Clallam County receives $2M in quarter
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, March 17, 2026
PORT ANGELES — Clallam County received more than $2 million from the state Department of Natural Resources in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The Clallam County commissioners heard a report on the quarter from state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Olympic Region staff during a work session meeting Monday.
The fourth quarter earning ended up at $2.162 million for the time period of Oct. 1 through Dec. 31. Throughout 2025, Clallam County accrued $9.55 million, commissioners were told.
The county’s net value of state forestland timber under contract as of Dec. 31, 2025, was $11.49 million.
A lot of the 2025 fourth-quarter sales ended up closing early so DNR could go through its audit early, commissioners were told.
The Tyee West sale received no bids as a first-time spruce market sale so DNR plans to put that one back up in April.
Other timber sales within the county haven’t gone through the state Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) process yet.
The department is estimating about $6.5 million in timber sales for the county in 2026.
With the exception of the Boulder and Tyee sales, DNR is getting competitive bids with two or three bidders per parcel, commissioners were told.
The reason those two sales didn’t get any bids is because a spruce market and a mill closed down south of Forks, which shifted things around, commissioners were told.
‘How did we do?’
During the work session, commissioners also heard from Chief Financial Officer Mark Lane, who delivered the “How Did We Do” report.
“I think how I would characterize where we ended up 2025 was I think better than expected in a number of different fronts,” Lane said. “I think overall I was pleased with where we ended the year.”
Lane shared highlights from the year in both revenue and expenditures.
Revenue from county operations totaled $55.8 million, which fell short of the budget by just 1.7 percent and grew 13 percent from 2024.
“I will call out that that extraordinarily high 13 percent growth year-over-year was driven principally by the Washington Healthcare Authority Re-entry grant advances that we received in 2025,” Lane said. “When you exclude that, our apples to apples year-over-year revenue growth was actually about 5.7 percent.”
Despite the growth, the county underperformed to its forecast by 4 percent, Lane said. Most of that underperformance had to do with grants.
Another revenue highlight was that the county’s tax revenue came in right on target with the budget at 100 percent.
In regard to sales tax, the last four months of the year were very strong, Lane said, with double-digit sales tax revenue growth in September through December.
“If you recall, we were patiently awaiting the effect to these various road construction projects and the sales tax revenue that was being kicked off from that, and that was coming in very unevenly in terms of the starts and stops of some of these projects,” Lane said. “We do believe we saw the effect of that and really led to us having a sales tax revenue number that was actually pretty close to being in line with what our overall budget was.”
Reimbursement delays from the federal government, especially during the government shutdown, affected Clallam County and especially the ReCompete program, Lane said.
Expenditures for the year came in at $50.69 million, which was 9.6 percent below the county’s budget.
Overall expenses grew by just 0.7 percent, which Lane called pretty remarkable because of the budgetary challenges the county faced last year.
The county underspent in many areas, including in capital outlays, which saw an underspend of $1.25 million or 65 percent below the budget, Lane said.
“This really is primarily related to the Washington Healthcare Authority grant advances that we received last year,” Lane said. “We had expected to spend, I believe, in excess of two and a quarter to $2.5 million in infrastructure and IT capital outlays relating to those monies with the formation of the clinical services department within the Sheriff’s Office.”
The county’s general fund ended up generating $5.15 million of operating surplus where revenues exceeded expenses, Lane said.
“By that amount, this represented approximately $6 million increase from cash flow from the 2024 operating deficit that we saw,” he said. “But again, it’s very important that we keep in mind that this very large number is largely due to the effect of the HCA Re-entry grant advances that we received.”
The county finance department predicted the county would end just shy of $16 million in ending reserves, but for 2025, the county ended at $16.88 million, about $889,000 more than expected.
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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.
