HomeMy WebLinkAboutclosed_caption09:00:25 Where your badge and everything, would they not like you in the building? Yeah, it's good.
09:00:31 I'm sorry. Alright, ready? Alright, good morning everyone. It is September eighteenth and I will call this meeting of the Board of County Commissioners.
09:00:44 To order. We've got a fairly light agenda this morning. I wanted to add one Another executive session at 2 30.
09:00:54 It's intended to be on there same rationale as before. So we'll add that and then, with that, we will start as we always do with public comment.
09:01:04 So if anyone in the room would like to make public comment, we'd love to hear from you.
09:01:07 You have 3Â min, please come up again to the microphone.
09:01:13 Of the Department of Central Services are here to submit a letter of public comment that comes from all of us who are here.
09:01:21 And some others who signed the letter but who couldn't be here. My colleague Jenny Matter will reap the letter on our behalf.
09:01:32 We are here as a department to make a few remarks in solidarity with and support of our department director Chris Goy.
09:01:40 Chris has been with our department for only 10 months, yet in that short time he has earned our utmost respect as a supervisor.
09:01:47 And our appreciation as a colleague. He has supported and advocated for each of us in the wide variety of different kinds of work that we do in this department.
09:01:57 He is always ready to listen and provide guidance and thoughtful advice. He conducts his interactions with us in a consistently respectful.
09:02:05 And professional manner even if he is in disagreement with us or presenting a contrary point of view. All of this he has shown himself to be an excellent leader.
09:02:15 In a valuable and dedicated public servant.
09:02:19 We want Chris to know that we also support him in the face of the inevitable adversity that comes with the difficult job he has undertaken and all of us are distressed and disappointed
at the prospect of losing his leadership and companionship.
09:02:33 We are also disappointed in our perception that so far county leaders appear to have given less effort to this matter than we feel it deserves.
09:02:42 The fact that the employees of Central Services are standing here together right now should indicate to everyone how important this matter is to us.
09:02:51 We asked the county administrator the board of commissioners to respect Chris and our department by providing us with as much of their attention and encouragement as they can
afford at this time.
09:03:02 Thank you for your time and attention.
09:03:05 Thank you very much, Jenny. I got a letter a copy of the letter. Great. Okay.
09:03:10 Yeah. Would anyone else in the room like to make a public comment this morning? Well, as usual, we're respond, public comments after we've heard them all.
09:03:20 So we'll give folks that online, but anyone else?
09:03:24 Alright, I'll call to the online room. Does anyone with us virtually like to make a public comment?
09:03:31 Love to hear from you. Hit raise. And or star 9 if you're on the phone.
09:03:40 Okay. Seeing none, we'll as is our custom, keep public comment open until 9 30, but take a moment to respond to what we've heard so far.
09:03:47 Kate, any response? Kenny and Ken and the central services. So I feel least, microphone. Yes, sorry.
09:03:59 I feel least in the loop just I've been out. With family and medical leave. So I don't feel really well informed to be able to respond.
09:04:06 I've been keeping up on this issue. But I think there's been more. Developments than I am really aware of.
09:04:12 So if one of you could speak to it, I think you're going to be better informed then.
09:04:16 I am.
09:04:18 Yeah, I share all of your admiration and adoration of Chris and as a member of his hiring team.
09:04:28 No, we made a good choice in selecting him for Central Services Director and I feel like at this point it's kind of out of our hands.
09:04:39 It's more in the HR department, HR departments kind of leadership. But we are we have been involved in this so the perception that we haven't been involved or haven't paid attention
to this issue is is not the case.
09:04:57 We've been very involved and early on Couple weeks ago I had a couple of conversations with Chris and then it was recommended that we not have any more conversations with them
for the time being.
09:05:09 So. You know, we've been doing as much as we can do. From my from my personal stance.
09:05:18 I've been doing as much as I can do.
09:05:20 Thanks and I it means a lot to hear from you folks today. I think I share Heidi and Kate's.
09:05:28 Affection and respect for Chris as well and it's it's complicated, but it is ongoing.
09:05:37 I would say the situation is, not fully resolved yet and as Heidi says, it really is kind of in a HR holding pattern at this point.
09:05:45 And, you know. I hear you and and we we feel much the same way.
09:05:52 It's again. A little bit. It's more, well, gosh.
09:05:59 Sorry, it's challenging to respond to without divulging information that I really shouldn't.
09:06:07 But, Suffice it to say hear you and and share your share your feelings. I don't know, Monty.
09:06:15 Did you want to say anything? While there are HR matters involved. It's not the HR director's.
09:06:23 Decision. The county administrator really is. You know, I'm filling in on certain duties, but not certainly not this one.
09:06:35 So the matter is Why not holding pattern waiting marks return since Chris. Works for Mark and, And it's, you know, really Marx.
09:06:48 Issue to whatever you. To work through, you know, with Chris on and, I just wanted to be clear about that.
09:06:59 Yes, there's thank you for any kind of employee action there can be HR matters but they is not the HR manager.
09:07:05 It's a good clarification. Has any decision making capacity here. Thanks. The timing of course of that has been really challenging.
09:07:19 And with Mark, yeah, kind of lack of. Clarity of what to do in that vacuum.
09:07:23 And so just would ask for your patience. And yeah. I, I. Really miss Chris and I think he's done a great job here as well.
09:07:36 Yeah, I think that's where we are. But I'll make there's still anyone who has made public comment if anyone would like to make a comment.
09:07:43 We'd love to hear from you in the room or online. You can hit click the raise hand button if you're online or start 9 if you're on the phone or if anyone else has moved to comment
in the room just stand up and come to the microphone.
09:07:58 But we do hear the letter signed by all, all here and and and more as well in central services.
09:08:04 So do appreciate the support for Chris. Would you mind passing the letter down? Just, yeah, I'll get it back to you.
09:08:14 If you're gonna original, And it was ready for. Yeah, thanks. Just say to, I mean, I've met.
09:08:22 With members of the Central Services team since. I've been doing this role as Phil and County Administrator and I just think that it's been.
09:08:32 Said many times in those discussions, just the importance of having a central services director and manager. I know public works.
09:08:42 As the public works director is it's maybe there's certain days people don't think I do a lot or people don't.
09:08:51 Like what I do but we have a pretty good team over there and we all. You know, I think leadership in a in a group like.
09:08:59 Ours and theirs is important and for years they didn't have that and that was something that they felt that.
09:09:08 Chris was really bringing to that team. You know, so I get it, you know, like,
09:09:17 You know, that I mean, I, I think I've expressed some of what you've told me, but you know it is important that there's a I'm a leader there that they can count on and work
with.
09:09:30 No, it's mine. All right, still in public comment period. We've heard they had the letter read to us from Central Services, but want to make sure that anyone else that would
like to add to that or add anything else as an opportunity.
09:09:45 You can hit raise hand if you're online or raise your hand and come up to the microphone if you have anything you'd like to share.
09:09:53 Alright, well, we'll keep public comment open and tell 9 30, but I think we've responded to the public comment we have, ongoing until 9 30, but I think we've responded to the
public comment we have ongoing issues of course and If anyone else is moved in the interim for the next 20Â min, you can hit raise hand or raise your hand.
09:10:10 And we can take a look at the consent agenda.
09:10:16 Thanks you guys.
09:10:30 Thanks. Alright. Got a couple hearing notices.
09:10:39 Okay. Yeah, that Kon just keeps showing up, doesn't it? Just another 1,000,004.
09:10:48 Is that what it was? Yeah, although it did go down to after 9 one. Is that what it was?
09:10:55 Yeah, although it did go down to after. Yeah, COVID money went away. But I mean, that in there is like $900,000 for foundational health.
09:10:58 I don't know if you remember Vicki when she was a public health director like. You know, fighting for it to her whole time and now it feels like it's acknowledge that we need
more, you know, counties need more foundational health support.
09:11:10 So, yes. Yeah. Good. Any questions, concerns?
09:11:18 No.
09:11:21 I'm glad to see DCD bringing in. More backup support as needed.
09:11:29 In the Cpace or program going. Yeah, exciting. Grateful for the Olympic. Educational Service School District for managing the school-based mental health.
09:11:40 You think that's gonna be they're gonna continue to be able to do that? I thought it was kind of an emergency.
09:11:46 They're in for the long haul. That's what they're in for now again.
09:11:50 Here. Great. Nothing's permanent, right? And lots of minutes on this as well.
09:11:58 Try to get I'm happy to move that we approve the consent agenda for September eighteenth, 2023.
09:12:08 A second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented. All in favor indicate by saying aye.
09:12:15 Bye. Any opposed? Okay, that is unanimous.
09:12:20 Well, so we have a very light agenda that as we, we've still got public common open for another 15Â min, but we have a presentation from Dwayne, I guess is doing the presentation
I assume.
09:12:34 I then his name showed up on the agenda without any information to me. So I have very little information.
09:12:40 Okay. About this agenda item other than that it's in response to the letter we sent them in June.
09:12:49 And then we've got potential government shutdown, which we could probably discuss this morning. We've got, as I said, I'd like to add.
09:12:57 30Â min executive session at 2 30.
09:13:04 Other things that folks, Wanna talk about gender-wise before we go into briefing?
09:13:12 Yeah, I wanna talk about climate action committee. Hackney. Appointment process for members and just figure out I keep getting.
09:13:22 Requested to approve these fantastic working members, but thank you guys for next meeting. October, you've got a couple other positions that are renewing.
09:13:33 I know there's interest in the existing people. And interesting you're getting those? I'm not getting those.
09:13:38 It's because the, oh, the jealousy says that the chair of the COCC and the mayor of the of the Port Townsend are the ones who decide that.
09:13:50 So I don't know. I mean. Okay, talk about right now. I'm just wondering at the October meeting, do you think you like the advisory committee can make a recommendation so we
don't have to.
09:14:04 Do you think you like the advisory committee could make a recommendation so we don't have to. My recommendation is that you know, somebody involved in CAC, in on who gets appointed.
09:14:13 I missed our last meeting as part of our outlook failure. That was one that did not reappear on my calendar.
09:14:22 All of my recurring meetings. So. Yes, I can. Be sure that we get that on the agenda.
09:14:33 We have a, I don't know the ordnance or resolution that governs the, how the CAC works.
09:14:39 I'll have to go back and look at the bylaws. The governance documents to see if that's in some sort of formal agreement, how that.
09:14:48 Equipment process works. I mean it is that's why they keep sending them to me. Right, right, but if there's a possibility, per say, you know, we make a recommendation first
or, you know, or if we need to actually change policy in order to do that.
09:15:01 So. I'll take that out of them.
09:15:04 Any other? Items folks would like to put on the agenda today. I mean, it'll come up through calendaring briefing from last week, but yeah, I mean, there's the leader was in
here this morning.
09:15:20 Regarding that derelict boat that sank near the IRON DEL Beach last week that's There's Jefferson County Sheriff's Office was involved in and the The Coastguard, the sheriff's
office did not.
09:15:39 So this is a boat that's been on the radar and was originally declared derelict in St.
09:15:41 Homish County and was relocated derelict in St's been on the radar and was originally declared derelict in Stahomish County and was relocated here and anchored just off the
Iron Del Beach and sank 83 foot.
09:15:50 Historic vessel. And it's in the Coastguards jurisdiction because it was one about that they were already tracking in Snowamish County.
09:15:59 So DNR and the Coast Guard are working on it now. And, But there was initially a report of.
09:16:07 No gas or oil on the boat, but the sheriff was able to deploy their drone and get a photograph of a huge sheen.
09:16:17 Some investigations will probably be. Coming but it's not one that's not a derelict boat that I'm Rolling up my sleeves and diving in the water on this time and just.
09:16:31 The Coastguard. No, it's really in Dnar's hands. And You know, they're just trying to get up to speed on what happened.
09:16:39 But now I had to speak with them on Friday. Yeah. But it was interesting. I, I mean.
09:16:46 We want to do briefing. I can say I went to the Olympic coast SAC meeting and they talked about So, so the state has jurisdiction over derelict or over the waters between.
09:17:00 The Mean high water, Mark, and 3 miles out. So basically everything in the Puget Sound and Straits of Wandefuka and the state waters, but.
09:17:12 On the coast, everything outside of 3 miles off the Pacific coast is federal jurisdiction. So the SAC meeting they were talking about a couple of votes that had Thank 5 miles
out and they the federal government is responsible for doing those They're like vessel removals.
09:17:34 So they're working on. Do they actually do that? That must be so deep. Yeah.
09:17:38 Yeah. Yeah. And I have no idea how they do it or what kind of contractors they work with, but.
09:17:47 It's, it's complicated, right? The whole, jurisdiction issues and then.
09:17:55 The entities are agencies that. Are involved in removing any derelict vessels like it's it's complicated so but this one is not on our.
09:18:06 On our work list. And
09:18:10 So the leaders writing an article about it and they'll be doing a little more investigation into that boat and I'll get an update from the sheriff and or the state derelict
vessel removal program which really coordinates information about all the derelict vessels and they have a huge list of over a thousand.
09:18:29 Vessels that they've removed over the years and then they have a list of about 280 boats that are known to be.
09:18:37 They're like now in the process of being removed from counties all over Western Washington. Well, then the list is also prioritized.
09:18:52 So there's. There's lists, there's both at the top of the list that have our priority one and those are the ones that they're working on first.
09:19:00 But we had that boat sink in Matsats Bay and You know, there's been more and more of these boats and the boat that sank and the Irondale Beach was actually apparently owned
by the same person who owned the Cartes, which was a boat of concern on the derelict vessel list.
09:19:17 Just outside the Port Hadlock Marina for a few years and that got removed. In the last 3 months.
09:19:25 But apparently this boat that sank in Iron Dale is also owned by the same person who owned the Cardiff.
09:19:31 So. Sometimes anchor or mooring these boats is just a a method of storage and . And unfortunately we have, you know, lots of moorings and anchorages So we have quite a few of
these boats.
09:19:49 Okay, so that was that was the end of last week. I'll get the calendar up and.
09:20:02 So starting, I mean. Last weekend, the eighth, ninth and tenth was a wood moat festival and reports from from festival headquarters was that Attendance was up over 2022, which
was great and you know some people in town are saying it was the best ever.
09:20:22 I would say I doubt that. Yeah, but I doubt that. But I will get, you know, confirm that with Barb, but Barb did say it was up over 2022.
09:20:33 So. We, so I was with you guys on Monday, of course, and.
09:20:43 In the evening, I, we had a MRC subcommittee on a member recruitment. So just.
09:20:50 Kind of talking over our process and. Candidates for, vacant MRC seats.
09:21:01 And then Tuesday I. I love the blocks of time where I have time to Take care of tasks and I feel like last week I just felt like I was a energized or bunny of getting stuff
done.
09:21:13 So Tuesday and Wednesday mornings both I just Let's locked to my computer and writing and getting things done.
09:21:22 Working on those trustland transfer. For project applications. With Mallory and Catherine Copis and then.
09:21:30 Tuesday afternoon. We had the tourism coordinating council meeting in Port Ludlow. And then I went out to the HD Carroll Park for the first inpiece in person meeting of the
Jefferson County Human Service Court Collaborators Coordinators and it was 50 people showed up.
09:21:53 It was really well well attended and facilitated by the community foundation and the Y.M.C.A, Tanya Barnett and Jen King Fisher, and there was a really good interactive facilitation
of that meeting.
09:22:06 So it got to meet a lot of people who I'd only ever seen on Zoom. And it was that I've really enjoyed that getting back to it for me the first time having in-person meetings
with these entities that I've been meeting with for the last 2 and a half years.
09:22:18 And Meaning people in person has been wonderful. So. Wednesday morning back at the task list.
09:22:28 And then. Midday I had a Olympic and Northwest Straits conference planning committee meeting.
09:22:37 The Northwest Rates Conference will be here in Port Townsend at the Maritime Center, November third and fourth and We're trying to.
09:22:46 We are developing an agenda for that that is a lot more interactive and and brings out kind of interaction through the agenda.
09:22:54 So that'll be a great meeting. Looking forward to that. Also, MRC is from all over the Straits and North Puget Sound.
09:23:02 Let's him that. So good to hear a lot about what other. Good works that the other MRCs are doing.
09:23:08 And the region and. I know that the MRCs get a lot from each other and pick up.
09:23:13 Ideas for projects. From each other so it will be fun to see other. Rc's in action.
09:23:20 Wednesday afternoon worked on the whole, this whole derelict boat issue, this specifically this. It's.
09:23:30 23 dash O 30. So it was originally declared derelict in Stalmish County and It's amazing.
09:23:38 There have been a few boats that I've been paying attention to in Jefferson County that have other counties initials attached to them as the place where they were declared derelict
originally and then they're moved to Jefferson County for morning.
09:23:52 And then in the evening on Wednesday, Carolyn helped me set up for the Peninsula Trails Coalition, Open House and Board Meeting at the Scout Cabin.
