​SEQUIM – A proposed Medication Assisted Treatmant (MAT) facility in Sequim, for treating individuals who are struggling with opioid addiction, is drawing a lot of resistance from opponents who fear it will attract homeless people and increased crime into the city limits.

The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe has purchased a 20-acre piece of farmland just south of Costco, made possible in part by the $7.2 million grant from the state. That property is designated an Economic Opportunity Area and is zoned outright for medical clinics. The MAT facility would be Phase 1 of a two-part project that would later include a mental health center. The MAT center plan is a 15,000 sq. ft. building that Tribal Health Director Brent Simcosky says would gradually grow to serve about 200 patients over the first two years.

While the construction application process is still in the early phases, opponents want to stop it before it starts. We asked Sequim’s Community Development Director Barry Berezowsky if he thought that was a realistic goal.

“You know, we get it. We understand where some of the community members are coming from in terms of their opposition. It’s certainly understandable, frankly predictable. But what the community members have to understand is that we have rules and regulations. We have laws that we have to follow, and when the applicant meets our requirements, we just can’t you know, willy-nilly change the requirements or ignore them because the community or some members of the community are upset. You know, if we behave that way, no one would have any certainty or any predictability or visibility into what we may or may not allow in the future, right? If we’re just doing it on an arbitrary and capricious basis. You know, I don’t know that we…I don’t think we have any authority or power to change that. Projects that are already in the hopper, so to speak, are allowed to continue, again, under not only state but federal law. So you can’t change horses, kind of in the middle of the stream without facing potentially a significant downside in terms of a lawsuit.”

Opponents of the project have come together by starting a group called Save Our Sequim, headed up by nurse and former candidate for State Representative Jodi Wilke. Some hold the belief that there are already plenty of medical personnel and facilities in place in Clallam County to deal with the opioid problem. Wilke says the evidence in Sequim is that the problem appears to be under control.

“You know, that is true that many addicts do function in their normal life and I say that’s great. The ones in Sequim have a program that they’re doing already because we’re not noticing them. The fact that we’re not noticing them, that’s a good thing, don’t you think? So why would you upset that applecart?”

Wilke also believes that we should focus on setting up small facilities throughout the area rather than a central MAT clinic.

“But I think the police are doing a great job. I know that there’s a lot of work that is required to sort of keep this blight under control. The concern is, we believe the solution is to keep the facilities small and local, easily accessible nearby where these people live and work. That’s great for Sequim, you know, you want to put a facility in…but a big facility like that is not designed for Sequim. I want to be real clear on that. That’s a regional facility, perhaps even larger.”

Clallam County Health Officer Allison Berry Unthank says our area is severely underserved, and we’re busing people to other counties for treatment. She thinks a central location makes sense.

“Yeah, so really the primary goal is to treat the folks from Clallam and Jefferson who we’re currently actually shipping out. So we’ve got a lot of folks who are actually busing to Everett or Seattle or Tacoma to get treatment right now and it would be much better for them to get treated at home. So that, among other things, they can be treated locally and then go back to their jobs or their families rather than spending their entire day in transit to Everett. But I think there’s often a misunderstanding of how much need we have locally and how many folks are actually currently getting treated somewhere else. You know, I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, but I can tell you that for our population, we actually send out the largest number of our population outside of County to get treatment. So we’re one of the biggest utilizers of the Medicaid service that pays for transporting folks out of county to get treatment. So we definitely have an unmet need, but it’s just that I think most people don’t know about it, because most folks that are getting bused out of town for treatment aren’t telling folks about it. but we’ve got a lot of folks who could use treatment locally.

We also wanted to hear from law enforcement on this issue. Sequim police would not officially comment on the issue. We asked Port Angeles Police Chief Brian Smith about the belief that some opponents have that if you create the services in your area, you’ll attract outside people who need those services.

“We’ve been hearing that in Port Angeles since the beginning of time that when you add services you attract people from places where there’s no services. I mean that sounds right. I mean, it sounds like you’ll attract people to where the services are but it doesn’t sound like you’re going to attract people from places that already have the services. I mean if somebody told me they were going to put what you’re talking about in Sequim here in Port Angeles, I’d be like, “that’s awesome”. If you think about what law enforcement and Fire Department and Public Safety is trying to accomplish… we’re trying to intervene with people upstream and ahead of them getting arrested. Ahead of them having a medical crisis, going to the ER where we know it’s going to be very expensive, or ahead of them engaging in, say, socially destructive and criminal behavior as a lifestyle. Right? And our official position is we’re, you know, understanding that we’re not the final arbiters and we won’t, we don’t have the job of analyzing all the impacts. We respect the fact that other people will do that. We, in general terms, are big fans of having as many services as we can, you know, convince to be here so that we can divert people out of things that are going to you know, put them in contact with us where it’s really not negotiable.”