PORT ANGELES — The Clallam County Sheriff’s Office has received a grant to handle sex offender registrations.
The Board of County Commissioners learned about the grant during its work session Monday morning.
The $91,000 grant will cover multiple years and will cover the costs associated with monitoring sex offenders. The county has about 170 offenders right now, Sheriff Brian King said.
“We delegate monitoring sex offenders to the cities,” he said. “We enter into agreements based on the number of offenders they have at the time of that agreement.”
The sheriff’s office takes on the responsibility of performing an assessment to determine whether an offender is a level 1, 2 or 3. Level 3s are monitored four times a year with a home visit, while level 2s are monitored twice a year and level 1s are monitored annually.
Transient offenders must check in weekly. If someone is not compliant, a detective is immediately contacted.
“Every week, you have changes,” King said. “It’s a labor-intensive but necessary function of our office.”
Some of the grant funds will be passed on to the cities, King said.
During the work session, commissioners also heard about an agreement to assign funding from the state Department of Ecology to the city of Sequim “to allow the county to work in conjunction with the city of Sequim’s Department of Health grant for a functional sewer system and water supply within the bounds of Flaura’s Acres,” according to the agenda memo.
“The residents of this neighborhood are going to be free from the concern that their septic system will fail,” Commissioner Mark Ozias said. “Homeowners will be taking on the debt portion of the nonforgiveable loan so everybody’s got skin in the game.”
Commissioners also heard about $120,000 allocated to Clallam County from the Puget Sound Partnership “to support projects in the Onsite Septic Management Plan,” according to the agenda memo.
In other business, commissioners heard about seven agreements with the state Department of Transportation for projects on the Olympic Discovery Trail.
“The day has finally come to get our agreements,” William Habel said. “It’s a pretty big opportunity. It has been challenging.”
The trail has a bunch of gaps in it that the county public works department would like to get work on, he said.
“These are mostly planning grants,” Habel said. “With planning phases, we can design pretty close to shovel ready. These are pretty great in that it gives us this flexibility to work within our time and have something ready to go when the opportunity comes.”
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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.