09:24:05 Down kind of. Off of Discovery and Mill Road there. First time I'd ever been in a scout cabin.
09:24:11 It's quite quite a wonderful venue. I didn't know about it, so. Yeah, affordable, wonderful venue.
09:24:19 So anyway, it was a good meeting about 50 folks from the community attended the open house and then we transitioned right into a Peninsula Trails coalition board meeting.
09:24:32 Why was there so many, public there? They had an open house, so. They're kind of moving towards having open houses before their board meetings when they're having in person
board meetings.
09:24:42 Okay. Along the trail. So this was just their Jefferson County in person board meeting. And merely, has taken over as the Jefferson County lead.
09:24:57 Oh, from Jeff Selby. So. Bringing a dose of energy to that role and Jeff is still very actively involved on the.
09:25:07 And so trials coalition board, but just not the lead for Jefferson County. Thursday morning, I worked on the Community Wildfire Protection Planning slide deck for the Board
of Health Meeting.
09:25:22 That'll be on our agenda for the Board of Health meeting next week. And I met with Tara McCauley.
09:25:31 She's joining the LTAC committee. She just wanted to kind of an overview on. Her role as an LTAC member and, you know, is a great.
09:25:38 Great briefing for her. She's the ED of the Jefferson County Historical Society. And then attended the community outreach meeting in quilting.
09:25:56 Yeah, how was that? It was good. There was not a lot. But Greg's people are showing up.
09:26:04 I think there was like 8 members of the public there, 8 or 9. Yeah, more county family. We had public but.
09:26:12 It was still a conversation I thought.
09:26:16 And then Friday morning I drove out to Nia Bay for my first and personal and because sanctuary.
09:26:24 Meeting and that was also great. Cod tribe hosted us and Spent the night out there.
09:26:31 Got to see my husband for a few minutes and Then drove back Saturday morning and. And then yesterday was probably my busiest day of last week just with.
09:26:45 Got up at 6 and went and helped with the. Chemical grange, pancake, breakfast, the annual pancake breakfast.
09:26:53 Only helped with all the prep made the pancake batter and then headed over to the chimican farmers marker and did a full day of outreach with our community wildfire protection
planning with East Jefferson Fire and Rescue and our consultants there.
09:27:09 A lot of positive feedback about the fact that we finally taken up the mantle of doing a community wildfire protection plan.
09:27:18 You know, I'm, I'm a little bit concerned that the expectations. You know, I'm hoping the planning process and the plan that we come up with lives up to the expectations of
the community, but you know it'll be, we're just at the beginning of this adventure.
09:27:33 And this Friday we'll be having an all day workshop on. The wildfire protection plan and I'm getting a lot more input, but.
09:27:44 Right now there's a survey out and it's supposed to currently on the County's homepage and it's 2 residents of the community and we're really looking for as many folks from.
09:27:57 Communities around Jefferson County to give input about their. Both their current conditions for wildfire and then also what their concerns are.
09:28:06 Get input about what what they know about wildfire protection as well. So if you're out there and listening, please.
09:28:13 You do go online and take that survey for us and it'll help. De, it'll help us in developing the plan that we eventually.
09:28:22 Publish and I the Plan will be out. It will be out for public review. I think, I think, Michaela was saying in in February, but we hope to have it completed by April.
09:28:35 Yeah. Yes. So that's looking back. Alright, for me, I'll make one more call for public comment here if anyone would like to make public comment because join us online.
09:28:47 You can hit raise hand or start 9 if you're on the phone. Love. Love to hear from you.
09:28:56 Close it after we get.
09:29:00 Your briefing from, How was your past week? Well, So yeah, just reminder I'm I'm mostly out on on medical leave right now.
09:29:17 So, but trying to keep a few balls in the air, and hopefully not dropping too many.
09:29:21 See, I did attend the Puget Sound Partnership Leadership Council meeting, or at least half of it on.
09:29:28 On Tuesday. And. The HOPE CONNECTION Council was the local host for that and actually talked mostly about projects in Jefferson County and.
09:29:41 The need for more comprehensive planning so that maybe like watershed scale type planning so that when funding becomes available like we're seeing right now that there is more
coordination that work has already been done, community outreach, you know, outreach with our roads department, for example, that you know, things decisions are being made opportunistically,
not strategically, and there is, you know, really currently no watershed scale funding as there has been in the past.
09:30:14 For example, the watershed inventory, what should resource inventory area, the rye 17 process.
09:30:19 Many years ago when we were writing the instream flow role, that was painful process and yet it really did help kind of galvanize, you know, prioritize.
09:30:30 Priorities across the county and we don't have anything like that right now. So we're proposing that that would be a valuable.
09:30:38 Process to invest in so that in Britain, for example, we would have already have the relationships and have done some of the groundwork to be able to consider projects.
09:30:48 Not that they'll necessarily be agreement coming out of that process, the rye 17 process was extremely contentious.
09:30:57 There were police involved at times. But we, many of us still refer to and rely on the work done then.
09:31:04 To you know, have their relationships to be able to move forward on things. So. That was, I think well.
09:31:13 Received. We also talked about, you know, challenges of growth management. In Britain in particular, it was one of the case studies we used.
09:31:24 Let's see, Dave Herrera, from the Comus Tribe was appointed to the Leadership Council also, which is, be great to have 2 representatives from Kid Canal Region on the Leadership
Council.
09:31:37 I missed the whole second day. I was not interested. Most of the good stuff happened. I agree.
09:31:45 Let's see.
09:31:49 Had call with a landowner in Chimicum, you know, really trying to dig into this idea of.
09:31:57 What can we do in Lambards? Should we be pushing for change there so those conversations are still happening?
09:32:07 Housing fund board meeting was able to attend about half of that also where I get pulled away we got some, I'll be curious to hear the second half.
09:32:16 I was there for the questions from housing providers and. Asking for clarification on our RFP process.
09:32:22 SRP is currently out right now for those dollars. I was sorry to miss Thursday's meeting, but just not at all possible to attend.
09:32:34 Had a, State Board of Health Environmental Health Committee meeting on Friday morning. And.
09:32:41 Soon I swear the new outside sectic code will come to us. I said loud and clear.
09:32:48 I need a lot of time with that before our October meeting where we will be. Considering it, although it goes out for public comment after that.
09:32:56 So, Stay tuned for that and that was my week. Alright, thank you. I mean, one last call for public comments.
09:33:05 If anyone has moved to make a public comment joining us online, you can hit. The raise hand button or star 9.
09:33:13 Alright, seeing no one with a public comment, I will close public comments. And I'll look back at my week.
09:33:21 See. On the eleventh of course, was here with you guys. And then, I met with Cindy Brooks.
09:33:32 We got out early, so I had a chance to go spend an hour with Cindy talking about the recompete project.
09:33:37 Just kind of recompete all the time. And then, was back in Glen Cove to meet.
09:33:47 Eden saw was kind enough to open up their conference room and met with a bunch of the property owners probably point folks there.
09:33:51 Thanks to Lizanne Koker from the Home Builders Association for helping to facilitate it.
09:33:57 Or at least set it up. And, you know, not an easy conversation, but I would say.
09:34:03 Even those that came in pretty hot against it were not really hot against it on the way out.
09:34:10 And a lot of people are really supportive and can speak to. How bringing that infrastructure in. Would it achieve the goals of reading peace? And I happy to do that.
09:34:24 So worked on a survey. We'll spend all day Tuesday kind of putting a spreadsheet together.
09:34:30 With all the parcels in Glencoes. And then, you know, starting to add information about it and building a survey.
09:34:39 We'll send that survey out. I also got Amanda Kristoffersen who's our new grant, administrator from who came over from environment of public health and funny being part of that
hiring process I never heard that she got the job. Oh really?
09:34:49 Not the job she started so yeah I think she's kind of drinking from the fire hose right now.
09:34:55 Maybe she is participating in that. So kind of she and Cindy and I. We're gonna meet again tomorrow, but she's been really helpful and adding.
09:35:04 Context and always a lens of equity to the the conversation. So that was kind of most of the day Tuesday just working on background stuff for that.
09:35:16 Could not do the anti racist class I need to reschedule my final one I made it to all of them except the last one.
09:35:23 We had at Orca meeting in person down at the cotton building. And, it's really.
09:35:30 Yep, once they came up here. Well, What was it? Hi, Brad.
09:35:40 Hi, Jill from Pacific County came was on the phone, but, Lisa came up from Grace Harbor.
09:35:51 Oh, sorry. Lisa came up from Pacific. Jill from Grace Harbor. Jill Warner, yeah, sure was the only dial in.
09:35:58 So it was good. Did our review was still keeping the Laura C. Pui as executive director.
09:36:03 She's doing a great job. The little bit of a turf war right now between capped agencies that I'm kind of getting rugged into which is It's understand.
09:36:15 I got a call about asked. I think I asked you that. The, basically. Oh 3 A, cancel, only cats contract to do the congregate meal with no delivery?
09:36:29 Mid-. I said Orca. Oh, it was Orca. That was the previous week.
09:36:36 Actually, I'm just telling you stuff. I guess I didn't get into all the trauma, but, but anyway, I'm just telling stuff, I guess I didn't get into all the drama, but, but anyway,
so not has nothing to do with. Okay.
09:36:48 That was not in person. That was virtual. So not has nothing to do with all that. Okay, that was not in person. That was virtual.
09:36:52 So I'm conflating. That was not in person. That was not in person. That was virtual.
09:36:57 So I'm conflating to get the meeting. That was virtual. So I'm conflating to get the. But they all start with those and obviously.
09:37:00 Yeah, I'm a little high centered on OH 3 A because so months ago I got a call that they were canceling the contract for only cap.
09:37:02 Not basically overcap is the . The only triple A during COVID that had its number of home delivered meals go down So some kind of dismayed metrics.
09:37:16 The. They were doing it as a canceling the contract out of convenience. So wouldn't be a black mark on Olicap, but it also means a holy cat couldn't appeal it is what I learned
at the only cat meeting that happened on Wednesday and they're really trying to still hold onto it.
09:37:37 Don't really know how it all went down, but then. More things evolved and that court reached out to me and it doesn't that the coastal cap is going to finish out the RFP.
09:37:48 They have a that's the Grace Harbor Pacific County cap agency. And then Matt Court reached out to me because coastal cap is inquiring about the RFP for our community centers
as well.
09:38:00 Settle a little bit of a turf war. I think I'm gonna probably reach out to Dr.
09:38:05 Luka, the Washington Cap Agency director and just say is this kind of a normal thing for caffeine to kinda county lines and take, programs from other cap agencies.
09:38:21 It just seems really counterintuitive to mission. So. Dealing with that a little bit, but we haven't seen that ever before.
09:38:28 No, I mean, I know I get the sense of running the community centers is yeah yeah it's a chore but it is tied if you're doing congregate meals and everything Yeah, it's harder
to do that without access to those facilities.
09:38:45 People the cap is talking about renting them, but I don't know. And interesting. But anyways, it was orca that I was at this Wednesday.
09:38:56 And, virtually. And, but well, you know. Staffing up, you know, they're probably 17 member organization.
09:39:07 We'll probably go to 20 this year as there's a lot of, growth, especially in Mason County in Grace Harbor County.
09:39:14 There's a lot of development of, you know, industrial level holders that would have to register.
09:39:18 So. But the board would expand. No, no, no, the staff. The staff is expansion.
09:39:26 17 to 20.
09:39:29 Housing fund board. I've answered questions about the RFP. What else?
09:39:37 There was one other thing we were, what else did we address? Housing fun boards? There was one other issue.
09:39:41 Oh, the budget store. The budget shortfall, super confusing. Did not resolve it. Yeah.
09:39:52 But I think we'll, I mean, it was originally recommended that we might have to claw back some of the 23 award.
09:39:57 Doesn't look like that's the case, but I've got to sit down with Judy and really.
09:39:59 Dash it out. The more we got into it, the more confusing it got. So does that mean that does that mean that your funding level?
09:40:08 I'm having a similar related issue with Just in terms we're doing the LTAC grant.
09:40:16 Process tomorrow. And I was like, well, what's our updated number? And it's way down from last year.
09:40:23 Hmm, well, that's not way down, but it's down and, but revenues have been up.
09:40:28 Lodging texts. Hotel module taxes have been up over last year. You did an extra award from LTAC like the, yeah, I don't know.
09:40:40 It's like our reserves are all screwed up but the funds that are I mean are 1590 that comes from sales taxes is super robust and we have more than we thought you know i mean
more than we expect we have like 900,000 if we can allay but all the numbers ended up being different from our assumptions and what we put on the RFP so I mean I I don't feel certain
about any of the numbers but
09:41:01 not the 1590. It's the recording fees. That's the challenge. 200,000 to expand on homeless housing, you know, and we gave 200,000.
09:41:12 So, and I wonder too if the. The conversion to Munis has complicated our accounting, you know, how we accounted for.
09:41:24 What has been paid already? You know, what's committed? What's been paid out? Yeah.
09:41:31 So it seems like there's maybe some systems work that needs to be done for tracking these. It feels like, yeah, like we didn't talk, we didn't even recognize until Caroline
that we're talking after the, you know, $400,000 or 4 20 that have gone to the seventh even, no to Cosmo Brown from 1590 as well.
09:41:46 So there's some things that just were not. Not represented in the numbers. So ongoing work with that.
09:41:55 Yep. A couple of new board members, low income democratically elected, which is great. Strategic planning goes, continues to go pace.
09:42:06 At the Jeffcom special meeting on Thursday. We were there because we have to have a budget according to our.
09:42:16 Policies which I don't think we've ever done before but we are following our policies now with Matt Stewart in the leadership role.
09:42:24 We need to have a budget approved by. The first regular meeting of September, which is coming up.
09:42:31 So it was a chance for us to look at the budget. It's all very reasonable. I mean, lots of increases.
09:42:36 Concluded the CBA negotiations successfully, you know 20%. Raised for all the communication staff and all the dispatchers essentially.
09:42:49 You know, that was 5, Non-cola, I think. Some pretty significant bonuses.
09:42:54 So yeah, you start start day one over $27 an hour. Nice. Yeah, still a lot of vacancies and overtime.
09:43:02 So a lot of overtime and you know as I think it often the case some of the temporary measures that we put in place to accommodate that you know.
09:43:11 Kind of what the deal was with in understaffed. Situations with overtime and everything and having to be pulled off vacation for overtime.
09:43:20 Made it into the ongoing. Nothing's temporary with the contract. It seems like. But really, good work.
09:43:32 We'll have our regular meeting next week and finish up that budget.
09:43:36 Had a couple conversations with, electors and directors about our annual review of County Administrator.
09:43:44 Was late to be a guest for the Jefferson County Bar Association and here in the courthouse, but to get there and good conversation with those folks.
09:43:55 Was able to spend about an hour as a fly on the wall with environment of public health and DCD as they were working with the consultant, the Intergov consultant Sherry on kind
of navigating that and it seemed like a really frustrating but constructive conversation.
09:44:13 You know, I don't think they were even. To the inner gov part yet like behind the software but just working out a workflow and lots of different contingencies and it seems Yeah,
I was there for a piece of it and it's seemed like a really constructive
09:44:27 Challenging conversation to sort out. 2 does what win and try to get all that understood to. To get into the implementation software.
09:44:36 So felt like the horse in front of the cart, which is, I think, the way it's supposed to be.
09:44:43 And then the community outreach meeting and quill scene. Good meeting. Yeah, good conversation.
09:44:54 Particular issues. Rose to the surface. I mean, I had prepped, Monty and Eric came as well about concerns about speed and the quilting core, which is much like we heard in the
Brandon one, but of course we actually have a project that is putting those speed limit signs up and in quilting.
09:45:14 So the secureial schools, yeah. It is safe for us to school. Yeah, yeah. And that is a project.
09:45:22 Yeah, that has been going. It was fun. Josh Peters, yeah. And that is a project. Yeah, that has been going. It was fun.
09:45:26 Josh Peters in his last stint with McDonald's, yeah, that has been going. It was fun.
09:45:29 Josh Peters in his last stint with the county is the one who are quiet that great. Oh my gosh.
09:45:34 That's, I don't know. Funniest array. I still have a contact to do filmmaking for for 2,013.
09:45:36 An extended contract. I just found an email to Monte that I wrote in 2015 about the sewer. Yeah.
09:45:44 Project some legacy projects. Okay, Friday I went up to Blynn to do chair the behavioral health administrative service organization.
09:45:58 Welcomed our new BHASO, member and Christine office. It was nice to see, sit down and We had, I don't know, serendipitously for me who loved to push people's buttons.
09:46:11 And we had someone from the healthcare authority there talking about the The opioid settlements and everything and I, you know, he was talking about.
09:46:19 How flexible it was. And I was like, well, you know, you talked about, you know, all those strategies ended up being prescriptions.
09:46:28 And so we got into kind of an interesting. Three-way conversation with the administrative organization, you know, one of the original legislators and, you know, implementation
and, that was good.
