Island County Commissioner Melanie Bacon (D-Langley) sent out this newsletter on Jan. 21, 2022.
Hello everyone!
This is my county update for the week ending January 21, 2022.
- On Tuesday, the Board of Island County Commissioners held public comment on the proposal to adopt a 1/10th of 1% sales tax for affordable housing (10 cents on every $100 of taxable sales). Eight people spoke in favor of the BOICC enacting the tax; eight spoke in opposition. The commissioners revised the resolution to restrict the use of the tax for the creation and support of new affordable housing units and void the tax in ten years if affordable housing isn’t being built with the funds. The commissioners also want to ensure we have a plan to guide the use of these funds, so we continued the public hearing until the end of March so a draft plan can be developed prior to the Board’s vote. If we vote to enact this tax it will go into effect July 2022, raising our local sales tax from 8.7% to 8.8%. If I feel comfortable with the plan, I intend to vote in favor of enacting this tax. By the way, all our surrounding counties have enacted this tax, meaning if you buy something in Snohomish or Whatcom you are helping pay for affordable housing in those communities.
- The Tourism Board gave a presentation to the commissioners this is the slide show. They are finishing a new free trails guide called “25 Trails Off the Beaten Path” that will encourage hikers to enjoy some of our less over-loved properties. The Tourism representative also spoke about the Tourism Board’s involvement with “Transformational Tourism”, which is a new approach to marketing our island to visitors. Basically, we continue to want tourists—but we want to guide them to participate in our county in a way that contributes positively to the island experience for all of us. Expect to hear more about this over the coming months.
- Our Veterans Assistance Coordinator spoke to the Board about the services that we at the county provide to veterans. She does an amazing job—but the needs of our islands are often beyond her authority. Island County has more veterans per capita than any other county in Washington—but we have no federally-certified Veterans Services Officer (VSO) with the authority to enact directly with the Veterans Administration. We asked Human Services to provide us with information on costs and potential grants to pay for both a VSO and a Veterans Assistance Coordinator at the county, so that we can provide our vets with more of the services they deserve. I’ll keep you updated on this.
- It looks like we hit our COVID peak this week and things are going to get better (please, God). But there is still a LOT of omicron out there. Let’s all continue to wear our masks and practice social distancing until we reach a level sustainable for our hospitals, which remain full right now. COVID is now impacting our county departments. To keep our employees safe, our board meetings will now be completely virtual except for the commissioners and staff themselves until we reach a better level. So, if you want to provide public comment at a Tuesday Board meeting, plan to do so virtually. Our most recent COVID reports for the county can always be found here.
- On Tuesday, February 1st at 6:00 pm, the Board will host a Puget Sound Energy representative who will provide a presentation regarding outages. The Board will take public input at this meeting. This meeting will be held virtually:
- Call-in: 1-669-800-5335 and enter meeting ID number 491 987 8603
- Video: https://meet.starleaf.com/4919878603/app
- The county is not able to test everyone for COVID when they feel sick. At our Board of Health meeting on Tuesday, our Island County Health Officer said: “if you feel sick, stay home”—i.e. we don’t need a test to verify we’re sick if we don’t feel well; we should just stay home until five days after our symptoms started if we have a mild case, 10 days if we have a moderate case, and up to 20 days if we’re severely ill but not hospitalized or under medical treatment. For more information, please access the meeting here.
- You can order 4 free tests for your residence from the federal government at https://special.usps.com/testkits to have conveniently available when you do need to be tested.
~Melanie
“Fight for the things that you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
― Ruth Bader Ginsburg
