Would 0.3% TBD Tax Be Used Just to Fix Roads?
To Be Determined

by Stephen Schumacher | Oct 28, 2023 | General

Like many, I was surprised to learn on July 26 from a brief front-page Leader blurb that city council was stepping up to fix Port Townsend’s crumbling roads by forming its own Transportation Benefit District (TBD) and meeting August 1 to fast-track funding by placing a new 0.3% sales tax on the ballot.

I was further surprised to receive a considerate email the next day from public works director Steve King letting me know “there is an opening for a committee that would be against the ballot measure. Alternatively, if you are supportive, I can also connect you with the committee for the ballot measure. Either way, we wanted to reach out to you and see if this sparks an interest one way or the other.”

Though I’d written and commented to council about transportation issues in the past, TBD was new to me, so I emailed this back per King’s gracious offer “if you have questions or want to discuss”:

King responded by phoning July 28 to educate me with a cornucopia of details and background about the city’s road morass and TBD tax plans. I jotted down this summary (as corrected and approved by King):

Concern about Austerity versus Enabling

So I attended council’s inaugural TBD board meeting on August 1 to learn more and offer up my concerns in this Public Comment:

Curiously, when I asked my core question “Would this tax be part of an overall austerity perspective, or would it be enabling the problems that got us into this in the first place?” — I felt the vibe that council was visibly recoiling at my word “austerity” as a vampire would to garlic or holy water.

Perhaps I was imagining things, but three subsequent council responses picked up on the “austerity” word, starting with Mayor David Faber making the point that:

And as to whether or not this is going to be part of an austerity mindset, or that this is brought about by city deciding to do things differently than pay for road repairs — sure, there have been steps that the city has taken historically that each of us on council wishes we hadn’t, including myself, including some of the decisions we made, such as the Cherry Street building. But that’s in the past.

Through the Financial Sustainability Task Force and our budgeting process for years, I think we have a budget that’s pretty lean overall. There really just isn’t resources to pay for road repair and maintenance.

The city has a bunch of different priorities as well, things that we have to do as a city.

So suggesting that there is at all money to be moved from elsewhere to pay for road repair and maintenance is just completely out of step with reality.

Councilor Libby Wennstrom expanded on how the city found itself without resources to maintain roads:

One of the things to understand about street funding and why things fell apart so badly is that more or less simultaneously as part of a series of statewide ballots, state funding for municipal street repair went away with the car tabs, but at the same time, city governments also got restricted to a 1% annual cap.

And if you’re running inflation (right now we’re running about 5%), and if you have a 1% raise every year, the question doesn’t become, what new projects can we do? It’s like, what do we cut this year?

And over a 20 year period, that’s a 20% shortfall, 25% shortfall, 27% shortfall, etc., so you’re getting farther and farther and farther behind. And the net result of that is having to use debt, just to do grant match to meet those basic needs.

So this is an attempt to kind of re-balance that and I get, “Oh, it would be great if we could actually have a tax base that met our basic requirement needs.” But the reality is that the tax base doesn’t literally meet some of the needs for state mandated things that we have to do. And so street funding keeps coming on to “Oh, we wanna do this, but this has to be on the back burner.”

And over a 20 year period, that gap between that 1% raise, if inflation’s running 3%, 4%, 5% — you’re just gonna keep getting farther and farther and farther behind.

These are all good points, and I appreciate how council is trying to do better and finally take seriously the critical road repair that has been put on the back burner for 20 years. So if Faber and Wennstrom are right that “there really just isn’t resources to pay for road repair,” then that’s a compelling argument for a TBD tax to finally repair roads, because the city is financially strapped and poised to “fall off a cliff.”

But I find that hard to square with council’s longstanding and current practice of always finding money or borrowing against the future for discretionary projects and pricey consultants — from Cherry Street ($2-3 million) to Evans Vista ($10-15 million) to Hybrid Golf Course ($4.4 million) to Aquatic Center ($109 million) — always prioritizing these and other things over basic road maintenance for 20 years.

And I don’t see how council has fundamentally changed its tune so long as it continues to prioritize pet projects over road repair. All that’s really changed is that outcry over roads has gotten so bad that council is proposing a new tax to pay for repairs, without tamping down on its current and future pet projects — that is, without “austerity.”

The Long Road to Catching up on Neglected Repairs

Even worse, the TBD tax risks enabling future councils to reduce even its current patchwork spending on road repair from general funds, because that could now be sloughed off onto the TBD to pay. Councilor Ben Thomas spoke out at the August 1 meeting asking council to commit to doing the opposite:

I just want to reiterate what I said the last time we talked about this topic.  I do think that austerity (I’d rather not word it that way, but I think it’s kind of what’s going on here) as much as we can from the rest of the budget to hopefully match this or something like that is very much in my interest.

I know that it’s a lot of numbers to crunch and they don’t seem to add up, but it does seem like just doing this alone would not be enough to satisfy us. I know we talked about trying to commit something, it’s hard to commit a certain number, but I still have an interest in that.

Mayor Faber disagreed, saying:

We cannot bind future councils. There’s no commitment to doing anything in the future beyond what funds are specifically directed, certain specific buckets. This pot of money is going to be dedicated to these specific purposes listed in the ballot measure and we wouldn’t be able to change what those funds are spent on. General funds are spent at the discretion of the council as a whole. We can decide where those funds are spent.

And to argue for austerity or committing certain dollars in the future to certain specific goals or projects — I think it’s dangerous, selling the future short.

We don’t know what the future priorities of the community are going to be. If the community come demanding certain things, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to necessarily just say we’re going to ignore them.

So I think it’s important to note that while this Council as a whole — all seven of us and the staff have evidenced an intent to do exactly as you’re stating — we’ve all been pushing for repairing our roads. And this very vote that we’re putting on the ballot here is clear evidence of that, along with what we’ve dedicated our banked capacity revenues to.

What the future holds is an open question. I hate the idea of constraining future action based on future need. We don’t know what those needs are going to be.

So even if we could dedicate and guarantee that we’re going to continue putting all the banked capacity funds towards road repair and maintenance, I would be an adamant no on that.

I appreciate where both of these councilors are coming from on this arguable point, as well as the evidenced intent “pushing for repairing our roads” that Mayor Faber speaks of.

But how long can an uncommitted and unconstrained council be counted on to continue this intent? For 20 years past councils put road repair “on the back burner” while prioritizing everything else.  And now a new tax-funded TBD might just make it even easier for future councils to deprioritize road spending completely out of the general fund.

