I don’t know if we are the typical Port Townsend family of four. We own a house here. We have a business here. Our kids go to the public schools, participate in sports. We are involved with Jefferson County 4H and the Girls Boat Project. We did all those things and more until the third week in March when Governor Inslee declared a state of emergency, sent everyone home, and everything stopped.
It was a busy time. We ceased operations at our successful business of twenty years that was now deemed non-essential. Our entire staff, six long-term employees, were put on standby effective immediately. All but unavoidable expenses were cut, including our paychecks, in an effort to keep the business on life support until…when? Nobody was saying for sure. We heard a couple of weeks, a couple of months, a couple of years.
I spent the first week contacting county, state, and federal representatives letting them know about the serious damage being done to small business in Jefferson County. I was also searching for a letter or waiver that would allow us to continue running a business that had always been essential to my family. Without the employees we now couldn’t afford, we could operate within Center for Disease Control, Wuhan Covid Virus protocols. The few orders still trickling in came via Internet or phone. They were processed by one person, my wife, the owner, at our office, and then shipped via USPS or UPS. All other details were managed remotely, including evenings with the family gathered around the kitchen table, sorting, bagging and labeling product.
When I heard back from the governor, it was a form email stating he was too busy to reply. When I heard back from the few local and state representatives that did reply, they told me the governor wasn’t returning their phone calls. They suggested we, “Do what we need to do”
At home we went through the same process, all spending cut except food, and utilities. We applied to our bank for forbearance on our mortgage, this put off monthly payments for six months. We did whatever could be done, to stretch what we had, for a long as possible with the plan that if we could keep the business afloat, we might be able to earn an income again somewhere down the road.
I became the person who went out for groceries once a week. My wife and two daughters stayed home. We had no contact with or physical proximity to anyone other than to say “hello” to friends and neighbors who might be out in their yards or passing by while walking around town.
I am not a teacher. I struggled with schooling for my sixteen and thirteen year old daughters. I had my doubts regarding the switch to online schooling. The sudden closure seemed to leave the teachers in the unenviable position of figuring out how to do this on their own. It seems that the bugs are being worked out. My kids do their assigned work such as it is, and have adapted effortlessly to Internet instruction and Zoom meetings. Regardless, they miss the interaction of a classroom. Their teachers tell us the same.
As a family we discuss this wild experience every day. We debate the economic shut down. We debate the latest news regarding the virus. We debate the mask/no mask protocol, and are pretty sure the people driving their cars around town solo with masks on and windows rolled up will be just fine after all this is over. We debate why the young and healthy who are not affected by the virus aren’t allowed to re-start an economy while the older folks and others who are at risk stay at home. Most sadly we debate the fate of our town as event after event is cancelled and a business like Aldrich’s closes. We ponder who, or what, will be lost next. We are learning not to be surprised.
We exercise as a family just about every day, usually in the evening, often walking along Water Street. Our commercial district is a ghost town. The only thing missing are tumbleweeds.
As I walk the empty streets I think about the chatter on social media that Port Townsend shouldn’t be in a hurry to re-open. The idea being if everyone–owners, employees, landlords–are doing okay with government grants and unemployment, then we should take our time. As a family invested in the vitality of this place, we hope this isn’t true.
Yes, we all bought in on some level to the stay-at-home concept so as not to overload our health care system. Historic precedents were provided. Yet even during the Spanish Flu of 1918, with the exceptions of theaters and dance halls, businesses were not forced to close.
I was impressed, to say the least, by the government’s ability to arbitrarily shut whole sectors of our economy in an instant. I am less impressed, and I will admit downright befuddled, when this same government, all the way down to local city councils, doesn’t seem to have the appetite or the ability to get it back up and running.
For my family the path to our recovery will be paved by a strong economy. For the sake of all families in this town, present and future, we have to find a way to keep all businesses open while we deal with this pandemic, or the next one. It has been my experience over the last few weeks that government can’t do this for us. Instead, we have to show government we can do it for ourselves. The longer we wait, the higher the price to be paid by future generations.
