Ready for hospital commissioner

Some have deemed Mr. Ready as obstructive to our hospital’s efforts to serve our community. He is a “Whistleblower” and sometimes critiques the Hospital Commission’s decisions. I find Mr. Ready has been courageous in standing up for his values and questioning the party line. These qualities make him the ideal candidate to serve our community as a Hospital Commissioner. 

I am concerned why the Hospital CEO did not partially “recuse” himself from deliberations with Olympic Medical Center, given his alleged status as a candidate for the new joint CEO position, which I assume would have personal financial benefits.  I also wonder about the wisdom of current commissioners actively campaigning for Mr. Ready’s opponent, who is outspoken in his unwavering support of the Commission’s majority. 

Though I have differences with our hospital’s priorities, including some of Mr. Ready’s opinions, my background in Preventive Medicine allows me to acknowledge the often dramatic cost-effective outcomes that come from prevention efforts. Grievously, payers of medical services strongly prioritize the care of acute concerns and procedures over efforts at prevention.  

Despite my differences in opinion around some of the hospital’s priorities, I can respect the pragmatic views of our commissioners and the Hospital’s CEO. Financial and regulatory demands are genuine.  Nonetheless, I appreciate a healthy democracy in which divergent opinions can be expressed without fear of retribution. Individuals should feel free to express themselves respectfully. 

I am grateful for the value we place on individual expression and beliefs. Historically, professional journalism has been a safeguard for our democracy, and I am thankful for The Leader’s efforts.   Let us not be naive, though, to the ongoing challenges to democracy, which include autocratic inclinations in us all (Our way or the highway!) and the allure of power and wealth.  I hope the above encourages a vote for Mr. Ready.

Kimber Rotchford

Senior tax exemption

For the first 24 years that I have lived in the county, I have owned a home and a business on which I paid full real estate taxes.  Although I could have asked for a senior discount or exemption 7 years ago, I waited until 2025.  

I have seen the Leader article stating that other taxpayers have to pick up the extra amount lost by helping elders stay in their homes.  When I talked to the County Assessors office about filing for this senior rate, I was repeatedly told that  younger people would have to make up the difference in lost taxes.  As someone paying more real estate tax in order to provide a senior discount for others;  I believe it is only fair that I now receive that discount for myself. I don’t feel and should not be lectured to feel guilty about this.  It is another form of discrimination against seniors.  I also object to be made to file an IRS statement and proof of income in order to receive the discount that I have made possible for others for many years.  This should be available to all seniors without a lot of red tape and economic discrimination.

Madelyn Curll

Thank you, and a six-pack

To the pothole complainers: Instead of silence, how about a hearty thanks and maybe a six pack for your hardworking neighbor on the city maintenance crew for the good work this summer? And let’s hope the money to do the work and the momentum continue.

Matthew Miner

Obee good choice for PT Council

Independent thinking on a town’s elected council is always a good thing for the voting public who don’t have time to study all the issues. It leads to more robust discussion, more careful consideration of alternatives, and, in the end, better decisions. 

That’s why I’m voting for Fred Obee for Port Townsend City Council. 

Fred is not a contrarian. He’s been successful as a business manager, as a non-profit manager, as a volunteer for local civic organizations, and as a journalist who does careful and diligent research on complicated topics. 

Perhaps it’s my knowledge of him as a journalist that gives me confidence he will research each subject on its own merits and draw his own conclusions. In the mid-1990s, Fred’s research led to a news story that challenged the conclusions of a school district, a sheriff’s office, a prosecutor, a defense attorney and a jury – and convinced a governor to give a young Chimacum man an early release from prison. 

Later, he became a champion for open government, and won the highest lifetime achievement award bestowed by the state’s community newspaper association, the Miles Turnbull Master Publisher-Editor Award.

For almost 30 years, I was co-owner and then publisher of the Leader. For many of the years Fred and I worked together there, he was the general manager. His ability to read and understand financial reports was critical to see our small business through recessions. That gives me confidence he will be valuable in city budget discussions.

Fred is also many other things – an accomplished musician, a father, a grandfather, the unruffled moderator of political forums, a fisherman, a sailor, a volunteer. The community will be well-served if Fred joins the City Council.

Scott Wilson

Support Fred Obee

Having heard both candidates for Position 1 on the city council, I am pleased to opine that there are no bad choices, but one I strongly endorse. Fred Obee has been studying and reporting on Port Townsend activities and government for many years and is a known and trusted source of reliable information on our government. He is intelligent, perceptive, careful with facts, and independent-minded, and will be a valuable member of the Council. He is not a maverick, but can be counted on to share wisdom, factual analysis and advice to the council, with the best interests of good government of a community he clearly loves. Support Fred Obee.

