PORT ANGELES — Clallam County Commissioner Jim McEntire hand-delivered a $1 million check to Port of Port Angeles officials Tuesday, marking the end of a three-month stalemate in county government.
McEntire and fellow Commissioner Bill Peach voted Tuesday — with Commissioner Mike Chapman opposed — to approve warrants for nearly $1.3 million in Opportunity Fund grants to the port and city of Port Angeles.
County Treasurer Selinda Barkhuis rejected the warrants last June because of what she considered to be an insufficient public process.
After months of public discord and threatened legal action, Barkhuis announced last Thursday that she was going on medical leave and therefore would not reject the warrants if they were approved by two or more commissioners.
The checks were signed by county Auditor Shoona Riggs and delivered to port and city officials shortly after the county business meeting Tuesday.
“That was a fun gig,” said McEntire, who marched into a Port of Port Angeles commissioners workshop meeting with check in hand.
“They were very happy.”
The port will use its Opportunity Fund grant to complete a building that will house the Composite Recycling Technology Center near William R. Fairchild International Airport.
The city will apply its $285,952 grant to the second phase of the waterfront face-lift between Oak Street and the Valley Creek estuary.
While Chapman supports both projects, the fourth-term commissioner has said the grants belong in the 2016 budget to ensure aboveboard transparency.
McEntire and Peach countered that commissioners followed county policy and state law when they approved the grants and went the extra mile to hold public hearings on the expenditures in August.
The Opportunity Fund is a portion of state sales tax that supports infrastructure projects in rural areas.
Clallam County’s Opportunity Fund Advisory Board twice vetted and recommended the grants to the port and city.
McEntire and Peach voted last month to seek a declaratory judgment and an order from a Superior Court judge that would have forced Barkhuis to honor the warrants.
Chapman voted no, saying it was bad form to take another elected official to court.
Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols said Tuesday he had not yet filed a declaratory judgment action and did not anticipate a need to do so.
“I’m glad that the situation resolved itself,” McEntire said in a telephone interview.
McEntire, who is running for a second term in November, said he will propose a retreat of elected Clallam County officials to open the lines of communication to avoid a similar “spectacle” in the future.
“We’ve got to be able to talk through our difficulties in a more constructive way,” McEntire said.
In other board action, McEntire and Peach voted Tuesday to approve a zoning ordinance to regulate recreational marijuana in unincorporated areas.
The county Planning Commission held 14 work sessions and two public hearings to flesh out a compromise that allows the growing, processing and sale of state-licensed recreational pot in commercial and industrial zones but keeps the marijuana industry out of rural neighborhoods.
Chapman voted no, saying in a later interview that voters should decide how the marijuana industry is regulated locally.
McEntire thanked Community Development Director Mary Ellen Winborn and her staff for shepherding the ordinance and the Planning Commission for doing the “heavy lifting.”
“I’m glad that we’re at this point where we can approve this and move on,” McEntire said.
McEntire, the board chairman, said commissioners may discuss putting the ordinance on a future ballot as an advisory vote or referendum.
“I followed this very carefully, and I’m convinced that it has been very thoroughly debated, hashed out and I commend you for the work that you’ve done,” Peach told Winborn.
In another 2-1 tally, McEntire and Peach voted to establish an ad hoc trust lands advisory committee to tackle arrearage on state Department of Natural Resources-managed forests in the county.
Arrearage is the timber that was supposed to be sold but wasn’t in the past decade.
As recommended by a 10-4 vote of the county Charter Review Commission, the trust lands advisory committee will study the possibility of reconveying management of DNR trust lands back to the county.
Chapman said he would not support reconveyance even if it were possible.
The trust lands committee, Chapman said, is “disrespectful to the Department of Natural Resources at a time when they are seriously looking and trying to find a solution to the arrearage problem.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