And without general fund contributions, the idea that passing the 0.3% TBD tax would repair all the city’s dangerously defective roads any time soon is illusory, since (according to King) it would still take about 40 years to catch up on all the neglected road repairs!

Since it costs $750,000 just to keep things going as they are now, the $800,000 raised by the TBD tax would mostly just stop the bleeding if not further supplemented.

Fortunately King hopes “maybe $200,000 to $300,000 of its $800,000 per year total could be leveraged with grants,” but even so, we’re still talking maybe 30 years to catch up on repairs — hence Thomas’ misgivings that “just doing this alone would not be enough to satisfy us.”

Concern about TBD Tax Short-Changing Road Repair

Even such slow progress assumes that most all of the TBD tax funds would be used for road repairs, but that’s just a hope which Mayor Faber is “adamant” not to “guarantee.”

My earlier quoted public comment expressed appreciation that “only $50,000 out of $800,000 at this point looks to be used” for purposes other than road repair, but I’m not sure where I got that figure, since King told me “about 80% of funds would go to essential street repair, and maybe 20% to ADA upgrades, sidewalks, and speed-calming type improvement projects” with “no way to tie the hands of future TBD councils to focus on repair.” So that leaves only $640,000 from the tax for roads, less than the $750,000 needed just to keep all the potholes from getting worse.

The Summary Statement for Ordinance 3319 establishing the TBD outlines $100,000 per year needed for “citywide sidewalk/ADA construction, upgrades, and repairs” plus $30,000 for “citywide traffic calming” totaling $130,000, which is in line with King’s 20% estimate.

But it also includes “$300,000 per year investment leverages approximately $1.5 million in grant funds for streets” to pay for projects listed in the current Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan. Such leverage is great, but how much of these funds would come back to be used for repairing roads, since that’s the focus of only 12 of these 54 listed projects?

Only 12 of 54 projects in the city’s Six Year Transportation Improvement Plan involve repairing roads. Of the top five priorities shown here, only one includes road repair.

Despite some overlap, the primary focus of the city’s 54 transportation priorities may be categorized as follows:

• Road repair (12 projects);
• Sidewalks and pavement preservation (11 projects);
• Intersection improvements (6 projects);
• New trails (5 projects);
• Shoulder improvements (5 projects);
• ADA improvements (4 projects);
• Non-motorized improvements for pedestrians and bikes (4 projects);
• Traffic calming (4 projects);
• Boatyard expansion and tree replacement (1 project);
• Downtown parking plan (1 project);
• New street extension through water treatment facility (1 project).

This priority list contains a lot of very worthy projects, but prioritizing them all together and paying for them out of the same “pot of money” with “no commitment” risks putting road repair on the back burner again — even when it comes to the 0.3% TBD tax for which road repair is the poster child!

Among these very worthy projects are other projects that are less worthy and even controversial, but would get smuggled in and subsidized by the new TBD tax instead of paying for road repairs.

In particular, quite a few of these priority projects are dedicated to so-called “traffic calming” — especially when considered together with “pavement preservation” projects involving Edge Lane Roads (ELRs), which force down speed limits to accommodate dangerously combining two-way traffic into a single lane.  This is especially unfortunate when speeds are reduced on previously safe arterials like Fir Street.

Recently striped Edge Lane Road on Fir Street, with vehicles now directed to reduce speed on the arterial to 20 mph. Two-way traffic is supposed to use a single center lane but not all do, dangerously risking collisions with oncoming traffic at blind hills or curves.

Additionally, the TBD ordinance earmarks about $30,000 per year for this traffic calming, claiming it is “one of the most highly requested items for improving roadway safety for bicyclists and motorists.”

Rather than improving roadway safety, many traffic calming initiatives paradoxically do precisely the opposite — planting hazards in the middle of roads, forcing traffic to swerve around “mini-roundabouts” and other obstacles, making vehicles drive too close to each other or in the same lane as oncoming traffic, creating confusion with poorly-understood symbolic street signs explained in tiny print on placards by the side of the road.

The theory seems to be that if you make conditions dangerous enough, maybe drivers will slow down!

The most infamous of these are the much-derided “traffic calming island” hazards in the middle of Washington Street, which Councilor Thomas ruefully called “one of those gifts we’ve given to the public to unite everybody, unfortunately, against us.” The one saving grace of these monstrosities is that they were funded by neighborhood nimbies, but taxpayers are still on the hook for ongoing maintenance.

As I said at a second Public Comment on August 1st:

My concern with the way the 0.3% TBD tax was structured is that it lumps everything transportation-related into one big “pot of money … spent at the discretion of the council.”

That allows future bad ideas like the Washington Street hazards and other discretionary or controversial projects to be paid for by this new tax money — instead of funding the long-neglected road repairs that everyone agrees must be done and were the advertised justification for the tax.

Port Townsend’s TBD should not stand for “To Be Determined,” risking road repairs returning to the back burner.

The $108,941,000 Pool
Could Default Its First Year

by Jim Scarantino | Oct 24, 2023 | General

Eye popping numbers. Red ink from the start. The city’s financial analysis shows that the proposed aquatic center would not be able to pay its debt service for its first four years. That analysis is built upon a fantasy of low interest rates and a Jefferson County that would grow at a steady, uniformly repeated annual increase, uninterrupted and with no downturns, for the next quarter century. Even with these favorable assumptions, default looms.

And where did we get that huge number in the headline? $108,941,000?  Are we not being told that the new PT aquatic center would cost “only” $37.1 million?

Read on. Let’s start with the city’s own financial analysis.

Mortgaging the Future

That modest $37.1 million construction project for a new aquatic center will be mostly financed, requiring at least a $22.1 million bond. A bond is the way a government borrows money from investors and financial institutions. Like a mortgage it has a term — the number of years in which it must be paid back — an interest rate, and set periodic payments.

Before a bond is “floated,” that is, sold to investors, an analysis is conducted to determine if the bond will work: will the debtor be able to pay and will creditors get their money on time in the amounts promised? That analysis is called a “pro forma.”

City staff has prepared this analysis on the proposed new pool’s debt. It was provided to us by Carrie Hite, Parks and Recreation Strategy Director. She provided this information without hesitation in response to our request. She has been open and forthcoming throughout this process, it should be noted.