We are triaging the young and healthy for the sake of the elderly and already sick. We are not all in this together. It is families and people who need to work paying the cost in terms of lost jobs, crushed hopes and lost homes so old people can feel safe.
We are destroying our economy, our society and future generations to fight an old people’s disease that doesn’t even hit all old people, just mostly those who spent decades smoking, overeating, not taking care of themselves or, sadly, just falling apart as we all do near the end of our race.
This is nuts. It is the exact opposite of what rational societies do.
THE NURSING HOME VIRUS
We could rename COVID-19 the “nursing home virus.” Nearly two-thirds of its fatalities in this state have occurred in nursing homes or other senior facilities. In King County, which has been driving most policy decisions, 70% of COVID fatalities were in skilled nursing facilities. Across the nation, it is nursing home deaths that account for the substantial majority of COVID deaths.
Outside nursing homes, COVID deaths are concentrated almost exclusively in the elderly. While those under age 60 in Washington account for 68% of the diagnoses, very few of them have died or required hospitalization. The vast majority experienced no symptoms, or symptoms serious enough to require medical intervention. Many just stayed home for two weeks.
The deaths outside nursing homes or other senior facilities are concentrated not in the elderly, but in a small demographic cohort: the elderly with serious other health issues. Brought on by unwise life choices or other causes, obesity, hypertension, weak hearts and compromised cardiovascular systems, and damaged lungs from decades of smoking or other causes made them victims to a virus that little troubles most people who are exposed to it. Healthy old people have generally not been felled by the virus. They have been strong enough to fight it off, though the fight can be grueling.
52% of COVID deaths were those over age 80. When the next cohort is added in, those above age 60, they account for 90% of all COVID deaths.
The Washington Department of Health reports that 9% of deaths were among people aged 40-59, and 1% aged 20-39. The message is clear: COVID is not a threat to those under age 60, and generally not a threat to those who are otherwise healthy.
Though the DOH does not break out the numbers, the Seattle Times’ reporting indicates that a significant number of the non-nursing home deaths may be attributable to the homeless population, well known to be plagued with serious, life-threatening health conditions before the pandemic landed.
We now know, therefore, that the severity of the pandemic is limited fairly clearly to distinct quite elderly, already sick and already maybe dying populations. COVID is not a lonely killer. Other factors were already attacking those who succumbed.
But it is the young and healthy that we have been triaging. It is their lives we have been and will continue destroying.
It is worth repeating: this is nuts. Never before in medical history has government on such a massive scale destroyed its people’s well-being to save such a limited, otherwise easily isolated and protectable population, a population that would normally be that to be triaged in favor of the healthy, the productive, the young, and those not needing massive expenditures of public health resources.
It is those who are being triaged for no good reason who are angry and leading the protests against the Governor’s arbitrary, illogical and, in many ways, corrupt lock down order.
WHAT THE ELDERLY OWE THE YOUNG
I am in that group for which young families are sacrificing their jobs and dreams. Like many of the elderly in and around Port Townsend, I don’t need to work. Ironically, while working families and sole proprietors have seen their financial stability crushed, I’ve actually been making money as the stock market has rebounded. I know I am not alone in that good fortune.
Yet young people are being forced out of jobs and careers for my benefit. How many times can I repeat it: This is nuts.
It is my responsibility to protect myself. I have a full life behind me. The finish line is up ahead (hopefully, not just a few steps ahead, but it is not so far away I can’t see it). Those who are just starting their lives, building families, building community instead of feeding off it, they deserve my sacrifice, not the other way around.
And what is that sacrifice? Wearing a mask, social distancing, washing hands and not touching my face, keeping contact surfaces clean. That little effort pales in comparison with the nightmare government is inflicting on the young for my sake.
Unfortunately, too many vocal and politically influential old people in this community do not share this attitude. They want to keep businesses closed. Too many old people who wear masks when they are alone on a beach or walking in woods are pressuring government leaders to heed their outsized fears instead of making rational decisions that put on the scales the full weight of the cost and suffering of destroying our economy.
