The North Beach School District voted 3-1 against an agreement with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to act as the pass-through to fund a tsunami tower near Ocean Shores Elementary School.
Ocean Shores Mayor Jon Martin said the city is looking for ways to get around the impasse.
“This has been 10 years in the making. When I became mayor, I knew there was a problem with funding,” Martin said. “I believe that the tsunami tower is important. But if it isn’t affordable for the city, I wasn’t going to be moving forward on it.”
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The tower as planned would be constructed north of the Ocean Shores Elementary School and Faith Community Church in a wooded area owned by the city.
Funding would have come from a series of grants, including a recent agreement with OSPI that would have provided $8 million for the tower, alongside $3.5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, $700,000 that the city set aside in 2018 when the process got rolling, and a $490,000 appropriation from the state.
“I didn’t want to go back to my council and say more money,” Martin said. “Nor did I want to go back to the school district and take money away from kids’ education.”
No new costs would have been levied upon residents or taken from the school district, Martin said — all that was required was an agreement with the school district to act as the pass-through agency as a condition from OSPI. The money was also not usable as designated for other projects, Martin said.
“Grants are hard,” Martin said. “You have to follow the rules.”
After deliberating briefly Tuesday night, the school board declined to enter the agreement.
Michael S. Lockett / The Daily World The North Beach School Board met on Jan. 17 to discuss, among other issues, a project to build a tsunami tower near Ocean Shores Elementary School.
Fast moving
Many concerns were voiced about the speed with which the deal seemed to be put together.
“I’ve been trying to support the locals with everything to get it across the finish line,” said Matt Lebens, the hazard mitigation grant supervisor for the Washington Emergency Management Division. “As far as the sense of immediacy folks are presenting, I can attest to that. (The FEMA grant) is due to expire this first quarter of this new year.”
Ocean Shores entered talks with OSPI in late November 2022 to fill the gap between the money earmarked for the tower and the projected requirements to finish it, said Ocean Shores grant manager Sarah Bisson. The engineering firm Degenkolb completed the schematic for the tower in January of 2023, Bisson said, and now the city has brought the plan to the school board. But if the additional funding isn’t secured very soon, Lebens said, the federal grant will expire.
“Unless the additional funding comes in, FEMA is going to see that as a stall,” Lebens said.
Of the 30 schools in Washington located in tsunami zones, only Westport has a vertical shelter, Martin said.
“Washington has the second highest risk of these large and damaging events in the U.S. because of its setting,” Bisson said, citing data from Project Safe Haven. “Ocean Shores is particularly vulnerable because of its position further west than other communities in Grays Harbor.”
Michael S. Lockett / The Daily World Susan Conniry, one of the main voices of opposition to a project to build a tsunami tower near Ocean Shores Elementary School, speaks to the North Beach School Board on Jan. 17.
Competing viewpoints
A vocal group of residents attended the meeting, voicing a number of concerns with the project, from the compressed timeline to the use of the funds to attacks on the administration.
“The school district needs to use the OSPI funds for seismic safety improvements for all the schools,” said Jane Shattuck. “Giving the OSPI funds to the city and using it to maybe protect one school instead of using it to protect many is not the definition of disaster management.”
Randy Newman, who heads up OSPI’s school seismic safety program, addressed that later in the meeting, stating the funds couldn’t be repurposed for other seismic safety improvements; that the nature of the grant was such that the money would go to the tower or to projects in other districts.
“There will be another tsunami. It will be big. The geologic record is very clear. We have a unique opportunity to take advantage of a gift the state has given us,” said resident Scott Cameron. “To miss the chance to get state funding to get protection at our schools … we would be remiss not to take advantage of this opportunity.”
Others took issue with the administration proposing the tower itself, calling the move vote buying, that the tower was a pet project, and that the compressed timeline was a maneuver to force the school board into making a decision without sufficient time to consider.
“We have an appointed mayor of Ocean Shores looking to win re-election,” said Susan Conniry, herself a former city council member. “You will find as some of us have traveled here tonight, that this is a self-serving request, and should be denied.”
Some stated their opposition to the tower because it wouldn’t personally benefit them in the event of a tsunami. For others, the chance to protect elementary-school-aged children was a good reason to build the tower where it’s proposed.
“History tells us and science tells us, there’s going to be another tsunami. If we build the tower, primarily, the children and staff at Ocean Shores Elementary School will have an easy chance to get to the tower,” Richard Wills said. “We have the potential to save hundreds or even thousands with the tower.”
Resident Hank Isaac argued it would be cheaper to buy every child a small helicopter after citing a bible passage about spreading out one’s investments, while others opined that other methods of tsunami safety would be better.
“If anyone on the school board votes for this, they should be recalled,” said Mike Wilson, after recommending getting students “tsunami balls” instead of a rigid tower, a commercial product currently claimed to be in development.
“We are almost shovel ready on this project at this point,” said Ocean Shores City Administrator Scott Andersen. “We chose to live here. The kids did not choose to live here. They did not choose to live on a sandbar in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
Andersen said he’d be gutted if the city had the opportunity to get the tower built and chose not to, leading to death or injury in the case of a tsunami.
“We are this close to finalizing this project. Hopefully, we will never need it,” Andersen said. “It’s going to be just kicking this problem down the road when we are this close to a solution.”
Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757-621-1197 or mlockett@thedailyworld.com.
