PORT TOWNSEND — Fred Hill Materials’ attorney has demanded that Jefferson County commissioners and interim county Administrator Dennis Richards rescind a Monday letter suspending work on the gravel-mining company’s pit-to-pier project environmental impact statement.
The commissioners on Thursday called a special meeting for 3 p.m. today in their chambers at the county courthouse, 1820 Jefferson St., Port Townsend, to discuss and possibly act on the letter.
The county had said that the company, which wants to build a 4-mile-long conveyor to move gravel from Shine to a pier on the Hood Canal shoreline, owed nearly $100,000 for staff and consultant work on the impact statement on the proposed project.
Fred Hill’s project manager, Dan Baskins, said he mailed a check for $55.333.98 owned the county on Monday.
“We got paid,” Richards confirmed Thursday.
Another Fred Hill Materials payment of $44,348 is due to the county July 31, Baskins said, and the company fully intends to pay it by then.
“Continuation of the [Board of County Commissioners’] politically motivated, improper legal actions with regard to the [pit to pier] application and associated functions will not be tolerated,” said Jim Tracy, Fred Hill Materials’ land-use attorney, in a Wednesday letter to the commissioners and Richards.
Richards said the commissioners would have the choice of reaching an agreement or rescinding the letter.
Commissioners could “do nothing and leave it the way it is, or rescind the letter and try to negotiate something else,” he said.
Tracy will attend the meeting in an effort to work out a new agreement with the county, Baskins said.
