EDITOR’S NOTE — This is the first of two articles about the settlement of disputes over the canceled Hood Canal Bridge graving yard. The second article will appear next Sunday, Sept. 3.
PORT ANGELES — What’s behind the $15 million graving yard settlement the state made with the city of Port Angeles and the Port of Port Angeles?
Fairness, according to Tom Fitzimmons, Gov. Chris Gregoire’s chief of staff.
When the settlement was signed Aug. 14 by the governor and all the parties during ceremonies in Port Angeles, the public was told that the millions were to compensate for the loss of jobs and other economic damage from cancellation of the Hood Canal graving yard.
The project was stopped in December 2004 after construction uncovered the Klallam ancestral village of Tse-whit-zen and its cemetery.
Before the $15 million can be paid, it must be approved by the state Legislature.
In an interview with the Peninsula Daily News, Fitzsimmons explained for the first time that the $7.5 million and land the state will give to the Port, and $7.5 million to the city, “balanced up with the value that the tribe is receiving.”
He said the settlement represents a roughly equal three-way split of land and cash among the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe and the city and the Port of Port Angeles.
Parity among the parties meant estimating the value of the tribe’s ancestral cemetery — the central 11 acres of the canceled graving yard site — and its low- or no-rent lease of land for a museum, then adding $2.5 million, the amount the state will give the tribe to build it.
That’s how the amount of $15 million was arrived at — $7.5 million to each party.
The settlement was based on “fairness and equity so that the [non-Native] community felt the state treated them fairly,” Fitzsimmons said.
In addition, the Port gets the shoreline slice of the land, and the city receives $480,000 for an archeologist as well as up to $500,000 to attract or keep business.
With the $15 million and other reparations of the recent settlement, the Hood Canal Bridge renovation project is now expected to cost about $487.6 million, which is now $212 million over budget and three years behind schedule.
The state lost $87 million alone when the graving yard closed.
‘I’m pleased’
Mayor Karen Rogers was happy with the pact.
“I’m pleased we’ve come to an agreement, and we can all move forward,” she said in an interview last week.
The money for the city and the Port “was calculated as something sizable and sufficient to do a number of major projects,” Fitzsimmons said.
Fitzsimmons said the city’s share would compensate it for the tax revenue that the ill-fated project’s 120 “family-wage” jobs would have generated.
As for the Port, it was repaid for the “loss of potential” caused by closing a large section of the middle of the Port’s industrial waterfront holdings, Fitzsimmons said.
Half the canceled graving yard site will be designated a historical cemetery and be off limits to development. Roughly another third probably will be used for a cultural center and museum.
The money for the city and Port is subject to the Legislature approving Gregoire’s 2007 capital budget request. The current capital outlay is $3.3 billion.
However, Rogers said that if there was a reason for the Legislature not to approve the money in 2007, it could be requested in the following year.
The parties can continue requesting the money until the settlement is satisfied, the mayor said.
Rogers promised Gregoire she’ll visit Olympia every year until all the money is allocated.
Funds will be paid project by project and step by step.
The archaeologist’s salary and cost of the harborfront survey also will be apportioned year by year.
No projects earmarked yet
Until the city actually gets the money, there’s no sense in developing a wish list for it, said Rogers.
Eventually, the City Council and its staff will determine how the funds can be leveraged several times, she said, mostly with government grants.
“There are no projects earmarked for it at this time,” Rogers said. “We don’t know what the city’s needs could be two years from now.”
Port Executive Director Robert McChesney similarly said the Port isn’t certain how it will spend its development money.
However, the settlement listed project examples that included a barge dock, a sturdier bridge across Tumwater Creek, new fenders for oil tankers at Terminal 1, a multi-purpose cargo pier, larger ship repair facilities at Terminal 3 and Boat Haven marina improvements.
Moving ahead
The city, port and tribal governments “add up to the whole community,” Fitzsimmons said.
“The winner is the entire community.”
John Miller, the tribe’s executive director, said he thought the settlement was fair.
“It’s a beginning of the healing process for all of the communities,” he said.
State Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, who has criticized how state handled the graving yard debacle, summed up the settlement:
“The decision’s been made,” he said. “We need to move forward, move on.”
As for the money given to the Port and the city, “My guess is that it’ll make the constituency feel a little bit better — but they may not be completely satisfied.”
Buck said he would work to approve the $15 million.
“I’ll be working with Lynn [Kessler, D-Hoquiam],” he said, “to make sure it’s taken care of.”
Buck, Kessler and state state Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoqiuam, represent Jefferson and Clallam counties in the state Legislature.
Kessler said she foresaw no problem with funding.
“I feel pretty confident about it,” she said.
John Bickerman, the Washington, D.C.-based attorney who mediated the negotiations, said the settlement’s value “won’t be the words on the page but that the tribe and the community can go ahead and work together.”
Rogers agreed.
“We as a community — the city and the tribe and the community — have committed to a future together. It’s bigger than what building will be built.
“For three years, it’s been tough, and now we have a commitment to move forward.”
Long time coming
Work on the graving yard began in August 2002 on a 22.5-acre former log yard and mill site in Port Angeles.
The state Department of Transportation project, which was expected to provide 120 local “family-wage” jobs, would have created a huge onshore dry dock to build replacement concrete anchors, pontoons, and decks to revamp the 45-year eastern end of the Hood Canal Bridge.
Excavation found hundreds of human burials at Tse-whit-zen.
Transportation stopped construction in December 2004, with the consent of then-governor Gary Locke and members of the congressional delegation.
On Dec. 23 of last year, the present governor sparked negotiations for the settlement signed Aug. 14 when she called Frances Charles, the Lower Elwha tribal chairman — who was Christmas shopping in Costco at the time — and proposed formal negotiations in which the state and tribe would have equal footing on a government-to-government basis.
NEXT SUNDAY: What’s the truth?
Did Tse-whit-zen’s discovery and the closing of the graving yard chill waterfront business development for Port Angeles and the Port?