and the courthouse is right on recording in progress.
Good morning everyone. Welcome to this January nine Meeting of the Board of County
Commissioners. I will call this meeting to order
and get a v capture going. Alright. Uh First thing on our
agenda is the public comment. So we'll we'll look to the public. We have no one in
the chambers with us today, but if you'd like to make a comment, you can click raise
hand or if you're on the phone star nine to make a public comment,
Seen none. Now we'll go ahead and keep public comments open until 9:30 in case anyone
is is prompted to make a comment. And uh we're joined by Commissioner Dean remotely
today. Welcome. And we have a fairly light agenda as as things continue to ramp up.
So while we wait to see if there's any more public comment, do you guys want to take
a look at the consent agenda?
Mhm.
I had one question maybe for you Heidi It looked like um is this some of the behavioral
health distributions but not all. Is that correct? Let me look therapeutic support.
Truancy reform. Was to Oh yeah. I mean there's there's many more than this. Okay,
that's I figured there would be. So this is just the first few that have been contracts
have been completed.
Thank you.
It's coming. Great to see the uh incentive we approved last year for for retaining
and incentivizing a hiring of corrections staff
and always glad to see work being done on the community center for sure. A little
little uh scope creep. There is uh, you start taking off some of that siding and
see the real, the real issues that are underneath. So glad that we're taking care
of it now rather than waiting longer until we get the capital project going. So I'm
sure it's appreciated by the community down there. Also point out that the little
pagoda out there has been redone by by volunteer labor with the support of facilities
to so great to see that jim getting shined a little bit. Where are we at with the
roof repair on those the two community centers. That's part of the capital conversation.
Last time we saw budget, the community center has been zeroed out and I called that
out. Yeah, we were just seeing a few. Yeah, I think I stopped my feet enough about
that. That I won't be
no at all. It's all straightforward and good stuff. Um small,
yep, getting going still. You know, we'll build up maybe to the pace of last year
by the end of the year. I'll move to a permanent doctor consent agenda 2nd.
Okay. It's been moved and seconded looking to the public again to see if anyone's
been moved comments. Uh, seeing none. I will call the question all in favor of approving
and adopting the consent agenda as presented indicate by saying I hi, that is unanimous.
Alright, well, that's pretty much the day we got to see you next week. Um, No, I'm
kidding. Let's uh, why don't we go into uh briefing? Well you wanna cater you at
a place that you can look at your calendar or? I am yes. You want to take her away.
Sure. Yeah, busy week. Last week it was a short week. Um We uh spent
Wednesday morning interviewing for communications specialist position and um there
was a good consensus in the group. Unfortunately our number one candidate did not
accept the position, so we're back to the drawing board on that but we have some
we have some some other candidates um to consider some. Um So we had a good conversation
with congressman Kilmer's office about a few things but uh most exciting is that
the that re compete grant that film are put into the chips act was appropriated $200
million in the federal spending package. And his office is really hoping that we
will apply and offering some help in putting together applications so we still have
some time but they're hoping that the real writing will be done in about six months.
Um We're thinking it might be a little more like nine months but um uh starting to
put together some stakeholders. The energy c is likely the that um that's very exciting
to think of having some big dollars to um Again those are focused on the prime age
employment, it's 29 to 4 49 ish. Um But also funding for lots of things to support
that, including housing and childcare workforce development, so stay tuned. Um had
a transit advisory board group Wednesday afternoon. Um um I had really good conversations
about a couple of specific runs. Um you know, that gave us this test with the increasing
ridership and so we were able to brainstorm on a couple of specific runs and hopefully
they'll come back to some recommendations to the transit board Wednesday morning.
Um trying to do way too many things at once. I'm on my way to Olympia which was largely
stymied by um core cell reception but was able to participate mostly through most
of the Economic Development Council board meeting and um partly with some help from
the county and also the successful fundraising. They have stabilized their finances
for the rest of the year that we are in the middle of our strategic planning efforts
and hoping to very narrow the scope a little bit of how the BBC can be most effective.
What is their role. Um Had a first Ls association committee meeting with the Association
of Counties and Olympia. Um all Wednesday afternoon long long meeting getting ready
for the legislative session and um lots of bills starting to be dropped. It's gonna
be another whirlwind of the session and then they're Obama's time in a long session.
So um I will be providing weekly updates to you guys on some of our priorities and
also watch tax priorities. Um I'm sure you'll have you'll have to record on two so
that session starts right now actually as as we speak. Um Let's see.
Yeah, so that was all on thursday friday um worked with public health, outlining
our climate change agenda for the board of health for upcoming meetings and came
up with a good list of some um upcoming speakers and presentations as well as brainstorm
some further out that we haven't yet committed to, but some some good ideas generated
in that meeting. Then went to the Northwest Maritime Center that their leadership
and the puget sound partnership to talk about overlapping interests and priorities
there. You could see the Maritime Center potentially being a good partner for the
re compute there. I'm always impressed with all the work they're doing. Um had a
phone call with who has approached us um and wants us to consider doing a creating
a human rights commission um with the city of Port Townsend. So as we learn a little
bit more and do some research and maybe bringing that back to you. But um, I just
want, I want to be careful on how we proceed with that idea. Um and that was that
was largely great. Does sound like a busy, packed, full week. Yeah. Now, now with
the legislative session starting, I think it's just gonna be like that from here
on out. Yeah, I have a few legislative things on the horizon farther out, but
I'll be in Olympia on the 26th for our trust land transfer lobby day and we
spooled up our own little lobby day and our meeting going around meeting with key
members of capital budget and also there's a policy bill around trust land transfer.
So um meeting with other members as well, not just capital budget and then there's
the Washington Wildlife and Recreation coalition lobby day on the 2nd, 1st and 2nd
of february. And I'm gonna go down for the second of february. Um have more meetings
with our legislators on other issues. And then um also uh the coalition has a reception
in the governor's mansion on the second, which is always a good good time to get
reconnected to old colleagues for me. So I look forward to that. Um So that's also
I touch bases briefly with I think just kate last I know both of you about um the
NEko legislative uh I don't know what they don't call a conference but in in D. C.
You know, I I participated in the federal wa Sachs federal issues committee and
proposed housing and they took it and put it at the top of their list. And so when
I reached out to eric johnson and said should I consider attending this neko um D.
C. Event? He said, well yeah, I mean you're on you're on the federal priorities and
you've had a lot of good input and it would be great to have, you know, they're so
um I'm trying to see if I can shuffle that into my deck in terms of the calendar
but might attend that. So those are my legislative items. Um M. R. C.
Meeting last week on Tuesday evening and um we are dealing with a couple of derelict
boats in the waters around us and I am personally raised my hand to help deal with
one that is under the indian island bridge. That doesn't have anybody to be its natural
um kind of lead. It's on on private tide lands but the owner of the vessel has kind
of washed his hands of it. And so I'm working with the D. N. R. Derelict vessel removal
program and meeting with them tomorrow to talk about how to get that boat out of
the water. Um There's funding for that. So there's federal funding through the Northwest
straits Foundation Commission actually and um also through the D. V. R. P. Program
at D. N. R. So it won't be something that we have to pay for just provide a little
sweat equity. Um So I drove drove over the bridge yesterday and saw it sitting there
in shallow water and those those worry me so something I've been waking up in the
night about. Um let's see last Wednesday we had a strategy session for
the trust land transfer legislative day. Um We had we had a behavioral health new
member of our behavioral health advisory committee. Amanda Funaro is our board of
health representative to the advisory committee. And we are we did an orientation
for her. Just kind of what what the behavioral health advisory committee does and
the funding and the 1/10 funding and um answered any questions she had but you know,
she's up to speed on a lot of these issues. So it was just a good conversation about
the work of the committee. Um On thursday I did a walk around with Ehrenberg from
the ports mostly prompted by all the king tides and the storm recent storm damage
and storm damage. We have um we walked around the boat haven a bit and we lost mile
post zero of the olympic discovery trail. So we're gonna have to move that down and
talk about kind of the reorientation of the trail through the ports. That's a topic
that both peninsula trails coalition and the poor have been kind of grappling with
over the last couple of years. But this loss of mile post zero kind of um puts a
pin in it. Um ST still in the mix the parking lot. I think that would be an
ideal that we've had that recommendation. Yeah, yeah, it's still part of the conversation
for sure. Um And then he's like but so we walked around and talked about what happened
in the boat haven on the king tide day but then he said you should really see point
Hudson and I said, well we've got time. So we jumped in my car and drove down and
looked at point Hudson and the king tide actually did more damage in Point Hudson
it appears than in the boat haven. Um There was some pretty significant sloughing
of um the shore line inside inside point Hudson. So on the north side
kind of in front of um what's that? Restaurant docks? Yeah well short side of docks
on the marina side um quite a big chunk of dirt is gone. So there's a lot
of wondering at this point how to shore up the marina there as they replace
the jetties. So they're getting close on having all the rock. The last the last load
of rock was delivered to be put in that the north jetty and um you know they're basically
gonna do the same process next year with the south jetty, they'll start work after
a wooden boat festival. Um Let's see. So it was a good walk around with Aaron Berg
and um just like to do those every couple of months but King tides kind of are the
are the good highlighter on those events. Um Let's see I met with ula from Dove house
just because I had never really gone to dove house and had to sit down with her and
we had a great conversation um You know she she's um
most interested in seeing energy and attention going to workforce housing has just
had a lot of um not her normal clients reaching out families, just plain old families
in the community reaching out with, you know, problems finding housing and she just
feels like that's an area that needs more focused. So we talked a lot about the habitat
mason street project and the Hadlock sewer and how important that was gonna be for
filling some of that gap. But I mean, I feel like I don't, I'm not being not the
non housing commissioner, I feel like I'm getting in a lot of housing conversations
lately, um, but you know, I don't know where you guys are at in terms of um workforce
housing and, and what conversations are like a housing housing fund board to even
talk about workforce housing and the housing fund board we would love. I mean, it's,
it's definitely a topic of conversation as we do the five year plan, it's something
that we want to consider and none of the funds we have to allocate, allocate um are
responsive to workforce housing, which is, you know, the challenge with, with public
public sector funding, you know, it's all 60% below of am I right? Yeah, well, it
feels like all the work we're doing towards the Hadlock sewer is um, you know, achieving
some of that goal of increasing workforce housing in the community, but um, it's
something I'm hearing more and more as I go go around and meet with folks and it
came up for sure with last week, um, thursday evening I met with the peninsula trails
coalition, They're, they're kind of bigger board meeting and a lot of conversation
about the big raise grant that kids apps really leaning into holding a lot of the
putting together of the raised grant but will be asked to provide letters of support
and you know, planning input and all that. It's gonna be more of a planning grant
because the timeline for the rays grant got moved up. It was originally, I think
april and now that's due in february. So, um, they're focusing that ask on, on planning
for the largely the connector between um, kids app
and O. D. T. Yeah. But there's, there's like five different options that have been
drawn out for that route. And so it's a lot of work to do on that. Um,
on friday, I met with Chief Black talked about, just got an update from him on how
the levy campaigns going. And I wanted to talk to him a little bit about Trailhead
Park and the work that volunteers have been doing out there to create fire access
into Trailhead Park. And um, had a good conversation about those items. Uh, friday
afternoon. I had a long meeting with a constituent whose concerned about what's happening
on the property neighboring hers and trying to figure out if there's any real leverage
point for her within the mix of what's happening on the property adjacent to hers
and I realize how frustrating these. Yeah. And I remember David Sullivan telling
me that was the most frustrating thing about his tenure as a commissioner. Is these
kind of one off concerns about what's happening on neighboring properties. And sometimes
it's it's good. I mean it's always good to hear about them and sometimes there's
very clear egregious things going on and other times it's hard to figure out what
the leverage point is. Um
I think those are the high points of last week. I mean, busy week, busy. First week
of the year, even though it was a short week. And yeah. Okay. How about you, Greg
and I'll make one call right now. About 10, 10 minutes or so left in public comment.
If there's anyone that has moved to make public comment and click raise hand at any
time, it looks like Mr would like to be brought over
And if the caller would like to make a public comment, you can hit Star 9 to raise
your hand. We will first hear from Mr Kirsch. See you there. Good morning. We have
three minutes. Good, good morning Commissioners. Uh First Commissioner Brothers.
And you might want to bring your mic a little bit closer. You're pretty pretty quiet
this morning for some reason. Um Thank you. I uh I wanted to uh make not
necessarily public comment, but more or less a. P. S. A. Uh just an announcement.
I'm the chair of our local fair advisory committee have been for a while and I just
wanted to let people know and remind people because they probably I hope they've
already seen it already that the state ferry system is having a couple of system
wide community webinar meetings. Uh this week first is gonna be on Wednesday at 12:30
p.m. And the second is gonna be the next day the 12th at six PM. And you know that
it's gonna be a zoom women are. And links for that can be found on the ferries website
under the community participation or community involvement page a little bit difficult
to find. But uh you should be able to get out. I think it's useful for people to
hear not only what's going on on this route of course, but everywhere else in the
ferry system. Because you know our service here has been certainly substandard for
the last couple of years for a lot of reasons. Um some of which are covid related,
some of which are just workforce shortage related in general. And uh there are no
quick answers for that. But um you know, if you want to have your voice heard uh
question and answer session is going to be done. It's going to be moderated. You
won't be able to speak directly to all five or 700 participants. But uh the folks
at the ferry system will be taking in questions and and feeding them to their experts
to their senior staff will be on hand to, to answer hopefully answer those questions.
So those who can please join in, listen up, see what's going on. If you're unhappy
about having only one boat service, make your voice heard. Uh, you may or may not
know that port Townsend Coupeville route is just about last on the priority list
right now in terms of restoring service. And so frankly, uh, my personal opinion,
I'm not very hopeful that we're going to get it back real soon given the the ongoing
workforce shortages, particularly when it comes to the senior crew of the votes,
there's a great shortage of qualified captains and other senior officers. Anyway,
that's, that's the negative, the positive is please join in and listen to see what's
going on. Thanks very much. Thank you very much. Mr kirsch. And just to repeat, that's
12 30 PM this Wednesday or six p.m. On thursday. I'll try to join you guys on on
thursday and and get a more in depth. Look, we get updates on the regular from the
fairies off that wash dot, but it's uh, not a lot of optimism in in those reports
say it's a lot of capacity issues. And you're, I would say that your, your assessment
of the priority of the Coupeville route is dead on. Anyone else that would like to
make a public comment today,
Kate had to step away, but Heidi any any response to.