Chuck Henry

Stop the callous closure

Our family was shocked to read about John Mauro’s recent decision to forcibly evict unhoused people from their tents behind DSHS in Port Townsend on November 3rd. Is this what we have come to? This is cruel! As a community we must find more compassionate ways to care for our growing number of unhoused citizens – especially as the wealth gap widens.

Existing sanitation services must continue at the encampment, as we step up our efforts to address each problem -- as it arises. Besides sanitation, which seems to have been addressed by a collaboration between Goodman Sanitation and the camp residents, what are the problems Mr. Mauro believes closing the camp will solve? These are life and death decisions. No one person, we believe, should be in the role of making such decisions. A few years ago an elderly woman froze to death, alone, in her tent behind Port Townsend’s Les Schwab. We must not go here again!

We strongly urge our city council to intervene and stop this callous closure at winter’s door. We are confident our council can come up with a more humane plan for the encampment and it’s problems than a November closure – especially when people who have been working on this issue of homelessness for years are putting their heads together and leading the way!

Allow the encampment to continue, with appropriate and improved sanitation services.  Allow time for more humane solutions to arise, as suggested by the director of OlyCAP’s housing and community development, Viola Ware.

Alea Waters and Lang Russel

Grace for PT School Board

As I step aside after serving 16 years on the Port Townsend School Board, I’ve been reflecting on my tenure with an eye on ensuring that the director who takes my seat is an exceptional choice for the community and the schools. Amanda Grace is that person. 

In fact, I’ve spoken with Amanda several times over the years hoping she would run for this position. If voters agree with me, Amanda will bring a unique perspective along with being a team-player to help guide Port Townsend schools through its next era. Please consider:

- She’s a small-business owner, Goodman Sanitation. As a hands-on manager, she knows well the challenges faced by small businesses and by the working people of Jefferson County.

- She has a longtime, deep commitment to public education and our local schools from early childhood through high school. As a former Head Start teacher she brings with her a deep understanding of early childhood education. As a Mar Vista student and a Port Townsend High School graduate, she also knows the value and importance of alternative learning programs. 

- She was an effective force and key promoter of the roll-out of the district’s Maritime Discovery Initiative – a vision of  hands-on, experiential, and community place-based programming. Now over a decade old, that initiative is embedded into every classroom in our schools. 

- She’s held leadership positions and been a respected volunteer in many civic initiatives, including the Jefferson County Board of Health, Jefferson County Homebuilders Association, and Jefferson County Community Foundation, to name a few. 

With her three children recently graduated from PTHS, she’s had a front-row seat to see how students are experiencing education in our district. Along with her work on district committees and attendance at school board meetings, she is up to speed.

I believe our community is truly fortunate to have Amanda Grace poised to join the board of Port Townsend Schools. She will make an excellent addition to an exceptional board. She’s ready.

My only regret is that I won’t have a chance to serve alongside her. 

Jennifer James-Wilson

Quarles for council

For those who care strongly about the health and well-being of Port Townsend, Dylan Quarles is the right choice for city council. He will bring the integrity and hard work that our city needs to address the crisis of regular folks, many of them essential workers, being priced out of their homes and community. This work requires someone willing to listen and work with others across differences, not against others because of differences. Sadly, my impression of Fred Obee is that he has no real solutions, just suspicions. Dylan, by contrast, is willing to stand up for his principles – balancing budgets, more housing while protecting open space, prioritizing care for our community members – and is open to hearing others at the same time. Port Townsend needs and deserves a city council member with integrity, principles and solutions. Dylan Quarles is that person.

Viki Sonntag

Support for Obee

Here’s how I see the race for City Council shaping up.

One candidate:

Financed predominately by a wealthy couple who lead the City Planning Commission and Parks Advisory Board and champion City Manager John Mauro. Blames former city councils for our financial position and fails to acknowledge the extensive funds spent on consultants and failed planning processes under Mauro’s leadership. Missed the deadline for filing information for the voters pamphlet, denigrated the importance thereof and made excuses instead of taking responsibility. Claims to understand balancing budgets but has no actual experience doing so.

Great to see a well-intended young resident stepping up to serve our city for the right reasons. But, what we need right now is an independent voice and extensive experience and a deep understanding of the need to listen to the public, build on the work done by former public servants, and the vision required to move us forward while maintaining the very special character of our town.

I believe Fred Obee is that candidate.

Sheila Westerman

Vote Obee and Hasse

Join me in voting for Fred Obee for City Council and Carol Hasse for Port Commissioner. I have had personal communication with both candidates and they are sensitive to long range vision and environmental protection. They are the best choice; they listen to the citizens and prioritize the importance of environmental protection. This can weave with the progress of affordable workforce housing and economic growth at the Boat Haven. Get out and vote for Fred Obee and Carol Hasse and together we can work on positive changes for our special community!

