SEQUIM — Following a five-minute closed-door session on “national security,” the City Council voted unanimously this week to spend up to $22,000 on fencing.
Mayor Laura Dubois declined to answer questions about where the barriers will go, but City Attorney Craig Ritchie said the city’s water and sewer facilities are to be protected by chain-link fencing with barbed wire across the top.
Ritchie added that the fencing will be erected “as soon as we can get it up.”
The city has yet to select a contractor, he said in an interview on Tuesday. “In the next few weeks, we’ll decide whether to go to bid.”
The council discussed the fencing during an executive session because “to explain the need for it explains what our vulnerabilities are,” Ritchie said.
“It isn’t good to let people know where our weaknesses might be.”
The session was labeled “national security,” he added, because that’s one of the exceptions in Washington’s Open Meeting Act that permits a city council to go into closed session.
When asked how Sequim will raise the $22,000, Ritchie said: “This is probably ratepayer money,” though the city staff will try to find grant funding.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
