PORT ANGELES — Candidates for the Clallam County commissioner District 1 seat sparred at a political forum Tuesday over the Board of Commissioners’ recently approved sales-tax break, Dungeness-area water restrictions and the county’s budding marijuana ordinance.
With four weeks left before Nov. 3 general election ballots are mailed to voters countywide Oct. 14, Republican incumbent Jim McEntire and Democratic challenger Mark Ozias outlined their positions at the weekly Port Angeles Business Association breakfast meeting.
Ozias, 45, is the Sequim Food Bank executive director in his first run at elective office.
McEntire is the one-term Sequim-area Republican incumbent and a former Port of Port Angeles commissioner.
“What you have seen is a clear difference between me and my record and the philosophy I espouse and the philosophy and world view and plans of my opponent,” McEntire, 65, said at the close of the forum.
It was the candidates’ second general election forum since both emerged as the top vote-getters in the Aug. 4 primary.
In the District 1-only primary, Ozias and fellow Democrat Bryan Frazier had a combined 4,440 votes, or 51 percent, to McEntire’s 4,267 votes, or 49 percent.
In his opening statement, Ozias, a Sequim resident since 2004, said the county lacked sufficient planning for zoning rules for enacting statewide Initiative 502, under which voters in 2012 legalized the processing, sale and use of recreational marijuana.
“Clallam County was ready for businesses like that,” Ozias said.
“Really, the job of county commissioners is to provide leadership.”
Later Tuesday, commissioners approved a new law that allows recreational pot facilities in commercial and industrial zones but restricts growing operations and pot shops from setting up in rural neighborhoods.
Responding to criticism that the county had not moved fast enough on marijuana rules, McEntire reminded breakfast-goers that Clallam County has the only elected director of community development in the nation — first John Miller in 2006, Sheila Roark Miller in 2010, then Mary Ellen Winborn in 2014.
“We three commissioners must not intrude and get ourselves wrapped up in the job of community development director,” McEntire said.
Ozias was critical of commissioners cutting county sales tax by 0.2 percent. The reduction took effect July 1.
“The effect on most business owners is nonexistent,” Ozias said.
The break is expected to save taxpayers $360,000 from July 1 to Dec. 31 and will be revisited when commissioners develop a 2016 budget, which Ozias said already faces a projected deficit.
The cut means anyone who spends $100 in Clallam County saves 20 cents.
Along with his wife, Lisa Boulware, Ozias owned The Red Rooster Grocery in Sequim, which closed in 2014 after five years of operation because the couple, he said, “did not enjoy retail.”
But the experience did give him “a good grounding in the role that businesses play,” he said at the forum.
McEntire responded that when he built his house a few years ago, he would have appreciated a 0.2 percent sales tax cut.
“If we can burden family businesses, individuals or household budgets less, that puts more disposable income in the community,” he said.
“It’s not the object of government to coordinate the economy.
“That’s fundamentally a philosophical difference I have with my opponent.”
The two also disagreed on water restrictions on new development in the region known as Water Resource Inventory Area 18 between Bagley Creek and Sequim Bay.
“I am generally in favor of WRIA 18,” Ozias said, calling it an attempt at compromise but noting issues involving a portion of the inventory area south of U.S. Highway 101 in the east county need to be addressed.
That region, known as the “yellow area” from state Department of Ecology maps, has no access to the mitigation water credits needed to use water from new wells for outdoor use.
“The general consensus is that the future we are looking at is [that] the winters will generally be warmer and the snowpack will generally be less,” Ozias warned.
He said the county should consider long-term planning for water storage, noting that a solution could be a 70-acre reservoir in the Dungeness area that has been discussed at area forums with an estimated cost of $30 million.
“That would take a lot of cooperative effort to put together,” Ozias said.
McEntire said the county does not have the $30 million to $40 million it would take to build a reservoir.
His opposition to WRIA 18 “is well-known,” he said, challenging notions of a water shortage in the Sequim area.
“I cannot be convinced that we are running out of water on the east end of the county,” he said.
“There’s more than enough water for more houses.
“Mother Nature pretty much takes care of the aquifer for us.”
Ozias said in a later interview that McEntire has not been proactive on climate change.
“I haven’t seen him promoting or pursuing any planning for the anticipated impacts of global climate change,” Ozias said.
Discussions of climate change involve “so many uncertainties,” McEntire responded in a later interview.
“I don’t know that it’s possible to do any real planning based on some kind of model that has known difficulties.
“Clallam County has such a vanishingly small impact on atmospheric CO2 [carbon dioxide] levels.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
