Island County Commissioner Melanie Bacon (D-Langley) sent the following newsletter on Fri., Oct. 7, 2022.
Thank you for reading my newsletter for the 40th week of 2022.
Regular Agenda
You can watch this week’s Tuesday meeting at this link.
Resolutions Approved
| Resolution C-61-22 (consent agenda), Releasing and Extinguishing a Lien Against Property |
| Resolution C-62-22 (regular agenda), Proclaiming October 2022 National Disability Employment Awareness Month. I want to thank Commissioner Johnson for the fun t-shirts she gave to Commissioner St. Clair and me, from Drawings by Trent. |
| Here is the agenda for our October 11th meeting, including how to attend virtually. |
Upcoming Public Hearings
Tuesday, October 18th, 10 am:
| Resolution C-57-22 – Expanding the Boundaries of the W & B Waterworks 1 Water System, and Incorporating the Service Area Boundaries into the Coordinated Water System Plan. |
Tuesday, October 25th, 10 am:
| Franchise Renewal PW2022-0013 – Beverly Beach Improvement Club for water distribution line (Whidbey Island). |
Tuesday, November 1st, 10 am:
| Franchise Renewal PW2022-0103 – Sandy Point Owners Association for a water distribution (Whidbey Island). |
| Petition to Open County Road right-of-Way known as Ander Park Road, Parcel No. 23035-220-2270 (Whidbey Island). |
Work Session
The agenda for this week’s Wednesday work session can be found at this link; the audio is here.
| The Planning and Community Development department talked about their 2023 docket and work plan. They wanted the Board to decide on some items to remove from their plan, due to their inability to complete so much work in 2023. Some items that some citizens have wanted us to discuss next year have therefore been removed, due to lack of majority support to prioritize them this next year (including discussion on RVs, additional PBRS updates, and cell phone towers). The conversation with Planning begins at mark 00:36:14 in the above audio. |
| The Planning Commission will hold a Public Hearing on October 24th on updates to Island County Code 16.06 regarding land divisions and decisions (changes to code dealing with Boundary Line Corrections and Adjustments and Lot Combinations, and also large lot segregations); this public hearing will also discuss the Planning Department’s 2023 docket and work plan. For more information, see this document. |
| (Also, when I was looking up that public hearing info, I saw that the Planning Commission will be holding its public hearing on PBRS this next Monday October 10th at 2 pm. For more information, see this document.) |
| A big part of the Planning discussion revolved around the upcoming revision to the Comprehensive Plan. In the past, our Comp Plan was wholly a Planning department document. But our next Comp Plan will be very different from what you’ve seen from the county in the past—our Climate Action Plan will be part of the Comp Plan, for example; also we will include plans for our other departments such as Public Works and Public Health, as well as an inclusion on items we want the State and Federal governments to implement for our county (example: I anticipate that our next comp plan will include our desire for a roundabout or traffic lights at the Hwy 525/Bush Point Road/Honeymoon Bay intersection, which would be a plan that WSDOT would have to execute, not the County). This part of the discussion begins at mark 1:12:12. |
| Our Jail Administrator, Jose Briones, brought a couple of contracts to us. One of them was a renewal for the food vendor in our jail. This led to a very interesting conversation about the food provided to our jail inmates. Mark 02:35:00 in the audio. |
| Here is the agenda for our October 12th work session, including how to attend virtually. |
Budget: This year October is our big budget month because of two major changes to our budget process (we hired a new Budget Director and purchased a new budget software). The Board has 10 budget meetings scheduled through this month. The first two of them were held this week.
| Our first budget meeting was held on Tuesday, as part of our regular Board meeting. You can watch that meeting here. |
| Our second budget meeting was held on Wednesday, as part of our work session. The audio for that meeting can be found here. |
Next week: We will have 4 budget meetings next week.
| Monday the 10th from 10 – noon; to attend, use this link. |
| Tuesday the 11th from 1 – 4, use this link. |
| Wednesday the 12th from 1 – 4, link on the Wed agenda |
| Thursday the 13th from 10 – noon, same link as for Wednesday. |
Reminder:
| The Board intends to award Affordable and Workforce Housing grants totaling approximately $9.5 million to establish more affordable housing in the county. The funding source is American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars received from the federal government for COVID-19 response and recovery. These projects for Affordable Housing can consist of both rental and home ownership strategies. Applications are being accepted online at this link. More information can be found at this link. |
| The Ferry Riders Opinion Group (FROG) is conducting a customer satisfaction survey. To participate in this survey, you first need to sign up for FROG. |
| COVID continues to impact our community. At the Island Transit meeting today, we learned that they just had the second worst COVID week among their employees since the pandemic started. As various agencies take actions to rescind their emergency declarations in response to the Governor’s action rescinding the State’s emergency declaration (including Island County by the end of this month), it is important to remember that COVID will unfortunately remain part of our lives for a long time to come. |
Monday Tea with Melanie: 3 p.m. at Crabby Coffee in Freeland in the WiFire Community Space, 1651 E Main St, Freeland. Tea is on me.
Thanks,
Melanie
“In my community, we are taught that leadership qualities include humility, compassion, a sense of fairness, the ability to listen, preparation and carry-through, a love for the people, and a strong spiritual center that begins with a connection to Earth.”
~ Joy Harjo, Catching the Light
