Lawmakers offer school earthquake funding

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PORT ANGELES – Five of the smaller school districts in the northern Olympic Peninsula will be eligible for seismic retrofit grants under legislation that held its first hearing last week before the State Assembly’s Capital Budget Committee.

According to registrations for 2020-2021, the eligible school districts in the Northern Olympic Peninsula are Cape Flattery and Crescent in Clallam County and Chimacum, Quilcene and Quileute Tribal in Jefferson County. Port Townsend missed the discount by 153 students.

Longtime earthquake preparedness advocate Jim Buck said Friday that HB 1775 isn’t going far enough.

“It’s a good starting point, but it won’t solve the problem,” said the Joyce resident, an engineer and West Point graduate who served as the state’s representative for District 24 from 1995-2006.

A more pressing issue for schools than the long-awaited Cascadia subduction zone earthquake of magnitude 8 or greater, he said, is the 6.5-7.2 earthquakes common in the Pacific Northwest every 35 years or so.

Buck wants lawmakers to allocate $4.5 billion over 15 years to protect against those small earthquakes. The probability of a Cascadia earthquake is 37% over the next 50 years, the maximum scientific estimate that admits it is as low as 10%.

“We can’t follow a best-case scenario,” Buck said, saying Saturday that he supports another bill, SB 5933.

Scheduled to be filed Monday and submitted on leg.wa.gov, it will roll out the $500 million Seismic School Scholarship Bonds to voters in November.

Capital Budget Committee Chairman Steve Thringer of Port Townsend and his colleagues in District 24, Representative Mike Chapman of Port Angeles and Senator Kevin Van de Weg of Squim, said Friday that they support HB 1775. The county covers Clam and Jefferson Counties and part of Grace Harbor County.

All three said Saturday that they are open to favoring SB 5933.

Under HB 1775, school districts with 1,000 students or fewer, who are “generally unable to participate in the existing school construction financing program,” according to the bill, can apply for funding to modernize and replace educational facilities.

Recipients must submit at least 30 percent of project costs.

“I think it’s well thought out,” Thringer said, adding that no speakers at Tuesday’s session raised concerns about the 30 percent zone subscription requirement.

Without the “game look” of a school district, such as bonds, he said, the state could be left in limbo at all costs.

But Thringer, Van de Weig and Chapman were less optimistic about creating a committee to lead preparedness efforts for earthquake-afflicted schools, which Buck spoke with lawmakers in the 24th district.

Chapman, who chairs the Rural Development, Agriculture and Natural Resources Commission, said the state Department of Natural Resources is already conducting a seismic safety assessment at schools statewide, but so far has focused mostly on Puget Sound (dnr.wa.gov).

Chapman, a patron of HB 1775, said another year of work had to be done on the study.

“We’re taking steps,” Chapman said. “It may not be as fast as some people would like it to be.”

He said the legislation wisely focuses in this initial effort on small school districts that are not able to provide funding for new schools.

Chapman said it is too late for lawmakers to form the committee that Buck is seeking during the current 60-day session, which concluded its second week on Friday. Within 11 days, lawmakers face a deadline.

With lawmakers only agreeing to a supplemental budget, the last day to pass bills from most committees and send them to the floor in the original home is February 3. The deadline for the House Finance Committees and the Senate Roads, Transportation, and Transportation committees is February 7.

The last day to pass all bills from their original home is February 15th.

The Earthquake Preparedness Committee should be bipartisan, Chapman said.

“There are a lot of committees,” he said. “I’m more focused on making progress.”

Thringer said he was not convinced that a new committee should be formed.

“We have a good operation now,” he said. “It’s just a question of financing.”

Van de Weig said the commission is an option but the state’s office of the Superintendent of General Instructions can do most of what the task force can do.

Already struggling with collapsing facilities and mounting maintenance and operations expenses, he said in a subsequent email, regions are already having a hard time passing fees.

“Several school buildings that proved unsafe during the school shooting are scattered across the Olympic Peninsula,” he said in the email.

While earthquakes are an important consideration, buildings have many needs. If earthquake retrofitting helps the whole picture that’s great, but I have concerns if retrofitting is done without upgrading the water systems – eg. ”

Van De Wege said he would advocate an increase in the 1,000 enrollment threshold for school districts to be eligible for HB 1775 scholarships.

Noting that it’s a 60-day session, Buck said lawmakers may have to be urged to act more assertively about earthquake preparedness.

“I knew we had to work at the grassroots level,” he said.

“The entire capital budgeting system is set up to go in there and name your ham barrel project and bring it home,” Buck said.

These projects “have to go by the wayside while we try to save the children,” he said.

Buck said Saturday that he preferred Senate Act 5933, which was introduced late Friday afternoon, over HB 1775.

Sponsored by Democratic Senator David Frucket of Seattle and Republican Senator Mark Schusler of Ritzville, he will establish a seismic safety grant program funded with $500 million in bonds subject to voter approval.

All schools in Washington state can apply for grants.

It will be referred to the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Frucette, Vice President, and Scheusler, Vice President, is a senior member of the committee.

“It’s putting $500 million on the ballot in November,” Buck said Saturday.

“The voters have to decide on this, which would be a fatal blow. The happiest thing I like about this is that it will bring the issue before the eyes of the public.”

Thringer said Saturday that he needs to examine the law more closely.

“In some ways, it makes some sense,” he said. “Voters will have a say if they want the state to have a new connection.”

On Saturday, Van de Weig said a bond issue “could be a good way to go”.

“I want to make sure that the program is open to make schools safe in general,” he said. “We shouldn’t just be pouring money into schools for things like earthquake safety when there are a lot of other dangers that might exist.”

“At first glance, that’s something I would support,” Chapman said.

According to the American Seismological Society, earthquakes of magnitude 8.0-9.0 with accompanying tsunamis have hit the Pacific Northwest at a rate every 500 years.

“But some scientists believe that the recurrence period between some of these large earthquakes may be shorter – similar to every 300 years – in the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone in Oregon and its coast,” according to the organization’s website (seismosoc.org) in an article published publicly. 2018.

“The last major earthquake in the region, the 1700 Cascadia earthquake, may have had a magnitude between 8.7 and 9.2. Scientists believe the rupture may have extended from Vancouver Island as far south as northern California.”

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Senior writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650 or in [email protected]

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