PORT TOWNSEND – Taking a Chimacum farmer’s threat seriously, Jefferson County’s administrator called three sheriff’s deputies to the county commissioners’ meeting Monday to ensure order.
“I am the county’s risk manager and in that capacity I have to take appropriate actions for what is perceived as a threat,” Fischbach said after the county commissioners discussed the incident, which occurred during a county Planning Commission hearing on the critical areas ordinance last Wednesday.
Citing the county’s “No Tolerance for Disrespect Policy” adopted in September 2005, Fischbach released the transcript of a statement made during the meeting by Roger Short, a vocal critic of county bureaucracy.
“The way it has been tonight with the Planning Commission – it just ain’t going to happen and all I can see is May 17 of last year coming back up and you know if that happens it would be real easy for us to round up the troops in the county and bring the rifles to the courthouse,” Short’s statement to officials said.
He was referring to when a 450-foot wetland and waterway buffer was proposed after negotiations between the county commissioners and the Washington Environmental Council.
Council officials later said the 450-foot buffer did not apply to farms.
Fischbach said with recent shootings at Virginia Tech and the Space Center in Houston, county officials’ concerns about violence have been heightened.