09:46:40 I mean. I don't think she's gonna hear a lot of those. And she's also on the legislative steering committee.
09:46:49 Association of counties and right right. Yeah. It relishes a little bit of where the rubber hits the road.
09:46:55 Yeah. But it was, she was a little bit of. Now where the rubber hits the road, yeah. Yeah.
09:46:59 But it was, she was a good contributor to Kidsap County has still not decided what to do with their opioid funds.
09:47:04 Oh, and one of the. One of the settlements is delayed. So the pharmacy settlement, which we had dedicated to behavioral health in.
09:47:14 BHC, they still have not received, so. I'm going. County coordination.
09:47:21 Sort of lightly attended but good conversation kind of just breaking down the community conversations mostly a little bit about the strategic plan.
09:47:29 And, You know, I think the only real topic we talked about with the future community conversations is.
09:47:39 Do we have those small group breakouts? As usual, you know, the commissioners or law enforcement get 90% of the question.
09:47:49 So. People have enjoyed that before, but you know, like Treasurer Prader was quick to say, you know, I love small groups so they can ask questions, but just me with a group
of people, you know, they're not going to have 10Â min of treasure questions.
09:48:06 We can be responsive, I think, with the existing agenda to create smaller groups and more conversational.
09:48:11 If people attend them. If people attend them, yes. Yeah, so, coming up next, Gardner.
09:48:18 On the 20 fifth, Monday the 20 fifth, right next Monday. And then I went on KPTZ.
09:48:29 I was joined by Stephen Morton, the general manager of Atlas, UHV, the vacuum.
09:48:33 Industrial folks as well as Cindy Brooks to talk about recompete specifically Glen Cove.
09:48:41 Well, recompat kind of at a thousand foot level and also our task force and then talk to Stephen about.
09:48:48 A little bit about Atlas, what they've done, how they want to grow and how infrastructure would facilitate them growing.
09:48:55 Had another conversation with the city and Steve King about this as well. A couple with Monty as well.
09:49:01 So it's still, it's still looking pretty good. Amanda is now Christopherson is sitting with the other grant writers because they had asked for us to put a Jefferson County grant
writer on the team, which is consultants and staff in Clem County.
09:49:15 And I think the first word she got back is the Brandon Project probably does not. Rise to the level because it really doesn't hit that.
09:49:27 With the Grant Writer's Died with Consultants was it really doesn't hit that prime age, $26 and over jobs.
09:49:33 You know the argument that entrepreneurs could. Makes it a pretty small group. So, and even with the resorts.
09:49:42 Yeah, we are. I guess the wages just wouldn't meet that threshold coming home and it's that it wouldn't serve the infrastructure.
09:49:52 Resort, they're responsible for their own. Amanda also thought that, Department of Ecology would be a better.
09:50:00 Go to go looking for funds since they're already kind of invested in it. So I mean she's been doing a lot of work on the ground down there too.
09:50:08 So she thought there were other options that might work. Great. I'm glad she's working on that.
09:50:13 Yeah, no, it's great to have with me. The team. And then I went to the recompete task force meeting.
09:50:19 I was in transit to the, the surprise party for my dad that my mom spoiled by telling him that I was coming to celebrate his birthday.
09:50:28 But, interesting herd. I sometimes have really bad connection to the folks that were presenting, but a couple folks presented some of the other projects that were coming.
09:50:40 And they were interesting just Some of the ones one from the port of Portland was for a spud barge.
09:50:47 You guys know what a spot barge? I did not know what a spud barge is either.
09:50:48 Do you know what a spot barge is? Nope, No, the spot is like a little Gate that you're gonna test to a normal barge so that it creates kind of a mobile port so you can use that
barge to load and unload from anywhere.
09:51:05 You don't need a port facility. So the idea is it would unlock. Timber and wood chips and everything on the west end of Jefferson Flown County because it would allow kind of
port facilities to go to remote loads to load or unload.
09:51:21 And, it would also, except it would facilitate going to the. Taking barge loads of chip to the paper, but I think it's them just trying to throw Jefferson County on because
Barton is of course 30% of their stuff comes by barter ray and they have big brain on the riot.
09:51:39 The rail. But they're trying. They're trying with Jefferson County. And then the McCa tribe was partnering with CRTC, nonprofits.
09:51:49 For they've got a thermionic machine which is something I guess that allows them to kind of Quick cure.
09:52:00 Wood, they're making crossland panels. They want to make smaller panels so they can use for emergency housing, shelter, that kind of thing.
09:52:08 They're also trying to get a government grant. To make Pretty fads for the government, you know, kind of flat pack so you can just put a building up really quick.
09:52:18 And if they got that contract, they would need a second, thermionic machine. So it's for that.
09:52:25 So there were some questions. About well. You already have one, what happens if you don't get a contract?
09:52:32 I mean, you know, so some questions and then Jamestown. Try it has partnered with Herman Brothers.
09:52:40 And it's basically one of those. You know, Herman Brothers is kind of doing the work and Jamestown.
09:52:48 Doesn't necessarily have the expertise, but it's going to be 51% owner. So I think it's.
09:52:53 Where for for bio char and I my phone was dropping out a little on this one so I missed some of it but one of the things they're gonna do is to link they're so they're talking
about slash files in the biotech.
09:53:06 It's a big badge our kiln basically. And they were talking about using it for methane reduction by mixing it with caliphate.
09:53:17 Less perfect. Thing biotech. Put it in the feed. I miss some of this so I don't know I don't I think your phone was breaking out then my phone well they you know they I kind
of came in where they were like, so how would this?
09:53:33 Reduce methane emissions. Yeah. So they, Thanks. I'll find out more.
09:53:40 That's nice. Then I was in Tacoma and did not get back into T from Tacoma, tell kind of after the calls in fair.
09:53:50 So I missed my opportunities. So I missed my opportunities to sit with Mchale and the community wildfire.
09:53:54 So I missed my opportunity to sit with Mchale and the community wildfire protection as well as transit.
09:53:54 And I'm sure everyone had a great We'll see. It was I heard from Michaela.
09:54:01 That all reports are that it was. Back, back happening. All right. That's great.
09:54:09 It's like, you know, I'm hearing this on all friends all the events, you know, attendances.
09:54:12 Matching previous attendances and seems like and the resurgence of event attendance. Okay, well, that was my week.
09:54:29 Want to take a look at your last week or share any high points with us? Do you even do anything over there?
09:54:35 Not much. Well, we have a first day of our another Sewer employee today, Greg Ray, joined our team.
09:54:47 He was the vice president of operations for the So we're down to Port Ludlow for years, years and years and he's was there.
09:54:55 Hi, primary sewer treatment plant operator as well. And he's joined our team. Starting today.
09:55:03 So we now have Greg. Samantha and John Black. And of course, part time we have Bob Wheeler and, Dave Peterson as well, but, the 3 full time people be the you know, the primary
project.
09:55:19 You know, delivery team for the that's coming up. Or ongoing right now. So pretty excited about that.
09:55:29 We, really needed someone with a, he has a, group 3 operator, which is a high level of operations for wastewater and water.
09:55:40 So having that operations. Background is gonna be good for the project and to get it. Up and running as well.
09:55:50 Our contractor was off. Building that Swansonville project for the DOT. Last week. And They got it open.
09:56:02 To this schedule that was required. If you've driven down Beaver Valley road, you can see that.
09:56:09 And they'll be back at work on the sewer starting next week again. So.
09:56:15 And as I mentioned last week, we're. Samantha and her team are.
09:56:22 Putting a hammer down trying to get the documents ready for a bidding here and into late October for the waste water treatment plant construction.
09:56:34 Followed by the collection system.
09:56:38 You know, nothing is, Big and momentous, maybe some of the things you're.
09:56:44 Talking about. Commissioners, but every day it's It's something it's a struggle and we have little successes along the way.
09:56:54 So we. Have 2 fish barrier projects on Nailers Creek that had fish barrier removal board money on them that we were successful in getting that a year well not a year ago.
09:57:09 This summer. But then another program became available and I won't go into the details but the good thing about that was that.
09:57:17 No, match required. So Eric and his team. Got those.
09:57:25 Approved under the deadline and it was a big challenge. No one has any idea what it's like working with federal funds until you've actually done it.
09:57:35 Federal funds administered by the. but we. Got our right away doc certified.
09:57:45 Colette does a great job and. Or environmental documents and everything. So we were able to.
09:57:50 Get those funds get approved for those funds. So those projects should happen next summer. And, again, no match required the, unlike the fish barrier.
09:58:01 It's a couple 1 million dollars. So, 15% of that is. Would have been $300,000.
09:58:07 So this is good. And also the bids for the runoff road project it's called which is mostly just replacing many of our road signs with.
09:58:23 Improve. New signage on steel posts on concrete bases rather than the 4 by fours that people steal for fence projects that are getting knocked over all the time.
09:58:34 We did a project like this 10 years ago with federal funds and now we're doing the rest of the county.
09:58:40 But the bids came in higher than, expected so we were able to again Eric and his team secure the extra couple $100,000 for that project so we can get that.
09:58:57 Project going now. Which is good. So.
09:59:05 Yeah, that's, those were some. Successes this week, I guess. And.
09:59:13 And much many things continuing to go on here. I'll be Leaving on Friday for a few weeks, first time I've been off.
09:59:24 Like that for a long time. So, of course, Eric will be. The public works director and county engineer while I'm gone.
09:59:32 Like he always is. So take it easy on it. Good. Other stuff that way more in his plate than without having to fill in for me already.
09:59:45 But, But anyway. Yeah, so looking pretty good. That way, still a lot of vacancies, solid waste and on the road crew that we've.
09:59:58 We've got to address. And it's challenge. Yeah. Thanks.
10:00:09 Could we, use that to segue into the, the federal government shutdown. Yeah.
10:00:14 Cause, I was, you know, I think department might be. As likely to be affected as any other.
10:00:21 But you didn't raise any concern. So you're not concerned about delayed reimbursements or You know, all the threats of government shut down in the past have.
10:00:34 No materialized but they haven't really ever been
10:00:40 Impactful, impactful, I think over the long term they could be, but I mean I think you have to hit it just right like we're not.
10:00:49 Billing any federal agencies for projects right now. You know, our sewer project right now is.
10:00:57 Using the funds through State Department of Commerce. Course we have a lot of federal money that ultimately will be on the project, but we're not using it right now.
10:01:10 You know, we received our secure rural schools payment for the year. Do you have like I mentioned those fishberry projects, but those aren't till next summer.
10:01:21 So I'm not.
10:01:23 Aware of any immediate impacts. Of course that goes on for a long time, I think it would. Impact us more.
10:01:31 But, But, Maybe not a short duration shut down. Calling whether that okay and public works.
10:01:44 Great. Are you predicting it? You think it's gonna happen? I mean, we're hearing from our congressional delegation that they think it's likely.
10:01:53 Yeah. And I don't know if that's basically the like Kevin McCarthy doing anything we can to hold onto a seat.
10:02:00 That one person's upset with him. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I mean, I think it's a fundamental difference in values and perspective and Republicans have the majority and they
want to see that a huge spending cut.
10:02:12 And the you know, the agree, kind of general agreement had been a 15% across the board cut.
10:02:21 But it sounds like that is, you know, now the far right wing is pushing for something more drastic.
10:02:28 I don't know if the Democrats had kind of come to agreement on whether to accept the 15%.
10:02:35 They don't really have to, but you know, that had been a deal brokered. So, you know, how much of it is positioning and bluff, it's hard to tell, but.
10:02:46 You know, like I said, a couple of folks from our congressional delegation reached out and said, you know, just be prepared.
10:02:54 We're anticipating this. So if they're cash flow issues, you know, to be preparing for.
10:02:58 And that would be the time. And, but it sounds so I did a call out to the department directors and sounds like there's not a lot of concern.
10:03:07 We got our pilt money as well. The treasurer reported so You know, we don't don't have anything kind of big and looming that we're anticipating for cash flow.
10:03:14 Good. So I think we're in good shape. For now. Yeah, this I could see this could become a more protracted shutdown if indeed it happens just because the everything seems like
brinksmanship right now.
10:03:27 And so, you know, something we should just continue to check in on and, Try to anticipate if things are going to be an issue before they're kind of a crisis level or outside
the summer recreation season.
10:03:43 I remember the last government shut down. National parks close their gates, right? And the state and local parks were.
10:03:51 Impacted by that. But that was 1994. Yeah, would be a bummer.
10:04:01 I mean, they're scram and they, you know. Get hurricane ridge ready for the winter and They have a delay there, that'll be a shame for the people that, yeah, recreate up there
in the winter.
10:04:12 And, everything. Yeah, and I mean, 15% cut in the long run. That sounds.
10:04:20 Problematic. I mean we're already struggling with. You know, agencies at the federal level not having.
10:04:28 The adequate staffing to, you know, work with us on our existing federal grants and things like that.
10:04:40 Yeah. Just keep track. Let tribes are pretty affected by government, the government shut down too. Be aware of it.
10:04:53 They could have some stressors. Those of you who are on more human services committees, which I am not, those tend to be.
10:05:02 Pretty hard to, so it might just be something worth checking in and making sure that you are checking with their professional associations.
10:05:09 Presumably they are, but. Cause it seems like word on the street is that we all need to be.
10:05:15 Thinking about this. Okay. Okay. All right.
10:05:22 Well, shall we take a look at the coming week? Look for conflicts and, general calendaring.
10:05:28 You wanna take a look first honey? Sure.
10:05:34 Let's see, so. This morning I met with, Tom Mullen of the leader to talk to him about the derelict vessel that sank near the Irondale Beach and he's trying to put a story together
about that one and.
10:05:50 Let me needed to talk to the state program and potentially our detective at the sheriff's office has been the lead on that.
10:05:57 So. That was this morning, but then here with you all day, we have a couple of. Oh, we have an executive session this afternoon.
10:06:07 It's not on our calendar yet, but I'm sure it'll get there. Have a meeting with.
10:06:12 Our DCD director, this late afternoon at my house. After meeting here. Meeting in the morning with the planning commission member just concerns about.
10:06:24 You know, DCD is still getting Lots of emails from citizens about. Hangups and permanent applications and all the transitions in the team there, you know, they're just losing
their initial point of contact on their permit applications so they're getting cycled through a few people on one permit.
10:06:43 So just trying to. Find peace there as. On a case by case basis. Yeah, feeling optimistic, I have to say.
10:06:54 I think staffing is gonna, gonna rebound here, some folks there might be. Returning that I think would be really good.
10:07:02 Advocates for folks inside DCB. So I'm feeling better than I have in the last couple of months.
10:07:10 Well, and I, you know, check in with Josh about this and. You know, he's feeling like, yeah, they're, they put a plan in place and they're working the plan and the plans coming
together.
10:07:18 So, you know, I just keep telling people to be patient. But. Sometimes patients wears out sooner than.
10:07:27 So let's see. Tomorrow Monday we have LTAC presentations and, you know, I'm a little bit challenged with the You know, the funding level and the questions about.
10:07:41 You know, estimating the funding level, but I did get an increased estimate from Judy on Friday and.
10:07:48 We still have way more LTAC applications than we have LTAC funding to grant out. Significantly more applications.
10:07:59 1.1 4 million in applications and 730 and. Funding available, which is less than we granted last year.
10:08:09 What is about how much we get in that one tenth of 1% from Salesforce. So I must have had that you dipped in the reserve.
10:08:17 Extra reserves last year. And that may have actually set us up for why we have less this year because we spent more last year.
10:08:25 So, but just, you know, challenging decisions tomorrow and then, meeting after that with.
10:08:32 Chief Manly for Coffee to talk about forest land issues and. By our district funding. Have a couple of holds.
10:08:45 I have a bunch of holds for meetings and I just hope people confirm there. Hmm. There are meeting requests with me soon.
10:08:51 And then Wednesday I'm driving over to Ellenburg for The timber counties caucus meeting.
10:08:55 Exactly. Wednesday afternoon. Staying the night over there, let meeting goes late and then coming back Thursday morning.
10:09:07 For the Board of Health. Meeting, which is this week. I said, I think I said next week, but I.
10:09:11 I was looking at last week when I said next week. So this week we'll have the Board of Health meeting on Thursday and then.
10:09:17 And ICG meeting after that, Thursday evening. Friday we have our most of the day community wildfire protection planning meeting at Point Hudson.
10:09:28 This is to get all the stakeholders together. They could mean a great stakeholder group of about 30 folks and I think Michaela told me she thought about 20 were attending in
person and a bunch more online so it sounds like we're gonna have most of the folks turning out for that on Friday.
10:09:45 A couple of evening holds for meetings on Friday. I'm not, I don't know who's doing KPTZ this week.
10:09:54 Is the UK? I have I have a placeholder on my calendar, but I'm my name's not there so I don't think it was me.
10:10:04 I have I have a placeholder on my calendar, but I'm my name's
10:10:05 Okay.
