PORT TOWNSEND — The Board of Jefferson County Commissioners heard a presentation of proposed fee and rate changes in addition to proposed changes to the county fee policy at their afternoon session Monday.
The COVID-19 pandemic delayed updates to the parks and recreation department fee schedule, which last occurred in 2014, parks and recreation manager Matt Tyler said. The new 2023-2029 schedule will apply to campgrounds, event shelters, recreational facilities and the Memorial Stadium and HJ Carroll athletic fields.
“The new fees are comparable to those charged by other agencies in the region,” Tyler said.
Tyler said fee increases were tied to escalating use, inflation, maintenance needed to improve and protect these public assets. Campground fees will increase the most.
For example, an overnight stay at Lake Leland may rise from $18 to $25, increasing in $5 increments until 2029. The current average cost of a stay at a comparable campground is $29.
Not all fees will increase, however. And some changes to the fee schedule will result in lower costs to users. For example, there will be an option to rent athletic fields by the game, rather than by the day. This change will particularly affect youth soccer: out of 191 Memorial Field reservations in 2022, 75 were for league play (about 40 percent).
“We looked at who was using our athletic fields, and children got the most uses,” Tyler said.
With the change, per-game costs will decrease and teams won’t feel pressure to fill up an entire day with games to get as much as they can out of their reservation.
Another change will be the ability to rent an event shelter for eight hours, rather than the present system of having to rent two four-hour blocks.
Commissioner Heidi Eisenhower said she appreciated the changes that improved the ability of more people to take advantage of the county’s facilities.
“These are going to make it accessible to more groups,” she said.
Civil deputy prosecuting attorney Barbara Ehrlichman explained the proposed change to the county’s existing method of adopting and amending fee schedules would remedy a system that was cumbersome and lacked transparency. Fee schedules under the existing system were also out of date, she said. Changing to a process by which fee schedules would be adopted by resolution would be faster, easier and more efficient, she said.
A hearing on the new fee schedule and county’s fee policy is planned for June 12.
In the commissioners’ other action and discussion, they:
• Approved a contract for $444,871 with Natural Systems Design for planning and preliminary design work on the Rocky Brook and Powerlines Reach Habitat Restoration Project.
• The county will announce the names of the new Department of Community Development senior management team within the next week. It plans to hold an open house during which the public can meet them soon afterward. Resignations and departures in the DCD have hampered its ability to process permit applications and development reviews.
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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached at paula.hunt@soundpublishing.com.
