Clallam Transit Fare Increase

Clallam Transit fares will go up by 50% tomorrow. Day passes will go from $2 to $3. A one way trip from Port Angeles to Sequim or Port Angeles to Forks will be $1.50 instead of $1. The base fare for adults will go from 75 cents to $1. For disabled passengers, people over 65 and people 19 and under, the base fare will be 50 cents.

Peninsula College students will get a better deal. Starting this fall, they can get a pass that's good for all routes.

In-House Promotor for Sequim

Sequim will be hiring a Marketing Communications Manager to promote Sequim, using the Internet as well as other channels.

Harbor-Works Will Either Acquire Rayonier Site or Dissolve

That was the message to the Chamber of Commerce from Harbor-Works board member Kaj Ahlburg.

Harbor-Works hopes to acquire the Rayonier property and speed up the cleanup and redevelopment of the site. But if Harbor-Works is unable to work out an agreement for acquiring the property, it will dissolve by the end of the summer.

Ahlburg said: "Which path we end up taking may well be one the most important decisions affecting the city's economic future within a generation."

Port Angeles Community Market Resuming This Sunday

Starting this Sunday, the Port Angeles Community Market will be at Gateway from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be vendors in the pavilion and in the bus lanes west of the clock tower.

Here is their website.

Swain's Outdoor in Sequim will be Closing

They will be closed by the end of July.

This does not affect Swain's in Port Angeles or Port Townsend.

Co-owner Glenda Swain Cable said:

"It's the economy. It's Sequim bringing in these box stores. It's an unsupportive bank."

Five Candidates for Community Development Director

Clallam County is the only county in America where the position of Community Development Director is elected rather than appointed. There will be five candidates in the August 17th primary.

The candidates are:

John Miller —Incumbent;

Tim Woolett — county planner from 1997 to 2004;

Sean Ryan — co-owner of America's Finest Fire and Restoration Co.;

Alan Barnard —real estate broker; and

Sheila Roark Miller — DCD Code Compliance Officer.

New Plans for David R. Fox

David R. Fox had been running for Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney. But now, just in time to meet the filing deadline, he's announced that instead he'll be running for Congress.

He isn't running for Congress in the Sixth Congressional District, where he lives. He plans to run in the Fifth Congressional District, which includes Spokane.

Wednesday Farmers Market Starts Next Week

The Port Angeles Farmers Market will start its Wednesday Market on June 16th, 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Gateway. The Wednesday Market will go through September 29th.

The market next Wednesday will feature live music by Denny Secord and the Northwest Boys.

For more information check out the Farmers Market website here.

Upcoming Meeting about Rayonier Mill Site

This meeting is titled: “How Structures Remaining on the Rayonier Mill Site Could Influence the Cleanup and Restoration of Puget Sound .”

The meeting will be on Thursday, June 10th from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Clallam County Commissioners Meeting Room, 4th and Peabody Streets. The meeting will include one hour for questions and answers.

Presentations will be given by:

Rebecca Lawson, Department of Ecology (DOE) Toxics Cleanup Program Section Manager;

John Cambalik, Puget Sound Partnership's Ecosystem Recovery Coordinator for the Strait of Juan de Fuca and North Olympic Peninsula Watersheds;

Brady Scott, Aquatic District Manager for the State Department of Natural Resources (DNR);

Jim and Robbie Mantooth, owners of Ennis Arbor Farm;

Darlene Schanfald, the Olympic Environmental Council Coalition's Project Coordinator for Rayonier Hazardous Waste Cleanup Project.

The event will be moderated by Kathy Fletcher, Executive Director of People for Puget Sound.

Pedicabs in Downtown Port Angeles?

I agree with most of the comments at the end of this article: Interesting idea, but what about the traffic?

15,000 Attend Juan de Fuca Festival

About 4,000 people bought tickets to the Festival, and roughly 11,000 additional people attended the street fair.

The Festival's Executive Director, Anna Manildi, said: "We had about the same amount of people come in the doors [as in 2009] but we had less people at the street fair," because of the "wet weather."

And this is where we come to the PDN's somewhat — without putting too fine a point on it — schizophrenic approach when it comes to reporting the local weather.

Port Angeles residents who constantly talk about all the rain we're getting — and then happen to glimpse at the weather section at the back page of Section C of the PDN — must be wondering when Rip Van Winkle is going to wake up, look out the window and go "Huh??? Oh! Uhh..."

The most blatant display of the PDN's schizophrenic weather reporting was 2 or 3 weeks ago. They had a front page photo of a sailboat in Port Angeles Harbor, and the caption said something like "after the rain finally stopped, so-and-so was finally able to sail his boat in the harbor yesterday afternoon."

Then, in case anyone happened to glimpse at that day's weather page after reading that caption, the report was "yesterday's rainfall for Port Angeles, 0.0 inches."

Hello?!?!?!?!? Dingdingdingdingdingding!!! Anybody home???

This ineptitude has been going on all year. And it isn't just the PDN's weather "service," AccuWeather. The Weather Channel (linked at the upper right corner of this blog) is just as "mysterious." They show Port Angeles' rainfall from the previous day, going back for up to two months. Except —not trying to insult anyone's intelligence here, but if the shoe fits — they keep revising the earlier rainfall counts. Revising??? How do you revise that? Maybe I'm missing something, but if a certain area got, say, .80 inches of rain on a given day, how does that measurement get "revised" downward to .07 inches a day or two later?

Does the Weather Channel (or AccuWeather) hire handicapped/cerebrally-challenged people to measure rainfall? Maybe this disadvantaged person goes back to the same rain gauge 2 or 3 days later and thinks "Huh? Oh, I wrote .8 inches, but now that I look closer, it's actually only .01 inches."

I mean, I'm not making accusations — I'm just wondering. Does anyone else think it's a little odd that Sequim has almost as much rain as Port Angeles this year (according to the PDN), and Port Townsend has more? Or just, well, every time it rains, like it's been doing a lot lately, the next day's PDN weather page will say Port Angeles got a "trace" of rain, or maybe .01 inches.

Is this just a case of incredible incompetence (reading a rain gauge is sooo complicated), or are the Port Angeles Powers That Be trying to attract new residents by horning in on Sequim's "rain shadow" reputation?

I'm not accusing anyone of anything; just asking. Anyone have answers or theories?