I mean, I wrote the times down I would always like to hear what's going on with ferry
so I'll plan on attending one of those.
Great okay well we'll keep the public comment open thank you. Mr tears for your comments
and I will look back at my past week You know busy as I said mostly kind of getting
in the office rejiggering the schedule and getting things lined up a couple of meetings
doing a 360 review a staff review at Orca the clean Air Agency. So I did a couple
of those. I had lunch with Chief Black to hear more about the cares program that
will be coming soon. That's the kind of co responder mental health professional and
E. M. T. Embedded with throughout the county not just East jefferson um district
but everywhere with the Association of Cities Grant that's coming up here and I think
it'll get live by March. Um really exciting program then uh sat in with the
building association and mr mccauley with with the meeting about the site development
review data outcomes and you know I think the takeaway is they really dealing with
a perfect storm at D. C. D. But progress has really been made in moving through those
I think 44 had been done since the last meeting a month ago continuing to meet between
D. C. D. And the builders just to do everything they can to really improve the process.
There's I think a couple variables that have contributed to the delay. You know the
inter grove conversion some some staff out for you know appropriate PTO
and and and just staffing in general. Um And then the complexity of this new SDR
program above all and sometimes trying to be really accommodating to the public ends
up with not enough data to really process the request. So it ends up with a lot of
fun on recuperated work that the D. C. D. S doing on on some of these challenging
site development reviews. Um But progress is being made and I would say it was a
very optimistic meeting. Uh Take away let's see um the
I. Road along the next morning as well as the the jefferson County Food bank made
their submitted their paperwork at D. C. D. To construct their new facility in quilting
really exciting to to get moving on that. Then we had the olympic area agency on
aging council of governments meeting on on thursday good meeting. I think they are
the only fully staffed area agency on aging in the state right now. So so they're
doing doing really well with that. Um did an agenda planning with with Mark for today.
Um visited uh Cosmo Brown saw the new the tiny shelters the community built put
in looks fantastic, talked to you know a couple of people down there just over overjoyed
at the progress that's being made and also really happy to announce that only cap
got awarded a partial award from Commerce for the rebuilding of the shelter at the
phase one site that everyone was just moved from. They got $1 million 4.5 they were
asking and no one got full funding basically. So commerce is kind of put a placeholder
in it. They're looking for more funds to do more substantial awards for those that
did get partial awards uh this coming spring. So really, really good first step in
funding that um construction of a new kind of purpose built shelter and permanent
supportive housing facility for some of those folks who have been at our emergency
shelter, you know, going on a decade. So that was really great cause well Brown's
going great, still more room talk to some, some other advocates and you know, anyone
that wants to go through the coordinated entry pro uh process, there are still still
room left. There was a little bit of flooding with some of the king tides there too.
So there are a few sites that they don't want to get, they have had to do some additional
trenching and add a french train. So just kind of testing that out before they put
people in their seventh haven is also moving along well, um we will have people occupied
by March 1st. So um it's, it's coming along well, there's a couple couple gaps, some
some disagreements between contractors and subcontractors that need to get worked
out but you know the end is in sight. So these are our bumps in the road that we're
gonna have to iron out. I was up there for something else, not seventh Heaven the
really that just it's a good look at the building, it looks great, it looks fantastic.
Yeah, so that's exciting. Uh Met with the Portabello Village council and Chief Black
was there talking about the levy lid lift as well. Um Great to uh new new chair Dave
McDermott did a good job and always great to interact with the village council to
bring some more guests. They always really appreciate it when I bring assessor chapman
out to talk about assessment. So we'll see if some of the other new electives and
and returning electives and directors will, will come out. They're very interested
of course in the uh the closures of the Hood canal bridge that are coming this year.
The scheduled closures as well as the roundabout construction that's gonna start
here pretty imminently. I didn't make it out but some of the folks that have talked
to us about the shine road issue met with wash dot and public works last week and
hope to get a debrief about about that. Uh um what what they found out about that
meeting with wash dot about local access during the roundabout construction and such.
Um then we had our house hot house America. Not a lot to report, I just let them
know that hard number of moving in by March 1st seventh Haven, which is the numbers
that we uh committed to to uh move folks from homelessness into housing. We
committed 22 half of the units at seventh Haven are dedicated to folks moving from,
you know, either shelter or transitional housing into permanent housing. Um half
of the units and then the other half 0 60% below of am I mean, so still for it's
not exactly workforce housing, but they don't have to be exiting homelessness. And
then there's quite a few also that are dedicated to other stakeholders, you know,
Dove House as a unit or to Bayside as a unit or two I think therapeutic courts do.
So there's some that are dedicated to partners as well. And that was my week before
we go to Mark, we'll give one more call out to the public Coming up on 9:30. But
if anyone would like to make a public comment, we would love to hear from you click
raise hand or Star nine if you're on the phone.
Okay,
Seeing none, we'll pass it over to you, Mark, anything you want to report from last
week. Thank you Gregg. Uh as I think others have mentioned short week, so Tuesday.
Uh we had a board meeting and it was short, not as short as today's gonna be, but
like you said, we're ramping up on Tuesday. We spent the morning interviewing three
candidates for our part time communications specialist position three good candidates
and selected one. And and when I called the selected candidate I was informed that
another job come available and that um and that she would be taking that job offer
rather than ours. So we're gonna regroup uh later this week on that. And then Greg
you mentioned the meeting with the housing, the builders home builders association
and D. C. D. Staff. I agree with your characterization of that meeting and I think
things will only improve as time goes on. Hopefully the new staff that D. C. D. S
brought on board will stay with us for an extended period and then we'll get over
this hump and have calm waters going forward. Um Then on the fifth
um probably the most momentous thing for me last week is that we all got paid using
Eunice human capital management module. That's exciting an enormous achievement.
And um the auditor's office and Sarah and Kristen and Sarah McIntyre and I. T. All
the I. T. Folks. I mean a huge effort and I don't know if you've noticed your pay
advice has a lot more info on it than it used to and all the numbers checked out.
We do have some minor hiccups that we're sorting out but um all in all a huge huge
deal. Um And then in april hopefully the employee self service module will be available
so employees can check their own lead balances and make changes to their pay account
um from the comfort of their home or from Greece or Italy or wherever they might
be. So that anyway, I'm really really happy about about that. Um and then Greg and
I met to plan the very tiny agenda for today and then I had a weekly check in with
chris coy um who was showing all kinds of energy and innovative thinking. So I really
look forward to meeting with him every other week. And then on friday I met with
a financial team. Um and that was Stacy, our treasurer duty, our finance manager
and some other folks where we did sort of an after action review of the munis payroll
implementation to make sure that we have the issues written down and responsibility
assigned to who needs to work on fixing what. Um And then I had a very nice meeting
with Monty and Sarah Melanson to discuss the public works collective bargaining agreement.
Monte has some really great ideas um for the future and um
that will play into the workshop we're gonna have or the I'm sorry the executive
session we're gonna have next Tuesday to talk about collective bargaining agreements
in general. Uh a lot of innovative thinking being done on that topic. And then following
that meeting, I met with monty uh Stacey prayed our treasurer and judy Shepard, our
finance manager to talk about sewer funding. Uh and you'll hear much more about that
this afternoon. Um, we're really getting serious about this project now money is
going to begin to award contracts and so we've got to get strategic in how we deal
with this cash flow needs and so and so on. Um, and so that was my week last week.
I just wanna say Mark, you're doing an awesome job whenever you report all the things
you're working on or you know, your weekly report, it's such a diverse set of topics
and you're just killing it. So thank you for your work. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Well, getting better at juggling I guess. Yeah. And the munis is a is a huge step
and you know, I keep thinking about Southwest Airlines and, and the debacle that
their old software is created for, you know, thousands and thousands of people. And,
and sometimes there's a lot of growing pains that come with updating Softwares. We're
learning within a gov and have learned with munis again and again. But it's, it's
worth it. It is, yes. And then once the rough waters are behind you, you have 10,
15 years of relatively smooth sailing. Um Great,
thank you. And I, we I think Commissioner Dean is taking care of other stuff.
So I don't know anything else that we wanna, let's look at our agenda, which is,
as we say, very late today. Um, we have 1 30. We're gonna talk about our band, it's
gonna go into the sewer quite a bit too in that in that conversation. Right? Just
to talk about the needs the capacity we the slack I guess we need to preserve for
public works. Yeah the two items are liquidity and bid uncertainty. And so those
are the two big items. We do have some requests for our poor funding that we'll chat
about it. Um And we need to look at calendar and going forward also. Yeah we can
do that now can we? Yeah we certainly can't. I'm happy to go first. Calendar. I think
he's talking about calendar for the sewer. But I thought you meant this week monty's
gonna bring the timeline of expected contract awards and I don't know if he's gonna
put dollar amounts out there because we don't want to tip our hand might cost. But
they always do engineers estimates on work of that nature.
Alright. But yeah let's let's see what your upcoming week is like Heidi. So today
obviously with you all and then um I just wanna say I'll say at the beginning of
the next Monday is a holiday so we're not meeting next Monday but we're meeting on
the 17th. So and then I believe that we have and we also have an update from
dr barry on the 17th. Um Anyway. Um So this week um tomorrow morning I have a
meeting with the D. N. R. Derelict vessel removal program to talk about that boat
sitting under the indian island bridge because it's not really any anybody's hot
potato. And I'm on the derelict vessel task force of the Marine resources committee
and fiberglass boat recycling has been a passion of mine for the last maybe six years.
So here's my first chance to put an oar in the water and try and actually get a boat
removed. So look forward to working with the D. In our program. I've worked with
Troy would the project manager down there and he's he's a great human being and has
done a lot of important work for a marine waters near shore waters. And um look forward
to meeting the rest of his team and getting that boat out of the water. So um that's
tomorrow. And then um I have overlapping tourism coordinating council
and behavioral health advisory committee. So I'll attend the first hour of T. C.
C. And then click into the behavioral health meeting. Um It's only a conflict
twice and over the year. So um I when I was updating my calendar last week, I'm like
oh an overlapping one. Let me know if it becomes a problem. And then tomorrow evening
I just think this is this isn't a, well it's not a commissioner thing but it's max
Grover's 70th birthday max is a local love beloved artist and he's having his 70th
birthday party. So I will be attending that I'm sure it'll be a whoop whoop do. Um
Wednesday is a light day during the day. I have overlapping meetings in the evening
with the olympic discovery trail board and then the grange probably attend the olympic
discovery trail. Um, this time sometimes I pick and shoes thursday.
Um, Mark and I are doing a presentation to the class lamell tech committee on
the kind of jefferson county's process for allocating all tech funds and the types
of projects that we consider. I think you've got that on your calendar to Mark, but
if not, I can handle it. It's fine. I've got okay. Okay. And then
friday is the first Washington Association of Counties legislative update. I'll just
be attending to hear the update. Um, so not a lot on the calendar this week. Um,
but a lot of work to do in the mix, which is great. It'll give me time to actually
do the steps to get the right agencies involved in lifting that boat out of the water.
So, Um, yeah, and then just the 16th is holiday martin Luther
king day, very important holiday. Um, so that's, that's pretty light week for me.
Great. Sounds pretty busy. I'm sure you'll fill the time. Uh, let's see tomorrow.
I'm meeting with some of the folks from Cwilson that, that were skeptical about all
the caps management community center in the morning coffee down in your life. Yeah.
Today, you know, as I say, we're doing this 3 60 review at orca, there is one at
11 o'clock, so if we can get done by 11, I can go, I can participate in that and
that little uh conversation with the director of engineering director or co um then
agenda setting for board of health has been moved to Tuesdays, so doing that with
Glenn, the clerk and Apple and dr barry, then the quill seen Brennan empowered teens
coalition, gets the band back together on Tuesday afternoon for the first time since
school started, or second time since school started and then the next day or a lot
of work of this week, we have the personnel committee um at nine and the general
meeting is at the same time as the olympic peninsula Strategic Planning RFP group,
so I won't be able to participate in that. It's really just planning the RFP though,
it's it looks pretty good, so um we'll miss that. And then more ORca personnel
review um meeting with a couple of members of the housing fund board this week, including
one for lunch today and then one Wednesday afternoon and then slowly cap is meeting
Wednesday evening, we have a new board member from collin County, the newly elected
commissioner french will be joining us um and MARCo's a is instead so that will be
uh sad, sad to see MaRCo, always a pleasure to work with him, but but look forward
to working with mike french for the first time Um there's been a on Thursday more
Orca, there was a subgroup subcommittee about compensation. The compensation study
is almost done. So we're gonna be debriefing that information. A couple more meetings
with the 360 At 11. Pinky is I think taking not sure you were
there for the interview update. Mark, there's an update at 11. So pinky asked what
I want to know and I said, I really want to understand what it looks like from both
sides of the desk. So taking, taking a term from our builders building association
meeting. Yes. Um, and then continuing with with Mark might be competing for his
attentions on thursday, we're joining john morrow on on K. P. T. Z. With no set agenda
just talking about, you know, how well we work together I think county and city.
And then following that, well we're staying with K. P. T. Z. And going to tour the
tower site that we um supported with $65,000 for um building the new tower up there
on morgan Hill. So we'll go look at that next. And then the behavioral health committee
meeting is that afternoon a couple. I'm not a voting member on this on this group.
But with the million dollar grant, we've got a couple asks one to supplement that
cares program that we've talked about a little bit and the other for harm reduction
efforts and outreach that that's been ongoing. Uh think through Holy Cap, but with
a contractor, the cares the fire. Yeah. So that I should have mentioned that was
one thing that the fire chief and I talked about last week. So have you gotten your
ride along yet? No, I have, it hasn't been scheduled and I'm like, maybe I'm gonna
get to ride along with our local, I, I balked at my schedule and said, yeah, you
know, another month and I can just ride along with the ones that will be in Jefferson
County. I think I'm gonna do the same thing. Yes. The trip, uh, Morgan
Hill is at one, the radio broadcast is at noon 12 30 meeting there at 12 20.