10:10:10 20Â s. Yeah. I want to see on my calendar, which is weird because I like I have I feel that my calendar well, oh, we're gonna put it on Mark.
10:10:22 I think we all had conflicts. So it's Mark with Judy to talk about budget this week.
10:10:27 And he's back on Thursday? Plenty of time. First day back is Friday to work. First day back in the Friday.
10:10:38 I'll shoot him an email. I mean is there anyone else that is free to do it on the 20Â s both Hi, Heidi and I are in the wildfire protection thing, right?
10:10:46 Yes, one of them could sneak off for a little bit. I mean, we could do it from there.
10:10:51 We could do a wildfire. We've been doing a lot of wildfire planning, KBTZ sessions though.
10:10:56 Yeah. I, my schedule is really uncertain. I'm afraid to take on something that is that, you know, time sensitive.
10:11:08 I'll shoot Mark a note, make sure we can. If we can't, I'll just do a or I could.
10:11:15 I can be back up officially on the 20 fifth, but you might be. Oh, so you might not even be here.
10:11:28 Well, I will I will shoot him a note and bother him to find that about that. It's good to know.
10:11:33 Do you know, Monty? What's your? Expectation of date. Okay.
10:11:42 Yeah, I get back the 20 first . I'm in the 20Â s because he knows that I'm saying you leave.
10:11:53 But, I can look at the 20 the letter when you don't get it recorded. I'd say.
10:12:03 I could be back up with Judy. Okay, well I will reach out to Judy and make sure she knows that.
10:12:12 So I'll include you in the email.
10:12:14 Alright, that finishes your week, Heidi. Yep. Yep, no, no weekend work duties this weekend.
10:12:24 Alright, Kate. I want to put this radio on my calendar before I forget. Okay.
10:12:36 Go on there. It's housing related. Yes. So I I wasn't going to because it's housing related.
10:12:52 So maybe just me. Cancel. Yeah. Alright.
10:12:59 Associate back in the office Friday September 20Â s. Let me put me in. Okay. Okay.
10:13:15 I, so today. I need I'm gonna need to jump off at 20'clock for a quick NOLA, or Olympic legislative alliance steering committee meeting.
10:13:32 They scheduled it on a Monday afternoon. Which, you know, obviously does not work for us, but.
10:13:38 I was asked to at least join for the first few minutes and welcome our legislative delegation is joining Nola for that meeting.
10:13:46 So I'm gonna jump off at 2. I will probably be virtual this afternoon anyway, so you know, join at 1 30 for DNR, jump off at 2, and then be back by 2 30 for the executive session.
10:14:01 Thank you. Appreciate that. I'd say, well, a number of things are going to be.
10:14:11 As, as available this week, so this is all a little bit squishy, but there are a couple things I do want to the economic development council finance committee meeting tomorrow
morning and then, talking with, Northwest Straits about the climate resiliency session, which I'll be doing at the their conference which Haiti has talked about.
10:14:36 Wednesday have a hood canal coordinating council board of directors meeting. I have not yet looked at the agenda to know what we're going to be talking about.
10:14:44 So we're put back in that next week. Thursday I need to be in Ellensburg for the legislative steering committee meeting.
10:14:51 Which brings up a couple of conflicts. I've already told Board of Health. I cannot attend.
10:14:56 There is an NODC meeting, but same time as Board of Health. So. I had that pencil then that cover for you but probably should especially if you're not gonna be afforded home
I think.
10:15:11 Yeah, yeah, important. I'm a little unclear how that conflict exists. I'm still finding a lot of errors in my calendar.
10:15:14 Are you guys getting that still? I'm finding a lot of errors in my calendar. Are you guys getting that still?
10:15:22 I think it's my fault usually. So I think it's my fault usually. So I'm not sure if there's systemic problem that like I just type Well, and you know, and this all came too
with the new.
10:15:27 Outlook app. Yeah. Which it's in It I find it really challenging. It doesn't show the time zone.
10:15:35 That each event is scheduled for. So I have. Many events that I'm questioning what time zone is that supposed to be.
10:15:47 Yeah, that's a new one for me too. But so that also means, me.
10:15:54 Only being able to call in to the ICG meeting because I will be coming back. The, we did have a unfortunate.
10:16:07 I don't know, Miss Communication, Department of Commerce apparently had been talking to DCD about or they let DCD know that they were not available to come to the ICG meeting
vote that didn't get to us until Thursday or Friday.
10:16:22 So thank you, Carolyn, for continuing to ping me about that. But, they're not available.
10:16:27 They're gonna come to the November meeting. Never remember remember who's host host of the ICG.
10:16:38 It's not that. I think it's the city. It was the city. But I will send out an update.
10:16:49 We've had an issue with the, ICG. Calendar invite except what I had on the book.
10:16:53 But it had a different time. Yeah, I have 50'clock and 60'clock on my calendar And it was one of those things like, well, do we cancel and redo it?
10:17:04 I thought it would look like it was working so I didn't cancel it. It's the city.
10:17:10 At least if the agenda is correct, it's the city.
10:17:17 Friday. There's an Olympic consortium board meeting. In the morning, which, workforce development.
10:17:27 And maybe doing the radio show with Judy Shepherd and then I've been.
10:17:33 Disappointed I've not been able to attend the The governor started a roundtable last year on trying to seek consensus with tribes and stakeholders on the right area, new riparian
management plan.
10:17:49 And I've not been able to participate in this round, but maybe Friday afternoon I'll be able to, depending.
10:17:55 Okay, what my life looks like. At that point. So that is.
10:18:01 My week ahead. If they want to look any further ahead. If you want to look for conflicts.
10:18:10 Yeah, I just don't know yet what my What my life is gonna look like. See, move into the next phase.
10:18:19 Actually found a complex on my calendar for this week. Oh. the Chemical and Power Teams coalition is medium person for the first time.
10:18:26 When? Wednesday at 2 30. It's right in the middle of the Timber County's caucus meeting and I'll be in in Ellensburg.
10:18:36 If you want someone. Since you're taking that Timber County's office like the least I could do is take that.
10:18:44 That'd be awesome. Yep, empower teams at the Chemical School.
10:18:54 All right. I guess my calendar, that's what I'm doing Wednesday now. I had Timber County's caucus and was not going to drive over there, but I'm glad that you're willing to
continue to represent on that ID.
10:19:07 Today after the evening I have the Northwood Canal kind of annual chamber picnic. Down in the camp Parsons Boy Scout camp and So, you.
10:19:22 Tomorrow is another recompete day meeting with Cindy and Amanda and kind of working on that paperwork.
10:19:28 On the twentieth, yeah. Let's see what's that.
10:19:37 Who's Karen? Kara, Billinger, Hessen is that the new empowered teams coalition. Gotcha.
10:19:44 Coordinator for Chimicum. Well, I will attend that and Heidi. And my hair cut on Thursday, then boy to health and agenda planning for housing fund board.
10:19:54 The ICG. Talking to John Morrow last week, I think we'll talk a little bit about the.
10:19:59 Recompete project as well.
10:20:03 Maybe add that to the agenda. And then all day Friday is the many wildfire protection. Plan, and there's little conflict at 20'clock where the weekly recompete meeting is.
10:20:17 We'll see where we are in the meeting where I might sneak out. Virtually attend that.
10:20:24 And then, Saturday is. First day of college for me. So going back to school. Oh, geez.
10:20:32 Exciting. Looking forward to it. And that is my week.
10:20:39 Monty, any high points in your week that you wanted to? Getting ready for vacation is vacation, I hope, yeah.
10:20:47 Where are you going, Monty? Somewhere fun I hope. Oh, that's right. Yeah, you talk that.
10:20:55 Yeah, that's what you said. That's right. And the green one. Yeah, that's awesome.
10:21:05 Nice. I have a great trip and don't check your email. Yeah, no problem. Good.
10:21:17 Alright. Well, that takes us to the end of calendaring and briefing. We've talked about the government shutdown.
10:21:24 Anything else that folks want to talk about this morning? We could also break early and go take care of other work in preparation for our 1 30 and 2 30 meetings this afternoon.
10:21:35 That would be great for me. I'm gonna. Okay. Get the road.
10:21:40 Yeah, but nice to see you all in person. Yeah, pleasant surprise. Okay, well I will.
10:21:48 After one more pregnant pause, I will recess us until 1 30 this afternoon. We'll see you back here then.
13:30:42 I'm ready to go. Great. Good afternoon, everyone. I will call this meeting a 900, and 18 meeting of the Board of County Commissioners back into session.
13:30:53 Lots of guests in the audience, all excited about the presentation from DNR and the subsequent conversation, I guess.
13:31:01 Let me just get to the right screen here. And I guess without further ado, I'd love to invite Dwayne up to the, that you can sit here and do the presentation if you want to
do it at the podium you can, but you can make eye contact with everyone here.
13:31:15 Kate, are you, ready to go?
13:31:19 Thank you.
13:31:20 Alright, great. Let me get the slide deck for you up here. And then just. I'll try to guess and we'll see how well we can play off each other.
13:31:33 But I'll just say beep. Yeah, okay. Right. That's perfect.
13:31:37 Okay, alright, well, thank you, Chair Brotherton and members of the council. I'm Dwayne Emmons for the record.
13:31:44 I'm the assistant deputy supervisor for state uplands with the Department of Natural Resources. And today we wanted to.
13:31:51 I have a presentation. It has some just high level overview of what the department is, what trust lands are for people who may not be familiar.
13:32:00 I know you've had a number of discussions about it. You've had for decades discussions with the Olympic region about individual timber sales.
13:32:09 Natural areas, etc, but for, you know, just the general public, we've got a little bit of the high level overview and then some specifics about.
13:32:19 Existing tools, new tools that the legislatures provided for management of trust lands and and that cooperation with counties and junior taxing district beneficiaries as we
we have these discussions about about trust lands.
13:32:33 So, do you think it would be helpful just to do a little bit of table setting to say.
13:32:41 This session is really in response to the letter, the correspondence that's been going back and forth between us.
13:32:50 And DNR as I said in the agenda request and. The last letter we sent back to DNR was in June.
13:32:58 And so, we, the end of our letter was, what's next? And this is basically an answer to that question of what's next.
13:33:06 Exactly. And yeah, thank you, Commissioner Eisenhower. And we've heard from Jefferson County we've heard from junior taxing districts.
13:33:15 We've heard from other counties, you know, about these issues of trust land management. And so, Commissioner Frans asked the department to Start engaging more directly with
counties and with county commissioners with county councils.
13:33:34 We hear from certain counties more than others. Usually it's those timber dependent counties that really are, you know, dependent on that timber revenue that we provide.
13:33:48 Other counties. You know have other needs and so it's typically when we're doing our sustainable harvest calculation, it's typically when we're doing our sustainable harvest
calculation, which is once a decade that we're doing our sustainable harvest calculation, which is once a decade, that we get that, you know, most engagement, which is once a decade,
that we get that, which is once a decade, that we get
13:34:04 that, you know, most engagement. But once a decade that we get that most engagement. But once a decade is a fairly long time.
13:34:06 You may have 3 or 4 council members turn over in that amount of time. And so we recognize that we need to do that engagement more often and more, you know, more meaningfully.
13:34:17 So that's part of, you know, why we're here. Along with the, responses and the dialogue we've been having about.
13:34:25 Trustland management in Jefferson County. So. Across the state in general. The department manages roughly 5.6 million acres of land.
13:34:35 That's forest land range, agricultural aquatic lands and even commercial real estate. About 2.9 million acres of that is trust lands the remaining is aquatic lands that are
the bedlines and shorelines of the state.
13:34:52 For those trust lands, DNR is. A trust manager. The state, the legislature is the trustee.
13:35:01 And then Jefferson County and junior taxing districts are beneficiaries of. What we call county trust lands and I'll talk about that.
13:35:11 In one or 2 more slides. So here you can just see a map of. The lands across the state.
13:35:17 We have a mixture of federally granted lands, lands that came to the state at statehood.
13:35:22 And what we calling in those county lands, state forest transfer and state forest purchase. State forest transfer lands.
13:35:33 And if you go to the next slide, I think it has. A little breakout. Those state lands came at statehood.
13:35:42 That's the majority of the lands we're managing and the common school trust is the largest beneficiary.
13:35:48 Those state forest lands, those are lands that. Primarily were twenties and thirties. As timber companies as railroads were logging.
13:35:58 Reforestation was in a thing. And so you'd harvest and then. Often. Those lands would be.
13:36:07 Walked away from, they would be defaulted on taxes. Counties couldn't manage 600, acres of land.
13:36:15 So those were turned over to the state to manage as trusts just like those federally granted lands had been since the 1,008 hundreds.
13:36:24 So that kind of precipitate the development of DNR as we know it now. It, it actually, created a new agency, which was the, the forest board, and there was a forest board created
and they were called forest board lands.
13:36:41 And the department. Of natural resources actually came into being it combined a bunch of agencies together in the fiftys so you had an agency that was managing the federal lands,
you had agency that was in charge of wildfire, you had an agency that was in charge of those forest board lands and in the fiftys they said let's combine it all it's all the same thing.
13:37:03 That's where the Department of Natural Resources came to be, the aquatic lands may have even been managed under a separate agency.
13:37:11 Thank you. So we often talk about the trust responsibilities. There is a number of Supreme Court cases that talk about the trust responsibility.
13:37:27 There's a very recent Supreme Court case, conservation northwest V France, which Although that was decided unanimously and the department's favour, there's still.
13:37:37 Disputes and debate about what. Those lands are and what the Supreme Court actually said.
13:37:45 What the Supreme Court said was Clearly these are trusts. They spent about 6 pages defining. What those trust responsibilities are.
13:37:56 There those responsibilities that are on the screen. And They recognized what the department argued and has always argued, we have discretion in how we manage these lands.
13:38:08 However, They also recognize as a trustee and a trust manager, we will be held to an abuse of discretion.
13:38:19 Basically, if you give away the farm. The beneficiaries can sue you and you will lose.
13:38:25 That is happened a number of times. In. Management of trust lands. Scamania v state was the first.
13:38:33 Where the legislature wanted to give. Break to timber industry to timber companies that had purchased. Timber sales and the market had severely down turned in the eighties.
13:38:45 The legislatures wanted to release them all from those contracts. They had to pay a nominal fee and they'd be released.
13:38:53 Scamani and other beneficiaries sued and said That's a real harm. The state Supreme Court agreed and said, Other objectives no matter how laudable cannot.
13:39:06 Come before that trust responsibility. And so. When we talk about that and you hear us talk about it.
13:39:14 Agnesium. That's the framework that we're managing under. You put a one by the first bullet point.
13:39:22 Yeah. Yeah. Any other priorities that your administrative? You know, perception?
13:39:30 Yeah, we and I think maybe the next slide or 2 will have some of those others. So we, we follow the policy for sustainable forests.
13:39:41 That's a policy that was set by our Board of Natural Resources and it incorporates. All of those trust responsibilities along with the Multiple Use Act.
13:39:52 Our habitat conservation plan, state statutes. So as an administrative agency of the state, we have to follow state statutes.
13:40:02 We can't do things that are outside of that authority. We have to have explicit authority. But generally these are the things that we have to follow.
13:40:10 We have to follow laws of general application. So Endangered Species Act. We have to follow it.
13:40:17 We can't get around it just because We're a state agency. The Multiple Use Act says the department shall endeavor to.
13:40:29 Allow multiple uses on the land. Recreation, aesthetics, you know, all of these other things.
13:40:35 But the legislature also recognizes their duty as the trustee. And so it goes on to say. We have to try to incorporate these things as long as the trusts aren't harmed.
13:40:47 If the trusts are being harmed, then the trust have to be compensated for those uses. So.
13:40:55 Our recreation program. They have to acquire a lease if they're going to put in a parking lot or a campground.
13:41:02 If the Olympic Discovery Trail. Has to have an easement across it. And.
13:41:11 You know, so we have to make sure again that trust responsibility comes first, but we have to because it's that statute try and meet those multiple objectives.
13:41:22 We also have to under law meet set a sustainable harvest level and achieve it. Or we enter into a rear edge and then we have to calculate and tell the board how much we're behind
and then in the next sustainable harvest we have to the board has to decide how do we treat that a rear edge number of other statutes that are all the same.
13:41:48 One I will note, and that Supreme Court case, the conservation northwest of France. Touched on it, it noted that We don't have to manage timber.
13:42:01 On these lands. We have to make them productive. But the law doesn't say we have to manage for timber on those federally granted lands.
13:42:12 The law does say we have to manage for timber. On those county trust lines on those state forest transfer lands.
13:42:19 It says on those lands that are primarily good for growing timber, that's what we have to do.
13:42:25 We can't sell them. We now this last session we are able to change statute so that we can directly transfer them to.
13:42:33 Counties to. Other governmental agencies and to tribes but we can't sell them we can't sell them on the private market they have to be managed for timber production.