The fearful are objecting to taking advantage of an opportunity for an early reopen of Jefferson County businesses. Though the Governor concludes that Jefferson County’s low COVID risk entitles it to move to Phase 2 in his statewide plan, local leaders, hearing and feeling the fear, have opted to let the early opportunity pass. They claim that otherwise, with Seattle only a couple hours or less away, we will draw tourists escaping cabin fever.
Fear is a liar. Very few of the businesses that could reopen under an early Phase 2 rollout would be tourist businesses. The selfish fear of the old is keeping closed new home construction, manufacturing, office businesses, in-home services, and hair and nail salons. None of these are tourist oriented businesses. (That lie also ignores the fact that real estate brokerages, such as that owned by Port Townsend’s Mayor, have never closed, though they have been attracting buyers from Seattle, California and elsewhere. Like I said, fear is a liar.)
It is time to stop triaging the young and healthy. Open Jefferson County now. Let the old protect themselves so the next generations may enjoy the same good life we did. Otherwise, many of us oldsters will be gone while those behind us are still paying the price for our fear and selfishness.
Delay and dithering rules in Jefferson County. Eight counties have already applied to enter phase 2 now, the next step in Governor Inslee’s reopening of Washington’s economy. Local officials instead have opted to add additional procedural steps not required by the Governor’s order. This will drag out deliberations until May 26 at the earliest.
That is just days before the benefits of an “early open” variance would expire and the Governor’s phase 2 is slated to be taking effect statewide anyway.
Kittatas, Columbia, Garfield, Ferry, Pend Oreille, Lincoln, Kitsap and Stevens Counties were able quickly to deliberate and approve their Public Health Officer’s and Board of Health’s proposal to move into phase 2. The first six counties, like Jefferson, were identified by Governor Inslee as among the ten counties with such low COVID risk and adequate public health preparations that they could start reopening additional businesses before the rest of the state. Businesses that could get back to work could include new home construction, home remodeling, manufacturing, retail, some restaurant operations and other services.
[UPDATE: Late Friday Governor Inslee announced that the applications for Columbia, Garfield, Ferry, Lincoln and Pend Oreille were approved.]
Kitsap and Stevens were not on the Governor’s top ten list. They are so eager to help their local businesses and workers that they submitted applications pre-emptively, making the case to the Governor that they should be permitted to enter phase 2 now because they also are low COVID risk counties.
Jefferson County officials likewise could have taken action to blunt the crushing economic blows befalling what was already a poor rural county that had an unemployment rate not only above the national average, but also above the chronically higher average black unemployment rate.
Local officials here did not convene to even discuss accepting the Governor’s invitation until nearly a week had passed. A joint on-line convocation of the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners, the Port Townsend City Council and the Jefferson County Board of Health met last night for four hours. Such a step is not required by the Governor. The City of Port Townsend, under his order, has no role to play in applying for a variance.
Some participants in the meeting, most notably those from Port Townsend city government, wanted no part of an early reopening our economy. They won.
The decision to delay is as much a substantive policy decision as would have been approval last night of a variance application. The county’s public health officer could have submitted a simple list of businesses he believes should reopen (he said he already has some in mind). With the Board of Health convened and with a quorum, it could have approved that proposal. Instantly, the County Commission, also convened with a quorum, could have, in turn, voted approval. The variance request could have been delivered to the Governor in the morning. Such an accelerated process is likely how the other counties were able to move so quickly.
The only action by our local leaders was to schedule more meetings:
Next week, by Tuesday, the county’s public health official, Dr. Thomas Locke, will deliver the list of business activities he believes should or should not be opened. They will be ranked from most eligible to open to least, based on ease or difficulty of virus control he sees in the activity.
On Thursday, May 14, a special meeting of the Board of Health will consider and possibly vote to accept or reject Dr. Locke’s proposal, in whole or in part. If the Board of Health votes affirmatively to seek some sort of variance, that resolution will be passed onto the County Commission for action.