The pro forma — the debt service vs. tax revenue projections — shows this for the critical first eight years:

These figures reflect the annual debt service on a 25-year bond for $22.1 million at 4.5% interest.  The “County Wide PFD Sales Tax” shows the estimated revenues from a proposed 0.2% county-wide sales tax that is being considered as the vehicle to pay for a proposed $37.1 million pool. The difference — $15 million — would, it is hoped, come from $5 million each in gifts, federal grants and state grants. “PFD” stands for “Public Facilities District,” a new governmental taxing authority that would own and have control over the pool and which would receive its funding from a new county-wide sales tax.

Sure, this seems slow going. But hang in there. It will soon be clear how the finances for the proposed aquatic center don’t inspire confidence.

Regarding that pro forma — you can put anything into it to make it work, but you should try to be at least a little bit realistic for it to be of any use. This pro forma adds the exact same amount to each subsequent year’s sales tax revenues: $27,865. It is not unfair to say that is an arbitrary number. In the real world, that amount of sales tax revenue would require $13,932,500 in growth in the county’s retail, service and construction sectors every year for the next quarter century, without exception. The sales tax would be 0.2% or 1/500th.  Simple math: $27,865, the number added to each year’s projected sales tax revenue total, times 500 equals $13,932,500, the amount the county’s taxable economic activity would have to grow each year.

Is it realistic to assume this steady, constant growth rate, no slowing economy, no bumps, no recession for 25 years? That is what is being done here.

Notice the negative numbers. Right out of the box, in year one, the PFD cannot make its loan payments. It falls $90,401 short. That is considered default. The state of default would continue until year five when, based on those hoped-for constantly rising sale tax revenues, the PFD would finally be able to pay its debt, on account of that arbitrary growth rate we just discussed. But by then, a $194,439 deficit has accumulated. That deficit continues until year eight.

Revenue from user fees at the new pool are not included and do not belong on this pro forma. For one thing, they are wholly speculative. Nobody knows with any certainty how much people will pay to use the new aquatic center.

The consultant’s financial model (that we have critically examined here, here and here) requires the new aquatic center’s revenues to increase by 800% over the Mountain View pool’s revenues starting the first year. But even those hoped-for soaring revenues won’t be enough to cover operating expenses and thus could not contribute anything to meeting debt service obligations. Further, the pool won’t have any revenue its first two years, when the project is being finalized, bid, and constructed.

This pro forma properly analyzes whether a PFD could meet its loan payments from sales tax revenues. It can’t, at least not until five years out.  By then — indeed, by the first year — bond investors will be demanding the money they are owed that the PFD can’t repay. Default looms right up front as soon as the project gets going.

This is not the picture of a sensible public undertaking. It brings to mind the Cherry Street Project pro forma which showed that project going into default early on. What should have been a deal-breaker was disregarded by City Council back in 2018.

Will the current City Council — and a Board of County Commissioners, which will have final say on creating the PFD and pursuing a bond measure — fail to heed this recent object lesson in fiscal irresponsibility? Will they charge ahead and ignore the red ink on the wall?

So Much Worse in the Real World

This pro forma used an interest rate we are not likely to see again for years. It arbitrarily employs a 4.5% rate. As of this writing, investment grade municipal bond rates are bouncing between 5.5 and 6%.  Some have reached 6.3%.

A bond for a brand-new, untested public facilities district running a pool complex, funded by a variable tax rate, may or may not earn an investment grade rating. It could be viewed as more risky than bonds secured by property taxes or utility rates, charges that must be paid to keep a municipality going. A financially failing pool is expendable in the larger scheme of things.  Any lower rating than investment grade means the PFD would have to offer a higher interest rate to attract bond buyers.

If the PFD has to pay higher interest, as anyone who has bought a car or home would understand, its monthly payments will be higher.

Prudence requires considering the worst case, which would be a bond rated below investment grade. But let’s grant investment grade status for this exercise, yet (in compromise) apply one of the highest rates seen the past week. That was 6.3% for a big-city hospital bond, something a lot more solid than a pool bond. (Similarly, Overlake Hospital in Bellevue had to offer 5.85% on its bond that recently went to market.) We will use 6.3% interest over 25 years, the same term being considered now. What does that do to the financial picture?

The red ink gets much worse. Monthly payments would be $146,471 for an annual amount of $1,757,652 compared to the unrealistically low $1,483,659 in the table above. The red ink the first year at a realistic interest rate would amount to $364,401. The cumulative deficit would explode and stretch out until year 14!

Bondholders want to be paid every year. They won’t wait five years for promised payments, and they certainly won’t wait more than a decade.

The $108,941,000 Pool

The 316-page Final Report, Recommendation and Appendices released by the steering committee pushing the aquatic center proposal nowhere states any cumulative total cost for the project. The cumulative interest is never calculated. Nor are operating costs and subsidies ever totaled.

Using the unrealistic 4.5% interest incorporated in the working hypothesis, the total interest over 25 years would come to about $15 million.

Using a more realistic and current interest rate, the total interest paid by taxpayers would be $21,841,000. That is money that would be sent out of this county to institutional investors and wealthy individuals desiring tax-free municipal bond income.

The proposed PT aquatic center would be an almost mirror image of the William A. Shore Aquatic Center in Port Angeles, which reopened in 2020 after a remodeling and expansion. The Shore center has demonstrated it costs about $2 million annually to run such a facility. Over the 25-year term of the PT pool bond — until it is paid off — operating costs, not adjusted upward for annual inflation, would be $50 million.

Let’s add all those certain costs together in order to see the size of the commitment this county would have to make to this pool get the bond paid off and keep the pool’s doors open:

$37,100,000 construction cost +

$21,841,000 in interest payments +

$50,000,000 in operating costs

______________________

$108,941,000 total.

That is a huge number for this small, poorer-than-average county with a housing crisis and negligible income and job growth. No wonder the financial analysis shows this project going into default and failing financially in its first years. The picture gets even worse when real-world financial considerations — not rosy hypothetical assumptions — are applied.

“Speculative” 

The steering committee’s fundraising consultant says the last piece in the financial picture is “speculative.”

ECONorthwest of Portland, Oregon, was hired to determine if the county’s economy is strong enough to support this huge project. They determined that the city’s economy could not generate the sales tax revenue to make it come close to working. So the entire county would have to be taxed to find enough money. The ECONorthwest report can be found starting at page 116 of the Final Report, Recommendation and Appendices.

