New "parcel fee" to be investigated
Plus: Transportation, trust land, and the Conservation District
County engineer Joe Donisi presented the six-year Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) to the commissioners on Monday. The TIP is a detailed overview of public works projects, such as roads, culverts, bridges, and trails, that the county is planning through 2030.
Roads
Due to erosion, Voice of America Road is currently only 20 feet from the bluff in places. The dead-end road, which serves as an entrance to the Dungeness Recreation Area (“The Spit” to locals), will be moved at least 150 feet from the bluff.
The road department is “proposing a study, not a solution” for two dangerous intersections on Old Olympic Highway. One is where it crosses Kitchen-Dick Road, and the other is where the Old Olympic Highway intersects with Cays and Macleay Roads.
Although most of the TIP projects will happen in his district, Commissioner Ozias, who attended via Zoom for the second week, only questioned one item: improvements planned for the portion of Towne Road south of the levee.
“Given the amount of interest from the neighbors along Towne Road that we’ve been hearing at our meetings in the future improvements,” began Ozias. “Can you share your latest thoughts as to how we might engage the public to keep them appraised of what we’re planning and to listen to the ideas that I know they have for that section of road?”
Engineer Donisi replied that he wouldn’t usually suggest a public meeting for a small item on the TIP, but it could be arranged. Ozias asked how soon plans could be prepared to share with residents of Towne Road, and Donisi replied that next spring was likely.
The residents on Towne Road between Woodcock Road and the Dungeness Valley Creamery have developed a close relationship with Commissioner Ozias. In February 2023, these neighbors submitted a petition that caused Ozias to pull the plug on the Towne Road Levee project, delaying its completion by over a year while driving up costs.
After the same residents had elevated concerns about speeding cars, Ozias fast-tracked their request that the county lower the speed limit. A traffic study revealed that since the road has been dead-ended for over two years, the speeding cars are attributed to the lead-footed residents who live on Towne Road.
Compare that concierge service to residents worried about the dangerous Macleay Road/Cays Road intersection. A letter requesting safety improvements gathered dust on Ozias’ desk for five months before Commissioner Randy Johnson, from the neighboring district, began advocating for safety improvements.
During his presentation on Monday, engineer Donisi provided an update on the Towne Road levee, which is still closed. The road already has two layers of chip seal, with a third scheduled for next year. Weather will determine when the county can paint stripes, but the road should reopen to public traffic by the end of this month.
Notably absent from the County’s TIP was 3 Crabs Road in Dungeness, which is prone to flooding. For years, residents have asked the County to address the problems that make the road impassable during some winter storm events. The Jamestown Tribe featured the flooding of 3 Crabs Road in a 2013 “Climate Adaption Plan.” The Tribe’s report identifies homes along 3 Crabs Road as having “high property values.”
In 2021, the Jamestown Tribe attended a workshop planned by the North Olympic Land Trust — an organization that has recently lost donor support and been criticized for becoming too political. The workshop determined that the North Olympic Development Council — a nonprofit organization led by its president, Commissioner Mark Ozias — could assist in an involuntary property buy-back program of homes prone to coastal flooding. “We need to make sure we're using taxpayer dollars wisely and not paying full price for parcels,” the report said.
If Clallam County continues allowing flood water to make 3 Crabs Road inaccessible, it could devalue parcels and even make them uninhabitable — a scenario that would make them ripe for an undervalued property buyback program.
In the next six years, other road projects are expected on Black Diamond Road, Carlsborg Road, Edgewood Drive, Heath Road, Hoko-Ozette Road, Joyce Piedmont Road, South Airport Road, Mary Clark Road, and Old Olympic Highway (resurfacing). If you would like to review details about these proposed improvements or read about the many bridges, culverts, and county trails scheduled for maintenance, read the TIP on the County website here.
The public works department is joining forces with several County budget meetings to showcase its six-year TIP and is also hosting an open house on October 8th, 6 p.m. at the courthouse.
Doing more with less
Despite all the scheduled TIP projects, nearly 50 remain “unfunded,” which challenges County leaders who can only raise property taxes by 1% annually. This problem is amplified by the increasing number of parcels being absorbed into tribal trust land.
Tribes can convert their property into trust land, which exempts the Jamestown Tribe from paying property taxes. According to the Tribe, this conversion is done “to reacquire ancestral homelands.”
According to a letter from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the county commissioners last month, another parcel is poised to be swallowed up by tribal trust. The latest ancestral homeland acquisition is a former Schwan’s Home Delivery warehouse in the Carlsborg Industrial Park.
With a taxable value of nearly $600,000, the $4,356.24 tax burden will soon shift from the Tribe to taxpayers as they absorb the cost of funding services such as developmental disabilities, veteran relief, and the public library.
New “parcel fee” discussed
Clallam County isn’t alone in feeling a budgetary squeeze. The Clallam Conservation District (CCD), a state agency with local districts, struggles to honor its mission statement of “protecting and preserving natural resources in Clallam County” while the program grows. During District Manager Kim Williams’ presentation to the commissioners on Monday, she explained that 88% of the CCD program is funded by grants. However, there is no grant that funds the writing of grants, and that is why the $125,000 Clallam County provides is so important.