13:42:46 All of our lands are certified under the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. All of our lands in our South Puget planning area are also certified under the forest stewardship.
13:42:57 Certification. Any paper coffee cup, turn it over, any box of tissues you will find an FSC or an SFI logo.
13:43:07 They are demonstrating that. The where that product came from was from sustainably managed lands. Our management on those lands is no different.
13:43:20 Whether it's SFI or FFC certified, we just didn't choose to certify the entire state under both standards.
13:43:27 But you go into Jefferson County and Our lands are managed just like they are in our South Puget area.
13:43:35 So this is just a map of where those DNR managed lands are in Jefferson County. You can see East Jefferson.
13:43:43 Very scattered. Very likely as we acquired those lands either at statehood or. Those tax default lands a lot didn't default in East Jefferson and likely a lot of those lands
had already been acquired prior to statehood by someone else and so typically it was every sixteenth and every 30 sixth section of every township were made those common school lands,
where those had already been claimed.
13:44:18 The federal government blocked up large chunks. And so that's why you can see out in the Olympic experiment say 4 is that big block of common school.
13:44:28 So roughly 14,701 acres of state forest transfer. And then you can see natural areas, natural resource conservation areas, those are other areas of conservation.
13:44:43 But for those county lands that we're talking about. We're talking about about 14,700 acres in Jefferson County.
13:44:56 Here you can see the total acreage of those lands. From all trusts in the county.
13:45:01 What we are really talking about and as we have these conversations. We were talking about those county trust lands there are others that want to have conversations about all
trust lands being managed but We have that, and duty of undivided loyalty.
13:45:19 To those other beneficiaries so we can have those conversations about county trust lands but We're not really going to be influencing what's happening on the normal school or
the capital grant.
13:45:33 And this one I know that you're familiar with, but this is how revenue is generated and how it gets to the county and those junior taxing districts.
13:45:41 On the federal trust, it doesn't matter where it's, where that revenue is generated for common school, if it's an orchard in.
13:45:49 Wenatchee if it's commercial real estate and Isoquo or it's timbered here in Jefferson County, it all goes into the common school fund.
13:45:58 The county trust lands are different in statute. It says. The revenue shall be distributed in the same manner as property tax.
13:46:07 And so it is very place base. It is. Revenue that's generated in that junior taxing district in that footprint.
13:46:15 The revenue goes to that school district, that fire district, that hospital district, etc. We have to as we're laying out that sale and as we're doing that we send that information
to the county treasurer and say.
13:46:31 This revenue is going to be coming out of. Tax area 6 52 whatever it is.
13:46:38 And it's often the school district is often the larger. Share of that of that revenue just because of the way the the tax levy is in most jurisdiction is not only.
13:46:52 So now I'll just talk about across all the lands in Jefferson County, the different buckets.
13:47:00 And we broken these up these first 2 columns into
13:47:04 Themes or areas that we've had. Concerns about. So. We first started hearing about more conservation for pre 1,900 forests.
13:47:17 And then that shifted to pre 1945 so-called legacy forests. The department under that habitat conservation plan and under the policy for sustainable forests we have.
13:47:31 An old growth policy that was set in early 2,000. So any old growth that is identified is conserved.
13:47:40 And that is any stand that regenerated prior to 1850. And so that's pre-European settlement.
13:47:48 And regardless of an individual tree, if it's pre, 1,850, it's, you know, it's our duty to try and identify it and you can serve it.
13:47:58 Old growth stands that are greater than 5 acres. Would have some functional benefit and those are all. Establish that definition of old growth was established by Dr.
13:48:12 Jerry Franklin, Dr. Norm Johnson, Dr. Van Pelt and others. The experts in old growth ecology in Washington at the time.
13:48:23 And so they helped the department. Identify and kind of create that. That's actually a, an.
13:48:33 A younger definition. Than is used in the Northwest Warras plant. So we're a little more conservative than even the federal, the Northwest Horace Plan as far as the age of old
growth.
13:48:48 So again, we put these buckets in here again because we've been hearing about conserve all of that pre 1,900 conserve all of that pre 1,900 conserve all the rest of the pre
1,900 conserve all the rest of the pre 1,945.
13:48:58 You can see how much has been conserved. So I'll walk through this. The natural areas, natural resource conservation areas.
13:49:05 Then we added in administrative sites just those. Lands that aren't actually commercially forested but you can see 1,600 acres of that old stuff.
13:49:15 33 acres of pre 1945 etc. younger forest here is just younger than 1,945 so in those natural areas, 7,000 acres.
13:49:27 Long term deferral. These are the things that come from our HCP. Muralat habitat spotted all habitat.
13:49:34 Etc. Over 54,000 acres across. Jefferson County. You can see 34,000 acres.
13:49:44 Of that pre 1,900 that's that really old it's muralat habitat it's all habitat it's Don't know how much would be defined as old girls, but that's old stuff.
13:49:56 Sorry. Next is riparian areas. And so, no, you. Go back.
13:50:02 Sorry. So reparing areas under our habitat conservation plan, our riparian protections are greater than any other landowner in the in the state.
13:50:12 You can see 50,000 acres is protected in riparian areas. This next category is a little.
13:50:20 Different. So moves are spotted all management areas. ROS is rain on snow. And then unstable slips.
13:50:30 Unstable slopes are going to be protected. Those other 2 categories, they take analysis and there are thresholds that have to be met before we can operate in them.
13:50:41 Spotted all management area and this is across ownership it's blind to ownership. 50% of that area has to be above threshold has to have enough mural, or sorry, spotted all
habitat before we're able to operate in it.
13:50:57 If we're able to operate in it, we have the full range. We can do variable retention harvest.
13:51:02 We can do thinnings, but it takes that analysis. Rain on snow is the same. That's in higher elevation where you have that rain and you know if it rains on snow and you cause
you know flooding, etc.
13:51:18 A certain percentage of that basin has to be above hydrologic maturity before we can do anything other than.
13:51:26 And so, and then all short term deferral is.
13:51:31 Around 10 years, it's for whatever reason, operationally, we don't have an easement.
13:51:36 Where there's a long term lease, something like that. But roughly 85%. Is either conserved or We have to do that additional look before we can operate at all.
13:51:53 When you see the post 2,000 final harvest, things that have already been harvested in the last 20 years.
13:52:00 And remaining gemlands, general ecological management. The full range of management opportunities are there. We Yeah, other than assessing everyone for unique features, etc.
13:52:14 These we don't think have unstable slopes or anything like that. So. As you look across that.
13:52:21 In those areas we're talking about. That pre 1,900 there's about even including the rain on snow about a 200 or so acres of pre 1,900 that's what we call on base for harvest.
13:52:35 Then this legacy forest. Another 600 acres. So we're not talking about large areas of near old growth that we're getting ready to harvest.
13:52:49 One thing it just shows on those county, those state forest transfer lands. The numbers are a little bit different you have more that is able to be operated on in that.
13:53:03 Remaining gem lands. But still in that long term deferral, not right period. 32% already conserved.
13:53:14 So now we can go to the maps and we'll go through these quickly. These just show all of the trust lands regardless of trust in the county and then if you just go to the next
this just shows where those 3 1,900 are in red and those pre 1945 are in yellow.
13:53:32 And if you now are natural areas and natural resource conservationaries and purple. And next is our. Long term deferral.
13:53:45 You see up along the coast along the straight, sorry. All of that old mural habitat. I will habitat is conserved under the HCP.
13:53:51 And then you go through and all of our repairing areas and then our. Next would be our Post final harvest, so.
13:54:02 You know, young stuff.
13:54:05 Snow moves and rain on snow. So now the last is one more. The light, the light green.
13:54:12 That's where we're looking to operate across all those lands in East Jefferson. It's not a lot, right?
13:54:23 It's that less than, you know, 30% that we're talking about. So next is West Jefferson, a little different look, but same thing and we can flip through fairly quickly, Commissioner.
13:54:31 All the owl and muralat habitat, there's a lot. Right, Perian and or sorry, the and our Ca is NAP.
13:54:38 . There Right pairing areas. Close final harvest.
13:54:49 Assess almost everything. It is a hard look before we do anything there on the coast. And then finally.
13:54:59 The last one is the
13:55:03 And you don't even see where that is, right? The easy to go find. Yeah, flip backwards and forwards and you might see the change.
13:55:12 I don't see it very easily. I know Bill Wells knows where it is, but he's probably the only one.
13:55:20 Because I'm sure. Yeah. So next is, then just a look at carbon because carbon is something we hear a lot about.
13:55:28 So I'll walk through this in a little more detail. The top shows timber output by different landowners.
13:55:36 So the black is industrial landowners. Goal is a small forest landowners. And this comes from.
13:55:46 An external entity eco trust. So I don't know why the spikes in in some of the data reporting it may just be years that they're reporting.
13:55:59 It may just be years that they, as they were collecting the data from other sources. It was a reporting year where They hadn't reported in 2 years and then they suddenly got
some, but you can generally see that trend.
13:56:07 State owned lands are in in green you can see, 1,990 prior to our HCP.
13:56:16 We were generating a lot of volume. And then post HCP, which was 97.
13:56:24 And you can see some years before that, you know, we significantly. Declined as the spotted owl was being listed, etc.
13:56:33 And then slowly post HCP and post-murelet decision, those lands that are on base.
13:56:40 You can see we're able to harvest a bit more. A lot of land as we were developing that ME.
13:56:48 Elect conservation strategy in the in which was finalized in, 2,019. A lot of land was off base.
13:56:55 While we were making decisions. Now that we've made those decisions, we've conserved where it needs to be conserved.
13:57:03 That other stuff's on basic and that bottom graph is. Stored carbon. So this is not how much is being sequestered.
13:57:13 This is how much is locked in right now. Federal lands, you can see a lot of sequestered carbon perake or they have a lot of volume.
13:57:21 And you can see on the top graph they're not producing anything. On the peninsula. So it makes sense.
13:57:28 You've at the National Park, you've got the National Forest. On a per acre basis, they have a lot of old stuff.
13:57:32 And it's not being harvested, it's just what's stored. State, we're generating revenue.
13:57:40 We're also meeting that other objective of conserving habitat, which coincidentally is. A lot of stored carbon.
13:57:48 And then the small industrial and the industrial. Their generating revenue, what's stored on the landscape.
13:57:57 Is less than the federal and less than us. But.
13:58:02 This is just that what's on the landscape. It's not stored in wood products. It's not what's being sequestered.
13:58:09 It's just, you know, that point in time. So. Next slide. This is an important one.
13:58:15 This is those small landowners. And that risk of converting to other uses. As we talk about managing our lands, managing federal lands, managing.
13:58:28 Private lands. As we see mill infrastructure go away. We see conversion happen or as we see outside pressures like COVID said everyone can work remotely.
13:58:41 No one wants to live in Fueallup. I live in Piola. Schools are great, but.
13:58:47 Every time I drive out here or I drive up to walking, I say, man, I wish I had lived out in the woods again.
13:58:56 Those landowners who, you know, said, Hey, I can work remotely. You know, they move in and someone says, oh, I could.
13:59:04 Make $600 an acre on that timber sale or I could sell this for you know, half a million dollars.
13:59:11 We're seeing a lot of conversion. Lewis County, I don't know why Lewis County sing the conversion that it is, but is that?
13:59:19 I'm sorry, I can't really read the x-axis, but what's the stretch of the conversion?
13:59:24 That's like the impact of the conversion. Yeah, right. I think it's that that that conversion and then that risk of conversion, you know, that's occurring.
13:59:33 This comes from a U Dub study done in I think 2021. Where they were assessing that risk of loss of forest land and That is one of the biggest risks as Commissioner Franz talks
about a lot.
13:59:49 We have for the first time in history gone from more than 50% forested to less than 50% forest to does the state.
13:59:56 Because of wildfire, but also because of that conversion. Wildfire once I get 3 forested it'll come back if it gets reforested but Once it turns into houses, it doesn't go back
to forest.
14:00:10 You don't know why Lewis County is so I don't I don't you know yeah Interesting.
14:00:16 And thankfully, Jefferson is, you know. At the lower end, but.
14:00:23 Anyway. Yes. Thank you. So again, this is the, why we're here and we want to, you know, again have these discussions as you definitely know.
14:00:36 Each of these choices when we talk about. You know, even reconvene versus trust land transfer versus do a harvest.
14:00:47 Yeah, there are all those trade-offs, right? And these are things that we deal with daily.
14:00:51 You all deal with periodically. Amongst the 100 other things that you know you work on that also have those trade-offs.
14:01:00 So. This slides here to say we are here to have those discussions. We're to help you, you know, as you're thinking about these things.
14:01:08 Thank you. So next slide is. This is kind of help to visualize, right?
14:01:16 With our HCP with our policy for sustainable for us, etc. This is where we think we are as a baseline, you know, our revenue to support local services.
14:01:26 We could be maximizing revenue. We don't, we aren't. We know that we have that.
14:01:33 Responsibility to balance.
14:01:37 We could sequester more carbon potentially by setting more lands aside. Or going to long rotations and just thinning.
14:01:49 But that'll change that revenue dial, that'll change that. Contribution to rural economies, dial, right?
14:01:56 All of these things, you can't move one thing without the other. Sustainable forest management.
14:02:01 I keep saying it, I will keep saying it, you will not find a more sustainably managed large landowner than DNR.
14:02:09 Does that include like, mitigating wildfire risk in that? Section. In which one in the DANAEL SUSSEAM HOUSE.
14:02:19 Yeah, that would to me that includes looking at forest resilience in right mitigating wildfire risk.
14:02:26 In making sure these forests when we reforest are gonna have the species that will be here in 100 years when we do our modeling for our sustainable harvest, our modeling is
for 100 years.
14:02:39 In eastern Washington, we're just doing our sustainable harvest. Calculation now. We are really looking at climate shift.
14:02:48 Where will Ponderosa Pine be now? And where will it be in a hundred years? And there are areas and we're putting in the climate.
14:02:57 Projections that are going to be kind of the most. Exstream ends of the, you know, the spectrum to see.
14:03:05 There will be areas where Pondosopine won't grow anymore. And we have to know that and we have to be able to respond to that.
14:03:13 So yeah, it takes all of that into account. Multiple use. And then fish wildlife conservation.
14:03:22 I might even turn that. To the darker green. Our HCP is was one of the first.
14:03:31 It's one of the most comprehensive. Oregon is still. Working to finalize in HCP.
14:03:37 And their forest board. Just last week kinda threw him a curveball and said, well, maybe, well, let's look at.
14:03:45 Like we've been working on this for decades and we're ready to sign. And they still have it.
14:03:53 Stone again, that managing for multiple uses, you've got the environmental economic social. All of these things that we're looking at that we're wrestling with daily to kind
of meet those multiple objectives.
14:04:07 Now we'll talk about the tools. And we can probably just. Go on to the actual tools.
14:04:14 So some of these are existing, some of these are new. Direct transfer. On these county trust lines, that's new.
14:04:22 That is something, Commissioner Eisenhower and I testified in the legislature on some of these encumbered lands and TLT.
14:04:32 Work house bill 1460 prior to this last session, we weren't able to transfer.
14:04:41 State the county trust lands. If we had an area that was better suited for habitat protection through natural areas program, trusting transfer, what have you.
14:04:52 We had to go through a multi-step process of identifying common school land. Having public hearings.
14:05:03 Valuing them. Making sure we have the same value. Swapping trust designation so that then I could dispose of that land into the National Aires Program or what have you.
14:05:16 And then this County Trust line was here and stayed. County Trustland took a long time. It was complex.
14:05:22 We now can directly transfer and it had diminishing returns too. On some of yes, especially on trust land transfer.
14:05:30 And so it was a complicated. Thankful that we have this tool that we can now do direct transfer to counties to.
14:05:39 Other state and local. Agencies and tribes. It has to be at fair market value because we have to keep the trust whole, but it allows us to actually transact a little better.
14:05:51 Have you actually used that tool yet? We have not yet. It will be similar to the other challenges we still have with those county lands.
14:06:03 And we'll talk about that maybe more through all of these because a lot of these are about moving land around.
14:06:09 Second tool is forest carbon leasing. As you may know, we have been looking at a carbon project or carbon projects of of some type.
14:06:22 Our initial attempt is identify 10,000 acres of some of this. Structurally complex older forest or forests that had other conservation value.
14:06:32 And carbon value to put into a carbon project. Unfortunately, we don't have the authority to. Enter into carbon markets directly.
14:06:42 The only way we can do it is through leasing the land. We have the authority to lease land.
14:06:47 We have the authority to sell valuable materials. But all of our statutes for selling valuable materials require those materials to be removed.
14:06:56 You can't sell the carbon then have it remote. That's not the intent of it. And so leasing would be the only mechanism it's not really something the carbon markets are you know
set up to do you'd have to find someone, a middle man, to lease the land at fair market value.
14:07:15 And allow them then to sell the carbon off offsets. We could take it as a revenue share.
