PORT ANGELES — The makeup of a nine-person ad-hoc committee on water fluoridation will be discussed at tonight’s City Council meeting at 6 at City Hall.
But the committee, which will consider alternatives to the controversial practice — including eliminating it — already has one vacancy that might need to be filled though the board hasn’t even been set up yet.
Potential neutral participant Mike Chapman, a Clallam County commissioner and county Board of Health member, said Monday the committee’s mission is too political and Port Angeles-oriented for him to get involved as a county official.
City Manager Dan McKeen said Monday that action by the city’s elected leaders could range from moving forward with naming the committee to doing nothing when they get together tonight in regular session in the council chambers at 321 E. Fifth St.
The council voted 6-1 on Jan. 19 to form the ad hoc committee to examine fluoridation alternatives for the city.
The committee would include council members Brad Collins and Sissi Bruch, who came up with the potential panel members’ names, including Chapman.
Collins voted Dec. 15 to continue water fluoridation for 10 years beyond May 18, while Bruch was opposed, in a 4-3 vote that the council reaffirmed by the same margin at the Jan. 19 meeting.
Collins and Bruch would join Marc Jackson, Port Angeles School District superintendent; Betsy Wharton, former City Council member and the city Utility Advisory Committee’s member-at-large; Jake Oppelt, owner of Next Door Gastropub; Janet Kailin, a retired Olympic National Park ranger; Chris Frank, Clallam County health officer; and Dr. Alan Peet, an oral surgeon and president of the Olympic Peninsula Dental Society.
McKeen identified Oppelt and Kailin as against fluoridation; Frank and Peet in favor; and Jackson, Wharton and Chapman as neutral.
McKeen said Tuesday that no neutral names have been submitted for consideration other than Jackson, Wharton and Chapman.
“This is a city issue,” Chapman said Monday.
His participation would add “an element of politics that this committee doesn’t need,” Chapman added.
“What people need to realize is, this is a political debate, not a scientific debate.”
Board’s intent
The committee’s statement of purpose, authored by Collins, Bruch and McKeen, is “to bridge the divide that exists in the community related to the issue of fluoridation and to look for viable alternatives that recognize the importance of oral health in our community,” according to McKeen’s memo to the council in preparation for tonight’s meeting.
City Council members rejected eliminating fluoridation and funding a 10-year, $400,000 “Oral Health Care Initiative” as an option at the Jan. 19 meeting.
Fluoridation opponents, upset the council did not abide by the overwhelmingly anti-fluoridation results of a survey of city water customers, have been gathering signatures on a petition that seeks to change the city’s government from a noncharter code city to a second-class city.
If the petition is validated by county officials, a citywide election would be held that would force the entire City Council to undergo re-election if a majority of voters favors second-class-city status.
Pro-fluoridation council members Dan Gase, Brad Collins and Patrick Downie, as well as anti-fluoridation council member Lee Whetham, are up for re-election next year.
They must file in May 2017 if they want to run in November 2017.
Board of Ethics
In a related matter today, council members will consider choosing, from a pool of nine names, three members for a Board of Ethics that will recommend action on an ethics complaint that fluoridation opponent Marolee Smith filed against Deputy Mayor Cherie Kidd.
McKeen said the selection requires a 5-1 supermajority of six council members in a process that will not include Kidd.
Smith, a November 2015 City Council candidate, filed the complaint after Kidd, while acting as mayor, abruptly ended the Feb. 2 City Council meeting over public comments Kidd said were “personal insults” that were being leveled at council members.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
