​Young Democrats have the potential to be a vibrant, active organization for people 18 through 35 who want to make good trouble and political change. I connected with Clark County Young Democrats (CCYD), and interviewed Kieran Kardong, who is clearly one of their rank-and-file leaders.

​In many ways, we live on an island. The North Olympic Peninsula is isolated, with only three highways that access it – U.S. Highway 101 on the coast and along Hood Canal, and State Route 104 over the Hood Canal bridge. When it comes to power supply, we are even more isolated. All our electric power is supplied by the Bonneville Power Authority (BPA) on a main trunk line that follows Hood Canal from the south. One disaster that cuts that line, such as a windstorm, landslide, or earthquake, and our entire region is without power until the line is repaired. And, as folks out on the westside know all too well, the line serving them frequently goes down.

​On Wednesday January 14 our community was honored to have Anthony Flaccavento, Executive Director of the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI), join us for a discussion of building community and better communication. 

Alex Fane, member of Clallam County Democrats and Indivisible Sequim, reflects on what he learned from that discussion:

​Despite the challenges of inflation and funding shortfalls during the year just passed, Clallam County’s Democratic Commissioners highlighted their most significant “wins” from last year in their own words, below:

​For Clallam County, 2025 was “Infrastructure Year”! Over $6 million was invested by our Opportunity Fund, supporting basic infrastructure throughout the County, like water and sewer systems, and supporting economic development in the Port Angeles Marine Trades Center and the Forks Industrial Park. 

Additionally, Clallam County and the City of Port Angeles partnered on a new Joint Public Safety Facility to co-locate our regional 911 center and our Emergency Management staff. In 2025, design of the facility was completed and a contractor selected; construction will be completed in 2026.  

Another form of basic infrastructure is affordable housing – and Clallam County is investing millions of dollars to ensure our residents have access to safe, quality housing. Our first project, led by Peninsula Behavioral Health, is a 36-unit apartment building near downtown Port Angeles that is under construction right now, scheduled to be open by summer of 2026.

Clallam County also made significant investments in its workforce, negotiating several agreements with our public sector unions so that we have fairly paid professional staff, while also ensuring that we can attract talent to our area to fill open positions. We also completed an external recruitment for our Human Resources Director and promoted from within to fill our Information Technology (IT) Director position. 

Out in the community, Clallam County continues to coordinate the regional Recompete effort, which is investing over $35 million into our local workforce to help create good jobs and connect our residents to those good jobs, while supporting them along their workforce development journey.

​2025 was a busy year for the Clallam County Commissioners! We continually strive to be more efficient and more effective. Last year, one of our major efforts was to create a "Combined Clinical Services" health care team to provide health care services in both the adult jail and the juvenile detention facility rather than having two separate and independent teams. Driving this change was our new ability to bill Medicaid for some of the health care services we provide to those in our custody, which we expect to offset about $800,000 worth of cost that otherwise would be borne by local taxpayers. The benefits will go far beyond the financial, as those exiting our custody will be much better positioned to continue their care, already connected to community partners who can help them improve their health and reduce recidivism.
 
We also made significant progress on the Joint Public Safety Facility project, which, when complete, will create a safe new home for our county emergency operations center as well as a modern facility for Pencom, our 911 service. After years of negotiations between the City of Port Angeles and Clallam County, an exhaustive process to find appropriate land, and a complex design process, we have finally awarded bids both for project management and for construction. Once contracts are completed with the winning bidders, we hope to break ground as soon as weather permits. When complete, this facility will provide a significant step forward in our county's ability to prepare for and manage any emergency that comes our way.
 
A final example among many - it is hard to choose where to focus - is our continued support for the county's Harm Reduction effort. The primary goal of our Harm Reduction Health Center is to reduce overdose deaths, reduce overdose incidents, and promote public health. We want to provide a welcoming environment where those in need can build trusting relationships with community providers who can help them meet their needs, be [those needs] housing or health care. After seeing a 33% reduction in overdose deaths from 2023 to 2024, I am happy to report that our county saw an additional reduction of 35% in our overdose death rate from 2024 to 2025. Even one death is too many, but it is heartening to see the progress our community is making.

​Book Review by Lisa Dekker

In her new book, “The Trees are Speaking: Dispatches from the Salmon Forest,” author Lynda V. Mapes travels to regions in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia to learn how research has radically changed our understanding of so-called ‘legacy forests’ in the space of just 60 years. The term was first coined by Stephen Kropp, founder of the Center for Responsible Forestry, who describes a legacy forest as a “naturally regrown, mature forest that preserves the biological, functional and structural legacies of the forests they replaced.” Although not everyone respects the term [it is not yet a designation used by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR)], there are legacy forests scattered throughout publicly-owned lands in Washington which are managed by the DNR.

Through interviews on site and forest walks with luminaries like Dr.Jerry Franklin, often called the ‘father of modern forestry’ for his work at the University of Washington, the first part of Mapes’ book eloquently describes why these forests matter.

We learn how research has radically changed our understanding in the space of just 60 years. Likely due to their dark understories, where little sunlight reaches some plants and trees, older forests with big trees went from once being described as “biological deserts,” to currently being recognized as the complex, life-giving, carbon-capturing, watershed-preserving treasures we know them to be today. 

In the chapter titled “Salmon Forests,” Mapes travels for a week among both the remaining healthy forests and the desolate clearcuts of Vancouver Island with Teresa Ryan (traditional name Sm’hayetsk), an Indigenous Knowledge and Natural Science lecturer at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Susan Simard, an eminent forest ecologist, also at UBC. 

Both Ryan and Simard are part of the Mother Tree Project, a crew of researchers looking at the changes in soil health, especially the decrease in the amount of carbon in the soil after successive clearcuts on a site. Simard has also led the project’s deep dive into examining the richly complex soils of the uncut forests, bringing insight, for example, into how the trees connect via the mycorrhizal fungi network between them. [These findings are controversial because if the logging industry were required to adjust their practices in order to retain these “biological legacies” for successful regrowth, it would be costly.]

Also evidence of the value of preserving older forests are the proven ‘sustainable’ traditions of the Tribes, stewards of these lands and forests for centuries before colonization. Their practices and protocols recognized that, by caring for the forests, the forests would care for them. New evidence for this appeared in a paper published in 2022, based on an archeologic study done in the land of the Nuun-chah-nulth peoples of British Columbia (whose family ties and culture extend down to the Makah reservation in northwest Clallam County). Botanists and archaeologists found that “old growth trees [still there] are witnesses” to the fact that these people were more than hunter-gatherers and that they “took care of and managed…forest gardens abundant with crab apples, berry patches, and wild rice root crops.” At the same time, because they stripped off only narrow pieces of cedar bark for their shelter and clothing, these same cedar trees have lived on for centuries. 

In the preface, Mapes declares that “[t]he need for a paradigm shift is readily apparent.” After many  real-world examples to support that belief, she concludes with stories of successful restoration projects, new ideas for community solutions, and a belief in the potential for people to change their way of thinking. This should encourage the reader to hope, as the author hopes, for a “new ethos of conservation, based on reciprocity and respect in our relations with one another, and with nature.”