removed from Tableau’s cloud repository prior to this article’s publication. Now that future risk has been removed, hopefully the above historical explanations will serve as a salutary warning for Tableau webmasters about what not to do.
Public Health Responses
Regarding the finding “that all 8 county COVID-19 deaths from May 2022 until data was last updated April 19, 2023 were vaccinated,” I asked Health Officer Dr. Allison Berry:
1. Can you confirm this information?
2. When did Public Health realize that only the vaccinated were dying of COVID-19 in this county since May 2022 until April 2023, and was this fact ever reported to the Board of Health, County Commissioners, and the public?
3. How many unvaccinated and how many vaccinated have died of COVID-19 in this county since April 19, 2023?
Berry replied to these questions as follows:
Thank you for your question. Here is the breakdown of deaths in Jefferson County by vaccination status in recent years. … Since the time when vaccinations were widely available, 48 people have died of COVID-19 in Jefferson County. From May of 2021-the end of that year, we lost 17 people to COVID-19. Of those, 12% were up-to-date on their vaccination, 59% were not up-to-date, and 29% were unvaccinated. In 2022, we lost 14 people to COVID-19. Of those, 14% were up-to-date on their vaccination, 50% were not up-to-date, and 36% were unvaccinated. In 2023, we lost 9 people to COVID-19. Of those, none were up-to-date, 56% were not up-to-date and 44% were unvaccinated. In 2024, so far we have lost 8 people to COVID-19. Of those, 25% were up-to-date, 50% were not up-to-date, and 25% were unvaccinated.
Berry’s figures for 2021 and 2022 match the Tableau numbers precisely, but do not include 3 earlier deaths from 2020 through April 2022 (which may have been reclassified or ignored because they preceded the vaccination program). Her figures also enable calculating there have been 6 unvaccinated and 9 vaccinated deaths since Public Health stopped updating Tableau on April 19, 2023, answering my first and third questions.
She did not take the opportunity to address my second question about Public Health’s failure to tell people the counter-narrative fact that only vaccinated county residents were dying of COVID-19 throughout the 12 months between May 2022 through April 2023, while always being quick to point out whenever someone unvaccinated or “not up to date” dies.
Berry included lengthy context on how she interprets these numbers, making several notable points that are off topic for this article but may be taken up in a future one (her full response can be read here).
Regarding closure of the data breach, Public Health Director Apple Martine reported that as of November 21, 10am:
Our JCPH technician worked with Tableau engineers yesterday afternoon, evening, and this morning to resolve the problem. There is no longer the possibility of accessing PHI from public.tableau.com now; these data have been removed. We expect to receive a formal accounting of how this happened from Tableau now that our incident ticket is being closed with their engineers. We will also be doing an internal after-action-review so that breach of PHI does not happen again. … The data should no longer be visible, and thank you for bringing it to our attention. We definitely want to make sure that we’re never exposing private health information, and breaches do happen.
Tableau charts that were leaking data have been replaced by a “404 Not Found” message.
City Financial Records Are Now Also Stored in the Cloud
Joining county Public Health in the cloud, the City of Port Townsend just shut down its local on-site server-based financial system Friday, July 19, 2024 and migrated to a Tableau-integrated cloud version on Monday, July 22.
The transition had “no hiccups… so far, so good,” according to Jodi Adams, new Director of Finance and Technology Services. Long-term plans are for Tableau to visualize data on the city website, but staff is currently learning to use it to make graphs for in-house reports.
City financial records are now stored in the cloud and managed via web browsers, including Accounts Payable & Receivable, Bank Reconciliation, Payroll, Human Resources, Employee Self Services, Utility Billing, and Project Management. Not yet included is the CivicPay option, enabling citizens to see and pay utility bills online.
Cloud migration was proposed by former Finance Director Connie Anderson and approved unanimously by city council at their February 21, 2023 meeting, but implementation took a year longer than projected.
The city had little choice — its vendor Springbrook had discontinued updates in favor of the company’s more expensive cloud version back in 2017, with support for the city’s on-site system fading and no better alternative offered by competing vendors, in line with the industry-wide push toward subscription-only cloud software replacing ownership with a rental model.
