SEQUIM — The two candidates vying for the Clallam County Board of Commissioners District 1 seat continued to spar over taxes, the county budget and the heroin epidemic in a recent forum.
Incumbent County Commissioner Jim McEntire, 64, a Republican from Sequim, said during last week’s forum he is not in favor of increasing property taxes by 1 percent in the coming year, as is allowed by state law.
He faces Mark Ozias, 45, a Sequim Democrat who is executive director of the Sequim Food Bank. Ozias said such a tax increase may be necessary.
“I am not sure that leaving the minimum amount of reserves in the county budget is really good financial policy. There are a lot of important reasons for the county to have a strong reserve, and I think it is safe to say that we would not have made it through the recent economic recession if the county had not started with strong reserves,” Ozias said.
Ozias, as in the past, voiced criticism of a move by the commissioners to cut the county sales tax by 0.2 percent. The reduction took effect July 1.
Projected savings
The break is expected to save taxpayers $360,000 from July 1 to Dec. 31 and will be revisited as commissioners develop a 2016 budget.
“Property owners . . . have shown that they are generally not very interested in having those taxes raised, but I am not sure that we are going to have another option,” said Ozias.
“I think it is best to leave as much money in family and individual budgets and checking accounts as we can, consistent with having an effective county government,” McEntire said.
“The level of reserves by our policy for the general fund is just a little shy of $9 million,” he said.
“We are projected, at least at this very early stage in our budget, to have several millions of dollars in addition to that.
“I don’t see any reason why we need to have money sitting in the bank that we have pulled from the economy and leaving it unproductive.”
Heroin policy
The prevalence of heroin use and associated deaths in Clallam County is a “very tough problem to solve,” McEntire said.
He said he believes that adding good jobs to the local economy will give people hope and potentially decrease their demand for drugs.
“That is one of the reasons I have been so strong on finding ways to push the economy along,” he said.
Ozias said the “community itself is really the key here.
“I have had experience building broad-based community health-related coalitions, and when a leader . . . makes the effort to pull people around the table to try and solve a difficult problem, they quickly find that everyone who is sitting around there has a shared interest in achieving that goal.”
The forum was hosted by the Clallam County League of Woman Voters at the Sequim Transit Center.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at cmcdaniel@peninsula
dailynews.com.