We go on from 12 30 to 1 and then just meeting there after that with with folks and
I don't have you on that. I'm looking at the, and Mark, you're not on that. So we're
not competing
explicitly. No. Always. Um, friday the 13th, fairly light day, a couple more
meetings with directors at Orca for the 3 60. I will also uh, lend an ear to the
uh, the Wasatch legislative update. There's a recycling bill that I'm excited about
already. I've got. I think it's very tangible bills that get me excited. Um, you
know, the number I can get it for you. I sent it to al, we had a brief conversation
about it. Um, Christina is the uh, as a sponsor and it would uh start making producers
pay for the recycling costs and I think talk about making a bottle deposit. Will
you send it to me? I will since I started in an open public session. Um and
then when the county coordination is 3rd, 3rd, 3rd Friday or 2nd Friday.
Okay. It's not on my on my calendar yet. So that would be the next week. Cool. Thank
you. Um and I also note, you know that as as Heidi said next monday is martin Luther
king day. Our calendars don't reflect that were closed on monday yet, but we are
closed on monday and we'll be here on Tuesday. So we'll have lots of conflicts on
Tuesday the 17th and that is my upcoming week.
Um Mark, how does your week look? It's looking fairly busy of course today with the
board. Um, tomorrow morning we had a meeting scheduled to regroup on the communications
specialist might have to reschedule that because Stacy parada is out all day tomorrow.
Um And then at 10 30 a special risk management meeting. Uh Mr Hunt sucker has been
out of town a good while. And so we canceled the previous regular risk meeting. Um
And so we have a number of items to address tomorrow. Um Then at two in the afternoon,
18. Um, it's been over a month since we've gotten together. And that's kevin street
from B. U. D. Ehrenberg from the porch and john morrow from the city and then behavioral
health advisory committee? I've been invited to that. So I will have it on in the
background. Uh and if I need to contribute, I will. Um on the 11th I am
Chris Coy and I are traveling out to the um School campus to meet with Scott Meck.
He's got 24,000 square feet of empty building space, uh building space that he can't
renovate, can't afford to renovate and can't afford to repurpose. And so uh we're
just taking a look at the space to see if if the county might be able to use some
of it for various purposes. Uh then lunch with john morrow. Um and then at one o'clock
the north olympic Peninsula City manager, county administrator get together uh from
2 to 1. And then uh the meeting with Stacey parada judy, Shepard
and Sarah Melanson to discuss C. B. A. Negotiating parameters that will bring to
the to the board on the 17th. Then on the 12th um in update Greg
with you. And then of course K. P. T. Z. And then uh Wasatch has an uh an
administration quarterly check in just to see how people are doing with our for funds.
I haven't taken part in that lately, but I will this week because I think we're doing
very clever things with our funds and weekly check in with chris coy uh and a weekly
check in with Brent Butler. And then on friday a light day. Just a legislative virtual
update at noon. Great. Okay. I'm just going to the following
week real quick. I see A. D. L. Quickly put the uh jefferson County uh coordination
on my on my calendar. Is it usually at 10 30 that just that conflicts with something
with me? So I'm
um yeah, so I have to work on that. I'm it's at 10:30 a.m. B H A
S S. O. Meeting that's meeting in person for the first time. So I'll likely be in
in blend until 11. And I was checking, are you you and Heidi? We're gonna do a chamber
update on the 20th, 20th. Yeah, no, that was rescheduled to february 3rd. Okay, cities
going first this time that the third of february, it's sometime in the first week
of february here. I'll find it third of february 10 o'clock. Great. I just want to
make sure that you don't, you know, no, show the county update. No, we're showing
great. Then we'll have to collaborate on how we approach that. I did it last Year.
two did I? Or Kate? Maybe Kate did it. No, I think I did it last year and I split
it won the year before. I think I did it last year. You know, something else that
we should maybe think about is usually an off election years. We do a road show.
Yeah, I have a note here. Um Yeah, B. zero cc
outreach. We called him. Right. Yeah. I think last time was 2018. It's been a while
and while it's good county coordination, uh, agenda topic too. Since it's, you know,
traditionally been an opportunity to bring other elected directors with us. Yes,
exactly. Okay. What do we hit Brennan scene? Um, did the west end out of
the, that one I didn't go to last time, but the role I have now, I probably will
go to that. And did you stay overnight or was it out? We stayed overnight because
their evening at six o'clock or 5 30 or? Yeah, so we need to engage in a planning
session.
Right. I think that was the first one we did and then we branched out. So
cool.
Um, and uh, great, how's your week
look, Caroline. Mm
Oh well, I hope it goes well. I would say that I am getting more Meetings that are
going to be in person. It definitely changes the day and so um, the drive time thing
is messing me up in a few instances but we've gotten used to being able to do meetings
right after meetings. I'm grateful for hybrid option for some so that I can still
attend both. But on the horizon, something of interest on the 17th in the evening
there's a meeting at the grange with support and the short farm
to kind of get community input on the ports ownership, potential ownership of the
short farm. That'll be an interesting meeting. I want to put that ferry meeting at
6:00 to.
Okay
well we have nothing else on our agenda this this morning. You know lots lots of
work to do. So I guess do we And we don't really want to move stuff from this afternoon.
Up up to the morning because we know that. Yeah. Yeah and we've got hopefully we'll
be able to get back at that time to kate will not be returning
okay to include the afternoon.
Um Okay well we'll still go. We will probably won't make any final decisions without
kids participation. Okay. Well um do we
want anything else that this is odd, says the newest commissioner?
Um but you know we don't need to make busy work. So I guess if no one has
anything else that they want to have this afternoon is the one agenda item which
could take a little while and I think we should still do the full presentation which
kate can can watch after the fact. So I've already heard from kate on the two items,
the big items, the moving money into the superfund from capital improvement and grants
management monies for liquidity. Okay. Um so we'll be bringing first quarter supplementals
to the board to do that. And um and then also hear from Stacy
on line of credit which he has to do to secure a line of credit and when when monte
awards the large contract bioreactor and all that We're gonna need, we think we're
gonna need a $10 million dollar line of credit to service the invoices and account
for the time lag and reimbursements. And so um on those two items we'd we'd like
a motion and or guidance to proceed along those lines and we know that kate supports
both of those um but deferring the decision on the three requests, that's perfectly
fine. Okay. Can weigh in um are monty and Stacey attending in person? Mark.
Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. Well then. Alright, great. Well we are adjourned
until 1 30 enjoy, I'm sure people, sorry, we're recessed until 1 30. Excuse me. Um
Yeah, get some work done.
Recording, stopped
recording in progress.
We are adjourned.
Can you hear us? You with us? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you just fine
and clear. Glad you're able to make it. Okay, well, I will call this this meeting
of the Board of County commissioners back into session. We're joined by some some
guests in the in the audience as well as online. And we have one item in our agenda
this afternoon um a workshop on R. P funds. So I don't know you you want to take
it away marc. Yes, I will. And I'll um start by welcoming a number of folks,
the three folks that have requests pending before the board dr Tamara MEREDITH with
jefferson county rural library district is with us remotely peter langley uh with
maritime trades. And then of course our one and only Betsy Davis who's in the room
here with wooden boat building school. And then of course we have county staff with
us. Uh uh Sorry? Yeah I had a parade down in
Vancouver Stacy our treasurer and then um monte renders our public works
director and he's got a couple of folks here that he'll introduce when he takes the
microphone. Um So a couple of things we want to do this is our per workshop and so
I'm gonna share my screen and mhm. Hopefully that will
project relatively well so that it's legible. I'll see if I can hide.
Uh Let me let me enlarge it just a little bit. Can you read
that and then I'll get rid of this stuff at the top.
There we go. Okay so part of what I wanted to do is just a quick review of where
our our monies have gone. On the left side. We have a big square there, roughly a
square that talks about the general arpa funds. Uh Okay, is
that better? Um Okay so you can see where the general are per for 2022
went um money to the ports for a hydraulic lift. Um Money to P. D. Two
different payments. 1 57 50 for broadband. 290,000 to the olympic
peninsula Y. M. C. A. For childcare a million and a half to recap for the mill road
project. We have 650 there for the sewer. Uh we haven't seen the exact amount
there yet. I think we might have invoices yet to pay in January for 2022 30,000 for
covid test kits 3 43 for premium pay for employees, a little bit of money for the
recuperative public health retreat for our public health staff. And then 500,000
for business grants through the E. D. C. And then next year we've committed a million
almost a million three for the sewer. And then in the center we have the revenue
sharing our PPA. And um we did receive trench one of
$1,692,385 got that in october of
2022. And you can see the monies that were distributed there half a million to this
city. No I'm sorry the habitat for humanity for um for affordable housing, 65,000
K. P. T. C. For their radio tower on morgan hill. 100,000 to the city for their community
health and wellness center. Um their study effort and then half a million to the
city of Port Townsend for their Evans vista project. And then 378,000 to Fort Warden.
And that was to help them um guarantee debt payments and then if not needed for that
then they can use it for capital. And so that's a quick review of where our monies
have gone thus far. Um So
we have about 100 and 49,000 and uncommitted revenue sharing r. P funds from
trench number one, We expect another 1.692 million um sometime this year. And I'm
hoping that we don't have to wait until October. I think the delay last time was
because Treasury had to determine what formula formula to use to distribute the funds
that were appropriated for revenue sharing counties. Um So I'm hoping, you know,
maybe june july august, we'll see those monies. And so if you add the unused
tranche, one monies and what we expect in trench two, that leaves about a million
8 41 in revenue sharing funds that are currently uncommitted down below that.
We had some potential funding candidates that we've spoken to previously. Um And
then of the General Arpaio we have 593,000 left. So if you
total the 1.8 and the 5 92 we have about 2.4 million in
our PPA that could be distributed. And the three requests that we have today, one
from the boat school for 100,001, from the library for 35 1 for maritime trades for
20. Should the board decide to make those awards, we would have about 2.3 left in
our monies. Um And a subsequent part of this presentation will be a discussion of
the sewer project at which time we'll come back to these $2 amounts. So I want to
switch gears now and and focus on the three requests that we've received.
So if I can go to
uh let's see,
show all windows.
Not that one.
Hmm. I apologize. Oh, I know I have to stop
sharing for a minute.
Where's the stop share button?
Mm. Oh, there it is. Okay.
There we go. I had two screens open and acrobat, so I had to close one so I could
switch so I could get to it. Okay, So the request for the Digital navigator from
the library district and dr MEREDITH is on on the call. I don't know whether we want
to invite her to speak, but um um we funded this uh in the prior
year and um and dr MEREDITH put together a summary of accomplishments
and what they've been able to do is reach out to people who are disadvantaged and
they've made digital access much, much easier for people that are disadvantaged and
they taught computer skills and other things. Um and so um would it be okay to ask
dr MEREDITH to speak to this briefly. Yeah, I think, don't you? I mean we might want
to talk process a little bit as we go through before we Okay, just at your pleasure.
Yeah. Um so I've got another request to put on that list of three that we consider
to, and I guess I'm I'm happy to hear from from all three of these projects we're
gonna make here about the sewer before we make any decisions Of course too and then
I just wonder if we want to have any um conversation about process with the rest
of the R. P. Funds. I mean we have multiple times responded to requests. I think
what we're recommending today or at least what I'm recommending is that once we consider
these three and if you have one to add these four that we put a moratorium on entertaining
requests from outside the county and that all the funds available be made available
to bring the sewer project to fruition. And then once um the sewer project is no
longer in need of these liquidity dollars and we know what the big amounts are and
we've covered any um bit escalation that might occur and if we have our pro funds
remaining at that time then we entertain additional requests or use them for internal
needs. Okay and so this really will be the last time the board gets
to consider requests from outside agencies for some time. Right if you agree with
the proposal. Okay well let's yeah let's let's let's hear people out there here.
So like I'd like to weigh in Greg. Okay um Yeah I I feel I feel really awkward
about um about considering um requests when we didn't have any any
discussion of accepting requests or what our priorities were for this round of funding
and um so I'm I'm certainly supportive of these projects um but I I feel
I just want to say I'm nervous about doing this without having given, you know, a
number of broader set of organizations the ability to request funds, so um happy
to hear them out, but I want to have a pretty robust conversation about process and
if the if it's really fair to proceed. Yeah, no, I I agree and I also recognize that
we have done that periodically through this whole process, you know, with you know,
projects from the Maritime center and and other nonprofits that are are doing good
work. But I I share your concern kate about accepting these requests without opening
it to any of our valued partners. Have we opened a process in the past, I mean I
remember bringing this up last year or even that was before I was chair. So when
kate was chair, we sat in this room for a moment together and I brought up concern
over process and it was said to me this is our process. So it's you know, it's been
a little um fuzzy all along in my opinion, our our process for allocating these r.
P funds have we haven't had a distinct process other than the um process you had
with recovery funding before. I was even a commission which was not part of funding,
it was cares funding. So it feel that's never felt to me like we had a good process
for this, but that we were responding to community needs and I totally hear the concern
about sewer and the rising construction costs and I'm super supportive of allocating
most of the funding to the sewer project because so much work has gone into that
project for decades now. Um but I I'm comfortable with the request we have on the
table because they're all uh known community partners, reasonable requests, they
they smell to me like the requests we received in the past for help from the wellness
Center most recently, I mean it feels like we haven't really had a process kate to
me. Well we set pretty clear criteria um early on and we also had the
identified projects through the cares funding process. So I I felt that we did have,
you know, we've been kind of collecting through the through the cares public process
um projects and priorities and created criteria then um so I agree it wasn't an
application process as such, um but it felt like it had gone through some some vetting
and deliberation, which I feel like we haven't done when we kind of reopened this
um this round, I would have rather had the conversation before considering any
requests, right, and I'll just say that we didn't solicit these requests, they were
unsolicited and um you know, I didn't feel comfortable telling these folks know,
you know that's the job of the board to consider them and decide whether to fund
them.
