SEQUIM — Cuts to the Clallam County Washington State University Extension Office’s Master Gardeners program eliminate office support staff, but the program will likely survive with the help of volunteers.
“I think you could describe us as crippled but not dead,” said Muriel Nesbitt, Master Gardeners program coordinator for two years.
Nesbitt and Lori Kennedy, the WSU Extension’s office manager for nearly 15 years, are being laid off effective Nov. 30, part of Clallam County commissioners’s latest round of budget belt-tightening as the county’s economy continues on a slow road to recovery.
The cuts amount to an annual savings of $76,000 in salaries and benefits.
Nesbitt said the Master Gardener program now has about 130 active members, about 60 percent of whom live in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley, garden-growers central in Clallam County.
Nesbitt said the master gardeners have turned much of their recent focus to helping the needy to grow their own food, and to plant and grow more vegetables at the Master Gardener’s demonstration gardens, earmarked at harvest for food banks in Port Angeles and Sequim.
The program has expanded to the West End and for the first time has trained master gardeners on the Lower Elwha and Makah reservations.
“We will still be training new master gardeners in mid-February,” Nesbitt said, and those interested can contact her at mnesbitt14@gmail.com.
Changes coming
Gena Royal, acting WSU extension director until the Extension’s new director is seated, will coordinate only the 4-H program after Nov. 30.
The cuts will make accessibility more difficult to the Extension office, and those wishing to use its services after Nov. 30 will have to make an appointment by calling 360-417-2279.
The office otherwise will be closed.
“We do so much with so little,” Kennedy said.
“There is no money and it’s going to affect the public.”
Without Kennedy, Royal said, “institutional memory goes down the drain.”
County Commissioner Mike Chapman of Port Angeles said the commissioners’ cutback was not a death blow to the Master Gardeners program.
“The Extension agent will still be there and have the ability to do the Master Gardeners program,” Chapman said.
“Maybe the new agent can come up with new revenues or fund-raising ideas.”
Chapman also cited the fact that the commissioners were looking at other non-mandated programs to cut, such as Streamkeepers.
The cut to Master Gardeners will save about 75 percent of a full sheriff’s deputy position, Chapman said.
Group’s activities
The Master Gardeners Foundation, which owns, gardens and maintains the Woodcock Demonstration Garden acreage on Woodcock Road, also supports volunteers who plant and maintain the city of Sequim’s Olympic Peninsula Demonstration Garden at the city Water Reuse Demonstration site next to Carrie Blake Park, the county’s Robin Hill park Demonstration Garden, the Sequim Community Garden of North Fifth Avenue and youth enrichment programs, and conducts plant clinics in Sequim, Port Angeles, Forks and at the Lower Elwha and Makah reservations.
The Master Gardeners Foundation is involved in three annual fundraisers, a fall plant sale in October, a garden tour in June and the Soroptimist Gala Garden Show in March at the Sequim unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula.
The cuts will other effects.
Kennedy said, as an example, the cuts will mean that pressure cooker gauges can no longer be tested at the Extension service office after Nov. 30.
Gauges will have to be sent off to Vancouver, Wash..
The Extension had worked hard to set up the service locally to prevent pressure-cooker-related botulism poisoning.
Weed wrenches, which have been loaned out on the first floor Extension office, will have to be loaned out three flights up in the original county courthouse building at the Weed Control Board offices.
“It’s going to be different than ever before,” Royal said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