“What would you consider to be the ideal funding model for a conservation district,” asked Commissioner Ozias over Zoom.
Williams answered that it would be easier if the agency were funded through a line item on property tax statements. That way, her agency wouldn’t be so dependent on grants. “It would be a ‘parcel tax’ per landowner,” explained Williams. She later clarified it would be a fee, not a tax, similar to the noxious weed fee on property tax statements. “I would love to approach that if you think that would be palatable for our county.”
“Just being quite up-front,” Commissioner Randy Johnson began. “Rates and charges, also conservation futures — which is also a fee, by the way — with all the levies going on…” He seemed to indicate that residents were being asked to shoulder more and more. Johnson was interrupted by Commissioner French, who admitted there’s a lot of pressure on property owners but said it’s worth investigating the new fee.
The CCD has had a busy year controlling a natural resource: water. It continues collaborating with the Jamestown Tribe to convert Sequim’s historic irrigation ditches into underground, pressurized pipelines. The agency distributed and maintained water meters for wells, as mandated by the Dungeness Water Rule — a theory that water usage from private wells takes water from the Dungeness River, thus infringing on the Jamestown Tribe’s treaty rights. The CCD also continues its collaboration with the Jamestown Tribe in the construction of the massive Dungeness River Off-Channel Reservoir — a project that, according to NODC documents, will prioritize water for homeless and transient populations.
The CCD also partners with the North Olympic Land Trust, led by Wendy Clark-Getzin, the Jamestown Tribe’s transportation program manager, to develop property conservation plans. The agency plans to spend a second year planting trees in the Jamestown Tribe’s River’s Edge floodplain adjacent to Towne Road.
The CCD has also stayed busy on the legal front. Williams said the agency underwent a First Amendment audit and that she gave a deposition related to contested election results from March, which saw Jamestown Tribe’s natural resources technician, Lori Delorm, win a CCD supervisor position.
Many of the CCD’s problems stem from its stance that Sequim’s historic irrigation ditches must be piped. Williams’ agency supports doing this without proper easements and without permission from private property owners. According to the Jamestown Tribe, piped ditches are necessary to prevent evaporation and leakage to conserve water in the Dungeness River. The presentation did not discuss whether evaporation or leakage occurred after diverting the Dungeness River into a 112-acre engineered floodplain adjacent to Towne Road.
If the piping is not done, open ditches could infringe on the Tribe’s treaty rights, but according to Jamestown Tribe CEO Ron Allen, the mandate is “a constructive alternative to litigation.” However, CCD’s mandate does not honor the Conservation Districts of Washington State’s vision of engaging “people in voluntary actions.”
Williams described the piping project as a process that “keeps the farmers irrigating and lets them have the water” without acknowledging that irrigators have rights to water usage. It isn’t a matter of one group letting another use the water; it’s a matter of rights. Private property rights can be taken away for public use in the eminent domain process, which involves compensation. There is no compensation in the piping proposal, and some landowners have been left with dry wells or footing the bill for removing trees that have died from lack of water.
Over the past year, residents concerned about the piping project have attended commissioner meetings. During public comment, they pleaded with elected leaders to mediate a resolution with the CCD. Commissioner Mark Ozias, who serves as the County’s liaison to the Jamestown Tribe, was perfectly poised to facilitate an agreement between his constituents, the Jamestown Tribe, and the CCD, but he ignored the people he swore to represent.
This spring, when Director Williams suggested to the commissioners that her agency should seek public input about the piping project, Commissioner Ozias replied, “I think we probably want to think a little bit about exactly what the focus should be.” The topic wasn’t revisited. Running out of options, the piping opposition sued the conservation district.
“The legal fee has jumped to about $16,000,” said Williams regarding a deposition she gave. The deposition relates to a petition challenging the March 19th CCD special election certification and was filed by a property owner. “Those are fees that we have to pay out, and definitely no grant will pay for legal fees,” said Williams.
In other words, residents asked the Board of Commissioners for representation, but the commissioners ignored them. The election that installed a “pro-piper” is being contested, financially straining the local conservation district. Now, the commissioners are investigating whether a new fee should be introduced to mitigate the consequences of their inaction.
The commissioners were handed a bomb that could have been easily defused, but they didn’t. Now it’s exploded, and they want you to pay for it.
We are currently being taxed to death! Our "assessed" value rose by 40% last year alone, the Hospital will get another 700 per year from my family, the Fire District has a couple levies proposed....Where does it end?!?! We know the answer already, it doesn't....
These idiots are overlooking the national 'debt' which exceeds $35,000,000,000,000, (Trillion, with a T)...Americans are currently BORROWING DOLLARS from the Fed TO PAY THE INTEREST...The county relies on state/federal grants...where is the subsidy money coming from?
We are on the verge of a global financial collapse and all we can talk about is tax and spend...we live in a fantasy about to become a nightmare and most of the agents in our gov't are completely clueless. Instead of tax and spend it's going to be expand and collapse. WTH? History repeats.🫣