Okay, well here we are um with them in front of us. So, you know, we've got the people
here, so I think we've we've got kate concerns, I I kind of share them a little bit
too, you know, it's our, we don't have a lot more opportunities for this kind of
uh dispersal of funds and we want to make the most of them. Um But with that, let's
let's let's turn it over to Tamara and share a little bit about what's what's happened
to date with the digital navigator and what you see in the future. Sure, thank you
very much all of you for entertaining this proposal. Um This is basically a continuation
of our digital navigator funding that we are currently working off of with the cares
Act funding that you awarded us last year. Um We had hoped to make it all the way
to the end of 2023 with the funding we had set aside, which included cares act funding.
Um Department of Commerce Funding as well as some local community Foundation funding.
Um What we're finding is just that costs have escalated over the last year. So between
travel costs and benefits costs and salary costs um there just higher than we had
originally anticipated. So our digital navigators out on the road a couple of days
a week. Now he's actually down in South County one day a week as well as in port
Townsend one day a week. We had hoped initially to do that maybe once a month and
we're finding that the need is great enough that he's actually down there every single
week, so that's increased a little bit of our costs there as well as um mileage and
getting back and forth. Um So he's down in Brennan will seen once a week as well
as serving up in Port Townsend um getting more of the uh affordable connectivity
program, grant requests, um so doing quite a bit of connecting people there um and
then just solving a lot of our general connectivity problems, device problems and
that sort of thing. Um quite a few partnerships have come out of this as well with
our local agencies and a lot of referrals, we are more tightly um melded with ali
cap. Now, as far as you know, we have people coming to us that start with questions
about devices and connectivity and we end up connecting them to resources for heating
and insulation or you know, food bank, that sort of thing. So we're finding that
it's very valuable not just for the internet side, but just for general health and
wellness in our community. Um so at this point, you know the request that you've
got in front of you is for $35,000, that's roughly five months ish of all salary
and benefits, which would pretty much get us through the end of 2023 with the funding.
We already have set aside. Our initial proposal was for a two year position and that
does complete a two two year cycle at that time. Right now. We're trying to evaluate
whether we bring that position completely in house uh, into the library district
and where we fund it entirely or whether we work for some other partnerships to be
able to fund it in some other areas. But um, I'd appreciate any thoughts, comments
and or funding you can give at this point. Great. Thanks. Dr MEREDITH any any questions
or comments for dr MEREDITH? I would I would just say, I know it's been a super successful
program and that I know people who've used the digital navigator navigator services
and for people out in, you know, my part of the county and in South County, it's
really a needed service right now. So I'm super, super grateful that you're here
talking to us about this. Thank you. I do appreciate hearing about how it's deepened
a little bit too, you know, kind of being uh an entry into Ole cap and other other
services as well. That's, that seems really critical. Um Okay, okay. Any questions
or comments? Okay, well, uh sit tight for a little bit dr MEREDITH, we're, you know,
building this as we go. Um pete, you want to talk about the maritime trade request
here. Thanks. Greg Heidi kate, always glad to be here representing our green traits.
pretty important factor this year's coming up. We're getting ready to do our update
of the economic impact study. So just to remind everybody that study was fully funded
by the trades out of pocket and or through donations membership Ships of the organization.
So we're pretty proud of where that document has gone and brought the number of monies
into our community that wouldn't have been here if that study hadn't been done so
to date. Um, the court has pledged 25,000 for assisting with the update and that's
part of our ask today is trying to get uh, funding so that the Marine trades Association
is not having to struggle and or get through this next evolution quite as hard as
before so we could fund our at least our overhead space for the next five years.
And for me this is almost too for for you guys is because essentially Betsy would
be receiving some of that as offsetting their rent as well for the camera building,
which has become a pretty good hub of marine trades Activities. So it's for the Marine
Trades Association, I think out of some of the care funding, they got $2,000 I think
from the Jefferson Community Foundation, but that's really all we've ever asked for.
So at this point we're really just enthusiastic to know we have a legitimate home
and we're starting to build an organization that I hope out of the outcome of the
new impact study might show that we're close to 30% of the economy here and not just
20. So also working towards getting the younger generation fully educated on board
management and the financials and all of that. And what makes a good businessman
is having some money to organize and budget for. So that's what we're trying to do
with this next generation. So any of your consideration would be uh certainly considered
as a great thing for us and definitely promote the fact that we know where it came
from. We all are hard working trying to pay those dollars into the system so that
it can be doled out appropriately. Thank you. Thanks a lot questions for.
I know I mean I I feel like the boatyards my home. So I've been really excited to
see what's going on within the building. Not just um the E. D. C. Being in there
and the Marine trades Association and the boat school but also now the Port Townsend
Sailing Association. So it is really becoming kind of a hub of activity for our maritime
community um in the boatyard and I think it's a really exciting time.
Thank you. Um Since we did get a proposal um and referred to it and showed the
library one maybe we should show the proposal from the maritime trades. Yeah this
goes into a little more detail about expenditure, correct?
Oh
okay so this is this is their their letter 20% of the economy. Um he
did mention the Port of Port Townsend making a $25,000 commitment.
Looks like 10 million in dollars generated.
So the request is for 20,000 for overhead support to maintain office. Is that right?
Pete? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Any any additional funds? You know what we're and it would
go to administrative costs currently right now looking at you know accounting systems
and and some legal advice. But other than that we're pretty self sufficient. So that's
just really to maintain our overhead and take some of the burden and worry off a
young board that hasn't quite got into the fundraising mode of maybe some of the
other organizations. So so timing isn't that critical for this request? Is that right
Pete? Um Well it is in a way we're currently pretty tight on rent funds. People are
making some donations based on whether it's going to our lifeboat fund, uh the economic
impact study or the rent. But we just like to have a feeling of what we might need
to do over this next few months to get through the hurdles.
And are you guys a nonprofit, what's your organizational structure? It's a 501 C6.
What the E. D. C. Is? Yeah and we're planning just so Kate would go
to Mark Knutson who's on the E. D. C. Board is also very familiar with uh martin
and associates who does the economic impact study. So they've he's worked with uh
mr martin out of the port of Seattle when he was there. So we're hoping to kind of
incorporate some of the E. D. C. Board membership as part of our updates so that
the two organizations are really kind of working together. That's great. Great thank
you pete any other questions or comments.
All right we'll go right through it and we'll onto Betsy. You can come up. We do
need you to talk on the microphone so everyone remotely can hear you as well. So
have a seat at the table test. Is that okay? Should bring it down. Um
uh Northwest school of wooden boat building uh teaches people the skills so they
can enter the marine trades. And we're thrilled that this year we have 60 students.
What's one of the biggest barriers for students housing like many other parts of
the community struggling with that. And we've had the incredible once in a lifetime
opportunity to acquire the seven cottages that sit adjacent to the school. And those
are becoming student housing and we immediately need to do some things to them to
make them as safe and energy efficient as we can. And so we've um Requested
consideration of $100,000 which would immediately go to helping us upgrade the electrical
and put in many splits. And we had frederickson come down and and go through the
details on one of the cabins which we then extrapolate to the other cabins and um,
that is our top priority, the electrical and heating. But then we also have roofs
and gutters and all sorts of other things to do. We think it's probably about a half
a million dollars altogether we'll be spending over the next few years but we're
just talking about the immediate stuff to make them usable. And tomorrow we open
enrollment to next year's class of students that start in october. So we're crossing
our fingers for a good number of students coming in and the opportunity to let at
least some of them know that there's access to housing for them. Thanks. Great. I
have the same question here. And what's what's the kind of the timing, the timing
need for that? Are you looking to get them ready for next october Yeah. Yeah. We're,
we need to start now. I have one sitting empty because I need to get the electrical
done and a hole in the floor repaired. Um Yes and um, we have some
residents in some of them but we're trying to get them all spruced up for fall questions
for Betsy. I have lived next to those cabins for 25 years and I walk my dogs down
there all the time and I'm so thrilled that the boat school is going to be the steward
of that property and those cabins for our community because they have needed a loving
owner for a long time. So super supportive of this Betsy. They're all fishing cottages.
Yeah, I think they might have been worker cottages initially, but um Duk shoulder
has a story that they were built in a day. Each one, I don't know then howard
learns family around the grocery store in the Ajax, but I think a post office. Yeah,
I've got a question Betsy, how come you decide which um which students to rent to?
Is it based on, on income at all? Or just help me understand kind of the, how, how
you see that decision making, you know, what we've done typically is we let the student
make the choice as to which housing situation they want. So once someone has signed
an enrollment agreement, we give them a list of all the places we know about that
students have lived before and some will choose to live in a room, you know, that
they're sharing with someone else and someone else might choose to rent a whole house.
So these um, will be at a price point that somewhere in the middle. So some students
will, and some students won't be interested in these and of the, those students who
are interested. One of the criteria will be those who are hardest to place other
places and what's turning out to happen is when someone has a family, that's the
hardest for them to find a place. So right now, the first house that came open for
a student this fall um was the first one that was open anyway, he came in with his
wife and his brand new baby. So I think you know, we won't necessarily do the income
screen because people can choose where they want to go, but we will definitely do
the screen on how probable it is for that person to find somewhat something else,
either based on their family structure or their money or whatever. But we also don't,
we need to fill those as we go. So we're not gonna Wait until we have 60 students
and then decide because we want to make sure and get people enrolled, they can't
enroll for sure until they have a place to live. So um I would say it's not a firm
screen based on income, but that will be a factor in our in our housing. You
know, a number of ways we we intersect with housing, but we um you know, generally
talk about kind of market rate housing, workforce housing subsidized or affordable
housing could use a kind of if this fits into any of those categories or or I don't
know those definitions, but we're looking about 900 $900 for the smaller
cabins a month, or 902,000 and then 1500 for the bigger two cabins. So I'm not sure
which category that fits into, but we're we're not subsidizing them, we're gonna
be paying our interest payments and our maintenance based on the rents. Okay. Thank
you. And then Betsy do do the students have to move out when they graduate? It's
a one year um lease and it starts in October and it ends September 30. And even though
our marine system students are here for nine months, we're still gonna have them
do a 12-month agreement. So for sure it's automatic unless they decide to take the
other class then they're eligible for another year. Okay. And kate actually, I'm
sure we'd love to learn anything from the other housing people. I I wasn't really
anticipating. We're gonna go into housing and then all of a sudden it's like we really
need to pay attention to it so we're happy to learn.
Great. Okay. And then I guess I'll give uh thank you Betsy appreciate you being here.
Um And then the fourth request I I will bring forward. Um and that follows up on
our letter in support of the Hood Canal, uh communications broadband efforts
down in South County. And uh I don't know if other commissioners have been getting
them but I probably have 25 requests from citizens down there asking us for matching
funds for that grant request for those for the for the Poles Poles. And I talked
with Kristin runs Basin P. D. One down there, they're looking for. Um And they're
also looking to the jefferson P. U. D. All of this. The whole $2 million project
is in jefferson county and in response to kate's question last week, it does not
help jefferson P. U. D. At all. None of our redundant systems go down that way past
mount walker. So it doesn't it doesn't serve jefferson P U. D. Per se. But it is
the entire $2 million project is in jefferson County, in South County. $100,000 would
pay for 10 lengths of poles and would be a great boon in the application for the
state broadband office grant. So I know there's a lot of South County support for
it and it is, it would benefit the broadband efforts just for jefferson county residents
um through a different municipal P. D.
Any any questions about that one I can answer or try to. I have received some emails.
Okay. Yeah, I have been inundated 100,000 as they ask to match its a $2 million
Jefferson Peut broadband is that was
one of our top priorities infrastructure. Yes. Previous round, yeah. To the tune
of 900,000. So this would bring us to a million on broadband and none of that money
of course went to uh South County because they're not they're not jefferson P ut
I'm very compelled by this one but we'll talk about all four. Um but I guess kate
Heidi, shall we table this and and listen to our presentation from the ports to add
a little bit more context before we really deliberate from the I'm sorry from public
works, I'm just gonna keep going come on in. I mean public works. Yeah, I would really
like to not consider specific funding proposals until we talk a little bit more about
priorities and um and and process and kind of decide on a rationale for decision
making. Okay, we can dig into that um after we hear from public works. Alright.
Alright great. Yeah
there's room for for your compatriots as well.
Okay.
Mhm.
No so um I wasn't quite sure the format today and I prepared you know a sewer briefing
that might take 20 minutes to half an hour. I don't know nothing else on the agenda,
all of our other guests through that presentation necessarily. Um because I don't
think I'm gonna answer any questions about whether you should or you know should
fund these other requests. I mean I think they all sound like good requests and I
you know the numbers with the sewer are large and general in nature. So basically
the sewer is a great place to put additional um county money and resources but
you know it's not gonna be at the level where it's like well is that 100,000 gonna
make or break the sewer. No I mean you know if 100,000 goes to some of these other
request, that's that's not what we're talking about here. I mean I think kate's got
some concerns about making those decisions right now and we're gonna talk about process
later. So, you know, to Pete and Tamara and and Betsy, we're gonna just, we're gonna
table that for now and and and and move on to this. We've got guests here for this
presentation too. So like I said, I just want to make sure that uh, the other guests
understand it's not the sewer or them, you know, it's the sewer again is uh uh, can
always use funding and what's remaining uh, to be allocated like Mark is proposed,
I think would be a great use of it. But it doesn't mean that these other requests
couldn't, you know, couldn't be funded. I'm not going to present any information
today that that does that, you know, So Okay. Um first I'd like to
introduce uh john Black who's sitting here with us. He's our newest addition to the
sewer team. We've been looking for full time sewer staff for a long time on this
project. I mean, for the last few years it's been just myself and and bob wheeler
who's sitting behind john part time fashion. And then we added Dave Peterson about
a year ago, which has been a great addition, another part time person. But uh, we've
finally been able to acquire a full time staff. And so uh john Black, I know you
met kate when she was over in our office, but we have Heidi Eisenhauer and Greg Brotherton
here. And you met Mark Mccauley when you walked in the county administrator Caroline
is the clerk of the board. Um ah So um
uh john maybe maybe you could come up here and just give a quick overview of your
background um before I dive into this. Sorry, to put you on the spot. Just uh yeah,
that's just a quick um
All right. Um so my background is uh with the uh superfund site in California,
uh where we were treating for chemicals that were deposited into the groundwater
system. Um I have Probably 14 years experience uh
construction management and uh plan engineer for uh those wastewater treatment
plants. Great, what was the which? Superfund site was it Aerojet Rocketdyne in Sacramento.
