Jefferson: Merging county, city governments will be a tough sell, commissioner-proponents admit

Published 12:01 am Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Combining county and city governments might make perfect economic sense.

But accomplishing the change will be a difficult sell, said the two Jefferson County commissioners who have suggested the merger idea.

“People will imagine the worst possible motivations,” Commissioner Pat Rodgers, R-Brinnon, said during a commissioners meeting Monday.

“It’s going to be a very difficult political decision, but the payoff is very high.”

Rodgers and fellow Commissioner Dan Titterness, R-Port Townsend, suggested combining city and county governments into a single metropolitan unit during a meeting Thursday.

The two talked Monday about the response they heard about the idea since a report on the consolidation idea appeared in Sunday’s Peninsula Daily News.

Merging operations could save money to both cash-strapped agencies, they said.

City leaders, including City Councilman Kees Kolff, were cool to the idea last Thursday.

Since the newspaper report, there continues to be a great deal of skepticism that the merger could take place, but no one said it was a bad idea, Titterness said.

“Every person I talked to recognized the economic benefits, but many of them were skeptical,” he said.