14:07:25 We do that with our agricultural crops. We can do a cash rent or we can do a crop share.
14:07:29 So we didn't even get that far in really the discussion of what it would be. But it's complex.
14:07:36 I mean, if you were releasing a fair market value, would that be for fair land or like fair I don't understand how you would find the fair market value for this brand new.
14:07:49 That is something that we are still looking at and we've paused a bit because of some litigation on carbon projects, but.
14:07:57 We, that's what we would do. We would have to look at what is the fair market rent.
14:08:02 It may be like in some of our agricultural lands that the the if we're doing a crop share that the rent is very low.
14:08:12 Because you're sharing in that revenue. But again, that's it's all that complexity and of course if you've got someone who's leasing it They've got to get their cut because
they're putting the capital in instead of us marketing directly and then the revenue goes to the beneficiaries.
14:08:28 We introduce another step. Every time I hear about that program, it gets more complicated. It's complicated.
14:08:34 Just defining what is a leaf area, right? Yeah. You have to meet what's called the Statute of Frauds.
14:08:40 Any Lisa you have, you have to have a very defined lease area. It can't be.
14:08:45 That served that blob of older forest. It has to be that. To definable property. And so, but what have you done?
14:08:55 Apart. It's called the Statue of Frogs. Doesn't mean that people are against for frogs.
14:09:00 Yeah, frogs? It doesn't mean that people are dead for frogs. Yeah, frogs, frogs.
14:09:10 Yeah, cause I can imagine a statue of Frog. A statue of a frog, right? Yeah.
14:09:12 You have to mark each property corner with a frog statue. No, so it gets complicated.
14:09:18 We attempted to go to the legislature and get authority just to enter into the carbon market directly. We drafted, we redrafted, we drafted again, other people drafted, we improved
on those drafts.
14:09:27 Ultimately, that wasn't successful. So working in the carbon market space is still a challenge.
14:09:36 Land exchanges. We can, we always have been able to just like we did with the. Swapping those trust designations if a county had forest land and wanted to exchange they have
to be at fair market value but we can do those property exchanges.
14:09:55 It costs any time you're doing a LAN transaction, you've got survey costs, public meeting costs all of that.
14:10:03 Land pools is a little bit. Of a new tool that's available now to many more counties.
14:10:14 This is a kind of on the state forest transfer lands. The complexity of that place-based revenue generation.
14:10:25 Happens in that fire district. If I sell that land, if I transfer that land.
14:10:33 I have to try and acquire land in the same tax district. That's the easiest. You can theory.
14:10:41 It's impossible to find land in that same tax district or very important, very hard. But if I find land in the same tax district, okay
14:10:50 If I find land in the county in a different tax district, the new legislation last year, now allows counties to determine how.
14:11:02 They want to try and. If I generate revenue over here now. Can it go back to the same fire district hospital district, etc.? That's the pool.
14:11:13 It can be done. That's a little different. That's just authority that we have it.
14:11:17 Called the Blanchard Fix. Skadget County doesn't think it was all that great.
14:11:24 It's hard still to do. The assessors office has to figure that out. It can be done, but it's hard to do.
14:11:32 The, the land pooling is if I find land in, say, Kalam County.
14:11:39 And Kalam and Jefferson want to enter into a. Cooperative agreement. That they're going to jointly acquire land and share proportionally in the revenue that's generated.
14:11:56 The statute now allows that. So first, those counties, any counties. It could be Wacom and Schumannia.
14:12:05 It could be Jefferson and Snow Homeish. It can be any combination of those West Side counties.
14:12:10 But they have to enter into an agreement and it can be 3 or 5 counts. They have to enter into that agreement and say.
14:12:17 We're going to share in that revenue and it's going to be dispersed, you know, based on the proportion of lands that, you know, are being acquired for each.
14:12:27 So can I, sorry to ask a, a complicated question, but if we were say Jefferson County pools some land with Clown County.
14:12:36 Could I mean then designate like if it was part of a trust exchange with, you know, the quilting fire department could be designated.
14:12:43 The revenue from that new pooled land in Clowland County goes to the junior taxing districts that the original land was transferred from?
14:12:52 Yes. And again, that's where that has to be worked out then with the county commissioners and then the, obviously the assessors office has to figure out how to make that happen.
14:13:04 So it can it's complicated. Thankfully. It's not my task. I have to find the land.
14:13:12 Okay. You all have to enter into those cooperative agreements, etc. The next is reconvance and I know you've discussed that in the past.
14:13:23 In statute, the county can request those county transfer lands back. But only for park purposes. And then trust line transfer.
14:13:35 Which I also know Commissioner Eisenhower is very familiar with. That is where the legislature is basically buying out that interest in that trust property.
14:13:48 Moving it into conservation status or recreation or other status. That comes with an encumbrance on the property, so it can't be transferred.
14:13:58 And then used for some other purpose. It has that deed restriction and perpetuity. But all of those are.
14:14:05 Somebody buying that trust land. And at fair market value. All of these recognize that these are true trusts and we have to keep the trust hole.
14:14:16 So again, all of these come back to that same duty. As the trustee, the legislature is the trustee and we're the trust manager.
14:14:24 So we always have that duty to the to the beneficiaries and it's an undivided loyalty.
14:14:30 For our current and future generations. We have to take that long look. Out a hundred years out in perpetuity.
14:14:40 It's 3 dimensional chess. And I don't know that may be the last, oh no, sorry, this is the last side, right.
14:14:50 So avoided conversion in the last legislative session, the department was, allotted 70 million dollars.
14:14:59 To look to acquire the new forest land. And then we can set aside up to 2,000 acres.
14:15:08 And this is just out of that budget, so structurally complex carbon dense. State forest lands.
14:15:17 In Western Washington and all of Schumannia and portion of Plicotat County, all those lands that are covered under the HCP.
14:15:25 Basically. Have to have concurrence of the county council, the county legislative body, regardless of trust.
14:15:35 So on this one, would that proviso the legislature did say? The county council county commission. Pass to say yes or no.
14:15:46 That was in recognition of just that larger rural economy benefit. And impact to rural jobs impact to the local communities if we set aside 2,000 acres next to a mill that gets
all of its wood from that local area, it's gonna have an economic impact.
14:16:04 And so. Because it's a budget proviso, it's not violating. Trust responsibility of undivided loyalty.
14:16:12 It's We're still keeping the trust whole when we're setting this lands aside, but have to have a in the county.
14:16:19 So we have to provide a list of those parcels that we're intending to set aside by the end of December, present that to the Board of Natural Resources.
14:16:32 We're working on that now and we'll hopefully have something in October or early November to discuss with counties.
14:16:42 And then again, work with our, with our board. In the proviso, we don't have to have that concurrence from the counties actually until we're intending to convert that land that
may not be for a few years and you know till we've acquired land but We're gonna get that concurrence now because we're obviously not going to harvest it in a year because then it's
not going to be
14:17:07 a carbon dense structurally complex forest anymore. So in essence, we're now identifying areas that are intended to be set aside into permanent conservation.
14:17:16 13. Point 1 million for civil culture and treatments. So that's everything from reforestation to young stand management to pre-commercial thinning.
14:17:29 All of that work to get these forests. As resilient as they can be. Growing as well as they can be because that has the best carbon sequestration value is a healthy.
14:17:43 Growing forest. How do you think DNR Do you know, Dni's operations are going to change with that.
14:17:49 Additional 130000000, not to me. It will actually help us meet what our backlog in civil culture is.
14:17:59 So this won't give us. A bunch of new money to do new and more innovative things.
14:18:09 We have known for quite some time that we have a backlog of just that pre-commercial sending and things like that that we need to do.
14:18:16 And that. Lack of funding comes from a variety of sources and reasons, but. This will help us to get that work done.
14:18:28 Other work to and a half 1 million to look at. Management of older forests. Look at the impact of changes to management of those older forests.
14:18:42 On mills on wood basket on carbon sequestration and looking at the totality. It's not just the carbon that's in the forest.
14:18:51 It is through the entirety of that. You know, life cycle of the wood. We know that forest sequester carbon, they continue to sequester as they're reaching 100 3,040 or older.
14:19:05 Then they slow and they decay and they, you know, reach kind of a steady state. But we also know that as or harvested.
14:19:14 That durable wood products. Are out there holding that carbon. We have that avoided. Emissions from carbon and steel which It's a lot more energy intensive.
14:19:27 We're not bringing in wood from. Other places. And so there's that added benefit of those wood products.
14:19:36 The forest service recently put out a report and they have a couple of nice graphs that I need to start putting in here.
14:19:43 That show just sequestering in forests, you kind of have like this. And with wood products you have like this.
14:19:52 When you have that additionality. So over time you have more carbon actually being stored. Because you know you've got it both in the forest and the wood products.
14:20:08 This does. Require us to look at all of those things. It brings together stakeholders from a number of areas.
14:20:17 Commissioner Eisenhower has volunteered. Greatciously again to cooperate with us and and be on that.
14:20:25 And so we'll be talking a lot of science. We'll be talking a lot about carbon sequestration.
14:20:31 How much is sequestered here? How much is the requested there? We hear about science all the time.
14:20:37 We hear it from all sides. And they're always the same. It is, it's always the same from each side.
14:20:43 It's never the same. From both sides. That's what we'll be bringing in.
14:20:49 There are studies that say if you Set aside more, Oregon, Washington, you know, that especially the coast sequesters a ton of carbon because our trees grow long they grow big
they grow fast.
14:21:05 There's one that's often cited Beverly Law. You guys should, you should read that and manage under that.
14:21:11 One of the things that that recommends is. Set aside large areas for conservation. Achieve 30 by 30, right?
14:21:22 Achieve 30% land conservation by 2,030. Achieve 50 by 50. And serve 50% by 2050.
14:21:29 We're done. We've already done that. That's what our HCP did.
14:21:35 Conserve large blocks. Our murrelet. Amendment created special emphasis areas. Where we set aside.
14:21:46 3 and 5,000 acre blocks in different parts of western Washington to conserve even more land. We're generally at about 50%.
14:21:56 Okay, so, that's, like, when you include that, spot all measurement areas, So we're at the 30 to per 50 already.
14:22:04 So again, we're talking about those. Areas that are on base after. We, the federal services, fish wildlife service, National Marine Fisheries Service.
14:22:15 All of the scientists said this is where you should conserve. And this is where you can generate revenue from the beneficiaries.
14:22:23 Feel like you explained it already, but can you describe the backstory of rain on snow? What does that really mean?
14:22:30 Yeah, so that is areas higher elevation where when you have snow and it's kind of a snow-dominated zone when you get rain if you've opened up the canopy and you've then got
snow on the ground and the rain is falling directly.
14:22:43 On that snow you cause more melt and so you cause more seasonal high flows and so you don't want half of your basin to be in that open exactly because then you get those.
14:22:59 Winter, you know, flood events. And so we We look at that basin, regardless of ownership.
14:23:06 And we're, if it's below a certain threshold, we don't operate there or we're only doing sending.
14:23:13 Until the basin is above that threshold.
14:23:19 And the last one is looking at carbon and ecosystem service markets. That's another, working group that will be establishing.
14:23:30 Looking at carbon markets and other ecosystem service markets in general, working with Department of Ecology and others.
14:23:39 We haven't advertised any the stakeholder group on that. I will let you both know.
14:23:45 I'll let all 3 of you know in case anyone else wants to join one of our one of our working groups.
14:23:55 So and that one again both of those come with some contracts that will be contracting with researchers, and that one again, both of those come with some, contracts that will
be, contracting with researchers, with, some contracts that will be, contracting with researchers, with entities that will help us do these kind of assessments and So think that may
have been the last slide.
14:24:12 You mind if I make a copy of your slide, Dick? Oh no, yeah, definitely. It's A, it's yours and B, it's a public record.
14:24:18 All right. And I know that didn't get directly to the comment letter that you sent with the I know Jefferson has done a lot of work.
14:24:27 Jefferson County has done a lot of work looking at these issues and I know Commissioner Eisenhower particularly.
14:24:34 You know I joked that I think we saw each other I know I I saw you more than half of my staff.
14:24:43 We worked on a lot of these issues just in general, but not the specifics looking at individual parcels and things like that.
14:24:50 I know you've worked with the region a bit. But anyway, I will. Pause and see if you have questions or we can shift the the discussion to however you want to.
14:25:00 Okay. I'll turn to Kate first, see if you have any questions or comments after the presentation.
14:25:08 So with us Kate. He's in a sketchy spot. Oh, I know it looks like she's back.
14:25:16 Yeah. Alright. No questions from Kate. Any thoughts you want to share?
14:25:24 I've been asking my questions throughout. No, I mean, I would just say that we are proceeding with a few trustland transfer applications and You know, that's for some of the
parcels that we did identified interested in reconvance for but trust and transfer makes a lot of sense.
14:25:44 And, I know Bill and I have talked about those. Once when he came up to visit.
14:25:49 So. I don't know if we wanna, I don't know what specifics.
14:25:56 Yeah, let's dive into it. I don't know how we're ready or you to dive into specifics.
14:26:00 We can dive a little bit in. I may talk specifics at the general level, but we can definitely, you know, talk specifics at the general level, but we can definitely, you know,
talk as specific as you want and things that I don't have the answer to.
14:26:14 That's where we'll have, you know, those continued conversations with our region staff who know.
14:26:18 The landscape intimately and then talking through the complexity and I think that may be more beneficial now and instead of is this parcel better here or better there or what
have you, Thank you, Sarah.
14:26:32 But the you know, kind of walking through the complexity of those different. You know, opportunities. Like we'll just help through our specific asked.
14:26:43 I mean, we were pretty explicit in the letter. I mean, would you? You know, trust line transfer, for example.
14:26:52 Submitting the application. You have to have a receiving agency, which I think the county is a willing receiving agency.
14:27:00 We have to do a best interest of the trust analysis, which looks at. Yeah, is this lands that it's fairly easy to generate revenue.
14:27:12 That, you know, it's in the middle of a working block. It doesn't make sense, you know, from a trust perspective.
14:27:19 I, I know, Commissioner Eisenhower is very familiar with that since we all worked on the working group together.
14:27:26 You know the parts you mentioned by Anderson Lake Park. Right? Likely makes sense as a potential for trust land transfer.
14:27:36 Then it's getting ranked by an independent panel that's going to help us rank them.
14:27:45 And then we're going to depend on the legislature to fund it in the last session. We had 10 parcels that were submitted and they funded I think 6 and they skipped around a little
bit.
14:27:59 They weren't supposed to but they did skip a little bit. And so
14:28:04 You know, whether parcels get, you know, chosen, you know, it is always, you know, to the legislature, right?
14:28:14 So there are no guarantees with trust and transfer. Reconvenience is more certain. But it doesn't allow for.
14:28:23 Acquiring new property, right, because it's coming to the county for park purposes. Direct transfer.
14:28:31 Would require the county to come open the funds to acquire the parcel and then we can go find something somewhere.
14:28:41 Suggested that one did you likely didn't? So again, that's just those challenges and all of them require us finding more land.
14:28:45 What's like, what's the timeline for the 70 million dollars program? Yeah, so that like I said we are in the in the mid to end stages of identifying across Western Washington,
those 2,000 acres.
14:29:04 We've had a number of counties. Reach out and say we're interested in that utilizing that tool potentially.
14:29:10 I think it may be 6 counties. We've had other counties that have said we are not interested in that.
14:29:16 Yeah. So if you just look at 5 or 6 counties.
14:29:22 We want to do that conservation where again it does the most good. We have the most benefits. If we can have it in areas that.
14:29:30 Have or are near existing conservation. That adds to that conservation value. That's why when we did our HCP, we We put the habitat where it existed and where it was close to
federal ownership.
14:29:45 So you get more conservation value. That the owl is gonna be more likely to be an a larger area than find that one little piece somewhere.
14:29:55 Are we talking about the larger chunk of that funding is for replacement, working timberlands. Yeah, the 70 million all goes to buying new lands, but we then have to We have
to set aside 2,000 acres and it has to be.
14:30:11 Then of that, that equal value. So. 2,000 acres of mature. Timber is going to cost a lot more.
14:30:21 Maybe around $10,000 an acre when you look at the timber and land value. What we acquire is likely not going to be much work, it's going to be.
14:30:30 Hopefully, 35, 45, maybe there's some mix of some sanding timber but it's likely going to be younger.
14:30:37 We may get more land, but. You're not gonna see revenue for a while. But that 2,000 acres across even 5 counties that may be interested.
14:30:49 That's about 400 acres per county. We already did that. And I know you didn't.
14:30:58 Identified about 450. Yeah. And I will say, in, in an existing or a potential expanded boundary of a natural area preserve.
14:31:07 That helps to meet that intent and the commissioner, you know, commissioner Franz desire to have it be, more bang for the buck. Right.
14:31:16 So that is one that we've looked at and we said, okay. Very potentially. I make no guarantees but very potentially right.