Sacramento. Okay. I know, I just know there are a lot of Superfund sites everywhere.
So there are yes. Yeah.
Well, welcome aboard. Yeah. Yeah. It's great to have John here and uh you know, like
like you mentioned has 14 years worth of experience in wastewater treatment. Um He's
already, you know, really dug into the plans and and uh had some great observations
about the project and uh really pleased that john's here. And we were lucky to find
john living right here in our community already lived up here since what about 28
2018? Um So uh that was, it was great to
find john right here. Um So are our teams really coalesced in the last few months
actually because Samantha harper from the P. U. D. Has been getting much more involved
and engaged in this project as well. And uh so it's a it's a it's a bit of a nontraditional
team because we have part time folks and people that don't even work in public works,
but you know, the P. U. D. S. A partner on this project, so great to see them getting
so involved and you know, finally we do have at least one full time person in our
department working on this project. So um anyway, thanks for coming up, john, I'm
sorry to put you on the spot.
Let's see. Well this how do you Okay,
just to you know, quickly remind folks um the sewer boundary is
that green boundary? You know, it goes from the library, this mouse's library
here, qfc here, Sheriff's the jail and everything down here. The
bottom on Jim McColm Road, that's the extent. And then we have Betsy's, you know,
boat school down here. It's only in red. This is a a exhibit out of
a grand application. We did where we were
uh the waterfront area down here in red was not part of that grand application but
it is part of the project but that's why it's shaded in red. So that's the area where
uh working actively to sewer of course the habitat properties up here where the airstrip
is in the upper left corner in this red down here, that's the sewer treatment plant.
And that's the the site where the water gets infiltrated next to Chinachem Creek.
Again, this is class a reclaimed water that's near drinking water quality when it
goes there. This is not a stinky sewer treatment pond with brown stuff and foam floating
on it. You probably never see water in this pond. It'll be much like the pond by
the end of the runway. That's usually dry because it's that's also an infiltration
planned that rapidly infiltrates water.
Um Where is the next pay? How do you, how do you click to the next page?
Oh, there we go. Quick. Um overview of of uh
2022 accomplishments Designed about 95% I would say except for the
actual connections on the individual properties. In fact, John is digging into that
now that he's here with us, that's you know, if you have 40 to 80 properties you're
trying to sewer, that's 40 to 80 projects really. Each one's an individual project.
Um But we have done a lot of data collection on those properties and that's ongoing.
The cultural resources studies and if you want to call them permits or approvals
were required thanks to a lot of hard work by bob wheeler uh working with the tribes
and uh um our consultant e. S. A Environmental Services Associates Incorporated.
That's a huge step required to complete before we could even spend the 20 million
that we got through the Legislature and Commerce and those approvals were Uh acquired
at the end of the year. So a huge step which will then allow us to execute the final
contract for the $20 million dollar appropriation from the legislature. You guys
signed that in the last meeting of the year and I got the and then Commerce signed
it the first week of january and I got that back. A lot of permitting work was accomplished
in 2022. Sep a shorelines conditional use permitting um etcetera was either approved
or is currently on the verge of approval. Um Again bob worked on that. Dave E. S.
A. And D. C. D. Staff um josh and Joel.
We added staff and of course bob was already here but Dave spent here about a year.
You just met john black collect kostelic is our right away representative who has
done a lot on this project already. She's been with us for several months. She's
also getting um right away for transportation projects as well as handling other
um there's a lot of property management right away needs in a department. Um
Samantha harper with the P. U. D. Has become really engaged with this project to
the point where we expect she'll be doing a lot of construction management on our
at least our first contract and I've I got an update to the inter local with the
P. D. To cover that work that she's currently reviewing but um has indicated that
she has time and desire to to do construction management on
elements of this project. Which is great because as we know the P. U. D. S scheduled
to operate this system. So um really pleased that there's through Samantha becoming
so involved in the final design and construction of this project. Um funding.
We probably got that 2.5 million through the E. P. A. Through senator Murray. Maybe
that was the end of 21 but I put it as an accomplishment here in 22 of course it
requires 20% local match. We recently received the three million from that Kilmer
and Cantwell championed um That was part of the 1.7 trillion omnibus package.
Of course it has a 20% local match as well. Late in the year we applied for the clean
water program through the Department of Ecology um Bob and I and others put a lot
of work into that. That's a $5 million 1.7 million in low interest 20 year loan.
We will likely hear about that in January or February. And as I said we executed
the contract for the 20 million with commerce because we got the cultural resources
work done and of course the county committed about 1.9 million of its own R. P. Funds
to the project which is what is funding the work on the project right now. Um All
these other grants are primarily for construction. So the design work, the staffing,
the project management, the easements we're acquiring, that's all coming out of the
R. P. Money. I think we've used about 4-500,000 of that already.
There's some remaining remaining work that our consultant, Tetra Tech has to do a
few $100,000 that will be paying for that work as well. Again, I mentioned easements
uh required some pretty significant easements from four property owners, bob was
real instrumental and as he always is talking to property owners and getting the
ball rolling on that and colette brought those over the finish line. It's not as
easy as it sounds great, the property owners super cooperative but um just a lot
of uh of uh let's call it paperwork to make those kinds of uh things
happen, surveying legal descriptions, appraisals, all kinds of stuff.
Um Bob has worked with Barbara on the Sewer Ordinance significantly. We're not going
to delve into that today, but there will be work early this year, 2023 uh on the
sewer ordinance. And there has been a lot of public outreach ongoing. Maybe not in
the form of large uh community meetings or newsletters, but it's mostly one on one
property owner, one property owner at a time and it's mostly bob wheeler, some Dave
Peterson and I know john was out meeting with uh a couple of the folks with bob a
week or two ago as well.
This is the sewer budget as it stands you this is not new information I sent you
this a couple times maybe the first time was in september and that was not
necessarily new information at that time either. It was an update to prior budgets
that um we had put together um
The work has been broken into several different categories here. There's a $4 million
dollar site work contract that's earthwork getting the site ready and doing the main
pipelines into and out of the sewer treatment plant. There's the wastewater treatment
plant itself. Um then there's construction administration and management. So $16
million
Tech's
professional cost estimator has given us at various stages through the design There.
I would say that $10 million, well $14.6 million 150
pages of documentation behind that. My recollection is that has not really been inflating
at the cost of some other construction projects. I find these numbers to be pretty
high and higher than I expected and we've done some things to try to stabilize them
or bring them down there. They are supposed to include the cost
escalations we've seen in recent, you know due to inflation and everything. You know
this cost estimator that's all he does, he works in Seattle. So he's used to the
kind of prices over there and um he's using the latest data he can get his hands
on. I still think that I'm I guess I can't characterize it more any any better than
just hope, but I, you know, by putting out multiple contracts that are smaller, we
hope to get local contractors and maybe maybe um You know, at least bring the project
in for these costs if not below rather than putting out a $30 million dollar contract
and only getting one kind of contractor to show up in this county. Um
But for now that's that's the cost estimate. There is some contingency about 10%
built in here, but that's more or less eaten up by tax, sales tax that wasn't added
into these. So it's a it's an add on these, by the way. I mean these projects are
going to generate a fair amount of sales tax for Jefferson County when they when
they happen. So maybe that's a good reason to reinvest some of that money
um In this project and there's the collection and connections project um again,
similar here about 17 million. Again, I I feel like these numbers are or
let's call him plenty adequate but if we are in a volatile bidding climate right
now we're doing a very large project. We're doing a type of work that this public
works department hasn't and no one around here has done a lot of so I mean I I know
what a bridge should cost and some of the work we typically do my my confidence level
in items that we don't do as much as obviously not not as high. I've got to trust
the information we're getting out of our consultants. And this is this is one question
before you go is the connections that is that all the grinder pumps on the property
and everything, all costs including. Yeah, thank you for for current septic users,
not, you know, future ones like habitat or something. The funding picture on the
left, we have the funding, the Fed and state funding all secured except for this
five million, which we hope to hear about in a month or two on the right side remaining
from R. R. P. Funds, The local match that we have to put into these federal EPA grants.
And then with the ecology five million grant required a loan component. You can't
just get grant from ecology has to come with a loan. We applied at this ratio based
on a hardship category that we feel we qualify for. But in the end, that's their
decision, that would be a 20-year loan at .4%. So it works out to $87,000 a year
for repayment. Um Not too bad. So if you add the
state and Fed funding and the local funding together, you get 35 million, which is
actually a little bit more than that number there. But if we don't get the
ecology grant or as much or if things cost more um you know, I don't want to
say that we're, We've got 1.6 million of extra money again. And and this this year
we're gonna learn a lot because a lot of this project is not all of it, but a lot
of this project is gonna be bit out and so we'll get a lot better feel for how we're
doing with the funding we have, but this is what it looks like today. I still think
um that we could park additional ARP of money that we have in this project. Um to
cover uh unanticipated costs, cost escalations or also things like
we've built um
we need to establish a fund for equipment and replacement and emergencies and things
like that, that we don't necessarily want to burden the users with those costs. Um
So you know, there's there's that money in the future that we will need. So anyway,
um this one's A little hard to show all in one
page. It's maybe I can shrink it down here. It's gonna get hard to read too hard
to read.
I'll keep this on the left, some broad project categories of course, you
know, project management on going through the whole project Completing the design
for what I'm calling the $20 million
that's
mostly staff time.
There are 3 to 4 construction contracts for that $20 million that we will put out.
And I think it's important to mention right here that we're not, we're really avoiding
combining funds like the commerce money with the patty Murray E. P. A. Money because
they're, there are different requirements with those fundings. They're on different
timelines that the commerce money we have to have all under contract by the end of
24 spent by mid 26. The E. P. A. Money um uh
doesn't have any deadlines associated with it, but we're gonna have to go back and
do some additional federal permitting with that money. Um if we start mixing them
together, the federal money is going to bog down the commerce money. So we're really
characterizing this as separate projects. And so with the 20 million, we have a commerce
project that's gonna be building the wastewater treatment plant, the infiltration
pond. Of course the site work before you build the wastewater treatment plant. And
some portion of the collection system and connections maybe the portion that goes
up Cedar Avenue and over to QFC. The rest of the federal money that we're getting
an ecology money we applied for that has uh that will go to uh additional portions
of the collection system to expand it out, like down to the waterfront and down chin
become road to the those areas. Um But were these are separate projects that were
bidding them out separately on separate timelines. So this first construction contract
is the one we expect to bid out here and hopefully as early as uh
early March really and then build this summer,
all the mass grading, building the infiltration pond And the main pipe coming in
from s. r. 116 to the treatment plant and then from the treatment plant over to the
pond. On the heels of that will be the actual wastewater treatment plant contract
And the collection system. And those I've given over a year to construct these
timelines may be generous, but I don't want to over promise that still gets that
work done by the end of 20 for two years from now and then we have some money for
some of the initial connections. We really need connections to get to fire up the
wastewater treatment plant. Um Subsequent to that, then we have
remaining design details and construction contracts which are represented here in
late 24 and 25 for additional collection system and connections. Again, areas like
the waterfront boat school and down road and things like that. And then the bottom
line just represents uh construction management throughout the project. And those
numbers add up to similar numbers as I showed on the previous page 35 million but
for construct some of that's not construction. So it's really like 34 a half million
anyway. Right in the ballpark of what I was talking about in the budget doc on the
previous screen, I did a really simplified cash flow analysis here where I just took
like, I don't know this, say this $10 million dollar wastewater treatment plant project.
I divided that by the number of months that it spread over and I so each month has
the same amount of that money that 10 million in it. And then the spreadsheet there's
hidden rows, it adds up the monthly costs of this project. And again of course it
adds up to the same number the 35 million um over here on the right. So you see
some months we'll be spending close to $1.4 million. So if we're using
reimbursable grants and there are a couple of months behind, we could have two months
of cost we have to potentially cover. So that could be like $2.8 million. If this
work gets compressed into a tighter time frame that will be even more money. And
of course um money isn't generally spent evenly like that like in the middle of a
construction project. The bills could be a lot bigger than the beginning but I I
didn't have the time or energy to try to get that sophisticated in modeling this.
I mean I did this in a couple of hours on friday. So I've met with Mark and Stacey
and judy about um a line of credit to help cash flow this project. I think Mark has
some ideas about cash flowing the initial part before we have the line of credit
using county funds like the R. P. Funds and capital funds and we're looking at a
line of credit of 5 to 10 million. We'll we'll figure out what we need. Um five might
be adequate but just barely 10 might be more. But I don't know Mark's done this before.
Um I know this is Stacy's realm support. Uh Stacy indicated that the poor had a line
of credit they were using for their big project. So this is this is not new ground
where it's just new for jefferson County, maybe this idea of line of credit, but
you know with reimbursable grants, it's um it's what's needed seen this done a lot
with land conservation projects. Yeah, I do it in my personal life. I've just never
done it in my my government life.
Any questions on on that again? I mean, I guess one of the takeaways is that we do
plan to start, you know, construction this year and early this year and you know,
we've broken out the site work, hoping to get one of our local earthwork contractors
on the job um where they specialize and then you know, the wastewater treatment plant
is a different kind of contract suited to a different kind of contractor. And then
much of this collection system work which is putting pipes and roads is potentially
good work for local contractors as well. But you know they only have certain amounts
of you know bonding capacities and things like that. So we can if we just put out
one contract it's uh we're gonna scare them off or make it uh they won't have the
ability to bid on and then the cost would likely be higher. Might be a little simpler
for us to manage only having one contract. But um I think we all feel like doing
it this way. There's there's more advantages than disadvantages. Totally agree. Yeah
I appreciate you taking the looking at the potential for local contractors into consideration
that's huge and important. Yeah. Well you know Dave Peterson was
was really instrumental in bringing that conversation up when he came on board so
I gotta give credit to him for really thinking about how that would how that would
go. And I agree that that is the way to do it. Um
Let's see if I can get down to the next page.
