PORT TOWNSEND — Meetings on the process of creating a home-rule charter for Jefferson County tend to underscore the same message.
“On the November ballot, you will not be voting for a charter,” said Val Phimister, who spoke in favor of the process at a forum hosted by the Port Townsend Kiwanis Club on Wednesday.
“You will only be voting for the opportunity for the freeholders to draft a charter,” she said.
“You will have to wait for the freeholders to draft a charter before you can vote on it.”
About 50 people gathered at the Highway 20 Road House for the forum to hear Phimister and Bruce Cowan, who spoke in opposition to the charter process.
Jefferson County Auditor Donna Eldridge and Elections Supervisor Karen Cartmel provided an introduction.
On Nov. 5, voters in Jefferson County will decide whether the county should begin the charter process and also will vote for five freeholders in each of three county commissioner districts.
If voters reject the measure to begin the charter process, then electing 15 freeholders to write a charter will become moot.
Ballots will be mailed to registered voters Oct. 16.
Those who oppose the charter process can and should vote for freeholders who represent their position, Eldridge said, adding that voting for more than five candidates will void all of the freeholder choices on that ballot.
District 1, which includes the city of Port Townsend and the adjacent area, has the most candidates, with 20.
District 2 covers Cape George, Kala Point, Nordland, Chimacum, Port Hadlock, Irondale and Four Corners and has 15 candidates.
District 3, which covers southeast Jefferson County and then extends west to the Pacific coast and the communities of Kalaloch and Queets, has 16 candidates on the ballot, although two, Sunday Pace and Larry Hovde, have withdrawn from the race.
Elected freeholders would be charged with writing by June 20, 2015, a county charter that must be approved by the voters before it is enacted into law and becomes the blueprint for county government.
The state constitution permits counties to write home-rule charters to provide a form of government that differs from the commission form proscribed by state law.
Phimister, a member of the Community Rights Coalition, which gathered the petition to put the measures on the ballot, said her group had three purposes: to be able to create and amend the county charter, to incorporate the power of initiative and to implement a citizens’ bill of rights.
“In 1889, every county got the same suit off the rack — that is, every county got the same suit of clothes that was rigid and inflexible,” Phimister said.
“A charter allows us to tailor that suit to our needs.”
Cowan disagreed.
“Charters are not a bad idea for big counties, but for us, pursuing a charter is unnecessary, costly and unpredictable,” he said.
Cowan said there is “no compelling reason to spend the next year and a half inventing a new form of government.
“A lot of people don’t like what’s going on in the county, but that’s not a reason to change the form of government,” Cowan added.
“It’s a reason to run for office, work for someone you like better or get yourself on a committee.”
The cost of the charter process is yet to be determined.
Cowan said some counties have spent more than $200,000 to administer a charter process during its development.
“Kitsap County spent $270,000 on its charter process, and it all went down the drain since the voters defeated the charter,” Cowan said.
Six counties in the state have adopted home-rule charters, including Clallam County.
Once a written charter is approved, the county would be responsible for administrative support and legal advice, an amount that cannot be determined in advance.
Phimister said the administrative costs would be about $6,000 or $8,000 a year, noting that a more accurate cost estimate is being developed by County Administrator Philip Morley.
“We don’t have a budget deficit; we have a surplus,” Phimister said. “The money to support this will come out of discretionary funds.”
Jefferson County Commissioner David Sullivan said later that Morley had not yet worked out a total but expected that it would be “in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands” of dollars.
Sullivan confirmed that the county has a surplus this year but said many programs that have gone unfunded are clamoring for that extra money.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