14:31:27 When will you know those lands? That would be hopefully within the next month. End of October, beginning of November.
14:31:33 Have that nail down have, you know, that kind of doesn't need the official concurrence from the county yet, generally need that concurrence from the county that you know that's
great we're happy with that so when we present to the board.
14:31:46 Either in November or December the first Tuesday in December that We all know where we where we are. So in our in Mallory and I have spoken with the region a couple of times.
14:31:58 And I've talked about prioritizing lands. We're North of highway 104.
14:32:07 Okay. And then looking at also the expansion of the day, getting our panties in a wad about timber sales south of 104 because that's where we're hearing the most from our junior
taxing districts.
14:32:22 And we're also hearing that those are the more productive timberlands and the forest north of 104 are slow growing dryer smaller all these things.
14:32:32 So, you know, we're, we're feeling aligned with Dnr's regional.
14:32:39 Work plan. Right. And just look forward to hearing more from you guys on that. Yeah and and the timelines for the different tools obviously are.
14:32:51 Are different and although that legislative funding has a allowed me to bring on more staff. It's still.
14:33:03 A very large workland. You're offering me a job doing? Volunteers or you have volunteered. Volunteers or you have volunteers enough commissioner.
14:33:15 But no, that just that. Process of doing land transactions. Takes a long time.
14:33:23 Acquiring 70 million dollars worth of land is gonna take. A long time. You know, there will be some larger, you know, parcels that will become available.
14:33:33 But it's gonna be hard. Well then there's the leftover proviso from the previous legislative session too.
14:33:38 Right. That one we're working through. We have it for that. We're getting we're getting more successful. We haven't done anything in Jefferson yet.
14:33:47 We haven' but we are now that we have staff. I know Commissioner Fran notes it with COVID and then retirements and everything.
14:33:54 We were down to 2. Staff doing land transactions. We now have 11. But 9 of them are new.
14:34:03 And so got to teach them, you know, all the things they have to do. But yeah, we've had discussions, I know.
14:34:11 With that concept of acquiring, you know. Certain lands from certain large industrial landowners around here.
14:34:20 Everything we do, we still have to have that lens of the our fiduciary duty.
14:34:28 We can't acquire land that's at 7 or $8,000 an acre. That's gonna be used for timber production.
14:34:35 That's gonna have a like a point 1% return on investment. Because the land, I, we can't realize that value as.
14:34:46 Housing. We're not gonna sell it for housing in 10 years or 20 years. So I have to acquire land.
14:34:52 That is going to provide that value to the beneficiary. If the inverse is also true, you know, like many of the lands that we're talking about, DNR, the lands that we're talking
about, DNR, the trust lands are, I think, Hi, hire candidates for conversion to another use and we're trying to prevent those versions too and I'm just wondering that if that's one
14:35:12 of Dnr's criteria as they're going through these is the risk of conversion of a piece of land.
14:35:19 Yeah, well, it's interesting. That is one of the values of trust land transfer is the legislature actually will buy it and they have to because that is their duty as the trustee
at that highest and best use.
14:35:33 So when I do that fair market appraisal. It is at what is that highest and best use.
14:35:39 And so, you know, in this last legislative session, there was a property called Egglon and Kitsap Peninsula.
14:35:46 Very similar, I think, situation to many of the ones we're talking about here. How's housing pressure around it?
14:35:54 The county wanted to see it, you know, as a county park. And it had that highest and best use of housing.
14:36:03 And so the appraisal is going to be. Pretty high. What that will allow us to do is by forest land that is at that higher and better use.
14:36:18 In areas on our county trust lands. Like I said, we can't sell directly. We can't put it on the market.
14:36:25 And sell it for housing. Our other lands we can, they don't have a restriction on sale.
14:36:35 We worked with Kitsap County on a parcel in Silverdale. That was 25 acres.
14:36:41 It was zoned as high density residential. The county said we really need that. We need housing. And it was surrounded by residential and surrounded by commercial.
14:36:55 Hospital and Yeah, commercial development. And so we worked. First we were working with a private developer. We were going to exchange land as we can do exchanges.
14:37:06 We're gonna acquire commercial property and, exchange for that. They would. Trade commercial property for that property.
14:37:14 And develop it. That didn't work, but then we worked with the county, worked with Senator Rolfe.
14:37:19 She got some funding for, for that. So the county purchased it for housing and for then some open space and other use.
14:37:26 And so that's a win-win for everybody. We're able to go by.
14:37:32 More working forest land or agricultural land, the bat. And the county got open space. Space for fire.
14:37:43 District building and. High density residential. Right. So again, that's that land use, right?
14:37:51 What is the best use of that plan? But on these county trust lands, we can't buy commercial property, we can't do other things, we can't put it in the residential so we've got
to buy working for our line.
14:38:01 So that's the investment. Hi, I have to look at. Great. Sorry, we've been asking lots of questions.
14:38:06 We're a little pastime. We do have a public comment period too. So do you have any other burning questions?
14:38:15 All right, so we'll open it up to folks both online with us you can hit raise hand if you have a question or a comment. All right, so we'll open it up to folks both online with
us.
14:38:27 You can hit raise hand if you have a question or a comment or anyone in the room that like to make public comment.
14:38:28 We'd love to hear from you. Yeah. Why don't you come on up? You've got to come to the microphone so we can hear you at home too.
14:38:32 And 3Â min per person. You don't have to say who you are, what we love to know.
14:38:34 Pam Gray, I live in Port Townsend. How do we access all these charts and graphs?
14:38:39 Cause you know, it's kind of hard to. Digest it all in 2Â Si can answer that and we'll make we'll put the slides on our minutes.
14:38:49 So if you just go to the county website, you know, within a week or so, we'll have all this whole slide deck.
14:38:54 Linkable and you can watch this again or just go through the docking. Okay, just a comment.
14:39:00 When you say treatment, you're talking about pesticides and herbicides. As well as thinning and then operations that means.
14:39:10 Treatment and cutting. They're sort of euphemisms it seems. Sorry, we often talk in our own acronyms and things like that.
14:39:21 Generally when we talk about civil cultural treatments, we're really talking about reforestation, pre-commercial thinning, that's where you go into the forest.
14:39:30 Trees that are 2530 years old generally don't have commercial value. And so you're, going out and just like you're tending your garden, you're pulling the, you know, you're
eliminating the.
14:39:43 Broken top ones, the ones that don't seem to have as much vigor, you're literally looking at that tree in that tree and picking which one to keep.
14:39:52 Although we do use herbicides, Those are typically done as spot treatments.
14:39:59 We're not. We're trying to avoid pesticide use as much as possible. And so really what this that new funding will be going to is that contracting out for pre-commercial spending,
for youngstand sending at about 1015 years old when you get old.
14:40:18 Just a ton of alder coming in. We're going to go out and we're going to pick the best tree.
14:40:23 If that older is better than that dug fur, we'll keep the older if it's 150 alder and one dug fur, we're going to get rid of 190 alder.
14:40:30 So it's more of that mechanical work. That we're talking about. No, thanks.
14:40:35 Other comments? Marsha? Yeah, please check. So, Marcia Kelvin, quil scene in capacity as a closing fire commissioner and also a family that uses the quiltine schools.
14:40:48 You've heard from me before about our Tuner Taxing District concerned with revenue from timber and example is tonight at our fire commissioner meeting will be asked to consider
the purchase of a new demo engine at 563,000 to replace a almost 30 year old.
14:41:04 Engine that we can't find parts for. Luckily we had a good timber harvest year, 483,000 to date.
14:41:11 Higher than our average of 250,000 per year. So we can consider that purchase. We really rely on that revenue.
14:41:19 And we saw the county proposal to DNR and are asking for 4 different analyses to be done if they haven't already been done, which is.
14:41:28 I heard Dwayne kind of confirm what I heard, which is a lot of the private land.
14:41:33 Being transferred in as younger timber than the DRR land that would be conserved. That gives us a gap of funding of, you know, perhaps decades.
14:41:42 How is that going to be filled? How large is that gap? So kind of time value of September.
14:41:48 Second, when you take that private land and apply the more stringent DNR policies, to that land, particularly when it's a harvestable age, will in fact be unencumbered if it's
being used to replace unencumbered land but it's under a private set of standards that are less severe.
14:42:05 Under DNR, are we really exchanging? Encumbered for encumbered. I don't know.
14:42:10 If you look at the total revenue base for, for timber, both DNR timber, but also, excise tax from harvest.
14:42:19 We're reducing the private. Inventory for excise tax. So what is that total impact going to be?
14:42:27 And last impact on local jobs, particularly in the West End of the county, but also some here doing those exchanges.
14:42:35 So we ask that those all be considered. I was curious to note in the slides that the avoided conversion program, the 70 million is for land at risk of conversion.
14:42:45 Out of forestry and you may know more about Rainier's plans than I do, but unlike Kitsap where I rode Eglon for many years on horses, I understand the building pressure happening
there.
14:42:58 Here there's not a lot of building going on. So is that land being transferred really at risk of conversion?
14:43:03 And last, thank you for sparing the South End to an extent from transfers. I will note that Dave Bob is also in our closing fire district.
14:43:12 So there is an impact. And that's everything. Thank you. Thank you very much for sure.
14:43:18 Great questions. I don't know if you have any answers off the top of your summit. The the language in the proviso about lands at risk of conversion.
14:43:30 That's when we acquire land. We're we're supposed to first look at lands at risk of conversion and look.
14:43:40 To, you know, to acquire those rather than just industrial forest land that potentially, you know, another industrial landowner would be purchasing.
14:43:50 As everyone knows they're not making more forest land they're making less and so Timor industry is concerned that as we're acquiring more land if we're acquiring working forest
land, yes, are riparian buffers are greater, our habitat protections are different than private land owners.
14:44:11 There's a concern that if we acquire, you know. 30,000 acres of industrial forest land there being impact to the timber supply and you know kind of disrupt the wood basket.
14:44:24 So it's that. Look to lands that are at risk of conversion. But it also requires again us to continue to have that.
14:44:33 Foriduciary and that trust hat on and look at that. You know, from that lens.
14:44:39 And so If we have lands adjacent to ours that are at risk of conversion, but are. At still.
14:44:49 2, 3, $4,000 an acre and that rate of return is still good for working forest land we can acquire.
14:44:56 If it's that 7, 8,000. You know, dollars an acre at bear land prices.
14:45:04 Then we have to seriously look and say, is that in the best interest of the trust? So you that's part on a partial by partial decision.
14:45:17 The evaluation of with you know apples to apples is exactly exactly so recently the the lands that we've been acquiring using that encumbered lands funding from the session
before, Commissioner, that you had mentioned.
14:45:27 We're We've been acquiring in Southwest Washington and Pacific County. Luckayacon County with other funding that we have through TLT and other things we acquired some working
forest land in Clark County.
14:45:38 In areas that were zoned or had the potential they had all management access so they had easement across us and so the private landowner could sell for development.
14:45:51 We were able to acquire some of those but they were generally around that 3 or $4,000 an acre with some timber that was 2530 years old right so we're meeting that intent of
we're ensuring that doesn't get converted.
14:46:05 Just having a house or houses in the middle of a working forest is always a challenge. We often hear we're not opposed to logging.
14:46:14 But just not here. But we're everywhere, so we hear that every day. And so That's what that intent is.
14:46:24 It is true that it's harder to find. Lands that have, you know, timber that's, you know, 50, 60 years old.
14:46:33 Most landowners are gonna harvest before they look to sell. Certainly a timber landowner is.
14:46:37 Yeah. Though if they've got larger blocks, you know, and they're wanting to divest, they're not going to hold it for another 15 years to work through the block.
14:46:47 They're gonna they're gonna sell. So part of that original proviso is designated for Jefferson County, right?
14:46:53 Yes, that original proviso, 10 million shared between the 3 Southwest Washington counties and.
14:46:59 So 5 million there and 5 million for Jefferson and and in Cleveland County. We just recently purchased some in Kalam County and my team is they're looking and looking and looking.
14:47:13 So, and I talked to Bob. Yep. Okay, we need to speed it up a little bit.
14:47:16 So I think what we'll do is we'll continue to take public comment, but let's just respond after we get all the public comment.
14:47:22 So come on up, Bill. And then after this one, we bring Richard over online. You got your hand up.
14:47:27 We'll bring you over and you'll be up after this chair. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you.
14:47:33 Thank you.
14:47:36 Good afternoon. Thank you. Bill Turner with Sierra Pacific Industries. We have forced all mills in the state and we work west side of Washington, all counties.
14:47:45 We also manage about 300,000 acres in the state. And as you heard, the state is a conservative land manager.
14:47:51 We are a, I shouldn't say beneficial. We benefit from the state's timber sale program as a company.
14:47:59 We rely on the states to Timbersale program as a company. And when the Clown County Board of Commissioners Council was going through this.
14:48:08 You see the last page of what I just handed you. I went through, I pulled the sale and Clowon County that we were currently logged to see the economic impacts because there
are huge economic impacts.
14:48:17 Often what's talked about in the DNR and in the Board of National Resources meetings is oh it's it's Just the stumpage.
14:48:27 Well, this particular timber cell, it's called the pyramid peak timber sale.
14:48:31 We're still harvesting it. We paid 1.7,000,001.7 5 1 million dollars for the right to harvest it.
14:48:38 And as you can see here, any timber sale, any purchaser, those logs get distributed.
14:48:45 To lots of different companies because we can't. Use all the logs ourselves for different species, different sizes.
14:48:53 This, and went to 7 different companies. More than a thousand employees in all those companies. The logger was a local logger.
14:49:00 The road was a local road builder. The, Pain road used basically bottom line before we make lumber.
14:49:08 It's all the stumpage is only 20% of the economic activity. After we make lumber after we sell that after the byproducts come back here at a port towns of paper, it's less than
10% and as was commented earlier that's your tax base that keeps expanding out too you eliminate this you eliminate jobs and other tax base so Look at this, consider it.
14:49:30 You can see my comments there. You know, or is a conservative land manager. Don't be afraid of good land management like they do.
14:49:38 Even if people don't like seeing it. It's good because our society depends on wood products and they're carbon friendly with products, as Wayne mentioned.
14:49:48 Thank you. Thanks. Alright, we'll go online to Richard. You've been brought over when you get yourself unmuted.
14:49:56 Mr. Lindsay, you'll have 3Â min to make comment. Our. Okay.
14:50:05 Mr. Linds, if you can get yourself unmuted, we'd love to hear from you.
14:50:16 Still not seeing them unmute. Why don't we? Oh, there you go. We can hear you now.
14:50:18 Is that? Very good. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to say this is a excellent presentation.
14:50:27 There were 2 questions that I had. One of them is as we talk about the various benefits. One of the things that is important to understand for those of us who live on the Toronto
Springs is that we're seeing the top of the peninsula being cut off.
14:50:43 We're seeing slides and slopes increasing and the concern that we have as long-term residents is that when we went to Lloyds and said, Can you provide us with change of condition
insurance?
14:50:58 They assess the risk. And said, absolutely not. We will not ensure. So I think it's important for DNR to understand that there also is in addition to science the concern that
we have about the utilization of the cutting that's taking place.
14:51:17 On the other hand, there are areas that can be preserved on the pencil and we would like to urge you to continue to explore those and to do it wherever possible to save the
forest, the rare forest that exists on the peninsula.
14:51:31 Thanks.
14:51:32 Thanks, Mr. Lindsay. And we'll go over to Gave Online. Hey, we'd love to hear from you.
14:51:38 Have 3Â min once you get yourself unmuted.
14:51:40 Yeah, thanks for the, the presentation. I tried to stick with as much of as I could.
14:51:46 And there's a lot of complicated interests here and there's a lot of communities to take care of.
14:51:51 I'll just speak for my own experience because I'm not obviously an expert in this, but.
14:51:57 I I moved to Chimicum West Valley Road 2 years ago and in that time I've seen massive full clear cuts on newly acquired ray near land.
14:52:10 At a rate that even just in an anecdotal way, I was like, that is like, that is going a lot faster than I thought.
14:52:18 I can't imagine that this is the rate that this kind of Clear it happens. Over the course of the last 20 years or 50 years.
14:52:25 And I think sometimes it's forgotten that that's the backgrounding, at least in the Quimper Peninsula, when it comes to the topics of DNR land.
14:52:33 Being used for multi purpose. Against the idea of using these for tenber sales. I think multi-use is the best thing we can get.
14:52:42 But backgrounding a lot of these discussions is the thousands of acres that Pope transfer that is now like just completely being clear cut.
14:52:53 I did some satellite imagery work to see the difference between from 2,016 to 2,023 and there's a huge visual change in the amount of land that's been used.
14:53:02 For logging in the Quimper Peninsula. I also used, a moisture index to see.
14:53:08 What kind of. Dry spots are being opened up due to the logging and it's quite massive.
14:53:15 And I think a lot of my concern recently seeing these fires start coming across to the west of the eastern crest the cascades.