You know O and M I just take this opportunity to bring it up again. We've talked
about this before when you start a sewer up there's gonna be a certain amount of
operation maintenance and admin costs No matter if you have one user or 300 users
and someone has to pay for that right. Um unfortunately when I was putting this together
this morning I grabbed some information that was a little out of date, I think our
current estimates more like 460,000 um We expect
that we could have
based on the water use right now there's about 350 us and er use 4000 gallons a month
of water use in this area. But some of those are really small users, we expect to
start up with closer to 200 us um which would be your school library,
qfc jail, you know, your larger not your residential folks but your larger commercial
garden court apartments. Um We've been targeting $100 a month per er
you which is in the industry range. And so that would generate $240,000 a year. But
if it's costing you 400,000 or even 500,000 year to run this using, you know, our
partners at the P. U. D. But I mean there's, well the table below talks about some
of the costs. Of course you've got salaries and this is only like a third time person
which that's probably low power lab testing, hauling solids up to the poor towns
and um composting facility O&M is not horrible. Maybe it's maybe this should be closer
to 200,000 but then you have some admin so those are overhead costs like insurance
uh cost allocation uh for other county services which is typical for enterprise funds,
vehicles, equipment you know have this and then you have um staff that's
sending out monthly bills. So that will be done by the P. D. So you have staff sitting
in the office talking about the next phase of the sewer And then you have this equipment
reserve and build up emergency fund. Maybe this is an area of the county can really
step up in and build these emergency funds. But you know okay at the time this was
done which is out of date, it was like $91. We're talking more about $100
but that may be more than some of our low income housing providers can stomach
and not really in line with what they're paying and some of the other jurisdictions.
So if the if we're coming down more like you know $50 for some of our users at least
then you know we're gonna have to subsidize even more. So this is an ongoing discussion
and I just pointed out again because I want people to remember that it's not going
to pay for itself until we have maybe upwards of 400 E. R. Us connected to the system
and that could take a number of years. But again this is
and if you go back up monte do your timeline slide yeah with all the horizontal bars
on it um when do you flip the switch lite the fuse? Yeah
here
I think that would be early 25 when the initial users are coming on right in here.
Okay so we have a fair amount of time
and we'll keep refining these estimates again. O and M. Is another thing until we
actually run it for a year. It's gonna be hard to know. I mean we've looked at other
sewers and to see what they're spending and things like that. I mean I think we're
in the ballpark here. It's not gonna be a million a year and it's not going to be
100,000 a year. It's gonna be somewhere in the middle. Um And doing this
with someone who's already running a utility. The P. U. D. Is going to keep the cost
down instead of having two full time sewer treatment plant operators that have nothing
to build their time too except for the Port Hadlock sewer. They'll be spreading their
costs through their waters. You know other needs that the utility has existing staff.
That's how kids set P. U. D. S. Doing it first. Yeah kits at the U. D. With the like
the Port Gamble treatment plant. They have a a person who was with their water side
who got certain licenses for their operation of their treatment plan and he's there
for three days a week, half time you know. But you have to have redundancy and backup
things like that.
Just the takeaways here again. Construction is starting the first half of 2023, it
is a large and complex project. Um we've really only just pulled our project team
together here in the last few months, so we're still coming up to
speed on some of this. We're talking about splitting the project into multiple phases
and contracts due to the different funding sources and timelines, there are bidding
climate uncertainties that will only become clear as bidding occurs. We have taken
a number of steps to control and reduce construction costs, like splitting the construction
contracts into multiple contracts and getting these easements so we can get a lot
of the sewer line out of the state highway which has really high costs associated
with it. Of course the ecology grant loan is still unknown until a month or two from
now,
but the funding that we've secured to date is adequate to construct a sewer for a
significant portion of the phase one area of Port Hadlock, which is why we're starting
the project is happening. There's no more question marks about that and it's starting
this year, the project is somewhat scalable. Um if we run short on money
somehow, uh you know, we just won't take a pipe quite as far if we have money remaining
as we bid, start bidding this out, we can uh we could extend some pipes like maybe
we extend the pipe uh across Jim McColm Creek and head towards rodeo drive and get
that in place. So that um because that's gonna be the one of the really expensive
parts of that project is getting across Jim McColm Creek um and that's the next logical
place to go with sewer um or you know, further up cedar avenue or some of these other
areas. So the fact that this project is somewhat scalable is helpful um
I feel increasingly confident that we're going to have the funding available
to connect the initial users. It's almost mandatory that we do
that because we have to have flow to start up the wastewater treatment plant. We
can't wait for people, you know, to figure it out on their own. The funding sources
will will because we're going to own and operate those grinder pumps right up to
on the on the property will have an easement for these, then we can spend public
funds including these grants on that infrastructure if we have enough money to do
it. Um So that's good because we really need these people who've already invested
in septic systems to swap over and and and give us flow. Um you know, when our funding
picture was a little more uncertain, we couldn't tell people confidently that we
said, well maybe we'll be able to help out with that, but I think we're gonna be
able to uh do it, especially if we commit, you know, some more RP funding to this
project that we'll be able to to get those existing users on there and and again
like I said, we really need to because we can't, we need 24,000 gallons a day to
start this this this sewer treatment plant up and that's about Our 40 largest water
users out there right now.
So like that leads me to the last point is that yeah, I think this project is a great
place to park more capital money for a variety of reasons. The uncertainties just
being able to help with the on site connections At least until we get help with cash
flow at least until we start getting some more uh certainties with our bidding and
everything. And by the end of 2023 I think we'll have all of that $20 million dollar
commerce project, all the elements of that bit out. So that's gonna give us a really
good numbers to work with to figure out what the rest of the project is going to
take to to um and compare that to the money we have from the E. P. A. Through our
federal legislators and hopefully the ecology grant as well. Um sorry, I don't have
100% of the answers at 100% certainty today. This is a lot of information, a lot
of great information. Yeah, it's a little, you know, any given day folks working
on this project or you know, roar wrestling with high level um issues like this
down to you know micro project details about how to write a specification for
retaining wall and you know, or some easement or were, you know, so we get pulled
in a lot of directions and we're doing the best we can with, and again with john
coming on board, we should be able to really ramp up our uh, the attention were given
to all the things that need attention on this project but we may need more help,
more people uh for certain elements or phases as project, we're going to continue
to evaluate that as we, as we see how it goes. You know, I'd really like to keep
most of this work in house rather than manage another large consultant contract and
pay for that. But you know, we'll see so yeah, gotta live in jefferson county already.
So that's a small pool. Right? Yeah, yeah yeah, exactly. Um so and I've said I
think and that's a great segue way monty the last bullet there. Um, so the reason
that we have monty come today was because um, we would like board
guidance board approval to undertake a number of efforts. First of which would be
to bring you supplemental appropriations first quarter to move the million in general
fund. That's in the capital fund that we moved into into capital I think first quarter
2020 because we had a good year in 2019, move that into the sewer fund And then
uncommitted DARPA as it's available as I mentioned earlier, the 1.692 and revenue
sharing for this year, we don't yet have but um I would like to have budget authority
so that when that money is received um it can also be put in the sewer fund to provide
liquidity um for the early phases of the project when the dollar amounts are going
to be smaller. And then the second thing that I would like the board to decide on
today is um is to grant our treasurer's. They see that authority to
go forth with an RP process to secure a consultant to help us obtain a line of credit.
Uh And I'm I'm recommending 10 million because like monty said he he straight lined
the expenditures but that bioreactor is gonna come in on a truck and it's gonna be
a very spending item. So we could get an invoice for who knows how much 5,000,006
million at once. I don't know. But we have to have the funds available to pay the
contractor pending receipt of the grant funds. And so um the budget supplemental
business. I you know judy Shepard's on the call. She and I can handle that. But I'd
invite Stacy to the table here um to maybe talk about how we obtain a line of credit,
what it might cost and those things. Um But you know, I've dealt with lines of credit
before. They're very useful in in managing cash flow when you have large dollar amounts.
Um And grants because you never know how long the granting agency is going to take
to reimburse you and um you know prompt payment to vendors maintains our good standing
in the community. And um anyway I just think it's vital that this thing be funded
fully. And so Stacey, you want to talk about lines of credit. Um. Sure. Yes. Um So
the ports does have a line of credit right now for the breakwater replacement, they
obtain that back in january of 2021. And so their rates are 1.55 and 1.65. And in
paying it back I just roughly I'd say we're probably you know 4% higher than that.
Now. I would estimate you'd probably want to Just roughly guess about 6% by the time
we get there as the Feds have been increasing the rates and what we've seen in what
we make each month, you know it's about 1% in the L. G. I. P. Mid year 2022 it was
4.11 last month it's at 4.2 nine Right now.
4.23 for the 30 day right now. So it's great for what we earn but that also means
if we borrow it it's gonna cost us more. Um so just uh
a few points. It's great information. Thank you monty. And I'm just completely impressed
with the uh the organization and putting all these pieces together to make it happen.
This is pretty exciting. Um, so
he mentioned, um, the line of credit, it also when we spoke before talked about an
inter fund loan and so there might be a couple of things there, but we currently
still have an inter fund loan for under the road. And um, that's a good basis for
what needs to be done to accomplish that and meet the state auditor requirements
for not a permanent transfer and what you do each budget cycle to make sure you're
on top of that um, along those lines. And so I'll just jump into these real quick
when we talked about or when monty brought up, you know, the sales tax that could
come on this. Um,
We get .5% for general .5 for optional and .3% for a special purpose. And so essentially
1.3% we get on all the sales tax for things that delivered constructed in the
county. So this would all that full 1.3% would go to that. So if you just want to
look at numbers on $10 million that's 130,000 on 30 million. It's 390,000. And that
would also have a lag of when the company does their reporting and then two months
later we receive it back. I think that's the cash flow issue is is really where the
county needs to invest up front, which is,
you're probably looking at a six month turnaround time from when you pay the bill
to get it receded back from commerce at best case. And you're also looking at, you
know, maybe three months from when you would get the sales tax for that. And certainly
we have other needs for the sales tax. But um and then I just noted that for piff,
that's point oh 9%. So for 30 million, that'd be 27,000, that that's not huge. It's
not nothing. Um But that's a different uh funding source to acknowledge um
on that for getting a line of credit. It's it's the same as getting any debt
where uh the board is the one who decides whether to enter into debt. The treasurer
is the one who um works to get the best rate and all of that. Typically we engage
with an underwriter or placement agent in the past. We used D. A. Davidson Jim nelson
and um we engage him, he works to see what the best uh
um loan structure we can get. So in the past we had bonds that, you know, people
would purchase those for each years and, and have a set amount they would get back
and it's, you know, traded when we refinance those in layman
terms, but we refunded them in government terms. Um They were done with a
uh private with a bank. And so they're structured like a bond like they used to be,
but it's with a bank and that's who we pay it to. The line of credit that support
has its with cashmere bank. I don't know if they would be, I think they've used them
a couple of times because they've had a few line of credits. Um who would give us
the best offer um for it? A lot of the rate depends on what our funding
sources for paying it back. So um you know like the lundy road
inner fund loan we used rate and so we know a portion of that is going to pay that
back uh for bonds and everything, you know, a general um uh
Yes, general obligation loan um is just the good of the
county. We've got these revenue sources which are primarily property taxes and sales
tax for the general fund and that's what's going to it or would we be using something
else. Uh I think uh Monte also has some other good points that have been brought
up at other times when loaning money for public works projects. Uh Currently uh the
roads fund has $4 million in it. That interest on their cash, we do invest and it
goes to the general fund. They don't, it doesn't go back into the roads fund. And
so you know between that and property taxes, we have a diversion. So they
are quite the cash cow for earnings for the county. And so it would be a little different
in um inter fund loans in my mind working with them than it would be for a different
type of fund that is not contributing as much for our revenue source. Not that they're
bad or not good. It's just that um we have made policy decisions on how we treat
the funds that public works has solid waste of course stays all with them. Um So
the process is we do an RFP. I I did. So I also will backtrack a little bit. I did
check with the state to make sure I didn't think it would but I figured I'd better
make sure and let them say it that the local program is not something that is designed
for this type of project. So uh they did confirm friday that that is not something
we could use for um alone or for helping to fund the project.
Um The
what were thing.
So the other thing is typically you work with a placement agent and bond counsel.
So we'd coordinate with the prosecuting attorney's office because they're the ones
who um Give approval for the board to engage with legal counsel. And so
uh we had an old contract 2017 with um foster Pepper.
And so checking with them to see who we have. So the process it could go two ways
as I've seen it. One is that we engage with bond council. They do the RFP for the
underwriter or we do the underwriter RFP on her own and work on the bond council
um aspect of it. So regardless um it's the government way of
getting alone. We don't just show up at the bank and say here's here's what we want.
Do you have a recommendation between those two active bond counsel ourself or or
doing R. P. For a bond council to set up the, I was really well, I also consulted
with other County Treasurer's to see if they had any RFP s that they had done recently.
I found a couple but they have different structures for how they do things. So just
trying to make that uh match our organizational structure. Um So
I would just think that if prosecuting attorney's office already has something in
agreement, then we would work from there. If they don't, then we would start with
probably the placement agent.
Great. How do any of these variables increase our risk, any of
these various options that we have for paying the or for the cash flow
and funding it, it's just so many big moving parts, you know, it's just seems like
the least moving parts is the best. Um Well, so in my just
distilling it down. Uh you know, the cost of the system is more than what will
get reimbursed and so we have our then they've done the public works money, they've
done the cash flow or the cash analysis much better than I am. I'm just making notes,
but basically you'll get reimbursed for things, but not for interest and you
know, having to pay now and getting it back later. So really To me, the risk is that
things go slower than you anticipate. Um you know, if you borrow $10 million 6%,
it's $50,000 a month. So the hope would be, you know, your,
you're on it for getting things reimbursed. And, and let me just say Kathy and public
works is excellent at what she does and the finances for public works, but I wouldn't
anticipate any issues, but there is the, You have to make sure everybody is getting
everything done correctly. So when it's time to reimburse they do and they don't
keep asking questions, but if we get a $10 million dollar line of credit, we're only
paying interest on what we draw. Is that right, correct, correct? So I didn't know.