Before the County Commission meets, however, some sort of “stakeholders” forum will he held to receive comment from businesses and members of the public. That may take place on May 19. The procedures and participants for that forum remain to be decided, and the technical challenges such a wide-open on-line forum will present will be considerable. Regardless, it was recognized that forum can have no legal effect on the previous week’s action by the public health officer and Board of Health. This is another procedural step not required by the Governor’s order.
On May 26, assuming that the Board of Health has voted for some variance application, the Board of County Commissioners may decide to accept their variance proposal. No amendments or changes are permitted under the Governor’s order. If the Board of Health’s variance application is approved, probably on May 27 it will then be transmitted to the state for processing, review and approval, a process which apparently takes at least several days. That is based on the experience thus far of those counties that already submitted their variance applications, all of which as of this time are still pending with Inslee’s administration. [Note those approved late Friday, per the Update above].
Phase 2 for the entire state could go into effect June 1, at which time restaurants may operate at 50% capacity, hair salons and barbers may reopen, in-home domestic services may resume, retail can reopen, and office-based business can start back up. But the Governor has reserved the authority to further delay phase 2, something that would make having a variance in hand that much more valuable to the lucky county, its businesses and workers.
“Reopen Clallam County” has seen its numbers of protestors continue to grow. Every Thursday at 4:30 p.m. the group assembles on Lincoln Street, Port Angeles, by the courthouse to protest Governor Inslee’s “Stay at Home” order. They have also been sharing information about local businesses opening despite the Governor’s order and submitting reports to the Governor’s snitch line that attack the order itself. It is a closed group, but its public events are open to everyone.
These photos from yesterday’s protest by PA’s Liberty Bell were provided to Port Townsend Free Press by Angie Ball or copied from group’s Facebook page.
A whole lot of guns. That was my first observation at the April 19, 2020, rally on the Capitol steps in Olympia. About 2,500 people had assembled to protest the Governor’s lock down order and call for restoration of constitutional rights. I saw many USA flags, Trump banners and handmade signs offering comic relief in this time of stress and anxiety.
Did I mention a whole lot of guns? Maybe that’s what I noticed so much because looking out for guns was what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. I served 24 years in the Army, as a medic and Sergeant Major. Being on the lookout for guns will probably always be with me.
I came alone and maintained social distance from others. Personally, I don’t like people in my personal space. That attitude comes in handy right now.
The hundreds of signs said lots of things. Taken together, their message to the Governor was simple: “We want our lives back.” The sentiment that the Governor had overstepped his authority and was infringing on constitutional liberties was strong.
My family, friends and even a neighbor expressed concern about me being there. The discussion with my neighbor got quite heated at one point, and lasted to the next morning. But we ended with mutual apologies and probably would have added a handshake and hug under other circumstances. I let him know I was going to the demonstration regardless of anything he said.
Let me explain my lack of concern about being in a crowd of thousands right now.
As an Army medic I received substantial training on NBC–Nuclear, Biological, Chemical–procedures and treatment. One of those procedures in case of a bio attack was not to put patients in enclosed areas. Tent sides get rolled up, windows and doors stay open, patients are spread out. We were to ventilate the area with fans and blowers. Outdoors, if possible, is even better.
We learned these lessons in WWI. Dispersal of the agent or bug is the goal. This lesson applies equally to a virus, like COVID-19. We have learned it does not long survive when dispersed. It is curious how it can survive up to 72 hours on stainless steel.
Here is my point: quarantining people indoors is the opposite of everything we teach Army medics.
At a safe social distance, I spoke with Brandi Kruse of Q13 Fox New. She wanted questions to put to elected officials. I wanted her to ask about the differential, preferential treatment of businesses under the Governor’s order. I let her know she’d been asking softball questions of politicians. I also had a question about a commentary she had broadcast, called, “Live Free or Die.” I wanted to know how you can fight for freedom if you’re not allowed to leave your house.
Washington is the only state in the country where you can’t go outside and fish, even by yourself in a boat a hundred yards from shore. I was trained to think logically and rationally, making decisions based on medical science. This and other prohibitions by the Governor make no sense whatsoever.