14:53:23 Is, you know, how are these conditions? Combining with the logging practices just even in like a 20 mile area around Chimacom, like how susceptible are we to forest fire now
that there's multiple 100 acre slash cuts.
14:53:42 So I appreciate, giving a chance to speak. My opposition to this and Thank you so much.
14:53:49 Thank you for waiting in, Gabe. We'll go on to Marta online. Marta, you have 3Â min to make public comment.
14:53:57 Make yourself unmuted.
14:53:59 Thank you. My name is Marta Brown. I'm from Kelsey. And I am in support of the.
14:54:06 Comments by Gabe and Mr. Linds. And I, driving along Center Road. The summer when I see the cedar trees it seems like they are I've noticed a lot more brown.
14:54:21 Foilage on them than ever before. And I would just like to say that I am very much in favor of preserving the forest land in Debb Bay and I would like to express my support
for that.
14:54:36 Thank you very much.
14:54:38 Thank you very much, Miss Brown. Okay, let's turn back to the room and if anyone else online would like to make public comment. We do want to hear from you.
14:54:48 Anyone else in the room like to make comment? Yeah. Yeah. I'm, okay, Sheila after, yeah, come up here.
14:54:59 Hi, I'm Peter Bales, Director of Northwest Watershed Institute. Thank you commissioners for over the past couple of months.
14:55:07 Providing very specific. Request to DNR. That would solve some big problems in this county with forest land.
14:55:16 One of which is. Yeah, at Dabab Bay, there's encumbered forest land.
14:55:22 It's a globally imperiled plant association that's sitting there. And we need to find replacement land for that.
14:55:29 To satisfy the junior taxing districts, but also to protect what is the largest, you know, globally rare forest type in the world of this type of forest.
14:55:40 And also for your recommendations for. Trust land transfer and reconvene. I think it's probably the most specific of any county.
14:55:49 Maybe Dwayne could back you up on that. But I'm wondering when, when is DNR going to respond specifically to the county's request, especially for the expansion of the Deba Bay
natural area.
14:56:02 Which has been in the pipeline for many years and is broadly supported by the tribes, the shellfish industry.
14:56:08 Citizens of the area, county commissioners. And it would set the process in motion to. Allow trust land transfer funding and the natural climate solutions funding to come in.
14:56:21 And protect those lands and provide replacement lands and get the process moving on that. Thank you. Thank you, Peter.
14:56:30 And Dwayne, we'll get through all the public comments. And if you got an answer, would any questions, would love to hear.
14:56:34 Okay, anyone else in the room? Yes, Steve, come on up. Yeah, oh yeah, and then we'll go to Sheila H online.
14:56:43 Hey, good morning commissioners. My first time in here in person, the room looks so much bigger on camera.
14:56:48 So I, you guys do have your own little world up here. That is for sure. So he, like, here with the American Forest Resource Council, that is for sure.
14:57:00 So, Heath, I do have your own little world up here. That is for sure. So Heathcliff, here with the American Forest Resource Council, our members produce the carbon friendly
wood products that our society needs.
14:57:04 So very much appreciate Dnr's outline and as Bill Turner already mentioned, we think DNR does forestry from about as a conservative standpoint as you can do anywhere in the
world.
14:57:15 And so certainly appreciate all the people that as Bill and others have mentioned who don't like to see forests managed or harvested.
14:57:23 I think the one thing to remember is here in the Pacific Northwest, we have perhaps God's greatest place to grow trees and to renewably grow trees.
14:57:32 Our forests are about 10 times more productive than an inner mountain west forest. So just do remember that every time you set an acre of forest land that is still available
for manage here.
14:57:45 You are shifting that harvest to somewhere else and in many cases it will take 5 to 10 acres somewhere else in the globe to provide the same amount of wood products or we can
use concrete and steel and if you care about an emissions standpoint, that's not a good alternative.
14:57:59 So turning to the letter from June, I must say we were a little disappointed not to be included or involved in all in that process.
14:58:08 As you know, we had reached out to you all months ago and expressed an interest in that and that just didn't happen.
14:58:13 That's okay, but we ultimately think that when you bring in broad stakeholders and in that you tend to get more durable solutions for these types of things.
14:58:21 So certainly we look forward in the future to hopefully doing that if there's an interest in the county regarding some of the recommendations that you are making.
14:58:32 We do have some concerns with the way that the land shifts are being proposed here. For example, trust land transfer, one of the major tenants of the legislation getting passed.
14:58:42 Was to reduce to stem the loss continued loss of working for us the corpus of the trust over the last several decades we've lost 83, acres of trust lands because you were only
getting 20% to go out and buy replacement lands.
14:58:58 For example, these federally granted lands that you are targeting north of the 104 and then trying to do inner trust exchanges with them potentially and then to do trust land
transfers, there are some serious complications that we have concerns with.
14:59:11 And then frankly, just for our industry, I'm not sure Jefferson County given what we hear today and other things may not be the best place to buy, timberland to be managed,
just to be frank.
14:59:24 So as we're looking at either doing exchanges or purchases, this may not be the place for DNR to do it if they're looking at the, you know, really the interest of the trust
to generate the revenue.
14:59:34 So we'll look forward to working with you as any of those applications go in on the Trustland Pro, transfer process and then into the legislature.
14:59:40 Thank you. Thank you. All right, we'll move to Sheila and then B Lopez after that.
14:59:47 When you yourself unmuted, Sheila, you have 3Â min to make public comment. Thanks for being here.
14:59:51 Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Sheila. I live in Quilstein and I want to thank you for the helpful presentation.
14:59:58 And I also want to thank the commissioners. For having this discussion. I want to express my support for the day Bob Bay forest protection and the expansion of the natural area.
15:00:10 Protection of these forests is important to support water quality, including our local water supplies. Wildlife habitat, rare forest types, and the overall integrity and beauty
of our local world.
15:00:24 We really need to make protection of Deba a priority. And again, thank you to the commissioners for your advocacy.
15:00:32 Thank you very much, Sheila. And we'll go over next to B Lopez when you get yourself unmuted, you have 3Â min to make public comment.
15:00:47 Alright.
15:00:44 Let me bring it over with panelists and then. We can. Thanks.
15:00:48 Can you hear me? Alright, I'm Brian Lopez. I live here in Cliffene area in the Debba Bay.
15:00:57 I want to support the expansion of the day Bob Bay natural area and I thought it was a very interesting presentation today and I learned a lot but wanted to hear more response
to the proposals that the commissioners had passed across in their letter.
15:01:15 I think we have some very well selected parcels here with rare forests and plant types and critical streams and and that protect our local water supplies that protect Dave,
bay from contamination.
15:01:27 I didn't hear much about water quality in the discussions and in the various programs there. But the proposals here for expanding the DABAA natural area and and protecting the
rare forest and plant types we have here have broad support from environments and local landowners, tribes, shelfers growers and our county commissioners.
15:01:48 So I think it makes sense to protect these parcels and do swaps that that protect the junior taxing districts.
15:01:56 But a lot of these parcels are on stable slopes have rare plan associations and watershed complications and should be swapped for more productive, easier harvestable land.
15:02:06 Great. Thank you very much for your comments, Brian. Anyone else in the room like to make public comments?
15:02:13 Love to hear from you? Anyone else? Okay, I'll ask one more time online if anyone else would like to make a public comment.
15:02:23 Kate's ready to come back over.
15:02:25 It looks like another Kate.
15:02:30 Welcome back, Kate.
15:02:32 Hey, thanks. I just wanted to say I have been listening in and I'm really appreciated the presentation, even though I missed the tail end of it and the public comment.
15:02:41 So just wanted to say I've been here listening.
15:02:42 Thank you. All right. And to the other Kate, we'd love to hear from you. You have 3Â min to make public comment, Kate.
15:02:52 We can.
15:02:51 Hi, can you hear me? Okay, perfect, sorry. Yes, hi, I'm Kate Bushalon.
15:02:58 I'm a resident actually of Kolsen and Dave Bob and I just want to echo the other sentiments of my neighbors with regard to I appreciate all of the information.
15:03:08 I will admit it was a lot of information and as newly understanding and starting to understand the jargon and in the forestry terms I appreciated that 100, and one.
15:03:24 I do, I did think that this was going to be a little bit more geared towards what was happening on the conservation side and think that it's important that these rare forests
are protected.
15:03:32 And I hope that everybody that is listening today with all different interests at various levels understand that what we have around day Bob is unique and needs to be preserved
for a variety of reasons beyond the natural beauty but for just the elements of nature, water preservation, a lot more than just the timber sales.
15:03:54 So I'm hoping that we can come to a common ground that there are other places that could be pulled from to do the commerce side, the industry side that needs to happen and we
can keep day Bob.
15:04:05 And where it needs to be in more of a conservation mode for the future. Generations to come.
15:04:12 Great. Thank you so much, Kate. I see Richard has raised his hand too. Bring Mr. Rath von over.
15:04:21 And I'll make a last call online if you've got a public comment you'd like to make, please get your hand up so we were a little past time so
15:04:30 Yep, go ahead, Richard. You have 3.
15:04:28 Alright, I'm sorry, can you hear me now? Yeah, the Rich Brathon, on property on, Day, first time in one of these meetings.
15:04:39 And thank you for making it enjoyable, like the presentations. I wanted to support what Kate just said.
15:04:47 I, well, I'm just an art supporter of preserving the Deba Bay area and expanding the natural area.
15:04:53 I'm hoping that the commission and the other interests can find some common ground with respect to some of the commercial interests.
15:05:02 But first and foremost, let's protect and continue to protect and expand the Deba Bay natural area.
15:05:07 Thank you.
15:05:08 Thank you, Rich. Okay, I'll make a last call in the room. Anyone like to make public comments?
15:05:14 And I'll make a last call online. Seeing no one I will close public comment and Dwayne maybe give you the last hand to talk a little bit more about calendar.
15:05:25 There were a couple questions on that. I think those would be helpful. Yeah, definitely. So As I noted to Commissioner Eisenhower before the meeting, my intent today was to
Do a little bit of that DNR 100, and 100, and, one, and, you know, touch a little bit on, you know, some of the, the tools that we have in the
15:05:47 tools that we have in the tools that we have in the tools that I know you're some of the the tools that we have in the tools that I know you're familiar with that you expressed
in the letter.
15:05:52 It's obvious right that these are complex issues there's there's always trade-offs there's always gonna be.
15:05:59 Competing interests there's going to be people that will benefit more people that will benefit less through you from all of these.
15:06:06 And as the ultimate trust managers, the department has to make those decisions. Often These are done within the context of the sustainable harvest level.
15:06:21 Because everything when we're talking about managing for timber. Has to go through that. That filter, that actual model.
15:06:29 To determine how much timber is going to be harvested over the next decade. That includes what lands are going to be on base, what lands are going to be off base.
15:06:38 If there are lands that are gonna go into conservation, what have you. Where we have that tension is.
15:06:45 Where we've set the sustainable harvest where the board has made the decisions on where is your elect going to be conserved where our land is going to be on base for harvest.
15:06:54 As we work through that and then. We have people say, oh, you know, we, we have other, you know, other ideas.
15:07:02 So again, it's complex and Some of it takes time. Some of it's easier than others, right?
15:07:08 And so. Trust land transfers that process. Just created a new process for that and it will take.
15:07:19 2 years because it's a biennial budget cycle. And so this was the first conversation.
15:07:26 I know you've had conversations with the region staff and like I said, the beginnings, they know the lands on the landscape the best.
15:07:33 It does need that coordination between county junior taxing districts and region staff and me and my staff to help put all of those pieces together look at timelines look at
the you know realistic timelines.
15:07:51 Dave, I'll be expansion. As one. There is a an external natural heritage advisory council that helps.
15:08:00 To guide where is across the state where is the most need for conservation. And so. Hi,izing those areas.
15:08:10 We got legislative funding to help. Now, and prioritize where that. Those lands that greatest need of conservation.
15:08:20 Creating an expansion boundary. Is that something that takes a commissioner's order so the commissioner of public plan does that.
15:08:31 Doesn't mean that the legislature will fund. Projects to acquire land to fill in that boundary.
15:08:40 I do know that I think there's a tour being scheduled for sometime in early October. For DNR staff, to go out.
15:08:46 And work with stakeholders. To look at the Deba Bay, national area and talk about that and we've had some conversations with the commissioner about.
15:08:56 The concept of expanding. The natural area. The acquiring lands, right, where staff are working on that now.
15:09:07 So all of these are different times, right? And so it's not one presentation and we've solved everybody's problems.
15:09:13 It'll take we would give you 2Â h. It'll take it'll take at least 3. Okay.
15:09:22 I did just want to hit and I know we're over. I should have warned you I should have warned you I can talk about this.
15:09:26 No, just an hour. Generally our And this comes from a U-dub study. It's a little old, so these numbers may be even greater now.
15:09:35 Generally our management for timber. We generate anywhere between. 10 and 15,000 direct indirect and induce jobs every year.
15:09:46 That's the economic impact of our timber management. It's 1.5 billion dollars in economic activity.
15:09:54 So as one of the commenters mentioned, we often talk about timber sale and what revenue will go to that.
15:09:59 You know, junior tax and district beneficiary. But the jobs that are created in general. Every year is 1.5 billion dollars in economic activity.
15:10:12 And just a couple other notes of people that had asked questions, that I had more specific answer to.
15:10:19 When we do that appraisal and looking at lands. If we're looking at trust line transfer, the devils, the lake, that will just, this past session.
15:10:34 When it's appraised, it's a place appraised and what will it, what could a private landowner do so that it doesn't look at what our management constraints would be.
15:10:43 It would look at what would a private landowner be able to do. And so if that's timberland and they have smaller buffers, then it's appraised with those smaller buffers without
any mural that constraints what have you.
15:10:52 When we are fireland that then gives us more more money to buy land. So when we buy land, yes.
15:10:58 If we buy private timberland that had smaller buffers, we will put our larger buffers on.
15:11:06 We're going to avoid something that will have severe constraints. But because we were funded with. More value for that land.
15:11:18 That we're disposing of, we're able to apply more land. So it's it.
15:11:21 Will hopefully be on that. So that's one of those concerns. It's it's a bit of a wash.
15:11:28 Finding land. And finding land that will benefit living in your taxing districts. That's the more complex challenge.
15:11:38 No, I do think some next steps will be, you know, as we are assessing. The 70 million dollars in funding and looking at areas that the county's proposed.
15:11:50 We are looking at that and we should have that answer fairly so. Trust line transfer that is the process that you're all familiar with.
15:11:58 It's on its own timeline. And then looking at other lands, you know, north and south of.
15:12:08 Moving and exchanging lands. And that that's harder. It's complicated. So all of these things, they'll all have their own timelines.
15:12:18 But they're all all things that working, you know. More at the staff level is where those conversations seem to happen as if I start talking specific about land transactions.
15:12:31 I get in trouble real bad. We've enjoyed your loquaciousness about this, Dwayne.
15:12:35 It's great. I know when is the last time you got to walk in the woods though? I every day I lament my life choices.
15:12:46 Yeah. Pushing paper now. You, I remember walking in the woods. And you, you seemed very at home in the woods.
15:12:51 I remember in yellow jacket season why I decided to. Oh yeah. Right. Okay, any last thoughts?
15:12:59 How many are Kate? No. Okay. I'm glad we have the presentation though.
15:13:04 A lot of it was review for me, so. A lot of you'll get it again in like, yeah, weeks.
15:13:13 All right, well, we'll take it. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Dwayne.
15:13:15 All right, well, we'll take it. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Dwayne.
15:13:17 Sarah, all the DNR staff for being here and the other stakeholders as well. Mallory, good to see you quiet, you know, but you had your chance, I guess.
15:13:22 All right, great. Well, we will move on. So you guys can take a moment. We're gonna jump into an executive session.
15:13:30 I think we're gonna step out of the room so you don't have to rush out but we are going into an executive session with our civil deputy prosecutor, 33 and human resources director
regarding reviewing the performance of a public employee, no discussion of salaries, wages, and other conditions of employment to be generally applied within the county and no final
action on the hiring, setting the salary of an individual employee or class of employees are discharging or
15:13:51 disciplined and employee exemptions outlined in Open Public Meetings Act, RCW, 42, dot 30, that 100, and 10 parentheses one, parentheses, G.
15:13:59 We'll be going in at 3 15 and it'll take us a couple of minutes so we gotta travel right.
15:14:05 And then because we have to come all the back end of week, so I think just a half an hour or this is should be I'm confident we'll be able to get it done in a half an hour today.
15:14:20 Okay.
15:14:19 Alright.
15:14:22 You wanna bet?
15:14:24 I don't want to bet. I don't. I don't want to bet. I just want to be.
15:49:58 All right, we are coming out of our executive session with no action taken. No need to extend. And as we are at the end of our agenda, unless there's something for the good
of the order.
15:50:10 This, 9 18 meeting of the Board of County Commissioners is adjourned. Have a good week, everyone.