Yes, exactly. So um You don't want to starve it too much and hold it up.
You know, we talked about five million or seven or 10. You definitely want to have
the capacity to do what you need to do and the flexibility with the approvals already
there, but I would anticipate that they would be um uh managing
the cash best they can to make sure that we, If we spend five million on one thing
that we get it reimbursed as soon as possible. So many dollars we have can go towards
more of the project than paying interest and could you get a line of credit that's
guaranteed by like the commerce, the commerce grant and say this is, you know, reimbursement
grant and we're just going to do these $10 million dollars and as we mean a single
is that increased? They typically would do basically the underwriter placement agent
is gonna do an RFP that all of the banks or anyone interested in funding. It will
provide information and so your comprehensive with it. When you do it, you say this
is why we're a good credit risk and why we'll pay it back. We have this amount coming
in sales tax if we're having things come from the general fund or um, you know, we,
you basically do the whole package and that the history of the county and the employers
in the county and the uh, just economic level of the county
means we're not gonna default on it. Most of this money is coming from, from grants
that we've already secured. I mean, we have the letters
Indicating that we've been approved or whatever the case of the 20 million, we just
need to contract with commerce. So we're assuming that's adequate as a loan. I think
it would be. I think it's just making sure we can also pay the interest and I don't
think we're a bad risk at all. It's just that all gets put pencil to paper and very
clear. It's important to remember if you're adding things monte that you need to
come to a microphone just for the open public meetings and I might add to that part
of the reason we're asking for the capital moneys in the capital or the excuse me,
the general fund money in the capital fund to be moved to sewer. And the art of money
to be moved to sewer is so that we can use that to pay contractors to minimize what
we have to do on the line of credit. And then when that money is reimbursed by commerce,
it goes back into the pot and can make other payments to the um to the contractors
as well with the hope being that we reduce our interest expense over the duration
of the project. I'll also add that we have not increased our debt over many
years. And a significant portion of that is um allocated to Jeff Calm
because that those were improvements for 911 services and so they pay that out of
their communication, sales tax they get each month. And so our portion is very small.
And and um so it's not like we're already maxed out on debt and trying to go for
more.
I'd like to come up to the microphone please. I forgot to mention in
just the grants we got to our federal legislators which will come through E. P. A.
And that ecology grant that we applied for, which has a loan component. We can't
use our money for the match on those. Um uh we can certainly use it to cash flow
those projects, but we can't use it for match on those projects because that's federal
matching federal. So there is in the case of the two federal grants from our
Federal legislators, that's uh 750 plus 6, 25 is about $1.4 million dollars in
local money. That can't, you know, has to be local. And then the 20 year loan if
we're successful in the ecology uh program that I think I said the payment on that
was about 87,000 a year for 20 years. That will have to be again local money sources
like piff totally acceptable to, but they are money not so much on those. So just
keep that in mind. And I would just I would also just phrase it as
the system is not going to be free. It is an investment, but I don't think you can
get it for any less. Fair enough. I want to make sure you get a chance for any questions
or comments. Yeah. Start on the financing. Um, I'm just thinking if,
you know, we, I guess I'm curious if there's a way to provide some contingency funds
for the project. Um, that that really stay with that intent that if they aren't needed,
then that they can get moved back over for other uses too. And you know, I totally
agree that we need to be able to cash flow this project and um so I'm not opposed
to doing it. I just wondering if you, you know, if there's some mechanism by which
um the funds could be available, but it doesn't like that means that that sits in
the sewer fund forever. Um Yeah kate, a condition of moving the monies into the sewer
fund would be an agreement and I think I can see money nodding up and down that should
those funds not be available, they'll be returned to the source. Okay, great. And
then um less financing, more Kennebec to monty's presentation um Is
is it too late for additional users to be added to the Phase one service area um
or like what, you know, I've been asked this question a few times and I'm just curious
how who do we direct folks to that are asking these questions. Are there any thresholds
you guys are still thinking about um for potential new users?
I think we're always open to the discussion, nothing set in stone. I mean when we
let a contract that will pretty much define what area that contract is suing but
with those federal E. P. A funds were out a year and a half from deciding exactly
where those are gonna be spent. And and so there's still um you know room to discuss
to discuss some uh uh what you're talking about, um you know,
within reason, you know, but at some point you'll probably have to say like, yeah,
that's we, we gotta just buckle down and get to work in the service area as we defined
it. I think when we're um well certainly, you know, we're gonna define the service
area and the ordinance, but again, an ordinance can be opened up and and changed
too. But um it's complicated. But nothing, there's nothing that
legally prevents us from entertaining the idea of expanding into certain areas or
anything like that. I mean, I think our funds are flexible enough if they're adequate
to, like I said, the project scalable. So if we end up getting great bids and have
extra money, we can talk about what areas that um we could extend into that. We
had an original initially originally planned, but we have to draw, we have to put
a container around it just for our own sanity and ability to get something done as
well. But I've I've fielded recent phone calls from people several blocks north on
Cedar Avenue have fielded phone calls from people to the west of the school. Um
and and things like that, you know, from me, I call monte about twice a month. Yeah.
Uh you know to you or rub yeah, that you can refer him to
me or for now it's fine. You know, that boundary was more or less drawn around the
zoning. Um And so once you get outside of that zone and you get into more, you know,
single family residential type zoning, which becomes a larger challenge to get everyone
in a certain neighborhood all on the same page at the same time, because it tends
to follow the condition of their septic system. If their septic systems working fine,
they have less interest. But then the person next door to them has a failing system
and they can't get it soon enough, you know, and it's really challenging to address
those issues and we don't have time right now to do that, but I think we will as
we get more and more of the system built and I penciled in cost for kind of
ongoing project management, which reflects that, you know, the sewer never ends when
she started it. There's always going to be um questions about how and when
can it be expanded and things like that? You know,
When on your timeline, is it time to start talking about Phase two, we've almost
started phase one. Are we ready for Phase two? Well, it took how many years to get
where we are with Phase one? I mean, well, again, I um I think if there is adequate
money, you know, getting the pipe headed towards rodeo drive is a great first uh
thing to do. I mean that's our other commercial area. Um we'll see, you know, right,
it's complicated enough right now. So yeah, gotcha, you know,
23 years ago we didn't have any money and uh it was hard to, you know, we're trying
to keep everything as small as possible so that we could have a realistically sized
Funding ask, you know, what are you gonna do with $5 million dollars if that's all
you get? How do you start a sewer? Uh Now now we have, you know, uh we've we've been
pretty successful thanks to the efforts of of of you all with the Legislature and
everything and the applications we put together. So it's a little different picture,
but I mean it keeps changing, you know, and it's hard to keep up with. So hey, monty,
do you know when we should hear back from ecology? I think it's bob, isn't it january,
february.
Thank you, bob. I'll take care
bob wheeler for the record if you need that. Um We should here in january if we've
made it through the ecology process, then it goes to the Legislature to be approved
and then we wouldn't get that money until july 1st this year uh is really the plan.
What we heard in talking with ecology is last year they funded every project that
applied and they have more money this year um that they're considering that doesn't
mean there won't be more people applying, but this is a high high level, high priority
project for ecology right at this point in time. So fingers crossed, we're very hopeful
this money is going to come through. Let us know when we should dial it into our
talking points for our meetings with representatives Derringer or maybe we already
should.
So I want to respect everyone's time. I really appreciate this deep dive and and
uh treasurer parada for it sounds like a recommendation that there's no better option
for cash flow than uh than than looking for a line of credit is if I can summarize
thusly. Um there there's a couple requests about this specifically before us and
and we will I guess take public comment before we take action on those items. But
our people um are you guys ready kate Heidi to consider applying for
a line of credit for cash flow and then also the internal supplemental budget items
to create internal liquidity for the sewer project.
And that's tied to the conversation about how much do we want to hold back for other
projects and um projects on the table right now. Um
if you find one or one or more of those, what's left after funding, those would then
be set aside for the sewer.
Um Mark, would you mind pulling up the spreadsheet again, please can look at the
totals. So what I heard earlier was that we have the $1 million in capital funds.
We want to allocate to the sewer and the 1.69 to 2023 revenue sharing that we want
to set aside for the sewer. Well um is there additional? Excuse me on the screen,
the yellow highlights towards the bottom of the left column And the bottom of the
right column would be the monies that The number on the left side assumes that all
three of those are funded and then you'd have to take another 100 off the top if
you fund the broadband for South County. So that would be 2.179 plus a million. Um
And that would buy some pretty good liquidity and um and then you know monty said
that the estimates, construction estimates and whatnot are are healthy but time will
tell we don't know. Um And so I would recommend that whatever is left after you fund
whatever our proposals, you're gonna fund all of that be made available to the sewer
in addition to the one million in the Capital Improvement fund.
And then should it not be needed, of course, whatever is left at the end would be
returned. Another strategy could be to determine how much we want to dedicate to
the sewer right now and then leave a slush fund as we think talk about process for
considering the proposals that we have on hand. Um And I don't really want to say
potentially others, but you know like if we if we were to dedicate 2.5 million today
to the sewer project and that gives us some time in some wiggle room um on the other
projects. Would would would that uh do you feel like that would meet the cash flow
need monty?
Yeah, I think it would for that initial uh let's call it a $4 million dollar contract
for the site work. You know, until we, you know get the line of credit secured later
in the year. Probably get us
zeroing out as we as we think about process and then also just you
know, opportunistic if there was something came up that was like, you know, really
met our criteria and opportunity. That was a game changer as we talked about. Okay.
So then to achieve the 2.5 a million and a half of wood then be
dedicated in addition to what's already been dedicated a million and a half in additional
art plus a million in the capital improvement fund. And that would leave um What
million +477. Almost 800,000 beyond what the boat school the
library maritime trades is asking for. So um 909 $134,718.
Oh that was good. What's that? If you back a million and a half out of that that
Yeah. And then take another 100 for the south county broadband
and that would allow the sewer and Stacey's work to move forward without getting
bogged down and the rest of the conversation because six months is what we need at
least to establish that line of credit. Right? And um I'll just remind the board
that that 1.692 2nd tranche we don't yet have um and so we could well and we can't
do this until april because we don't have budget authority yet, but but certainly
it will give us time to do all the um all the internal contracts and so on to make
it happen.
You're talking about the lower left number in yellow being 1.5 million? Yes, 1.5
would come out of that number. So that would leave 779 but it's the total number
in blue because we're not we're not funding those projects we heard from earlier
today. So the number above the yellow and blue is too okay 9 30 for 7 18.
Right. Well step one is to take a million five out of the 2.4 and then the board
will talk about criteria and process and all that.
I think that seems like a really reasonable course. I would like a timeline to talk
about that criterion process even though we haven't had one since cares because some
of those requests are time sensitive, like the library's Digital navigator. I'd like
to get that on the docket. We can still I mean I'm not done talking for the afternoon,
but Yes, absolutely. We'll get I think any timeline today is reasonable, but if the
two items, the line of credit and um and the million five
if we have board approval to proceed on those two things. Then these gentlemen and
this fine lady can get back to work and the million in capital. Right, okay.
So um Well we I'd be I'd be happy to take a motion at this time. As I say, we will
give the public an opportunity to weigh in before we take final action. Um I'm happy
to move that. We allocate 1.5 million in our available art of funds. And in addition
to a million dollars in our capital funds to the sewer project and then also authorize
treasurer pray to to pursue a line of credit to support the sewer project
a second. Alright, that motion works for you. Okay? Um We have a motion on the table
to assign $1.5 million of available are for money plus million dollars capital to
the sewer project. As well as direct treasurer Preta to investigate a line of credit
for liquidity. And now I will open it up to the public for any public comment.
You can hit raise hand if you'd like to make a comment.
Okay. C no public comment. I will close public comment and ask if there's any further
deliberation or questions either of my seat mates have. I don't. No. Very very very
good deep presentation. All right. All in favor of the motion on the floor indicate
by saying I hi. That is unanimous. All right, well thank you all thank you
Stacey john nice to meet you bob and monte. Great work. It's exciting that it's uh,
I will say broke ground last year though. Right, right. We put in that piece of pipe
under the sidewalk at the school under construction currently under construction.
Okay, great. Well, should we keep talking about criteria for a little bit more sure
at least come up with a plan for Yeah, I mean, I would say one of these these requests
is pretty time critical in that. The uh, the canal, the grant application is the
17th. They're gonna put it in the 13th for the state broadband office. You know,
the letter is great, but a matching grant definitely demonstrates local support.
So I don't know to me it is clearly, you know, as we pointed out in line with the
other broadband support we've done and I think it does meet that criteria that we've
discussed before about highest and best use of these funds. But what do you guys
think about that? I love leveraging other money. Yeah. Okay. Um, and I,
you know, to me the digital Navigator also stands out a little bit in that way too.
And that I feel like it it's a program we supported has made made it through our
process such as it is once before and um, I think it's a, it's a benefit throughout
the whole county itself. I mean, I think the voters school project is really great.
I think the maritime trade project is great. They don't, they don't necessarily benefit
the county as a whole. And I guess I'm wondering do we wanna, we've done other projects
like this that we have supported them. So I just, I'm with with Heidi and let's figure
out how we're going to distribute this. You know, let's say we take the 100 off the
top. Um, you know, $830,000. Um, do we want to open it up to other nonprofits to
see if there's other, I mean, I'm not sure the best way to do it because we did support
the maritime center in a similar ask, a P. T. Z. And similar ask. So we supported
the idea of the wellness center. Whether that ever comes to pass or not. I mean we've
supported a lot of things that are aspirational of the community and I don't know,
I'm supportive of both the marine trades requests. I mean they both are fundamentally
marine trades and it is a huge sector of our economy. And um, I know that the marine
trades, the Marine trades Association is stabilizing right now. And so I feel, I
feel motivated to support that to getting them to a place of stability so they can
do their next study and um, show their benefit to the community again. Um, and then
the boat school, you know, is building the future of our marine trade. So I, you
know, I'm from the economic development standpoint, I'm supportive of both of those
requests and I feel like um I don't feel like I need a big
process to get to supporting all four of these. I feel like they're all good uh projects.
