PORT ANGELES — A longtime Port Angeles resident and advocate for people with disabilities has launched his fifth campaign for a City Council seat.
Peter Ripley, 52, filed paperwork Wednesday with the Washington Public Disclosure Commission.
He plans to run for the City Council seat now held by Max Mania, whose term ends in December.
“I did file my [candidate registration] papers with the intention to run against Mr. Mania,” Ripley said.
Mania did not reply to requests for comment on Friday and Saturday.
If elected, Ripley said his first priority would be the shuttered city’s landfill, which ceased opeation in 2007.
He supports removing all the accumulated garbage to address a failing 135-foot bluff just north of the landfill that is threatening to send decades of built-up garbage tumbling into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The city’s chosen route, removing just the garbage most in danger of escaping and buttressing the ends of the seawall at the toe of the bluff, is but a temporary fix, Ripley said.
“There should be something more than what I call a duct-tape solution to a leaking problem,” Ripley said.
The city’s engineering consultant on the landfill project estimates the chosen route will cost about $15.4 million.
Aware that removing all the garbage likely will cost tens of millions of dollars more, Ripley said the city should work to save money for that effort now by creating a designated savings account.
Ripley suggested money could be raised for landfill removal by mining the accumulated waste for valuables or material that could be sold and hosting waterfront carnivals once the city’s waterfront improvements along Railroad Avenue are complete.
Ripley also plans to push for better social services for the disabled, elderly and poor, and to promote marine-based-industry jobs in Port Angeles.
“I think a more marine-base economy would work here,” Ripley said.
Ripley, who has lived in Port Angeles since 1974, currently maintains his online publication “The Ripley Report” and serves on the Clallam County Developmental Disabilities Advisory Committee.
Ripley last ran for a seat on the City Council in 2009 but did not make it through a four-candidate primary election.
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Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.
