PORT ANGELES — Clallam County’s $1.3 million in warrants to the Port of Port Angeles and the city of Port Angeles have bounced, in effect, like rubber checks.
Treasurer Selinda Barkhuis last week fulfilled her promise not to honor the warrants on the county’s Opportunity Fund to build out the port’s Composites Recycling Technology Center and to improve a city waterfront park.
Neither Karen Goschen, the port’s finance director, nor Byron Olson, who holds the same post at the city, knew how they’d get the grants that county commissioners have unanimously approved and that the county auditor has issued.
Goschen said Tuesday it would be up to port staff and perhaps port commissioners to decide how to seek the money.
“The typical banking process treats everything as good,” Goschen said.
Olson said City Manager Dan McKeen, maybe the City Council, would determine how to get the $285,952 the county contributed to a waterfront facelift along Railroad Avenue.
“I am incredibly reluctant to get into the middle of this issue,” Olson said. “We’re merely an outside party to this.”
In a related issue, Barkhuis’ refusal to release the $1.3 million may cost the county, port and city $35 each for returning the warrants, according to Goschen.
Meanwhile, port and county elected officials said it was the other government’s job to procure the disputed funds, which Barkhuis has said had been granted without sufficient public process.
And the state Attorney General’s office, which Barkhuis said she has asked to intervene in the controversy, said last week it had heard nothing from Clallam County’s treasurer.
Barkhuis did not respond when asked for comment about her seeking the Attorney General’s intervention.
County Commissioner Jim McEntire said commissioners had played their part in the controversy by approving the grants.
“We’ll just let things play out the way they’ll play out,” McEntire told the PDN.
“The interested parties are now the city and the port. They are going to do what they are going to do.”
Port Commissioner Jim Hallett, however, said Tuesday, “I certainly hope the commissioners and the treasurer can work out their positions in an adult-to-adult way.”
Barkhuis’ refusal to honor the port’s $1 million Opportunity Fund allocation affects the port’s ability to prove it has matching money for $1.7 million in other state and federal grants.
As for the bank penalties, $35 is what the banks for the county, the Port of Port Angeles and the city of Port Angeles impose for processing instruments drawn on insufficient funds.
Here’s what’s happened.
Clallam County Auditor Shoona Riggs, on the advice of county Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols, issued the disputed warrants June 16.
Warrants are checks that banks agree to honor even if tax revenues have not been collected to pay them, although such is not the case for the Opportunity Fund, which is made up of sales tax funds.
Goschen, finance director for the port, and Byron Olson, finance director for the city, said they had deposited the funds in the Port Angeles branches of Umpqua Bank and U.S. Bank, respectively.
U.S. Bank also serves Clallam County.
By Tuesday, the money backing those deposits had been withdrawn, Goschen and Olson said.
U.S. Bank did not answer the PDN’s request to clarify what it might do, but the mybanktracker.com website said U.S. Bank’s fee was $35, the same as listed by Umpqua Bank.
Barkhuis has said she would not honor the warrants unless ordered in writing by the state Attorney General or by Clallam County Superior Court.
She had posted that she had asked the Attorney General to intervene.
Alison Dempsey-Hall, deputy communications director with the Attorney General’s Office, said on Saturday, that “to the best of our knowledge, Selinda Barkhuis has not reached out to our office on this matter.”
On Tuesday, Dempsey-Hall said she had not received word that a request had been received from Barkhuis, but added that she had not talked with all who might have received it.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