Anderson’s proposal identified a number of advantages of the cloud approach, including:
- Eliminating cost of expensive on-site equipment;
- Reducing the carbon footprint;
- Tableau integration — visual analytics platform;
- Enhanced data security protected by highest level of security available.
But any such “enhanced data security” is at best a trade-off, given that moving data to the cloud surrenders the natural physical security provided by restricting access to on-site users and those connected to the local area network. By contrast, cloud hosting exposes city finances to worldwide security risks either via web access, hackers, “careless computing”, or insider attacks at the cloud host.
A textbook example of these risks is Jefferson County Public Health’s data breach, from which the city can hopefully learn to take care not to likewise expose its own confidential financial records to the web via the Tableau cloud platform they both share.
by Celeste Peterson | Jun 18, 2024 | General
Being an “old school” liberal, I had thought that the new ideology and its theories being taught in the schools — like Gender Identity — were just about respecting each other. Like most of our community, I tried to be inclusive by listening, learning, only asking a few questions using the new language, and keeping my opinions to myself.
I didn’t realize how much these new ideologies were affecting children and youth until 2017, when my daughter was in third grade.
She came home one day and asked if she was a boy.
Shocked and confused, I asked why she would think that. She told me that some of her peers thought she was a trans boy because she preferred to play with the boys and had a short haircut at the time. I found out that she wanted to play with the boys because the girls wanted to label themselves and others and talk about crushes. She just wanted to be a kid and play.
That became the first of many discussions explaining the difference between biological sex and stereotypes. Later, these conversations involved pressure she received from peers, and most recently adults, to self-label. She was even encouraged to become a trans boy to fit into her friend group better, which includes trans youth. By then, she knew herself better, but still wondered why they thought she was a boy.
From these discussions, I found out that many kids think that if you fit a gender stereotype then you are that gender, and that you can actually grow new genitals of that gender. Do kids who think this become teens who think they’re trans? I had more questions than answers.
This is when I started to pay full attention to what was going on in our community. I noticed children with no previous signs of gender dysphoria, but with a history of autism/neurodiversity, and/or trauma, become trans teens — some medically transitioning. They were all friends and some had multiple family members who were trans.
The adults they were close to seemed to ignore their comorbid issues and focused on supporting their trans identity instead. Why were they transitioning so fast? What would happen if they changed their minds? — a normal part of youth. None of this made any sense anymore.
I decided to do a deep dive into the origins of all of this and to see what has happened to other youth who transitioned years ago. I didn’t want to be part of something that may be hurting youth by remaining silent.
Detransitioners Raise Their Voices
Through researching all sides of this issue, I discovered the detransitioners: the growing number of former trans people who did change their minds, telling stories of regret and sometimes horror over their efforts to identify as the opposite sex. There are more than 53,000 detransitioners on Reddit alone, with more “coming out” every day.
In articles like To the ‘Gender-Affirming’ People Who Lied To Me, many detransitioners point to the false promises from people involved in this movement.
“You lied and said transitioning would make my pain go away. You lied and said changing myself was the only treatment for my gender dysphoria. You lied and said the solution was changing my body when the problem was in my mind.
You treated my gender dysphoria as the root cause of my pain instead of a symptom of my underlying core issues. You treated me as a boy trapped in a girl’s body instead of a traumatized child dealing with the aftermath of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. You focused on the girl who wanted to be a boy and neglected to see the girl who was starving herself, self-harming, living in flashbacks, and actively suicidal.”
One detransioned woman describes how her undiagnosed autism was misinterpreted as Gender Dysphoria, the “clinical diagnosis received by transgender people.”
Elizabeth Hawker describes “unwittingly dressing up my Autism in the more fashionable clothing of Gender Dysphoria.”
“After six years of identifying as a trans man as a teenager, I desisted (stopped identifying as trans) at the age of 21. Since reclaiming my womanhood, I have been thinking long and hard about what exactly happened in my 15-year-old brain that made me feel I would only be stable and fulfilled if I took testosterone, changed my name and pronouns and socially became a man. The conclusion I have come to is that thinking I was trans was completely inseparable from my autism.”
