Move the MAT?
The proposed medicine-assisted-treatment (MAT) Healing Campus has brought quite a bit of dissension to our little community. Driving past the new resort hotel under construction next to the casino, I realized that it could provide a solution which would please everyone.
The tribe should devote one floor of the hotel to the MAT clinic. Since they have already figured out how to keep the patients from having any ill-effects on downtown Sequim, they could apply the same measures to insure that the patients — our brothers and sisters — do not bring crime to the hotel or to the casino parking lot.
The hotel will be finished years before the proposed Healing Campus can be completed, bringing help that much sooner. What better and more compassionate way could there be for the tribe to demonstrate that the opponents of locating the campus in Sequim were badly mistaken?
Patients who have car trouble can even be put up at the hotel until the wraparound care provided by the program can replace their transmission or whatever.
Robert Falk
Sequim
MAT, grownup time
My wife and I attended the Jan. 21 Sequim City Council executive session. The results, moderated by the mayor, were disappointing, disturbing and disgusting. For three half hour closed door sessions the council members held discussions on the tribe’s recent medication-assisted treatment (MAT) center application, and whether an A-2 or C-2 procedure should be followed during the MAT application review/approval process.
Based on council member comments, one is for the tribe’s drug distribution facility, one member against it. One member was either too cowardly or too smart to say anything. The other four engaged in political double-talk, general waffling and lame excuses.
The worst excuse was that because the facility application was accepted for approval, the council could not change the review/approval procedures. News flash: The council has known about the tribe’s plans for more than two years and had more than enough time to review and change procedure elements.
It’s time for the double-talk and excuses from the council to stop. They need to remember this is their community, too. They and their families live and work in Sequim.
Many of us come from communities with same or similar facilities and are familiar with the problems they cause.
Most of these communities have significant support facilities and agencies available, yet still suffered major quality-of-life issues.
As has been pointed out, we do not have the support structure. It’s high time for the council to do the right thing for our community and stop pandering to the tribe’s special interests.
Bob Travis
Sequim
