PORT ANGELES — It’s show time for fluoridation, with 9,669 municipal water users in the spotlight.
After more than a year of intense public debate, advisory surveys will be mailed out Friday asking if the city should continue fluoridating the water system past May 18 as a means of fighting tooth decay.
Receiving them will be 8,105 water users in Port Angeles and 1,564 in an area of the Clallam Public Utility District east of the city limits who drink city water.
Each survey will include a postage-paid envelope that must be used for the response to be valid.
The survey will include the survey question, an explanatory statement, 250-word statements written by committees for and against fluoridation, and rebuttals by each committee of the other side’s assertions.
Completed surveys must be deposited in a drop box by 5 p.m. Nov. 27 at City Hall at 321 E. Fifth St. or postmarked by that date.
The destination for mailed surveys will be a Port Angeles Post Office box.
But they won’t be picked up until Dec. 7, with results available by Dec. 10, city Administrative Assistant Kari Martinez-Bailey said Friday.
Martinez-Bailey, the public contact person for questions about the survey, said Friday that the elections office at the county courthouse where the survey results will be tabulated will not be available until Dec. 7.
“It is a long time,” Martinez-Bailey said.
“We had anticipated starting [tabulation] as soon as Dec. 3.
“It was due to the location of where the counting was,” Martinez-Bailey said.
“We didn’t want to have it [at City Hall].”
Bailey is available to answer questions at 360-417-4500.
City water users who live in the county PUD should call 360-565-3577 if they have questions.
City Council members will get the survey results by Dec. 10, Martinez-Bailey said.
They will discuss those results at their regular meeting, which begins at 6 p.m. Dec. 15 at City Hall.
The council must make a decision by May 18, after which a 10-year pledge with the Washington Dental Service Foundation to fluoridate expires.
“I am certainly hopeful that a majority will register their opinion and support,” fluoridation supporter Dr. Tom Locke, deputy public health officer for Clallam County, said Thursday.
“There are a lot of variables. Probably the biggest one is response.”
Locke said opinion polls in Portland, Ore., showed majority support for fluoridation before residents voted against it in 2014 in a low-turnout election.
“The higher the response rate, the more likely it is to represent the true opinion and the more likely it is to support fluoridation,” he said.
Proponents have said fluoridation is among the most successful public health measures and is supported as a bulwark against dental disease by a host of dental and medical organizations.
Fluoridation opponents have been commenting against the practice for more than a year at twice-monthly council meetings, asserting it causes fluorosis, contributes to low IQ and is a factor in a host of health maladies.
They have termed it forced medication and said the city has no right to add fluorosilicic acid to fluoridate the city’s water without water users’ consent.
Fluoridation opponents were victorious by a wide margin in a 1975 advisory ballot election.
But a 2002 opinion poll, “which is more statistically accurate than an advisory ballot,” registered 70 percent support for fluoridation, said Locke, a board chairman of the Dental Service Foundation.
Fluoridation of city water began in 2006 with financial assistance from the foundation.
It is funded by Delta Dental of Washington, a nonprofit insurance company.
Fluoridation opponent Dr. Eloise Kailin said Friday she is reluctant to predict the advisory survey’s outcome despite the strong success of the 1975 measure.
“I am hoping it’s a new world and people are on the Internet and that people are getting the new information,” she said.
“The facts are whether we can overcome this slick advertising and misstatements which we have documented as misstatements.”
Responded Locke: “It all comes down to who do you believe.”
Martinez-Bailey said the survey will cost an estimated $10,667 for postage based on a one-third return rate predicted by former Clallam County Auditor Patty Rosand, who will count the results.
Rosand did not return a call for comment Thursday afternoon.
She will be paid $37.23 an hour based on her salary as county auditor on a per-diem basis up to 50 hours for a maximum of $1,861.
Martinez-Bailey said committees for and against fluoridation can each have one observer monitor the vote count.
The PUD is paying a percentage of the cost of the survey.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
