PORT ANGELES — In what he described as a 2½-year experiment, Clallam County Commissioner Jim McEntire has pledged a $500,000 commitment to the Economic Development Council to help the organization “up its game.”
And new county Commissioner Bill Peach is on board.
The Clallam County Economic Development Council, or EDC, would use the money from the county’s Opportunity Fund to hire the staff it needs to help existing businesses flourish and to bring new jobs to the county, McEntire said.
McEntire, who is a member of the EDC board, cited recent mill closures and the loss of scheduled air service in Port Angeles to underscore the need for an adequately-staffed economic development office.
The EDC now has the equivalent of 1.5 full-time employees.
“There’s a general agreement on the EDC board that the EDC needs to up its game,” McEntire said in a commissioners’ work session Monday.
The EDC is a private, nonprofit organization that help local businesses.
In an Oct. 14 letter to commissioners, EDC officials requested a $200,000 pledge from the county in 2015, another $200,000 in 2016 and $100,000 in 2017 for personnel.
If the funding is approved, the EDC would have a four-person staff and “occasional contract staff support to successfully pursue business and employment growth opportunities in our region,” EDC board president Brian Kuh wrote.
Said McEntire: “This is an experiment, the $200,000 a year and half of that for the remaining year.”
“If it does work, and hopefully it will, then the value proposition will be plain and government funds can then be the minor fraction of EDC financing and less the major fraction,” he said.
Clallam County already contributes $30,000 per year to the EDC.
The Opportunity Fund is a portion of a state sales tax that rural counties can use to finance public facilities serving economic development purposes and personnel in economic development offices, according to state law.
Clallam County will tap into the infrastructure fund to repay a $10 million loan for the soon-to-be-built Carlsborg sewer project and to replace the aging sewer systems in Clallam Bay and Sekiu in the next few years.
“I personally want every dollar of the Opportunity Fund to go into infrastructure, but this is a way, hopefully, to get us there,” McEntire said.
“If it doesn’t work, we’ll throw this model away and come up with something that does.
“I’ll be the first one to recommend pulling the plug if this thing shows no promise of working. But I hope it will, and I intend to see that it does, because we need an EDC that works and that’s got capacity to work. And so that’s the whole idea here.”
Peach agreed.
“I see the need for us to resource that particular group if we’re going to be successful,” he said.
Commissioner Mike Chapman said he did not support the $200,000, noting that he was outnumbered.
“It is what it is,” Chapman said.
The half-million-dollar commitment to the EDC was one component of a multifaceted proposal.
McEntire also asked his fellow board members to consider the adoption of the EDC’s five-year strategy as Clallam County’s high-level economic development strategy.
He also pitched a “clean up” of county ordinances and policy that relate to the Opportunity Fund, and the formation of an economic infrastructure council comprised of at least the county, cities of Port Angeles, Sequim and Forks, the Port of Port Angeles and the EDC itself.
“My sincere hope and all my efforts are going to be put to a very tightly-focused economic development organization,” McEntire said.
According to the EDC’s “strategic direction” adopted for 2014 through 2018, the four areas of focus are marine trades, natural resources, advanced manufacturing and tourism.
Among the desired objectives for 2018 are no net loss of private sector jobs.
“This EDC strategy really is a way to breathe life into what we’ve already set out for ourselves and to put into our formal planning effort,” McEntire said.
“All too often, our comprehensive plan, in my view, largely sits on a shelf and nobody really looks at it all that often.”
The proposed infrastructure council would replace the county’s Opportunity Fund Advisory Board.
Alan Barnard, chairman of the Opportunity Fund board, said the advisory panel has been hamstrung by a lack of structure and “dysfunction” at the EDC.
“We lacked the information, the background, the historical data. We lacked a structure to effectively weigh the request (for Opportunity Funds) against the bigger picture to see if this money is going to create what it was intended to create,” Barnard said.
“I see no reason for the board to continue in this current fashion because I don’t think we we’re bringing anything to the table to assist you,” he added.
Commissioners next Tuesday will consider scheduling Jan. 27 public hearings on proposed ordinances and policy amendments for the Opportunity Fund.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
