PORT ANGELES — Clallam County commissioners and the Port Angeles City Council each must come up with at least $3 million in funding to be able to complete the joint public safety facility project.
At a joint meeting on Tuesday, city and county staff presented the governing bodies with current cost estimates for the project that will house the county’s emergency operations center and the 911 dispatch center.
Mayor Kate Dexter said there is “significant value” to having these emergency centers co-located so they can coordinate responses during emergency situations.
The city and county already have purchased 3.6 acres of relatively seismically stable land near the airport for the project, Dexter said.
To complete it, the most recent estimate projects the cost just less than $30 million for a 17,700-square-foot facility.
Some of the costs come from site development, which, given that the land is not completely flat, is projected to cost about $1.4 million per acre.
The city and county have secured $14,315,800 in committed, awarded and anticipated funds for the project from various sources. That includes $1 million for project design from both the city and the county, $2 million from the emergency 911 communications reserves, $7.35 million in grants from the state Department of Commerce (DOC) and $2.9658 million from a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant.
Given the cost estimates and funding, the city and county would have to jointly come up with between $15 million and $16 million to complete the project.
“This is not a likely scenario,” county deputy chief financial officer Rebecca Turner said.
To ensure the facility is affordable, staff plan to look to see what could be removed or delayed until a future point, with the hope of cutting project costs down to about $20 million.
“This is presented as a potentially best-case scenario, not necessarily a realistic scenario,” commissioner Mark Ozias said.
Sheriff Brian King said the staff is examining a detailed cost estimate to figure out what can be scaled back.
Port Angeles Chief of Police Brian Smith said city staff are figuring out what would allow the 911 dispatch center to be basically operational at the new location, and what equipment could remain at city hall until a later date.
County administrator Todd Mielke said there are engineering alternatives that could decrease the cost, although he was doubtful it could be reduced to $20 million.
Once they work through these logistics, staff will present the new requirements to the design firm, OAC, which will return with another cost estimate.
Council member Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin said the jurisdictions need to focus on a plan that gets most of what they need for the emergency management center and the 911 dispatch center “even if it’s not the ideal thing we’ve been planning for over the past six years.”
If the project could be reduced by one-third, it would require the city and county to each come up with at least $3 million.
Because some of the grants already secured have restrictions on how and when they need to be used, the jurisdictions are on a tight timeline to secure the funding.
One of the DOC’s grants requires that the project be fully funded before the money can be accessed. Both the DOC grants expire on June 30, 2025, with the potential to get extensions.
The FEMA grant expires on April 30, 2026. A six-month extension is possible, Mielke said, but very difficult to get.
To keep these grants, Mielke said OAC needs concrete project information by the end of September, the project must go to bid around February or March, and construction needs to begin next summer.
Schromen-Wawrin said, “When you take a sober assessment of the timeline, [it] looks dire.”
City council and county commissioners unanimously voted to jointly pass a resolution directing the county administrator and city manager to “prepare a funding plan for the remaining anticipated costs for the joint public safety facility.”
Council member Amy Miller was not in attendance and did not vote.
Dexter said the wording of “remaining anticipated costs” was purposefully vague to allow staff to move forward with the idea that each jurisdiction must commit at least $3 million, but to allow them flexibility if the costs end up being greater.
City Finance Director Sarina Carrizosa said city staff could likely come up with some potential funding solutions by the Sept. 17 city council meeting.
Council member Brendan Meyer suggested looking at lodging tax funding to see if it could be legally used for the project.
Schromen-Wawrin suggested implementing a public safety sales tax to raise the additional funds. However, that tax would need voter approval, and it is too late to submit it for the Nov. 5 ballot, so he said the tax likely wouldn’t be timely enough to help. He said he also is open to going into debt to fund this project.
Mielke said the county likely would reprioritize capital projects to free up funds for the project.
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Reporter Emma Maple can be reached by email at emma.maple@peninsuladailynews.com.
