PORT ANGELES –Monday’s community meeting with state Department of Transportation officials over the graving yard will include an open house followed by a session with a majority of the state Transportation Commission.
The Valentine’s Day community session — sought by Gov. Christine Gregoire in the wake of the Dec. 21 abandonment of the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard project on the Port Angeles waterfront — will take place in the main banquet room of the Port Angeles CrabHouse Restaurant at the Red Lion Hotel.
Monday’s meeting will be in two parts, according to a structure outlined in Olympia on Wednesday by Linda Mullen, DOT communications director.
The two parts:
* A 90-minute “open house” with DOT staff, beginning at 4:30 p.m. upstairs at the CrabHouse, 221 N. Lincoln St.
* A “sit-down” session from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the same location. It will include presentations and an audience question-and-answer session for four members of the Transportation Commission.
The commissioners are scheduled to be Vice Chairman Dan O’Neal of Mason County and members Edward Barnes of Clark County, Elmira Forner of Chelan County and A. Michele Maher of Spokane County.
Attendance by a quorum of the seven commissioners will constitute an official meeting of the commission, although no action is expected to be taken.
Gregoire request
The session will satisfy the Feb. 4 written request by Gregoire to Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald.
She asked him to convene another meeting — in Port Angeles — among parties to the graving yard controversy.
The first was held Feb. 2 in Olympia.
It produced no consensus on what to do with the abandoned graving yard site, where the state has spent $58.8 million without building any replacement components for the floating bridge’s aging east half.
The project was shut down after hundreds of Klallam remains and thousands of artifacts from the former village of Tse-whit-zen were uncovered on the 22.5-acre construction site.
The Feb. 2 meeting drew 40 Port Angeles city and civic leaders, union representatives, 24th District legislators and members of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe to the state capital.
Tribal members declined to consider reviving construction at the graving yard.
Port Angeles leaders, however, said they hold out hope of restarting the project, although the Transportation Commission and Gregoire have said it cannot be done without the tribe’s consent.
‘Group dialogue’
As for Monday’s session in Port Angeles, Gregoire told MacDonald that it should be “a group dialogue exchanging information and ideas, thereby furthering a common commitment to a positive path forward.”
MacDonald, in turn, has said it will:
* “Give everyone who has a question the chance to ask it.
* “Give everyone with an opinion the chance to state it.”
He was unavailable for comment Wednesday to confirm whether he, too, will attend Monday’s meeting in Port Angeles.
Roger Daignault, business representative for the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters, said he will ask his members and other union representatives to attend the CrabHouse meeting, as they did the Feb. 2 gathering in Olympia.
That session overran its scheduled stopping time by two hours.
Bad for business?
Port Angeles City Councilwoman Karen Rogers said scheduling the meeting on Valentine’s Day was ironic at best and “a shame” for restaurant owners.
“It appears to me that the restaurants will be adversely affected on one of the year’s most popular dining evenings,” she said.
“It’s a special night out for couples. I just think that’s a shame.”