The concerns I have are around kind of fairness to to similar partners. Um so we
just went through an agonizing process for funding um home repairs with our housing
providers and you know, not everybody got funded and um there were, there were some
similar projects, you know, the we did fund home repair in South County and I, so
I worry a little bit about going outside of the process and um and yet, you know,
of course totally, totally supported marine trades. Also, just there are, you know,
the South um South County Chambers trying to get established, you know, there's just
a lot of folks that haven't been invited to the table that I worry, it's just easy
to to criticize decisions without being more transparent about how to access funds
that are available instead of just, you know, someone. And can you get a letter in
without knowing that was even an option. Um So those are my concerns, not at all
about the validity of the requests or the value of the projects, but just how do
we look at our other partners and say that we've, you know, that we were really fair
um in that process and I've had that concern, you know, even with some of the other
awards we made. But they were good projects. But I like Kate have just been through
a pretty arduous project with the process with the Housing Fund board so that that
raises it into high relief for me to, you know, if it's whether it's fair or not,
I understand why Kate is saying this now and I agree with both of you, you know,
I mean, I think could we I mean, I would say the same thing about L tech and behavioral
Health Advisory Committee. We just went through arduous process is for those two
pots of funding. So the people that didn't get it, you just sent a letter to us and
we'll just without any process at all, write him a check. Right. I mean it just is
it uh I don't know about that option. Should we have that option? Well, that was
the point I brought up back in 2021 shouldn't we have a process. So yeah, I mean,
I agree with you. I just think I was thinking that we were, you know, people were
bringing requests forward. Yeah. Yeah. Try to improve as continuous
improvement.
So what do you want to do? I mean, do we want to do an easy process, write a letter
for your, you know, from our valued nonprofit partners and open it up to everyone
and then consider the letters we get with no application process, but just
or should we develop criteria, you know, and as Kate said, we did have um some some
pretty for care and even for our art awards, we talked about highest best use and
and and leveraging other funds, You know, when when like P. U. D. S. Um work, you
know, if we give you this matching grant, you get these additional funds and it really
worked out. So, I mean, I don't regret um a lot of the projects that we've funded,
um and and some of the ones that we went through that process and and went a long
ways to the process and then said that one doesn't quite meet mustard and uh, I don't
know, I mean, I don't think that any of these projects are any of the boat school,
the maritime trades or even the Digital Equity Navigator are going to fail or succeed
if we make the decision this week or in a month. Mhm. So I don't know. Um, would
you guys be open to just soliciting other other requests or Kate was skeptical about
that.
Oh, you're muted. I wouldn't say skeptical. Just know that it's gonna be a lot of
work and we probably want to put some, um, you know, Yeah, yeah. You know, general
guidelines and set some priorities. Um, but you know, we could say kind of last hurrah,
right? This is the last of the r. P funds, we want to put them to good use. Um, it's
a limited fund, but you know, I mean, it does put us in a position of disappointing
a lot of folks, but at least they have a chance. Right? Yeah.
Oh yeah. Yeah, no, that's a
good point. I C g I mean it's uh it's uh it's birth was about this kind of conversation
or I mean, we don't have as much money now and we're I mean looking at larger projects
to it got pretty granular with cares. I would say That 2.4 million and we had 30
some odd projects. Yeah, I think larger projects is a criteria that we evolved from
that. Right? I mean, we really did change to wanting to make more strategic investments
in bigger projects. And I think this is kind of a natural result, the kind of request
that we're getting now, is you know kind of the um moving a project that what what
what would move the needle the most. Um, I guess if you guys would like, I'd be
happy to take a crack this week at drafting kind of a basic, a reel ad
hoc process, just trying to identify and then work with you guys next week on what
the criteria are for what I mean. Again, I'd love if we could move on the broadband
one, but you know, 838 100 whatever the final total is that we have to allocate now
and come up with a simple process with that for our nonprofit and municipal partners
I guess. Well commissioners, I'm gonna share my screen one more time. I just want
to remind you of some of the internal funding ideas. Um Let's see what
oh yeah we have a county to run.
Might be hard guidelines. Yeah. So so right here were some of the internal um
and we already some of what was in here previously we funded out of capital, the
center road paving project and um the O. D. T. Match, we moved over to capital. Um
but you know, we've had some long standing needs inside the county that and I'm not
saying that we allocate any money to these now but certainly internal county projects
ought to be able to compete for. Can you can you blow that up so we can see more
of the screen. I mean is there other funding we need to be talking about um like
what's the residual box and what's total uncommitted I mean, total uncommitted capital.
There are other Chunks of funding. Right, so we're taking a million out of that 2889
right there
can some of those other funding candidates, those are capital expenses. Can they
be funded up These these projects for 23 are budgeted already. Right, but the box
that you were just in over there to the left, the other trailer trailer, record storage
facility, road maintenance trailer, I mean, those things could be funded out of capital.
Mhm. But we have the Brennan community center there and we've got
preliminary expenses for paying an architect and whatnot. Um, And, and so, you
know, a fair amount of capital is gonna be committed in the following year in 2024.
So maybe if we can project some of that out too, What's the timeline for our capital
conversation? Capital planning conversation? I'm hoping by the 31st of March we'll
have a workshop with the board on that. Mhm
hmm.
But commissioners Eisenhower and Dean Commissioner Brotherton made an offer to come
up with, I mean, you offered to do it over the weekend or what have you to come up
with something the board could consider on the 17th maybe. Yeah, that sounds great.
Yeah, maybe we could talk a little bit to flush out a few of the topics that have
come up today, like housing, you know, is that something we want to consider with
these funds? It's such a priority. And yet there's also a very important fair process
that we struggled, you know, so will these four projects wait
until then, I think they have to, I would be fine advancing the broadband project
just to feel like it's so clearly falls in our previous, um, you know, kind of infrastructure,
public funding equity, like meets the criteria we've been working with up until this
point and it's time sensitive, right? I think the others, we established that they
all they could use the money, you know soon, but they can wait for a process to be
developed for sure. I mean we weren't. Yeah. Ok. And I'll talk a little bit to mark
two and just have some ideas for us to discuss next week about how to set up internal
projects versus external projects.
Yeah. In looking at that list at that list, it looked to me like three of them pretty
clearly fall under the capital planning process because it's really about facility
a a building a site facility um and the 4th 150,000. That seems somewhat
doable with existing capital. Um I should say that the the road one, I feel a little
less um you know, refunding the general fund. That feels a bit like a shell game,
like we're in good position right now, we're very lucky to be having any of these
conversations. Okay. Alright. Sounds like a plan. So I would welcome a
motion about the one that we're I think ready to take action on today. Um I'm happy
that too. We may. Yeah, well, we took it on the other one. I'm happy to make a motion
that we allocate $100,000 in R. P. Funds to match mason P. U. D. S. Grant proposal
for broadband for the Brennan community.
Okay. Um and I will open it up again to the public for any comment.
Okay. See no public comment. I will close public comment and call the question all
in favor of supporting the mason P. U. D. S collaboration with canal coordinate.
Could canal communications on on the the power pole replacement project indicate
by saying I I I that's unanimous. Alright, well we had a
fairly robust afternoon after all. Thanks for being able to rejoin us kate. Really
appreciate having you here. Um I'm exhausted. I don't know anything else that we
want to talk about today. Well, should we talk a little bit about kind of guidance
for the letter of interest that eliciting? So I think I think an important thing
would be to decide on an amount available and to give some guidelines on size of
ask. You know, do we see kind of going back to a number of smaller um allocations
or a handful of larger ones? Um it would be good to narrow down the to ask a little
bit and maybe think about priorities. I feel like the range that we have in the
request today is pretty appropriate actually. Kind of 20 K, 200 K. So not not small.
Don't want to make 30 different contracts. Things that move the needle. Thank you.
Mhm. Um I still think the leveraging of other funds. Yeah, I think we want to see
a budget and any potential like matching funds that that's gonna leverage as Betsy
mentioned hers with leverage. Yeah.
Um
just that the, you know, these could be coming from every sector imaginable. So the
more we can kind of refine make our job easier. I mean, workforce housing is something
that we we know is a crisis level through all different industries. I'd say I I would
be happy to put um housing in there as a, as an important criteria an economy. I
would, I mean, coming within the spirit of recovery and, you know, our
funds being recovery funds, some of our economic sectors sectors are still getting
back on their feet and we have a preference for um capital
versus operations.
I mean, previously we've done more capital um support for for larger projects, but
I don't recovery might be defined as operations in the in this, you know, just thinking
about non profits and struggling and operations is sometimes what you really where
the struggle really is. I think the applicants are the people writing the letter.
Could I see public good as something that's, you know, kind of hard for some of these
two parts, but in any of them, even if they benefit, you know, the wooden boat school.
It is, there's a public benefit that's there to that is, you know, a little squishy
sometimes. But would you guys be okay with public benefit?
Yeah, I think that's the business, we're in
um geographic diversity.
Yeah. Um maybe um,
I'm gonna think that up uh words like other, like do we want to prioritize folks
that have not gotten funding from us. Previously other r p funds specifically. We're
talking about nonprofits and municipalities exclusively. How long do we want this
to run? We don't want, I mean we want it to be. How long do we want to do we want
when we want people to send us their letter by? Oh end of the month.
I mean if we want that we should be as clear and concise as possible.
I guess we would advertise it.
Yeah. And maybe just request a letter of interest and uh you know with outlining
a few key details and a budget, you try to keep it simple um letter of interest in
the project budget. Mhm. Yeah.
Should include things like the business type, what what type of business or public
entity. And then should we make the february meeting of the I. C. G. The selection
committee? I don't think so. I think that would complicate it a lot. There
might be some applicants in that group.
So so did we decide municipalities, businesses and nonprofits were eligible or we
didn't say businesses but we could, what did you just say nonprofits and municipalities
or public sector? Public sector. Yeah.
Um Yeah because I did the E. D. C. Managed the grants for businesses
like that. Also included nonprofits did. Um So they're, yeah. I think
there has been some more opportunity for businesses previously. Well and nonprofits
do we want to talk about whether or not people have fund, they've been funded before.
That was mentioned, but I didn't write it down. Previous funding. Yeah. Previous
RP funding cares. What's that? Yeah, I don't think I think so. I think we're trying
to reach folks we haven't reached yet. Right. Yeah. Previous county awards in
our park cares and we, you know, we don't have to draw hard lines. Um but maybe just
considerations will include, but this is, it's gonna be like we went through the
housing board. It's gonna be really subjective and you know, there's the hard part
of doing this work. I wish we had done this in the first round kind of our allocations,
but we had just had done it with cares, which I hadn't ridiculous
a massive public process. Um and are we talking
$9, Is that what we got? We're down to 6 79. 7 18.
It's a lot of process for 679. Can we say 680 and I am
$288 in my pocket.
Yeah. Okay, so 680, we're looking for a simple letter of interest.
Okay, I think I have enough to get started, you know, something for us to tear apart
at least.
So how did it get down from 834 to 680 so quick. And should we be keeping any money
for anything we have forgot else. We forgot about took the 100 for south county broadband.
Put it up in the regular arctic column because it's a it's a now an
allowable use under the original art, not revenue sharing. That reduced what was
available to 4 90 to add that to the 18417 70. You get 233, I can put it up on
the screen
right there. So this number is the sum of this number plus that number. And then
you subtract out what you committed to the sewer. Take out 100 for boats if you decide
to fund, which we don't know yet. If you want the Yeah. So you
want to assume that they're not funded yet? So you could then say this plus that
plus this plus that.
I think that's that's our intention.
8 34 8 35. Making that money. Okay.
And I would remind the board that in the past you have made grants out of the general
fund one to the Historical Society for 10 grand and I think you want to trinity united
Methodist Church for 20 and so if the maritime trades doesn't meet the criteria that
you develop for our you can still send them some money. Okay.
Sounds good. Alright enough said on that. Yeah.
Okay. Anything else you want to discuss today?
No, the wind. The wind. It is windy.
Alright. Nothing else from you today, kate. Um Let me just look at my calendar real
quick and see if um if I have any conflicts coming up,
I will be out on friday this friday by um
had to move a number of meetings around with our new um committee assignments and
such, but I think that's all working out pretty well. Oh um our joint special meeting
with the Planning commission um interferes with the legislative steering committee
meeting in Olympia fortunately. Um So I'm really bummed to miss that. Do we know
what the topic is for that meeting?
I don't for um
I if I recall a conversation I had with Brent weeks ago, I think it might be the
current year program work plan. Could you join remotely or it's like right in the
middle of the meeting. I have to be chairing the LSC meeting at that time. Yeah,
that's a challenge. I mean we can ask them, you know, they meet twice a month. We
can see if they can do it at the subsequent planning commission meeting. If it's
two weeks later it'll be the same conflict. But see the planning commission
commission desires a joint session with the board of county commissioners. Um it
sounds like they want to do it every January two, January 2nd. Regular maybe in January.
I can reach out to brad and see if that's scheduled and let them know about my conflict.
Okay. Why don't you track that down and if we can, I'm sure they'd like to have all
of all of us there. so if we can schedule it in february, they'd probably been amenable.
Yeah. Okay.
Um I will be getting into a regular challenge of getting to board of health on time,
also because of legislative steering committee. Um but um maybe I'll just call in,
you know, if I'm still driving, call in and then show up at the courthouse. Um but
I apologize in advance for that. It's chairing is, I'm finding it's taking more,
you know, I just have to be be there early and stay late and more of a responsibility
and I'm done in Olympia.
Okay. You know, I think that's all I want to cover. No one else says anything. I
will adjourn this meeting for the day. Thanks for the good work. Thanks everyone.
See you guys next Tuesday with dr barry's update as well. Great bye bye.
Recording stopped.