When I drive down Sims Way in Port Townsend, what I see are small businesses. How many of them will we lose permanently? How soon will we be seeing “going of out business” and “for rent” signs and empty storefronts?
Pushing our small businesses off the brink makes no more sense than banning fishing. Large businesses favored in the Governor’s order can operate safely. If big box stores can do it, so can the Mom & Pop stores. I say this to business owners: open your doors, be smart, wear masks, wash your hands, and operate the same way as those businesses the Governor has never closed down.
Don’t surrender your constitutional rights for senseless reasons. We can beat this virus and not kill our economy.
I learned this in the Army: “Face towards the enemy and march on.” This is an enemy we cannot see. We beat it by practicing social distancing and good hygiene. Common sense. It is also common sense we have to get everyone back to work now, no more bleeding, no more negligence by our Governor in harming those he should be helping. We never want to look back only to say, “The operation was a success, but the patient died.”
Port Townsend should immediately declare the Cherry Street Project in default and save taxpayers a little over $316,000. That is the balance of cash remaining on the city’s loan to Homeward Bound Community Land Trust, the volunteer organization behind the stalled-out “affordable housing” development. In just a few weeks the Cherry Street Project will be have its third anniversary. In three years the project’s costs have soared to over $3 million. Nothing is happening. No one is living at the site except rats and the occupant of a homeless encampment. This project is dead in the water, especially under current economic conditions.
The project needs at least another $1 million over and above the last construction budget, which was already several times larger than the intial estimated cost. That estimate does not include necessary civil engineering work or harardous materials expenses. Neither Homeward Bound nor the City has the money to complete all the work, now including lead and asbestos removal/mitigation. Homeward Bound has burned through all but $316,000 of its loan from taxpayers, $834,000 in principal, plus a hidden subsidy of nearly $500,000. Homeward Bound’s two-year grace period is expiring and its first payment is due this summer. It has no money to meet its obligations. It is going to default anyway, and the “reverter clause” of the loan agreement will send the project, its ridiculous costs and its hopelessness back to taxpayers who are going to get stuck paying off the full amount of the loan amount and interest.
The City has been managing disbursement of the funds as Homeward Bound has submitted requests for advances to pay specific bills. City staff evaluate those submissions to determine whether the bill should be paid.
The remaining funds are currently in City control. Sitting there. Available now as the City is facing plunging revenues.
At its most recent meeting City Council ratified furloughs for administrative staff, one police employee and more in other departments, a total of 19 positions, in order to save approximately $750,000. The Cherry Street funds are almost half that amount.
Homeward Bound has been in default for months because they are performing no work at the site. Ironically, while families and home developers with funds to complete residential construction projects have been shut down, the penniless Homeward Bound could be working on the Cherry Street Project because, for unexplained reasons, Governor Inslee’s order makes publicly but not privately financed residential construction “an essential business activity” that may continue during his Stay at Home order.
The Deed of Trust to secure the loan contains as its first obligation of Homeward Bound clear grounds for declaring default now. Homeward Bound covenanted and agreed at all times during the term of the loan:
To keep the property in good condition and repair; to permit no waste thereof; to complete any building, structure or improvement being built or about to be thereon; to restore promptly any building, structure or improvement thereon which may be damaged or destroyed; and to comply with all laws, ordinances, regulations, covenants, conditions and restrictions affecting the property.
One look at the building and grounds shows it is not being kept in good condition and repair, and Homeward Bound has been doing nothing to complete its construction. No activity has occurred at the site since last summer when the building was taken off its stilts (“cribbing” in house moving industry parlance). An inspection by the city found dangerous conditions, with holes in floors large enough for a person to fall through. The grounds are full of trash, a homeless encampment and a neighbor has reported to us that the project has attracted rats. “Big ones,” she told us.
Homeward Bound should agree to default. They know it is coming. They should let the City use the remaining funds to return people to work and help alleviate the economic disaster now settling upon our community.
The support for all statements made in this article may be found in our reporting stretching back two years:
