Politics are rarely dull in the quaint and parking-deprived Olympic Peninsula burg of
Port Townsend, home to lovely Victorian architecture, anti-Bush poets, independent film buffs, vegans, anarchists and yoga practitioners. Even less so, now that the Peninsula Daily News has clarified an earlier report.
Geoff Masci, one of two members of the city council's conservative minority bloc, did not - in a recent speech to the Jefferson County Homebuilders Association - merely call three of his more liberal council colleagues "hippies." No, to be precise, he called them "godless heathen hippies."
Masci told the homebuilders that Kees Kolff, Freida Fenn and Michelle Sandoval are fixated on "aesthetic values;" have "stifled" dialog on the council; and should be challenged by a conservative slate of candidates backed by the homebuilders. All three are up for re-election; only Fenn has announced plans - she won't run again.
Underlying Masci's frustration is a long-standing dispute between pro-development forces in Port Townsend and "small is better" aesthetes such as Kolff, Fenn and Sandoval. The three were elected on the "Rite Is Wrong" slate in 2001, tied to a group which successfully turned back a bid for a Rite Aid drugstore in town.
More recently, Port Townsend citizens have been trying to beat back a planned Hollywood Video, but to no avail. Not all are opposed, as letter writer Jeff Hammers makes clear in today's Port Townsend Leader.
The town's insular, anti-business slant became evident in another controversy. In late 2003, after making disparaging comments to a company official at a meeting in a Port Townsend restaurant, then-Mayor Kolff was widely seen as having chased away Santa Maria Shipping, which wanted to construct a small cargo ship-building yard in Port Townsend. The company chose the Willapa Bay town of Raymond instead. Kolff apologized at at a council meeting, and even the tactful city manager - who has lately been looking for work elsewhere - said Kolff blew it.
At times, the council's liberal majority has seemed especially clueless. Sandoval - a failed county council candidate, and realtor whose husband is the former county Democratic chair - joined with backers of a proposed arts center on the Port Townsend Golf Course. That idea got golfers good and honked off. And in a marathon session last August, the council spent six hours debating public cable TV access issues and other matters, while an agenda item on raising property taxes 53 percent never got discussed. (It was ultimately put to voters in November, and rejected).
The Olympic Business Journal reports (under "Challenges In Jefferson County") that business permitting and parking are serious problems in Port Townsend.
Masci's "godless heathen hippies" remark doesn't help his cause. But in calling for a slate of more practical, business-friendly candidates for the Port Townsend City Council, he's right on the money.
Will the "Take Back Port Townsend" crew get involved? Now's the time to start planning.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at March 03, 2005 12:16 PM | Email ThisThat's what Joel Connelly says anyway.
Posted by: South County on March 3, 2005 01:55 PMA sitting council member (then-Mayor) chases away a ship-building firm that would have been a great catch for the town.
Business interests have serious concerns about permitting and parking.
Meanwhile, the political dialog is shaped and controlled by people whose priority in public life is to rail against chain stores.
Yes, the town has a unique architecural character and that draws tourists, true. It is a lovely place, though downtown parking is absurdly constricted.
But the aesthetic character of downtown and the residential Uptown area of PT is well established, and not about to change.
Whether a Hollyowood Video comes in, and actually poses a challenge to locally-owned video stores, should not be cause for thousands of petition signatures and protests, yet it is. The movement bespeaks a pained isolationism and willfull rejection of free market principles upon which PT was in fact founded.
Such myopia needs to be challenged; it is symptomatic of deeper delusions. Masci is essentially correct.
Something is not right in Port Townsend, and has not been right for some time. While Masci went a bit over the top in his comments (even tho he says he meant them humorously) it would be good to see slate of moderate, more business-friendly, and less elitist candidates running this year for the seats currently held by Kolff, Fenn and Sandoval.
Socio-political change in Washington state and its counties and cities these days is incremental. Still, to me, that doesn't mean you turn tail in places like Seattle, or PT, or Bellingham.
Accordingly, I think it's important to give some encouragement to moderates and conservatives in such locales.
Yes, a majority of voters in such towns will always choose Kerry over Bush, and whole grain over white bread. (Hell, I choose whole grain, and I'm "conservative")....But they nonetheless do not give carte blanche to Ds and libs, especially where local and state politics are involved.I say that knowing more than a few Seattle "Dinocrats."
Bottom Line: The symbolic politics of The Left ("the enemy is Wal-Mart/Rite Aid/Hollywood Video; Haliburton; and Rush") will be its own undoing, if that is challenged and called out for what it is: a distraction from more basic and crucial matters of governance.
Posted by: Matt R. on March 3, 2005 06:54 PMPlease know that one of Kolff's first acts in office as mayor was to read a poem instead of recite the Pledge. Hundreds of veterans and other proud Americans almost lynched him. He was forced to listen to hours of public comment ripping him a new one.
You think this idiot would learn but noooooooooo!
2 months later Kolff and Fenn are going to Japan on a "sister-city" visit. They want the Council to authorize an "APOLOGY" resolution for dropping the bomb in WWII. Once again, hundreds are outraged.
Recently, these same Leftists tried to get voters to approve a 53% Property Tax increase. It failed by 2-1.
Then they spent down reserves 70% nearly bankrupting the town....and approved signing a contract to renovate City Hall & build an Annex when they were $750,000 short in it's funding. They confidently said their City Manager would find the shortfall. 2 weeks later....the City Manager was a finalist for a job in Longview.
The list goes on & on.
You can't make stuff like this up!!!!!!!!!!!