Clallam County Watchdog

This is no longer a debate about dignity. It is a debate about where Clallam County is taking people. One camp wants to keep expanding a two-decade harm-reduction project: sterile kits, pipes, test strips, naloxone kiosks, and a “non-judgmental” front door that treats continued use as an acceptable long-term condition. The other camp wants people out of tents, out of active addiction, into detox a...

The Marine Resources Committee just told Commissioner Mark Ozias how to write Clallam County’s next 20 years: replace “should” with “shall,” treat climate forecasts as binding, and put a biologist on every Critical Areas and shoreline file. Chair LaTrisha Suggs signed the letter. Commissioners sell housing affordability while this blueprint makes property parcels, wells, and bulkheads cost more in...

Last week in Excelsior, Minnesota, County Commissioner Candidate Jake Seegers found a waterfront town that looks a lot like Port Angeles—except the storefronts were full, the trails were spotless, and no one was camping, dealing, or using drugs in public. The difference wasn’t luck or isolation. It was rules that get enforced, services that aren’t concentrated in one small city, and residents who...

At last month’s Calico Cat Club forum, resident Karen Parker asked what non-tribal taxpayers gain when public money subsidizes jobs and business growth for sovereign nations that don’t carry the same tax load—and how that stacks against lost local revenue. Mike French called the benefit “easy and obvious”: Jamestown Healthcare filled the hole Virginia Mason left, then added a healing center and a...

Mike French wants a public apology for a two-year-old church announcement. His supporters then book a private “election protection” workshop in a Sequim church, reserve the right to refuse anyone at the door, and keep a skunk on the invite. Meanwhile, deputies hunt a 120-mph suspect who first showed up on a 2020 prison-release list; a familiar name from Jefferson County is back in the Clallam jail...

Mike French entered Port Angeles politics in 2017 talking jobs, roads, housing, and common sense. The voters’ pamphlets show how the pitch evolved—and how little the results matched it. After nine years, Clallam is still being sold the same lines while the books, the roads, and the downtown tell a different story. Mike French’s first printed promise was simple. Port Angeles was his lifelong home....

ORCAA spent $345,000 last year on outdoor burning and recovered $27,400 in fines. Clallam County Commissioner Mike French voted to expand the agency’s tracking system anyway. Rural board members from Grays Harbor and Mason Counties called it a first step toward more rules and fees. Property owners who clear land now pay more than double. A local shipyard that wanted to add jobs paid a six-figure p...

In this podcast-only episode of Sundays With Seegers , County Commissioner candidate Jake Seegers sits down with Hans Bailey — the former Sequim pastor who went from no real retirement plan to a family business built on a 120-square-foot treehouse. What began as a kids’ hideaway now draws guests from around the world, employs eight people, and puts hundreds of thousands of dollars in local wages a...

Two years into a $35.6 million federal “jobs” program, the public scoreboard is 21 people who finished training and later reported work or higher pay. The sales pitch was 900. The new official target is 603. The money did not shrink with the goal. Commissioner Mike French still wants another term on the strength of a grant that is better at funding government than at putting workers on payrolls. T...

Lauren Churchill told PDN readers that “common sense” means fearing Jake Seegers and keeping Mike French. The record says otherwise: pool-board failure, $1.5 million in avoidable Towne Road costs, $500,000 “affordable” units, and a Meta-backed 68,000-acre forest deal that dwarfs one family’s first house. From pool petitions and stolen signs to drop boxes and treatment-first, this week’s potpourri...

Port Angeles Deputy Mayor Navarra Carr just spent a work session asking how much of the city isn’t a “critical area” — downtown fill, the mill, the port, the harbor, the bluffs. She wants codes that prohibit development there, and she wants last year’s fight over net ecological gain put back into city law. She also runs Mike French’s campaign, and this is what that partnership sounds like when the...

Allison Berry wants deputies to referee her critics. Board of Health Chair Mike French sits beside her and laughs through the same public comments. The people who pay both of them get the smirk—and a police report. Clallam County Health Officer Allison Berry called the Sheriff’s Office because she did not like a Facebook post. That is not a paraphrase. That is Case 2026-00013825. On August 4, 2026...