Dixie Llewellin

Support for Quarles

We are fortunate in our community to have solid candidates for offices year after year. In part, because we do vote.

We routinely elect those with more years of experience and more traditional credentials over those who are living the experience in today’s times. We do this even when both candidates check the boxes of what is needed to hold that office. We routinely elect and re-elect good folks who are more familiar to us and, as a result who are older.

In these times, I place more weight to vote for those who have current experience, current skills, today’s pulses, particularly when it comes to Council. We very much need Dylan on Council in shared, elected, representative leadership. We need our elders, including people like Fred Obee and myself, to continue to be involved within our community, but from different roles than we held or aspired to in the past. Our elected office holders are getting older. We need balanced representation and for us to thoughtfully vote for the now and for the future. The results will be better.

Both candidates identify the same priorities, shortcomings, needs and opportunities with similar community values. The overriding difference for me is the perspective and relationship to the community that the person holds and from which he will engage in Council’s work. In our lived experience and positions, we can feel that we “know things”. However, we need to see is that we don’t know enough alone and that we need the process to engage with many others to find what is needed now for better outcomes.

I am voting for Dylan Quarles to address and balance the reality of today’s significant needs, gaps and opportunities into the direction we take into the future.

Jane Armstrong

Obee demonstrates integrity

As a Port Townsend resident since 1994, I am appalled to see the city planning commission chairman and his wife dumping big sums of money into the Dylan Quarles campaign for city council.

According to the state Public Disclosure Commission, Quarles has received nearly $3,500 in cash from Richard Jahnke and his wife Deborah. The couple also financed a mailer costing $3,954 that promoted the Quarles campaign. With the current Mayor and two other sitting Council members endorsing his candidacy, it is clear Quarles is being embraced by city hall insiders in hopes of maintaining the status quo in a way that has seldom been done before in our community.

It is essential that we maintain the integrity of our election process, something currently at risk.

Candidate Fred Obee is financing his campaign with small individual donors. He brings his experience, independence and expertise in dealing with public issues and concerns to a council sorely in need of change. His ability to listen and reflect demonstrates a strong, ethical compass that guides his use of fact-based strategic leadership. 

Do not allow our future decisions to be bought by those currently in office. I urge you to vote for Fred Obee.

Linda Maguire

Objection to Mauro’s homeless plan

I object to Mauro’s inhumane plan to remove the homeless from their ideal winter haven next to DSHS. Mauro acts as a career regulation slave who spends cash to clean the streets of people and polish sidewalks.

If we pressure struggling souls, they will turn harder to drugs and overdose. If we bulldoze their tents, they will die in the cold. Put them in a shelter? I don’t believe in density of despair. Judge them for incapacity? They are at capacity processing emotional pain in the elements.

These folks aren’t inherently degenerate; they are degenerated because we exist in a society that bows to disconnected rule makers instead of making safe space. A real leader would declare an emergency, write zoning, and modernize heritage ways of living. 

The word homeless, by connotation, makes it easier to treat someone as sub-human on public domain. But I’ll invent the term Forced Nomad to reframe the game. The term points to the root of the problem, it means someone forced to lose locational stability, a basic need. Losing location, aka home, especially from abuse or state power, means resulting grief. It takes a massive amount of effort, luck, and emotional power to find a home. Abuse, trauma, misfortune, now this? It drives a person mad to see the potential of their life so out of line with hope, in systems that provide no place. 

The problem with Port Townsend is that we have arrested policy development. We don’t strive to legitimize humanitarian innovation. Thoughtful design, ADU hook-ups, and a police outpost to keep the drug dealers away will do so much more to improve forced nomad life around right where they are at. People of Port Townsend, please turn your ears to my sense of humanity and derail Mauro.

Galen Fox Goodwick

Opposed to healthcare settlement

This is like a nasty divorce fight. The hospital, MOM, and DADDY, the class action lawyers, are fighting for dollars and ignoring us children the class-members, the hospital patients. The court says we are represented by DADDY. Mom has done the most important thing DADDY asked. She removed all tracking of users, used for targeted advertising, from the hospital web site. This is not enough for DADDY. He wants $125,000.00. He wants his buddy Simpluris to be paid another $64,987.00. But the big reward goes to CyEx (which incidentally owns Simpluris), $330 for a one year subscription to the Privacy Shield for every one of us who requests it. As of September 30, 2025, Simpluris has received 1,325 Claim Form submissions. This will cost the hospital $437,250.00. The total is unlikely to go to $12,198,780.00 but could in theory. If you mistakenly made a claim, maybe your best bet is writing the court requesting to back out. Testing the Simplurus number resulted in multiple menu messages and waiting forever for a person on the line until it disconnected. There is no call back option.  My letters have never been answered. There is a document allowing the sharing of information PHI (Protected Health Information) with Simpluris, but the licensing

agreement our plaintiff lawyers are recomending you accept will give far more PHI to CyEx for targeted advertising than the hospital ever lost on its web site. I fault both lawyers for the hospital and the plaintiff lawyers that have appeared out of nowhere. The public Final Approval Hearing is on 12/5/2025 at 1 p.m. Class members can request the right to speak.

