PORT ANGELES — Fire department personnel answered three aid calls in 80 minutes during a City Council meeting on 2016 budget priorities, illustrating what a dozen residents said at the meeting they believe is the top priority for 2016 city funding.
Twelve people during a council “listening session” Tuesday cited public safety — police and fire services — as the most important area of city operations.
Five others said health and human services was their top priority.
City department heads have prepared lists of least important programs and at least one personnel position that could be cut in each department for lack of revenues as a starting point for putting together the 2016 general fund budget.
View the lists at http://tinyurl.com/PDN-priorities.
“We face diminishing resources,” Mayor Dan Di Guilio said at the meeting’s outset.
“We’ve got to find a way to distribute those resources in a way that is most important to the city of Port Angeles.”
City officials have said they have reached the limit on raising fees and utility rates.
And council members have expressed no appetite for asking voters for an increase in property taxes beyond the 1 percent threshold.
“Public safety has always been the highest priority of local government,” said Alan Barnard, chairman of the city Public Safety Advisory Board.
Richard Stephens, a Port Angeles Downtown Association (PABA) board member, urged council members not to eliminate downtown parking enforcement and resource officer positions.
“Drug dealing, panhandling, loitering and vagrancy keep people from walking on downtown streets,” Stephens said.
Jim Creelman said more should be done to prevent suicides on the Eighth Street bridges, where four people have plunged to their deaths since new spans were completed in February 2009.
Firefighter-paramedic Rob Gunn said the fire department’s five emergency personnel handled 16 calls during Monday’s 24-hour shift.
He said they weren’t all actual medical calls, such as the woman who called during Tuesday night’s meeting who was locked inside her garage and used her medical-alert device to get help.
“To be honest, the majority of my time is spent handling people with nowhere else to turn,” Gunn said.
Call volume has more than doubled since 1990, when staffing increased to five emergency personnel, according to fire department statistics.
Health and human services funding also had its champions.
Becca Korby, executive director of Healthy Families of Clallam County, said sexual assaults for July through December 2014 had exceeded the total for all of 2013.
Funding for the domestic violence victim assistance program could be eliminated, which could increase repeat domestic violence cases, City Attorney Bill Bloor said at an earlier council meeting.
In addition, Korby said, in 2014, Healthy Families provided 533 individuals with shelter who were victims of domestic and sexual violence, including 262 adults and 271 children were the sons and daughters of those adults.
“You have a very difficult decision,” Korby told the council.
“Please don’t cut health and human services.”
Jody Moss, executive director of United Way of Clallam County, cited a link between funding for health and human services and public safety.
Funding United Way, she said, “helps to avoid some of those problems with public safety for people who are living just a little bit on the edge.”
Other speakers had a different mix of priorities.
PABA President Edna Petersen stressed the importance of public safety and said PABA members are concerned about the increasing cost of living in the city as utility rates rise.
Phillis Olson, Port Angeles Fine Arts Center Foundation president, emphasized the importance of the arts.
The center could lose $24,750 in city funding.
“We are willing to make adjustments, but we need a phased approach,” Olson said.
“We are changing, and we bring joy to the world.”
Ray Gruver, a State Farm Insurance agent and past president of the Chamber of Commerce, also argued that the city should have a healthy reserve fund.
“Be bold, be courageous during your considerations,” he told council members.
“When everything is important, nothing is important.
“You will be creating clarity for what this city identifies as critically important.”
Council members will meet with department heads to discuss 2016 budget priorities from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. March 24 at City Hall.
Council members then will score priorities from zero to 4 according to public demand, mandate to provide the program or service, how it relates to the department’s core mission and alternative providers for the program or service.
Their score cards are due March 30 and will be available for public review, City Manager Dan McKeen said Wednesday.
The public can again give input at the regular City Council meeting that begins at 6 p.m. June 16 at City Hall.
Council members will adopt priorities for the 2016 budget July 7.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
