County council holds two-day retreat to start off year

Submitted by the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization that encourages informed participation in government. The Observer Corps attends and takes notes at government meetings to expand public understanding of public policy and decisions. The notes do not necessarily reflect the views of the League or its members.

With two new Council members, the first day of a two-day council retreat focused on setting key elements of the coming year and getting a view of where things stand on County administrative matters. Reviewing last year’s accomplishments, the Council flagged issues to follow for further action including the shoreline framework, the sea level rise assessment, the resiliency framework, the federally funded trail project and tourism management policy. Ongoing projects from last year to be completed in 2025 are the Youth Community Health Survey and the Killibrew Lake Road culvert replacement.

The Council elected Kari McVeigh as chair and Jane Fuller as co-chair. They set the meeting schedule for the year adding sessions for department budget presentations. The Council divvied up the responsibilities to be the Council liaison to County boards, commissions and committees and to regional and state organizations. They reviewed the process for appointments to County boards, commissions and committees. They planned to set up a basic reporting template for these bodies to customize according to their responsibilities.

They reviewed internal and external communications policies, processes and platforms. The communications manager hopes to launch a redesigned County website in March that will make it easier to connect to the Engage site and to find information on County meetings. The County bought three properties, one each on Orcas, Shaw and San Juan and sold two, one on Orcas and one in San Juan in 2024. The county did not get a grant to do seismic upgrades of the historic courthouse. County facilities face long-standing issues of adequate and safe space, with several facilities having major issues, all of which will be very costly to address. The Council wants to develop a facilities master plan to tackle these long-deferred problems.

The County manager told the Council about work to date and the next steps in diversity and equity programs with training planned in 2025 in accord with the commitment to these ideals in the County charter. She reviewed the current vacancies and recruitment process for County staff. They are recruiting a new human resources director and a deputy county manager. They are continuing efforts to find qualified people to fill the Department of Community Planning director position, four Public Works project manager positions, two assessors and three deputy positions on Orcas.

The council continued its retreat with an update from the Department of Community Development. On permitting, the permit reviewing contractor has increased speed/efficiency as they get familiar with San Juan County code and will add a fifth staffer. The average time to process a permit is now 200 days. Some permits like basic plumbing can be cleared in as few as two. The goal overall is 90 days. In 2024 they received 616 building permits and processed 616, but many of those were prior-year permits. There are a little over 200 outstanding building permits. They are reducing the backlog of land use permits. The backlog of docket requests, which are very labor intensive, continues to grow. The Council plans to look at the docket request challenge in more detail.

The DCD is updating the Comprehensive Plan to bring it into line with new state law, new analyses and data, and add a new climate element. The County is doing public engagement on the Comp Plan update. County nonprofits received state grants to support engagement, and the Council wants to hear how they are using the grants. After the Comp Plan, they will update the Critical Areas Ordinance, which is overdue. DCD and the Prosecutor’s Office are working on the building code to fix confusing and conflicting language, which contributes to the permit issue processing challenge.

The auditor reviewed her functions of financial services, elections, licensing and recording. Financial services include budget planning, updating and processing, and grants management. She offered resources for understanding the County budget process. She suggested the possibility of adding a Council member to the budget committee, which Council endorsed. The auditor proposed changing the indirect cost recovery policy for grants. She addressed the move last year to stop providing services to 29 junior tax districts, which caused angst among smaller tax districts. The workload became too large for something that was not the County’s responsibility. The state audit is complete.

Public Works gave a brief rundown of County marine facilities and their challenges and roads affected by sea-level rise. He will bring to the Council the results of their outreach to find an alternate multiuse trail route so they can decide whether to direct further action on the project. The Land Bank director reported on some upcoming real estate transactions and said they will take a deeper look at stewardship. Kendra Smith reported the County had sent the letter to engage 14 tribal governments and is following up. Brandon Andrews outlined the proposed design of the Cultural Access Program which hopes to begin disbursing grants in early 2026. Mark Thompson said they will be giving the Council more details on the emergency ferry money on Jan. 21 and will be ready to issue RFPs for contract passenger and barge service soon.