Miriam Grossman, MD, is a child and adolescent psychiatrist whose practice consists of trans-identified youth and their families. After a decade in this field, in 2023 Dr. Grossman wrote Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness.
From the book jacket:
“She implores parents to reject the advice of gender experts and politicians and trust their guts—their parental instincts—in the face of an onslaught of ideologically driven misinformation that steers them and their children toward risky decisions they may end up mourning for the rest of their lives.
Don’t be blindsided like so many parents I know,” warns Grossman, “be proactive and get educated. Feel prepared and confident to discuss trans, nonbinary, or whatever your child brings to the dinner table.” Whether it’s the “trans is as common as red hair” claim, or the “I’m not your son, I’m your daughter” proclamation, or the “do you prefer a live son or a dead daughter” threat, says Grossman, no family is immune, and every parent must be prepared.”
Why am I so concerned and determined to share this information? My research uncovered the link between all these theories and the policies in place for years now in our schools that encourage labeling and division. This is why I WILL NOT stay silent any longer.
Here are three key policies in Port Townsend schools and how they affect families:
Equity, Race, & Identity (Policy 0100)
This is part of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) training and related to Critical Race Theory (CRT) through the concept of Intersectionality. “Equity” does not mean equality — instead it involves holding back the oppressors and boosting the oppressed.
DEI divides persons into identity groups based on whether they are the oppressed (aka victim) or they are the oppressor. Individuals are not important. The identity groups are divided by race, gender, and sexuality. Economic class is ignored.
Here’s an example of what this looks like in action:
At the PT Schools Equity Forum we were divided into the following groups: people of the global majority (oppressed), white parents of students of the global majority (oppressed allies), and white people (oppressors). We were not allowed to talk to persons from other groups to solve problems.
Social Emotional Climate (Policy 3113/3113P)
Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is supposed to create “a positive classroom climate” that “feels safe, respectful, welcoming, and supportive of student learning.” This “Equity-focused” practice assumes a child may have had a history of trauma and focuses on helping a child analyze their feelings. This can be in the form of frequent lessons exploring emotions and values or having students fill out questionnaires that ask questions like if they’re feeling depressed.
When The Benji Project visits a class to “teach proven mindfulness and self-compassion tools to young people,” along with meditation they also practice SEL — sometimes taking up more class time with SEL than academics. This is supposed to “create space for student voice and agency.”
However, when a student doesn’t find these practices helpful or doesn’t want to participate, they may be socially pressured by the adults to participate anyway. This is strange, since “student opinion … is considered a valuable part of the educational environment.”
An excellent resource on this subject is Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigail Shrier. It talks about what I have seen in schools regarding SEL, how it impacts families, and how it, and related practices, increase anxiety and hurt kids’ mental health and development.
Gender-Inclusive Schools (Policy 3211/3211P)
This policy involves the first step in Gender Affirming Care — social transition. Gender affirmation has been proven to be damaging to young children, unhelpful to teens, and it doesn’t prevent suicide. The latest report on Gender Affirming Care is the 2024 Cass Review, an independent evaluation of gender identity services for children and young people, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, a retired consultant paediatrician and the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in the UK.
This thorough analysis found that insufficient evidence was available to assess whether social transition in childhood has positive or negative effects on mental health, and that there was weak evidence for efficacy in adolescence. It questioned the reliability of international guidelines and advised caution in approaching social transition.
In Port Townsend, if a student of any age wishes to change their gender identity publicly, they can do this without their parent/guardians knowledge or permission and the school staff will socially affirm them.
A student can declare that they are the opposite of their biological sex and use the bathroom and locker room of their stated gender. Although “any student — regardless of gender identity — who requests greater privacy should be given access to an alternative restroom,” that is not always available when they need one. I’m not sure how this works in locker rooms.
Children thirteen years and older can see a gender affirming therapist for consultations without parents knowledge or permission. This can be done/started at the Port Townsend High School health clinic and soon will be available at Blue Heron (middle) School’s new health clinic for grades 6-8. Gender Affirming medical treatments (hormones, surgeries) need parental permission. However, kids who run away from home can receive Gender Affirming Care while in foster care if their parents refuse to affirm their new gender and cooperate with their transition (it can be considered emotional abuse per WA law ESSB 5599).
