HEADLINE: Drug-fighting levy has council bristling

NUTGRAPH: Bremerton taxpayers may be asked to approve a levy in November to provide city police with a drug- and gang-fighting unit for at least a year.

By Travis Baker

Sun Staff

Sparks flew Wednesday as the man chosen by Bremerton Mayor Louis Mentor to lead his $430,000 anti-drug, anti-gang levy nettled -- and was nettled back -- by a skeptical City Council.

Phil Olwell and Mentor would like to get the levy on the November ballot. It would provide eight new officers, one of them a DARE officer to work in the schools, plus their equipment. It would cost about 40 cents per $1,000 of the value of city residents' property.

But council members had a lot of questions at a Wednesday night study session. And Olwell bristled at the phrasing of one. The council bristled back.

Council members said the police department had gotten extra money in the past and chosen to spend it on overtime rather than new officers. They wanted assurances that wouldn't happen with the levy money.

And they worried about the one-year duration of the levy, half of which could go to training new officers if trained officers couldn't be hired from somewhere else.

When one councilman suggested the very tentative budget submitted was "askew already" because it called for buying four cars for only $10,000 each, Olwell got mad.

"Obviously, you're not hearing what people, especially people my age, are saying," he told the council. "We're ready to pay to make our streets safe."

"We were here when promises were made that we'd get things and we didn't," replied Council Chairwoman Lynn Horton. "If we're critical, it's because promises don't match reality."

Olwell said he felt it was "wrong to make that statement here."

"This is exactly where we make these statements," said Horton.

Councilman Al Colvin commended Olwell for his zeal, adding, "We're not questioning your integrity. But it's proper for the council to be curious."

Olwell burst on the scene Aug. 19, when he appeared before the council to demand that city police be given more money to combat gang and drug incursions into the city. He'd been involved in a long battle to rid his own West Bremerton neighborhood of a drug house, he said.

"I was going to present (the levy)," said Mentor, "and here's a citizen who really wants to get involved. He came along at the right time."

Also at the study session was Diane Russell, a deputy Kitsap County prosecutor and Bremerton resident. She agreed that "drugs and gangs have gotten out of control" in Bremerton. "These gang members are intelligent," she added. They come to the courthouse to see who has been charged with a crime and so might be cooperating with police as informants.

But the Mentor/Olwell plan has a large startup cost, she warned, and doesn't address the costs of prosecuting and jailing those arrested by a new drug team. "And how do you get these guys (drug officers) back to testify if their job no longer exists (after a year)?"

Mentor said the questions are good ones, but a start must be made. "We have to start sometime, and we hope it's with this levy."

Only Councilman Morrie Dawkins seemed eager for the plan. "We have a problem that will get bigger," he said. "But at least let's get this on the ballot."

"You may think I'm single-minded or I'm not looking at the big picture," said Olwell. "But if this doesn't get on the ballot in November, every councilman will be sorry we didn't get started."