“Capture areas” outside city limits would have to be tapped for tax dollars. The description “capture areas” comes from Jim Kalvelage, the founding principal of Opsis Architecture, the lead consultant on the project. He used that phrase in presentations explaining where the money for the pool would come from since the city’s own resources are inadequate. His included areas such as Chimacum, Port Hadlock, Marrowstone Island, Irondale, Kala Point, Cape George, Gardiner and Discovery Bay. For purposes of the city getting the money it needs, these are the “capture areas.”

At the time, Kalvelage was talking about hitting those areas with a property tax to pay for the pool. Now he and the steering committee are talking about a county-wide sales tax to pay for the pool. In the steering committee notes, they have also discussed going for both a sales tax and property tax. Washington state law allows a PFD to seek a property tax.

The promoters realized that “capture areas” isn’t exactly an endearing phrase for selling this project to county taxpayers, so it has been cynically converted to “service areas.” Kalvelage and the steering committee know the pool will serve very, very few people outside the city, maybe as few as 34 on a monthly average according to YMCA’s 2022 report on the Mountain View pool.

ECONorthwest concluded that, yes, the proposed pool is too big and expensive for the city to afford and a county-wide sales tax would be necessary. But it also concluded that even a county-wide sales tax would not suffice to pay for this size aquatic center. That is because Jefferson County’s service, retail and construction sectors are not robust enough to generate the necessary sales tax revenue.

A lodging tax would also be required to close the gap, according to ECONorthwest.

The kicker is that a PFD lodging tax can only target those lodging businesses with more than 40 units. In Jefferson County there are just three: Kalaloch Lodge far to the west on the Pacific Coast, and Harborside Inn and Manresa Castle in Port Townsend. Manresa has but 41 units, so it could avoid the tax by mothballing one of them.

ECONorthwest hypothesized an annual lodging tax payment of $500,000 from these three businesses to plug the hole in the pool’s financial picture. But it cautions that large number is “speculative.”

Indeed, it is. To generate $500,000 out of a 2% lodging tax, those three facilities would have to enjoy $25 million in revenue every year from renting rooms and cabins.

That’s $25 million from just three relatively modest lodging businesses. We are not talking Las Vegas-sized hotels here.

Prudent people cautioned by their own consultant that their plans are “speculative” would return to the drawing board. Whether our city council members and county commissioners have the sense to do so remains to be seen.

Vulnerable People Need Protection –
The Opposite Is Happening

by Stephen Schumacher | Oct 17, 2023 | General

Recently uncovered public records include a draft September 2022 City of Port Townsend Newsletter article, where Mayor David Faber wrote about his emotions while hearing elder people at the August 1 city council meeting “repeatedly call trans persons ‘pedophiles’ and ‘rapists’.”

Mayor David Faber’s draft article for the city newsletter following the August 1, 2022 City Council meeting, disclosed through a public records request.

City staff prudently advised Faber to scuttle his article, concerned that “it might do more harm than help” as part of “a shame spiral.” Police Chief Thomas Olson admirably expressed that “Everyone should be encouraged to engage with city council without getting ridiculed, no matter what their opinion is on a specific topic.”

Though Faber’s accusation was never published in the newsletter, this incident does speak to the frame of mind and knowledge base of council and staff that elder women were being demonized at this critical time period preceding the coordinated physical assaults on elder women outside the August 15 council meeting while police looked on but were directed not to help. And this mindset continues today.

A review of the August 1 meeting video and transcript remarkably reveals that Faber’s accusation was provably untrue: NO public commenter at the meeting ever called “trans persons ‘pedophiles’ and ‘rapists’.”  So how did this false and prejudicial narrative arise and continue to haunt the mindscape of our town?

Public Comments to Protect Vulnerable People

Julie Jaman started her August 1, 2022 public comment by summarizing her July 26 “experience while showering after my swim was hearing a man’s voice in the women’s dressing area and seeing a man in a women’s swimsuit watching little girls pull down their bathing suits in order to use the toilets in the dressing room. I reacted by telling him to leave, and the consequence is that I had been banned from the pool.”

She warned council that “women and children are being put at risk” and YMCA “staff seems to have received little professional training on how to handle reactions to such a radical cultural change, particularly for the most vulnerable, older female patrons and children who may be exposed to inappropriate behavior, the dignity and safety of unsuspecting women who have trusted to use these facilities for many years.”

Contrary to Faber’s claim, Jaman maligned no trans person in her comment to council, instead recounted her personal experience of YMCA management neglecting to protect vulnerable people (including herself). YMCA staff are supposed to enforce strict Child Protection Policies and Procedures, but no such policies appear among the Olympic Peninsula YMCA Pool Rules nor were in evidence during Jaman’s experience.

Searching the meeting transcript finds just this one use by any Jaman supporter of the words “pedophiles” and “rapists” quoted by Faber:

We have seen what can happen when pedophiles and rapists can and do populate careers and locations where they have easy access to women and children.

This was in the context of a nuanced, well-articulated call for protection from predators, which was NOT saying that trans people are predators as Faber claimed.  Instead, it said the opposite: that predators can pretend to be trans just like they can lie in other ways, so vulnerable people (including trans) need protection:

Do men transitioning to be women understand that discrimination and violence are part of being a woman, and that we do need protection from predators? Do women transitioning to being men understand that they are also vulnerable to male harassment and violence?

All that this commenter urged were common-sense protections against predators and that “women’s concerns about our safety and privacy are and always have been legitimate.”  The meeting video and transcript show that neither this commenter nor any other Jaman supporter called trans persons predators as Faber claimed to hear “repeatedly.”

Public Comments Hallucinating Words Never Said

In fact, the only people at the August 1, 2022 council meeting repeatedly talking about trans persons being “pedophiles” and “rapists” were Jaman opponents — falsely putting those words in the mouths of Jaman supporters while stirring up hatred against them:

1. “When they label trans people as pedophiles and predators, that’s a problem. Thank you. I think you all should be ashamed of yourself.”
2. “Comparing transgender people to pedophiles is absolutely disgusting. As somebody who has been a victim of sexual abuse myself, it is horrible to go that low to call a group of people who are just trying to live their lives these horrible things that aren’t even true. Pedophiles exist in the world and not every transgender person is a pedophile.”
3. From a former mayor: “The people who are standing at the podium this evening expressing fear need to really think about the terminology and get ‘pedophiles’ out of their language.”
4. “Do you know what trans people are? They are not pedophiles. They are teachers and they are leaders and they are the bravest people I know. And so I just encourage all of you who have such a short-sighted vision as to what trans people are and have the absolute hurtful audacity to call them these terrible names: Please stop.”
5. “But I would just like to reiterate the fact that a lot of people have also been calling trans people pedophiles, which is also a statement of calling people things that they aren’t. … As has been stated many times today, trans people are not pedophiles.”
6. Major Faber’s response to comments: “LGBTQ people, trans people in particular in this case are entitled to basic respect and they have not been receiving that in much of the commentary tonight on the pedophiles and rapists and predators.”

