PORT ANGELES — The elected leaders of Clallam County government and the Port of Port Angeles met Tuesday in a rare joint session to discuss the disputed future of the county Economic Development Council.
Though the Economic Development Council (EDC) came under criticism, both boards of commissioners expressed a wait-and-see attitude toward folding its activities into the port’s to-do list while the EDC continues to reorganize.
County and port staffs will get together with Port Angeles, Sequim and Forks officials and devise a single, countywide inventory of land available for development that could be presented at another joint meeting around mid-May.
“We want to be engaged,” port board President Jim Hallett said.
“I am hearing a hue and cry for something different.”
The EDC received $732,000 from 1998-2014 from the state Department of Commerce under performance contracts as the county’s nonprofit, associated development organization (ADO) as outlined under state law, County Administrator Jim Jones said in his opening presentation.
Jones said in a later interview Tuesday that commissioners must decide by December, when the EDC’s two-year contract with the county ends, if the contract will be extended.
In the state’s 39 counties, only ports of Chelan, Douglas, Whatcom and Walla Walla have been designated as ADOs by those counties’ commissioners, said Ken O’Hollaren, the Port of Port Angeles’ executive director.
Clallam’s EDC has 2015 performance contracts with the state Department of Commerce, Clallam County, the port, Olympic Medical Center and the cities of Port Angeles, Sequim and Forks.
As of Tuesday, the port and three cities had yet to approve 2015 contracts nearly three months into the year.
Tuesday’s meeting was the first in at least the nearly 12 years that senior Port Commissioner John Calhoun has been on the board that port and county commissioners met in a joint setting.
It came about after County Commissioner Mike Chapman called for more county-port collaboration at a March 10 port meeting.
“It seems strange there’s not better synergy between the port and the county,” Chapman said Tuesday.
He added that the EDC as a private organization cannot be an independent organization if it accepts public money.
“The minute they start taking government money, they are an extension of government,” Chapman said.
“Obviously the [EDC] executive director [Bill Greenwood] flatly disagrees.”
Chapman said the public is frustrated with the EDC’s track record on economic development and is not on board with a proposal to hire new staff.
“What they don’t buy is that hiring new people at the EDC is going to create a better economy.”
EDC Executive Director Bill Greenwood missed the joint session due to a doctor’s appointment he made six months ago, he said after the meeting.
Jennifer Linde, EDC director of pperations and finance, did attend.
Greenwood said later Tuesday that he continued to believe, as he told the Port Angeles City Council on March 17, that having the port take over EDC operations is a bad idea.
He had told City Council members that “a tremendous conflict of interest” would be created by the port and EDC vying for the same businesses.
“I don’t think this is a good idea at all,” he said.
“My understanding is that this is a discussion we will have when the new board is fully formed.”
Port Commissioner Colleen McAleer said the port has pivoted from focusing on its own property to marketing the entire county with a budget that increased from $191,198 in 2013 to $479,573 in 2015
“Working inclusively with industry, cities and the county is the way to go, and however this shakes out, we have to work in partnership, which I think has been lacking over a more recent period,” she said.
Port Commissioner John Calhoun, a former EDC board president, said the new board, which is being formed and will meet for the first time in April, should be given the chance to see what it can do.
Calhoun said he agreed with Chapman and McEntire that the port and county could work better on countywide infrastructure and development.
“We could do better with or without the EDC to coordinate that work,” he said.
But unlike Hallett and McAleer, he said the EDC should get more staffing.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