Otto J A Smith

Vote for Kerber

I have practiced internal medicine and hospice with and for Jefferson Healthcare for 43 years before retiring 6 years ago.  I know personally the commissioners and CEO.   Unfortunately there’s “an elephant in the room” in this election.   Although Matt Ready is bright and well meaning, his agendas have mostly been outliers and non collaborative.   It’s very important to have the overseeing body of the hospital working together benefitting the hospitals missions.

I am voting for Stu Kerber who would add:

   1. A unique experience working in banking and finance

   2. The ability to deal with conflicts and disagreements professionally, and 

   3. Respect for the work of the Board, CEO Mike Glenn, and his leadership team.

Dick Lynn

Support for Grace

The Port Townsend Education Association is proud to endorse Amanda Grace for the PTSD #50 At-Large District 4 Director position.  Amanda Grace has shown a strong commitment to the Port Townsend community and especially to the students our district serves. Amanda has deep roots in our community, being herself a Port Townsend High School (PTHS) graduate, a parent of three recent PTHS graduates, and has served on multiple community oriented boards. Amanda is currently the chair of the Jefferson County Board of Health, the former chair of the Jefferson Community Foundation, and worked previously as a teacher in the Head Start program at PTSD.

Amanda has stated her key priorities, if elected to the board, would be to maintaining safe and healthy schools, supporting staff well-being to enhance recruitment and retention of the best possible educators for our students, strengthening academic outcomes, and prioritizing classrooms and student support services through transparency and collaboration in a time of uncertain state and federal funding.

Amanda is running to replace the amazing Jennifer James-Wilson, who served on the board for 16 years. We thank Jennifer for your service and dedication to the students and staff of the Port Townsend School District.

The election is Tuesday, November 4.

Jeff Taylor

People, safety, compassion

As the Executive Director of Olympic Community Action Partnership (OlyCAP), I am joining those asking the City of Port Townsend to pause the planned November 3 removal of the Evans Vista encampment. This is not about politics or blame - it’s about people, safety, and compassion.

OlyCAP has served Jefferson and Clallam counties since 1966. Every day, we see how quickly someone’s fragile stability can collapse when housing is lost. When people are displaced without a lawful, safe place to go, they lose the few things that keep them alive - medications, IDs, warm gear, and connection to care. In winter, those losses can be deadly.

The City already has the framework to respond lawfully and humanely. Port Townsend Municipal Code 17.62, adopted last year, allows sanctioned and managed shelter sites that meet health and safety standards. State law (HB 1220 and the Growth Management Act) requires that cities identify and provide capacity before removing people. Using this process first isn’t only the right thing to do- it’s the legal thing to do.

At OlyCAP, we have completed vulnerability assessments for 12 of the 31 residents at Evans Vista. These represent the highest levels of vulnerability we have ever recorded. Even the lowest score reflects a “high-need” household. Of the eight most recent assessments, seven residents identified as living with a disability - 22% of the encampment’s total population. Statistically, that is a significant concentration of disabled and medically fragile individuals.

These are not statistics; they are our neighbors - people with names, histories, and hopes - who need stability and care, not displacement. OlyCAP stands ready to work with the City, County, and partners to open a managed site that fulfills both state law and our community’s values.

Until such a site is ready, the humane- and lawful - choice is to pause.

Holly Morgan 

No housing at golf park

The residents of Port Townsend have been advocating for Camas Prairie Park as open space and parkland. Open space preservationists are Native culture supporters, native plant preservationists, local and international botanists, historians, golfers, residents, former city officials, high school students, housing advocates, active recreation supporters and birders just to name a few community groups. 2,200 residents have signed a petition to preserve Camas Prairie Park.  They oppose removing 10 acres for housing on Blaine Street, as the city has proposed.

No municipal property available for housing carries the historic, cultural and environmental significance of Camas Prairie. Our parks and open spaces are essential to the future of our community and should be preserved.

A public records request to the city found misinformation and misleading statements and a well-laid plan to place housing on the Blaine Street parcel. The city staff made a huge mistake when it presented the Blaine Street parcels as having no deed restrictions and maps used throughout the Envision process showed no deed restrictions on the Blaine Street parcels. These parcels have the same deed restrictions as the rest of the ‘golf course.’  This misinformation became a thread in the justification for placing housing on Blaine Street. The public never has supported large scale housing on the golf course and they still don’t.

Mary McCurdy