These speakers fell into a feeding frenzy of confabulations and repeated self-reinforcing misstatements, confusing primary evidence with one’s own side’s overheated false claims about words never said just minutes earlier.  The end result was group hypnosis leading to the hallucination expressed in Mayor Faber’s draft city newsletter article about being “appalled and disgusted to hear people — all of them my elders, to shame — repeatedly call trans people ‘pedophiles’ and ‘rapists’ … with utter contempt.”

Nothing of that kind took place.

The Psychology of Totalitarianism

It’s hard to understand how this could have happened in less than an hour of real time, but some insight may perhaps be gleaned from clinical psychology professor Mattias Desmet’s 2022 book The Psychology of Totalitarianism, whose thesis is summarized in a physician’s review as follows:

Desmet’s central thesis is that when the correct conditions are present within society, a collective or crowd consciousness emerges which causes unspeakable atrocities to be permitted by, and in many cases directly conducted by large masses of the population (this process is termed “mass formation”).

This is a critical point because the majority of the individuals who commit the worst crimes of totalitarian regimes are not evil or psychopathic, but rather simply had a level of consciousness that allowed them to be swept into a mass formation. Similarly, this provides an explanation of why so many political zealots throughout the ages will feel it is justified to distort the facts in whatever way is necessary to promote their ideology. …

The final component necessary for mass formation is to have an “enemy“ to attach all of these negative feelings (that largely arise from disconnection) onto.

It is very disturbing and dangerous for Mayor Faber and others in Port Townsend’s power structure to mishear the words of vulnerable elder women asking for protection, dehumanize these women as appalling/disgusting/shameful/horrible/hurtful/etc., and project their own negative feelings onto these women as if they were an enemy.  The end result was the city’s incitement and collaboration with the hooligans who physically assaulted vulnerable elder women outside city hall just two weeks later.

Such demonization continues to be leveled against vulnerable people in our community. By falsely accusing them of attacking trans people with “utter contempt,” labeling them “transphobes” and “bigots,” valid concerns are dismissed and hatred is fomented towards them.

And the hits just keep on coming. Continuing its run of censorship and tendentious misreporting about these events, The Leader‘s lead op-ed for October 4, 2023 was ironically titled “A Golf Course For All Must Transcend Division” by new columnist Jason Victor Serinus, which trotted out these false narratives to smear and demonize:

…championship of Julie Jaman, whose outrage at a trans employee of the Port Townsend YMCA made it all the way to Fox News, attracted Proud Boys to our community, and got her permanently banned from the pool.

Talk about blaming the victim for how mismanagement of a whistleblower situation blew up into a nationwide disgrace! First zealots beat up on Jaman and those who championed her verbally in the council chambers. Then they beat up on these women physically in the streets. Now they continue to beat up on them in the press and social media.

Stop the madness! If ever there can be accountability and reconciliation to transcend division, maybe it can begin by understanding the truth of this pivotal meeting where council listened but did not hear, decided to protect only selected vulnerable persons, and enabled events to spiral out of control.

Can YMCA Be Trusted to Protect the Vulnerable in a New Aquatic Center?

The proposed new Aquatic Center is planned to be managed by the same YMCA that mismanaged the Jaman incident and never resolved questions raised at the August 1, 2022 council meeting.  This effectively excludes not only Jaman but also other potential pool users who no longer trust nor feel welcomed by YMCA management, raising another major red flag (alongside financial red ink) for the Aquatic Center.

Circling back to Jaman’s original concern about protection of vulnerable children, the Silicon Valley YMCA’s restroom policy requires that “Children must always be sent in threes (known as the rule of three) with a staff member.” Accounts differ about how many little girls were present during the July 26, 2022 incident, so it’s unclear whether Olympic YMCA violated the rule of three that day, or bothers to honor it on days when only one or two children are present.

But local staff seems to have been violating other YMCA rules such as “staff will stand in the open doorway of the restroom while children are using the restroom.” Much of the uncertainty about local YMCA child protection policies and procedures is because there is nothing on their website or Pool Rules about them.

Given Olympic Peninsula YMCA’s stonewalling, duplicity, and “attack the messenger” behavior in the Jaman case, there is lack of trust that vulnerable people would be protected under its management.

The Aquatic Center project should not ignore the elephant in the pool: its non-inclusive, untrustworthy YMCA management who responded to earnest child protection concerns by banning and bullying a vulnerable whistleblower with no due process.

Mayor David Faber’s Social Media Round-up:
The Joke’s On Who?

by Ana Wolpin | Sep 16, 2023 | General

In August 2022, incendiary events in Port Townsend brought social media posts by then 39-year-old Mayor David Faber to national attention. Internet writers began discussing tweets like this:

And this one, publicizing his ultra-low Rice Purity Test score (17/100) to demonstrate that, as “legally-required,” he is a “pervert and deviant”:

The Rice Purity Test is a 100-question survey that asks about a person’s experiences with potentially “risky” behaviors such as drugs, alcohol, sex, crime, deceit, and other deeds considered immoral or non-virtuous. Scored out of 100 possible points, the lower the score, the less virtuous. The average score is 60-75.

Another, about having sex with dead chickens:

At the October 17, 2022 Port Townsend City Council meeting, Port Townsend Free Press founder and ongoing contributor Jim Scarantino read some of the above tweets into the public record. While those social media posts may be old news to some, the story isn’t over.

Nearly a year later Scarantino was back with an update at the September 11, 2023 city council workshop. There were new tweets to be added to the record.

Following the workshop, Scarantino recounted on the Free Press‘s Facebook page:

“He makes such comments on a Twitter account that right up front identifies him as Mayor of Port Townsend. And he holds himself out as the Mayor while discussing city business on the same account where he also writes about masturbation. Not nice stuff to read, but this is the Mayor’s behavior in a public forum where he is representing the city of Port Townsend.”

Faber’s Twitter/X banner today is pictured below. The “cold feet” handle and licking dog are gone, replaced by a new photo, his political yard sign, and “Mayor of Port Townsend, WA” identifier.

Should we care about the tweets of David J. Faber, Mayor of Port Townsend? Why continue to bring them up? How did we get here?

The Backstory

The dive into Faber’s online persona began after the Free Press broke the story in August 2022 of 80-year-old Julie Jaman’s expulsion by the YMCA from our community swimming pool. That’s old news, too, but revisiting what unfolded provides important context for the mayor’s social media conduct.

Naked in the women’s showers after a swim, Jaman was shocked to hear a male voice. She became more upset when she looked past the flimsy shower curtain and saw a teenage boy in a woman’s bathing suit “helping” little girls with their swimsuits.

She didn’t know that Clementine Adams was a Y employee, a quite-obviously biological male who just months earlier had announced a new identity as a transgender woman. Jaman asked “Do you have a penis?” and demanded that Adams get out of the locker room. When management intervened, rather than de-escalate the situation, naked Jaman, dripping wet, was told that her reaction had been “discriminatory”. On the spot, she was banned for life from the pool she had been swimming in for 35 years.

The story went internationally viral, putting a magnifying glass on our little town. As the saga unfolded, Faber’s response as Port Townsend’s mayor brought him under intense scrutiny.

Less than a week after Jaman’s ouster, dozens of citizens showed up to give public comment at the next city council meeting. Two distinct groups spoke.

Those upset about Jaman’s treatment voiced discomfort over allowing biological men in women’s spaces. They requested that the city honor traditional safeguards for women and girls and work to develop a solution to meet all pool users’ needs. Some asked, why not allow for privacy and designate an all-gender space?

The second group attacked the first. Those asking to be safeguarded, they said, were “transphobes” and “haters”. “Trans women ARE women,” they chanted.

None of the concerns over Jaman’s abrupt lifetime ban or requests for privacy solutions at the city pool were addressed by the council. Instead, at the conclusion of public comments, Mayor Faber lectured that Port Townsend was a welcoming community, sternly rebuking those requesting consideration for private spaces as hateful and discriminatory. (Mayor Deflects Backlash Over Men in Women’s Showers at YMCA, Virtue Signals About Trans Rights Instead)

The only discussion among the council was a proposal to develop a statement “to formally support the Y and its staff.” In the days that followed, that “statement” was elevated to a Transgender Proclamation.

Local women’s rights advocate Amy Sousa tweeted the proposed proclamation out to her national audience and attempted to have an exchange with Mayor Faber. He responded with juvenile taunts and name-calling. Rather than discussing Sousa’s concerns, much like the group chanting at city council, Port Townsend’s mayor called her a transphobe.

“The transphobes have found me,” he tweeted out in response to her post. “Fuuuuuun”.

That wasn’t enough, there was more to say. Five minutes later he re-posted Sousa’s tweet that shared the proclamation, and responded with the nonsensical dismissal “Zoopity boop.”

“The mayor of Port Townsend doesn’t seem to think my concerns deserve respectful consideration,” Sousa wrote. “I think women/girls deserve the sex based provisions that our foremothers battled for centuries to attain, privacy, safety, & dignity for our BODIES.”

She later told media, “This is a little ridiculous to me that this is how the mayor is choosing to respond to women and girls who have legitimate concerns… he’s not taking these concerns with seriousness and the gravity that I think we are due.”

Sousa then organized a press conference to be held prior to the next City Council meeting, when the proclamation would be up for public comment. That event across from City Hall (covered in multiple Free Press articles – 1, 2, 3) brought yet more national attention after trans activists violently attacked the predominantly elderly women speaking, while Port Townsend Police watched passively from across the street. Citizens begging for help were told orders had come “from above” not to intervene.

Those who participated in the event were intimidated and assaulted; some were injured. They were locked out of the council meeting as well, unable to give public comment. Meanwhile inside City Hall, Mayor Faber descended from his dais and took off his mask to ceremoniously read the “welcoming” proclamation to a local trans “leader”.

Following the mob attacks and proclamation reading, a later tweet by Faber further inflamed the situation: “What an incredible night. The Port Townsend community showed up in beautiful fashion,” he wrote. “Tonight reminded me of why Port Townsend is home.”

While the police stood guard outside City Hall under orders “from above” to protect the mayor and council — not the citizens — during their special proclamation, below is what “home” had become for people speaking across the street that evening. “The Port Townsend community that showed up in beautiful fashion” looked like this:

How the Mayor Has His “fuuuuuun” on Social Media

This series of explosive events reverberated far and wide. Writers covering women’s issues took notice. After his puerile responses to Sousa and his “beautiful community” tweet the night of the assaults, they wondered what else Mayor Faber was broadcasting online.

Former New York Magazine and Penthouse contributor Mandy Stadtmiller was among the national writers to bring attention to Faber’s social media posts. The day after the city-permitted women’s rights press conference drew violent assaults from trans activists while police stood watching with detachment under orders not to protect them, she asked:

But first out of the gate was Substack writer Mattie Watkins. “This was supposed to be fun and snarky,” she wrote, “but as I researched David J. Faber things got progressively weirder and more serious.”

Watkins was the first to republish the tweets at the top of this article. Along with his sex with dogs and dead chickens comments, and the post that mayors are required to be filthy and deviant, she discovered Faber defending actor Paul Reuben, aka PeeWee Herman. Reuben had been arrested for masturbating in public and charged with misdemeanor possession of child pornography in 2002.

Faber’s tweet responding to someone claiming that Reuben had been targeted as part of a sting operation was that “PeeWee did nothing wrong.”

Yet in addition to masturbating in public, Reubens had confessed to possessing 170 images of children in sexual acts and positions.

Watkins also tagged this post:

In a follow-up article she asked “What does that mean?”

Social media influencer Vaush describes himself as a “dirtbag leftist” with an online presence geared predominantly to radicalizing young people. Watkins documents his insulting, aggressive and misogynistic attitude toward women.

Typifying that attitude, she says, are statements like, “I wish this dumb bitch wasn’t in high school so I could fully go off on her.”

And demeaning tweets like:

While degrading women is a common theme in “Vaush politics,” he is equally “notorious” for comments advocating pedophilia and lowering the age of consent, Watkins said. He influences his mostly young audience with messages that endorse the legalization of child pornography.

“What does this mean for Mayor David J. Faber?” she asked. “Well, he isn’t a complete idiot and is not on record agreeing with these specific ideas from Vaush. However, he also hasn’t condemned them and continues to align himself with Vaush as a whole.”

Faber Looks Amused

At the October 3, 2022 Port Townsend City Council meeting, Rebel News reporter Katie Daviscourt posed some of these same questions during public comments.

Daviscourt quoted Faber’s tweets about bestiality and asked him if his alignment with Vaush reflected his moral views. She asked if “his history of inappropriate and controversial tweets are a good representation of an elected official.” The mayor did not answer her queries. The video of the meeting reveals only a grainy flash of Faber grinning as she quotes his tweet, “As mayor, I am legally required to be a pervert and deviant.”

She asked, does the City Council stand by his comments or denounce his behavior?

The only councilor to offer a public response to citizens’ call for the city council to censure the mayor — and in some social media discussions, to remove Faber from office — has been Owen Rowe.

“I fully support our Mayor David Faber,” Rowe said. “I am entertained by his Twitter account, and do not understand that as in any way representing the city organization.”

Watkins notes that Vaush and his supporters “love to hide behind the ‘it’s a joke’ excuse.”

The File Grows

More of Faber’s online “humor” soon surfaced.

His post of a selfie wearing eye liner and mugging inside what appears to be a public toilet stall:

Delight over wasting a church’s money on prayer card mailings to his deceased mother:

And new tweets defending PeeWee Herman’s possession of child pornography and public masturbation. “I’ll say it again,” he wrote, “Pee-Wee Herman did nothing wrong.”

“In another tweet,” Scarantino informed council, “he said he adored this pedophile [PeeWee] for never losing his childlike innocence and joy.”

And “earlier in the summer,” Scarantino added, “between discussing housing policy and promoting one of the Financial Sustainability videos done by the city,” Faber was inspired to re-post someone else’s musings about masturbation:

“[I’m] thinking about that guy who died beating off at Pompeii” the post said.  To which Faber commented, “Every day. Sometimes twice.”

“I don’t know what it says about the city that for over a year the council has known about this conduct and has not said one word about it,” Scarantino told council. “And as I pointed out over a year ago, were any other city employee to engage in such conduct, you’d have a very hard time disciplining them with your mayor doing things like this.”

“This is the mayor. The mayor,” Scarantino later emphasized. Not only does Faber use his Twitter account to discuss city business, “he even communicated with at least one state legislator.”

“Seriously, imagine if a police officer—make it the police chief—identified himself by his public position, then said that stuff. But apparently they approve of his conduct enough to let it go, even when reminded that he was still at it a year later.”

“What does that say for Port Townsend and the government of this city?” Scarantino asked the council.

Are all of our elected officials who chose to place young Faber in the mayor’s chair entertained by his mix of city business with tweets about bestiality, perversion, deviance, and the joy of masturbation? Do all of them find his public defense of pedophilia funny?

REALITY CHECK:
PT Aquatic Center
Grossly Underestimates Operating Costs

by Jim Scarantino | Sep 10, 2023 | General

Lowballing costs. The feasibility study for the proposed Port Townsend aquatic center appears to grossly underestimate likely operating costs. Annual deficits may be far worse than being reported to the public. Even greater subsidies — and higher taxes — may be required.

The flawed feasibility study prepared for the city and the PT aquatic center task force relies exclusively on hypothetical numbers.

No on-the-ground research in and around Port Townsend was conducted.

In every scenario, a future PT aquatic center (architect’s conception featured above) would run deficits of around $400,000. And that’s being treated as good news.

We have a comparable facility nearby that could serve as a yardstick in accurately estimating costs for a future PT aquatic center. The William A. Shore Aquatic Center in Port Angeles has real-world data collected from real-world experience of its operations over time.

The consultants chose not to consider the Shore center’s real-world experience on the Olympic Peninsula. We will do it for them — and for the benefit of taxpayers who are being asked to foot the bill.

The William A. Shore Aquatic Center

The Shore aquatic center was built in 1961, two years before the construction of Port Townsend’s Mountain View pool.  It has undergone many upgrades and renovations and is now a modern, attractive 30,000 square foot natatorium. It had been owned by the city of Port Angeles until 2009 when voters approved creation of the Shore Metropolitan Park District, which now owns and operates the facility.

The expansion of the facility to twice its original size was completed in 2020. In addition to the original competition pool and diving tank, it now offers a spa, a wellness pool, and an activity pool that includes a “lazy river” and vortex ring. All pools are heated. Other additions include a multipurpose space, universal changing hall and locker rooms, and support spaces for staff and patrons. The enlarged building has a dedicated space for the Splash, Play and Active Recreation for Kids after-school program for children, and an outdoor playground with multiple features above a synthetic turf.

In 2017 voters increased the park district’s debt capacity from $6.5 to $10 million. The $20 million renovation was funded with bonds, state and federal grants and cash reserves.

Here is a video tour of the completed facility:

PT Aquatic Center Feasibility Mixed Up
With Upper Macungie, Pennsylvania

The feasibility study for a new PT aquatic center was prepared by the consulting firm Ballard*King & Associates from Highland Park, Colorado. I have written two articles (here and here) examining flaws and red flags in their report. One of the red flags was that these consultants compared PT’s cost of living and housing expenses to those in Pennsylvania. This, combined with other absurd extrapolations (such as concluding we likely had 1,305 adults playing basketball), led me to wonder if they had mixed up their report for PT with work for another community.

It appears that hunch was correct. The Ballard*King report is now posted on the city’s website. There is no title page. It is entitled “Upper Macungie Report 3.22.23” according to the tab that appears on the search bar when the link is clicked.

Upper Macungie is a rapidly growing township in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. That township had been doing work on a community center. It appears that the report for Port Townsend was cut-and-pasted, commingled and confused with work for a very different community on the other side of the continent.

Here is that curious page from the study comparing PT’s cost of living to its counterpart in… Pennsylvania:

Now add to these reasons to question the validity of the Ballard*King report indications that their operating expense projections appear to be way off. Shore’s real-world experience shows that running an aquatic center costs a lot more than these consultants are revealing.

We have obtained Shore’s recent financial data from Steve Burke, who has been with the Shore Metro Park District since before the facility underwent its expansion and remodeling. You may study that information at this link: 2018-2023 Shore Aquatic Center Financials.

Lowballing the Likely Costs
of a PT Aquatic/Fitness Center

Three versions of a possible new PT aquatic/fitness center have been under consideration. Ballard*King purported to project operating costs for each of them. The three versions are described in their report as follows:

The future PT aquatic center “base” model would be similar in size and offerings to Shore Aquatic Center in Port Angeles. Ballard*King estimated the annual operating costs for Port Townsend’s base model at $1,268,557. This doesn’t square with real-world expenses projected by the already-running equivalent nearby facility. Shore anticipates significantly higher operating costs in 2023.

According to its latest financial data, Shore expects expenditures this year to be close to two million dollars — $1,932,770.

The Ballard*King estimated annual operating cost of $1,268,557 is for a period of time in the future, no sooner than 2026, the year upon which they base their hourly wage predictions. If that figure were adjusted to 2023 dollars, it would be even lower, by a factor that backs out the cumulative effects of inflation.

The current annualized rate of inflation is 3.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  If we applied this rate of inflation to adjust the Ballard*King operating prediction figure to 2023 dollars, it would be about $1,191,106 or $741,664 lower than the Shore center’s experience this year. (You can verify this and the following present value calculations using this handy present value calculator.)

How could a similar facility hope to operate in Port Townsend for almost 40% less?

The projected base model is the least expensive version of a proposed new PT aquatic center. At their most recent meeting on August 25, 2023, the steering committee focused on the larger and costlier base-plus-gym and the full build out versions.

The base-plus-gym is projected to cost $37.1 million to build, nearly twice the Shore center’s $20 million expansion and upgrades. Port Townsend, with half of Port Angeles’ population, could thus be building a pool twice as expensive as the one that serves the much larger city. The full build out is projected to cost $45.9 million.

From somewhere, the steering committee believes it will obtain $15 million in grants, gifts or other support for each version, leaving $22.1 million for local taxpayers to shoulder for the base-plus-gym version, and $33.9 million for the full build out.

Ballard*King’s hypothetical annual operating costs for the two larger versions appear to be seriously off when compared to the Shore center’s experience just 45 miles away.

The base-plus-gym version would require, according to Ballard*King, operating expenditures in 2026 dollars of $1,617,810. That is $1,519,036 in current 2023 dollars, compared to the Shore center’s 2023 expenditures of $1,932,770.

How could a larger facility requiring more upkeep and staff incur such significantly lower operating expenses?

The projected operating costs for the massive full build out version — more than a third larger than Shore, with a gymnasium, weight/cardio space and a larger staff — are somehow almost exactly the same in 2023 dollars as the much smaller and simpler Shore aquatic center at $1,957,076 versus $1,932,770.

How could that be possible?

Doesn’t Pencil Out

At the most recent town hall presentation, July 13, 2023 at Fort Worden, the public was shown the slide copied above acknowledging that this project can’t “pencil out.” All three versions are projected to run deficits of $352,000 to $434,000, requiring an annual subsidy paid by city taxpayers on top of any property and/or sales taxes they would be paying just for the pool.

Those subsidy estimates may be another instance of lowballing what this project is likely to cost taxpayers.

At a July 2, 2023 workshop — as opposed to a public town hall meeting — the steering committee was provided a much grimmer projection, showing a subsidy of $1.6 million, four times what was presented at the public meetings. Unlike the slides shown the public, this one included the annual financing cost for a new aquatic center:

We’ve Seen This Before:
The Cherry Street Project

“I wouldn’t change a single thing about what we did,” Mayor David Faber has said about the failed Cherry Street Project. The city is now seeking bids to demolish that “affordable” housing project that has taxpayers on the hook for $1.4 million in bond principal and interest. Over $100,000 more in other outlays has been poured into the century-old derelict building barged here from Victoria, B.C. in 2017.

As we’ve reported, city council had in hand the equivalent of a feasibility study — a pro forma — that showed the project would default within two years of securing financing. The project’s cost estimates had been derided as “bogus” by the president of Homeward Bound, the organization that was going to complete the project. Costs were lowballed in repeated efforts to hook the city and taxpayers, and then extract more from them as the project demanded more and more investment… until the costs of finishing it became utterly prohibitive and the project was abandoned.

In its push for a new pool, the city is again being offered a questionable feasibility study. The consultant leading the effort, Opsis Architecture of Portland, Oregon, stands to secure a lucrative contract if the project moves forward.

Every member of the steering committee wants to see a new pool built. There is no one outside the loop providing critical, objective analysis. There is no “red team/blue team” constructive give-and-take to drag into the open all the possible weaknesses and flaws in the work being done by Opsis and Ballard*King. The city and the aquatic center steering committee are going with only one estimate, the estimate that suits their agenda.

The flawed feasibility study comparing Port Townsend’s cost of living to Pennsylvania and reaching absurd extrapolations from statistical data, while also missing the Cape George pool and placing Port Ludlow’s pools in Kitsap County — that study has been in the steering committee’s hands for months. Apparently no one read beyond the numbers they selected to pitch to the public to see how the study may be seriously flawed. They have no reason to critique the feasibility study on which they are building their case for higher taxes.

No one on the steering committee apparently was troubled by the fact that the feasibility study relies only on hypothetical numbers and did not bother to consider the real-world costs of the nearby Shore aquatic center. The Olympic YMCA holds a seat on the steering committee. They could provide real-world data from the Sequim YMCA to show how much it costs to run a larger facility. That does not seem to have been done.

Taxpayers are being asked to buy into a massively expensive-to-build, expensive-to-operate amenity solely on the basis of hypothetical numbers.

Ballard*King has already given itself an out. They do not guarantee that they got any of their cost estimates right. Proceed at your own risk, they say.

Ballard*King disclaimer of responsibility for any inaccuracies or omissions in their cost projections

Taxpayers won’t have such an easy out. Once they bite, there’s no getting off the hook.

Letters Forum: Off Topic!
– SEPTEMBER 2023 –

by the Editors | Sep 4, 2023 | General

In the spirit of offering Letters to the Editor as a traditional platform for lively, wide-ranging conversations in the public square, we invite you to write about whatever is on your mind.

Because we require comments under articles to be “on topic”, we found that readers who want to speak to other important issues, events and concerns that our small crew can’t cover don’t have a place for that. This Off Topic! feature allows readers to bring up other subjects, post news flashes, announce community events, or express concerns outside of the selected topics we write about.

A new Off Topic! forum is posted monthly. The post is open throughout the month for new letters and your responses.

How this works:

Submit your letter in the white box below Comment Guidelines at the bottom of the page containing the muted prompt “Enter your comment here…”

Either provide your own title to the letter as a top line or we will title it for you.

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