PORT ANGELES — A controversial land-use official spurned by voters in 2003 has returned to Clallam County government.
Bob Martin, 60, former appointed Department of Community Development director, is the county’s new supervisor of utilities and emergency management.
He assumed the office Feb. 6, replacing Joe Ciarlo, who joined the Port of Port Angeles as public works manager late last year.
County Administrator Dan Engelbertson and Commissioner Mike Doherty, D-Port Angeles, were adamant Monday that Martin was the strongest candidate among the five people who sought the position.
“I think he’ll do a great job,” Engelbertson said. “We wouldn’t have hired him otherwise.”
Doherty said, “I think we’re lucky to have someone of that caliber.”
The job, Engelbertson and Doherty explained, calls for engineering skills and waste-disposal experience.
These will be valuable for as the county extends sewers eastward from the city limit, joins Port Angeles to operate a solid-waste transfer station, and contemplates satellite sewage systems for Carlsborg, Blyn and the Lower Elwha Klallam Reservation.
The job also will cover dike districts and flood-control projects. Martin handled such duties in public-sector jobs in Alaska and Oregon.
“This job gets me back to my base, to my professional roots,” he said.
Emergency preparedness
The other facet of his job is preparing Clallam County for emergencies, be they tsunamis, earthquakes, wildfires, oil spills, landslides or floods such as those Martin coped with in Alaska.
“I think I bring a lot of skills to the problem,” he said. “There’s a lot to learn, though, and I’m eager to learn it.”
From 1995 through 2003, Martin was a lightning rod for land-use policies like the Critical Areas Code that protects streams, shores and wetlands from development.
Developers assailed him for being anti-growth while environmentalists reviled him for being too soft on development.
He lost his job after voters made it an elected office in 2002.
“Against my better judgment, I ran,” he said Monday.
Voters in 2003 chose his opponent, Rob Robertsen.
Robertsen, who had retired in 2000 after working for Martin as a building inspector, received heavy support from Realtors, developers and contractors. He became the only elected development director in the nation.
$120,000 in severance pay
When Martin left county employment, he made $75,288 a year. Had he won the election, he would have been paid $53,000.
He now will make about $57,300 annually, compared to Ciarlo’s former salary of $63,540.
Thanks to an agreement with the Board of County Commissioners, Martin collected about $120,000 in severance pay in 2003.
In 2001, he was challenged for taking a property tax reduction on his 19-acre Nodaway Farm, cutting his taxes from $1,400 to $26 a year since 1997.
The farm on Palo Alto Road is an equine recuperation and retirement ranch that produces no crops.
Martin eventually paid $5,881.22 in back taxes.