In this Sundays With Seegers, County Commissioner candidate Jake Seegers shows how Clallam County’s Code Enforcement manager told the Planning Commission she wants new fees, more discretion, and the power to threaten whole groups of property owners with fines at once. She called it an “amnesty” program. Then she provided an example of how it would work: comply in three months, or face a minimum $2...

The pitch was simple: Put Peninsula people back to work. The federal slides, the local plan, and the woman hired to run the program say something else. Race and tribe are on the page. Preferred partners are named in bold. A hydroseeder is bought for a tribal enterprise while local businesses already do that work. A lot of the cash moves through NGOs. Read the documents. The conclusion is sitting t...

Port Angeles starts expensive ADA work on Peabody Street tomorrow while tents and debris already occupy the right-of-way. The same week, a lone island resident backs handing two national wildlife refuges to a tribe, teen substance use in Port Angeles runs twice the state average, and legacy media is asked to return to the issues. These stories are connected by one question: who is actually being s...

In 2024, Clallam County commissioners formally urged voters to pass Olympic Medical Center’s levy lid lift. Voters did. Property-tax collections for Hospital District 2 doubled. A newly released consultant report — and OMC’s own board discussion about taking another 1 percent hike — show why more tax money was never going to fix empty clinic slots, unused buildings, and years of losses. Two years...

A Georgia child molester classified as Level III — the highest risk to reoffend — settled in Sequim. A registered sex offender from the Spokane area preyed on local minors. Last Thursday, voters asked the two District 3 candidates what they would do about public safety. One answered with numbers, enforcement, and treatment. The other sounded like a man who last ran a restaurant a decade ago and st...

Clallam County does not lack opinions. It lacks people willing to put a name behind them. After the fair, a packed forum, and another Board of Health meeting, Jake Seegers sits down in this podcast-only episode of Sundays With Seegers and talks like someone who has done the homework and still believes neighbors can stand in the same room. A first-time voter asked him better questions than most adu...

Reminder: Candidate Conversation Tonight Mike French is running on Recompete, the $35.6 million federal grant he chairs. Year one produced about 31 placements against a five-year goal of 900. A large share of the money runs through Mark Ozias’s NGO, the North Olympic Development Council, which keeps more than $1 million before passing the rest along. One subaward is explicit: Jamestown will buy a...

While Peninsula Behavioral Health rakes in nearly $20 million a year and its CEO banks more than the Vice President, addicts openly use street drugs steps from senior housing and the commissioners’ boardroom. Fear worked in politics once—will the same leaders admit their MAT clinic promises failed? Plus: John Birch Society pushes back, activists choke timber jobs, and a Board of Health that lectur...

Commissioner Mike French is touting the new Community Wildfire Protection Plan as collaborative “resilience” while campaigning. Now those voluntary recommendations—stricter codes, setbacks, defensible-space rules, and subdivision standards—are migrating into the proposed Comprehensive Plan. Olympic Climate Action activists and the Clallam Conservation District helped shape the process. Private pro...

At the Clallam County Fair, the Democratic booth offered pins linked to a blog that has published false, intimate fabrications about my same-sex marriage. My conversations with volunteers and the party chair suggested those attacks were tolerated—and justified. I’m a former progressive Democrat recounting this experience and asking what it means for the values my former party claims to uphold. Ano...

WARNING: This article discusses sexual exploitation, drug use, and crimes against a child. This content is not suitable for children. In this Sundays With Seegers, Commissioner Candidate Jake Seegers examines the illegal encampment that operated for months beneath Port Angeles’ Eighth Street Bridge—complete with drug supplies from the county’s Harm Reduction program and a sign that openly advertis...

From a candidate debate in Sekiu tonight to Portland shutting down its last major RV safe-parking site, a revolving-door sex offender in Port Angeles, debunked “success” metrics in Seattle, and sharp critiques of the homelessness industry—here’s what Clallam County residents need to know this week. These stories cut through the noise and ask the questions our officials should be answering. Tonight...

Short-term rentals help many Clallam County families cover rising property taxes and costs. Commissioner Mike French backed last year’s failed multi-million-dollar levy lid lift and continues pushing higher tax limits, while his own housing policy paper advocates caps on STRs. The new Comprehensive Plan language creating a countywide registry and life-safety inspections aligns directly with his ag...