OLYMPIA — As many as 40 legislators, local politicians, tribal leaders, labor representatives, and business people will gather at 6:30 p.m. today to discuss the past — and maybe map the future — of the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard.
The closed meeting in the Washington Department of Transportation headquarters in the state capital has an agenda but no announced goals besides what the participants decide, its moderator said Tuesday.
Tim Thompson, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, is the Tacoma negotiator the Transportation Department hired in December to guide what will happen to the 22.5-acre site on the Port Angeles waterfront.
That’s where the state has spent $58.8 million on a project now abandoned after the discovery of hundreds of ancestral burials and thousands of artifacts from a former Klallam village.
Two goals
“I think that this is a meeting that is going to have two things that have not occurred before,” Thompson said:
* “Everyone in the room will have a voice.”
* “Where we go from here is going to be up to the participants.”
