While the Port Townsend City Council has approved an anti-discriminatory proclamation, the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners is taking more time with the statement.

The county’s potential adoption of an anti-discriminatory proclamation modeled after that of Kittitas County was delayed Dec. 19, as two of the three commissioners decided that they needed to build their own version from the ground up.

“We spent some time ‘wordsmithing’ our document today, before we realized that it wouldn’t fit Jefferson County without some follow-up determinations of facts,” Kathleen Kler, the board’s chair, told The Leader.

As an example, Kler noted that Kittitas County’s proclamation stipulated that a group of citizens was “reacting to recent incidents of hate speech in our community,” a statement that she does not believe necessarily applies to Jefferson County.

“We haven’t had any such incidents in this county that I’m aware of,” Kler said.

Kler also feels it’s important to make the board’s incoming commissioner, Kate Dean, a full partner in drawing up the proclamation.

“We wanted to do it with a full complement of commissioners anyway,” said Kler, alluding to retiring commissioner Phil Johnson’s absence from the board’s Dec. 19 meeting. “And with a new commissioner, we could go over the full process of creating a proclamation, including how and why it’s created in the first place.”

The commissioners aren’t slated to take further action on the proclamation until Jan. 3.

CITY APPROVAL

The Port Townsend City Council passed a resolution Dec. 5 reaffirming its commitment to human and civil rights.

City Manager Dave Timmons explained that the council responded to the expressed concerns of a group of people by “bundling together” a number of actions the city had already taken over the past several years into a single statement.

“We wanted to recognize that this all had already been part of our rules,” said Timmons, who recalled that the city had become focused in such concerns following an increased U.S. Border Patrol presence in 2008. “We also implemented measures to show we had fair housing protection.”

Timmons added that the council stopped short of designating Port Townsend a “sanctuary city,” because such a status is more applicable to larger urban areas. At the same time, he pointed out that Port Townsend would have less to lose by adopting such a title.

“Bigger cities receive more direct entitlements from the federal government,” Timmons said. “We receive our funds on more of a competitive basis. Our state aid has fewer federal dollars attached.”