Gender Identity (a part of Gender theory which is a part of Queer theory) is a strong focus in SEL and Equity lessons. Students can be socially pressured by the adults to state their pronouns. Many young children believe that they can actually change their biological sex. I have learned that this is a frequent conversation amongst kids at Salish Coast Elementary. They are getting biological sex mixed up with gender stereotypes.
When kids are the age likely to believe in Santa and are taught starting in pre-kindergarten — through social media, kids TV shows, some adults, and their peers — that they can pick their gender, the confusion we are seeing makes sense. It took me one thoughtful conversation to tell my kids the truth about Santa, but it took many conversations to explain that they can’t change their bodies from boy to girl (and vice versa). The actual facts about this theory are clearly summarized in the article The Ideological Subversion of Biology.
This is especially hard to explain to neurodiverse children, like my own, who already struggle with identity and fitting in. Trans youth are mostly neurodiverse. This is why Seattle Children’s Autism Center has a partnership with their Gender Clinic.
Is encouraging gender transition “education” or indoctrination?
After I learned about the theories behind these policies and their wider impacts, I decided to look closer at how these ideas spread through our Port Townsend community. I discovered that 2017, the year my daughter and I had our first talk, was an impactful year for Gender Affirming Care in Port Townsend. Some of the youth I have mentioned, along with trans activist adults in our community, had put on a “legislative theater” performance called “Queer Youth Survival Quest.” A feature story in YES! Magazine explained that the interactive technique the production used was designed “to make concrete policy changes around a community justice issue.”
I noticed that community leaders, including those from Jefferson Healthcare and the Port Townsend School District, were in attendance.
It was that school year that the Gender-Inclusive Schools Policy was first created. There are now more than 20 books at Salish Coast Elementary, 35 books at Blue Heron School, and 30 books at Port Townsend High School that encourage gender transition.
Jefferson Healthcare started Gender Affirming Care training in 2017 as well (see Jefferson Healthcare’s Trans Mission). Since that year, more and more local youth have “come out” identifying as being part of the trans umbrella community — perhaps dozens. I’m finding out that many more youths that I had known as kids are choosing this identity. How many will medicalize due to this activism?
All of the theories that these policies are based on are part of Social Justice Activism. This movement was started by elite intellectuals who wanted to apply Postmodernist principles to society. They started actively teaching these practices in colleges starting in the 2010s. This is still taught today to all students in college.
This utopian theoretical ideology encourages the deconstruction of all parts of society including the way we communicate (that’s why language is always changing now). It emphasizes group identities, celebrates victimhood, and ignores the fact that people are individuals. This ideology especially despises science and reason. When this is taught to kids, it can lead to confusion regarding facts, loss of self-worth, and other mental health problems.
My journey to this discovery started more than six years ago. Now I’m a mom trying to share the truth about what kids are being taught in our community. So far, besides talking to friends, I’ve been to the Port Townsend Schools Equity Forum, the PTA, and have written a couple of letters to the Port Townsend Leader. I’m heading to the School Board next.
School Policy 2340 states that “materials and activities should be sensitive to America’s pluralistic society and should educate rather than indoctrinate.” Is the intensive pressure in our schools which encourages gender transitioning a form of education? Or are the policies described above — along with the flood of reading materials in school libraries plus the prominent display of the Trans Pride flag in every classroom celebrating this ideology — indoctrinating our kids?
I believe this is indoctrination. Schools should teach facts and how to think — NOT what to think. Families can handle the rest.
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Additional Resources:
Available through the library system –
Available online –
All Port Townsend school policies can be found here.
Please make your concerns about this issue known to the commissioners through public comment either in writing (get written comments in a day or two before any given meeting), or by attending one of the meetings in-person or virtually online.
Management blamed the PDA’s crash on Covid, but conditions were already precarious. The 
When kids are the age likely to believe in Santa and are taught starting in pre-kindergarten — through social media, kids TV shows, some adults, and their peers — that they can pick their gender, the confusion we are seeing makes sense. It took me one thoughtful conversation to tell my kids the truth about Santa, but it took many conversations to explain that they can’t change their bodies from boy to girl (and vice versa). The actual facts about this theory are clearly summarized in the article 
