FORKS — Mayor Bryon Monohon gave the Forks Chamber of Commerce a peek inside his filing cabinet at its Wednesday luncheon.
Monohon, giving the annual State of the City address to the chamber, said chief among his concerns were long-term planning, improving the legibility of the city budget and evaluating the facilities owned by the city.
In 2010, Monohon said he spent the year organizing, titling his speech “Forks A-Z: What Is in the Mayor’s File Cabinet.”
“I spent a lot of time getting my filing system together and getting it integrated with [former Mayor Nedra Reed’s] system,” he said after the meeting.
“This year, I would really like to [focus] and use some of that information to do some long-term planning.”
When talking about the two airports run by the city — Forks Municipal Airport and the Quillayute Airport — Monohon said he hoped to explore how to better utilize the facilities.
“The Quillayute Airport, for example, has a really nice hangar building,” he said.
“It would be really nice for someone who needed some office space and wanted to be able to fly in and out but without the rigmarole of the big city.”
He plans to evaluate all of the city’s properties this year.
“We are a very facility-rich city,” he said.
“We have a lot of facilities — more than we have people to use the space in them.”
He said the city has used up 10 years of the 20-year lease on the Quillayute Airport, and one goal for the year was to find someone who could use the space.
When Monohon took office in January 2010, the budget was hard to understand, he said.
“It was a good budget before, but it was in four different languages — so you would have to look at one section and then translate it to another language to compare to another section,” he said.
He said he has already made some improvements by clearly highlighting revenues in green and expenditures in red.
“It is my little dream that someday, I want to have a budget of such a quality that we can start submitting it for awards,” he said.
Other points he highlighted were:
• The Forks Animal Shelter — “It has been swept under the rug for too many years,” Monohon said.
“Just because we don’t have money for it and haven’t been using it much doesn’t mean we don’t have an animal problem and that the animals don’t need it.”
He said that the Forks Friends of Animals has been working on renovations of the shelter at its own expense but that more needs to be done.
• Business — Monohon said that he wasn’t going to revisit the idea of requiring business licenses but that he did want to explore what new businesses could be opened — and how many of each type the community can support.
“Thresholds are something that is an interest to me,” he said.
“The state Department of Commerce has data on what your community can support size-wise.”
• Fluoride — Forks was among one of the first cities in the state — perhaps the first — to fluoridate its drinking water supply, Monohon said.
In Port Angeles, three groups — Clallam County Citizens for Safe Drinking Water, Our Water-Our Choice! and Protect Our Waters — have been fighting fluoridation since it was introduced in the city.
Last year, the state Supreme Court sided with the city in a suit filed by Our Water-Our Choice! and Protect Our Waters. The two groups sought to have fluoridation stopped through the ballot box, but the state high court ruled 5-4 that the practice is administrative in nature and can’t be challenged through initiatives.
Monohon said members of the groups said they are considering suing the city of Forks as well on the same topic.
“I wish that they would challenge the federal rules, rather than the local governments, but we’ll just see how that turns out,” he said.
• Forks Timber Museum — Monohon put out the word to help out the museum, which tells the history of logging in Forks.
“I have had an e-mail saying that they weren’t seeing any gains from Twilight and that they hoped I would have some ideas,” he said.
“That is something I think we need to put our arms around and help the museum.”
• Olympic Community Action Programs — Monohon said the program will likely move out of the building it rents at the city’s Community Center.
Monohon said it would likely find another facility because of differences in opinion over how the community center should be run.
Tim Hockett, executive director of the agency that operates from Port Townsend to Forks, said Wednesday that it was premature for him to comment on the situation.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
