PORT ANGELES — Clallam County is expected to renew a $26,000 agreement with the Clallam Conservation District.
The district will use the money to provide renewable resource conservation planning and implementation, county Budget Director Debi Cook told commissioners in a work session Monday.
The county board is expected to approve the renewal next Tuesday.
“This $26,000 is the same allocation that the commissioners have made for a number of years,” Board Chairman Mark Ozias said.
“It is not reflective, in my opinion, of the importance of work that they do and its value in the community.”
Under the terms of the proposed agreement, the Port Angeles-based Clallam Conservation District will submit quarterly reports on or before April 15, July 15, Oct. 15 and next Jan. 15.
Commissioners Ozias and Bill Peach suggested a full-fledged PowerPoint presentation from the conservation district about its projects and activities.
“I’m really interested in what are they doing,” Peach said.
“I’m a little sensitive to the fact that we’ve had them constant with regard to revenue.”
County Administrator Jim Jones said the county has made the same general fund allocation to the conservation district for nearly 15 years.
Over time, the district had requested that the county impose a “conservation future” fee that would be assessed on the 58,000 parcels in the county.
That fee would be about 50 cents per parcel, Jones said.
“They’ve come back to us a couple times and asked us to impose that — we can do that without a vote of the people — and the board has said no,” Jones said.
“So we just have this contract every year. They do good and valuable work that we could be charging fees for.”
Ozias said he would be willing to consider the conservation future fee.
“As we’re taking a look at all of our potential revenue streams and all that, it makes great sense to me to invite them to come and help us understand, if we were to go with a per-parcel fee instead of just making a general fund allocation what that would mean for them,” Ozias said.
“I’m not inclined to hold this allocation up because I don’t want to impact the work that they’re doing right now, but I do think that this would be a really valuable discussion for us to have.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
