PORT TOWNSEND — Following eight years of public service as Jefferson County commissioner, Kate Dean called her last meeting to order on Dec. 23.
Dean has been hired as deputy director of policy by the office of Dave Upthegrove, the newly elected state Commissioner of Public Lands. She will commute part-time to Olympia, with her first day Jan. 16.
Dean said she’s unsure of the details of what her daily work will look like, but she expects they will pull on her experience on the Board of County Commissioners.
In the new year, Dean took some time to reflect on her years on the Board of County Commissioners. When she started in 2017, the learning curve was steep.
“It was definitely daunting the first year,” she said.
Even as an informed and engaged citizen, you can’t imagine all of the work that goes into keeping a community going, Dean said.
“What I didn’t anticipate was how broad the role of county government is,” she said. “The role of a commissioner includes everything from public health clinics, to hauling solid waste, to building bike trails, to running a jail and courts, to collecting property taxes and issuing passports. There’s no way you could know the breadth and depths of all county functions until you’re in that job and have oversights over all of those functions.”
Dean said she was asked to run for office multiple times before she did, but she didn’t see herself as qualified. People interested in seeing her run pointed out that she had lived in all three county districts, had been a business owner in every county district, had worked alongside the government in her work with the North Olympic Development Council (NODC), and she had a master’s degree in public administration.
“They say women have to be asked like five times before they actually run for office because they often think of themselves as unqualified,” Dean said. “That was true of me too.”
“The sewer’s probably been the most tangible success that we’ve seen in the last eight years,” Dean said. “I really hope to be there to help flush the first toilet later this year.”
Port Hadlock was designated as an Urban Growth Area (UGA) in the 1990s following the passing of the state Growth Management Act. Public water was established, but the task of establishing a sewer was eschewed, considered out of reach in terms of funding.
The sewer project took a lot of footwork, 20 trips a year to Olympia, and four annual trips to Washington, D.C., Dean said, talking endlessly about the priority.
Before she was a commissioner, Dean was aware of the sewer project, as it was on a comprehensive development list the NODC maintained.
“The EDA, Economic Development Agency, the federal agency who oversees that list, would come to me and say, ‘Why is the sewer still on this list? The sewer’s been on here for 30 years. Why has there been no progress?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know. It seems really important.”
On her first day with the board of commissioners, as the commissioners were dividing the different boards they would sit on, Dean noticed the sewer wasn’t on the list.
She started working with the public works department to take funding on, she said. Dean said the project has raised about $37 million to date, from various sources, but largely from federal dollars.
“It was a matter of public works doing enough planning to have a shovel-ready project so that, when that money became available, we were in a really good position to get it,” Dean said.
Activating the UGA also will have positive effects on affordable housing, an issue that gets into conflict with environmentalism, Dean said.
Jefferson County faces a paradox: Many residents are strong environmentalists but want flexibility in development, Dean said
“Those two things are not often very compatible,” she said.
Dean’s work on a number of statewide boards has drilled the point in. Particularly tribes have made the point, she said.
“A lot of development is having really detrimental effects on particularly salmon populations,” Dean said.
If environmental protection priorities are to persist alongside housing priorities, development needs to occur in density that can only take place in cities and Urban Growth Areas, she said.
“We really have to stop developing in our rural areas, even though that’s a cheaper place to do it,” Dean said. “And we do generally permit it because governments are beholden to private property rights.”
The values often are at odds, she said.
“This is really what motivated me to kickstart the Port Hadlock sewer was needing another Urban Growth Area, where development could go, that’s more affordable than Port Townsend.”
Port Hadlock will be able to host density in development once it’s on a sewer. The best example of the sewer’s ability to enable density is a property purchased by Habitat for Humanity, Dean said.
“Before the sewer, they have developing rights for two housing units,” she said. “After the sewer goes in, they will have development rights for 220 housing units. That’s the kind of difference the sewer makes. Port Hadlock being more affordable than Port Townsend, it just provides another venue for dense affordable housing. ”
Dean’s previous work included writing federal grants, which she credits for some of the funding success the county has found of late.
Getting through the COVID-19 pandemic with very few serious illnesses and deaths is another big win, Dean noted.
“Also, our economy has been strong,” Dean said. “Which is not true of a lot of towns and counties. We really took advantage of the federal funding that became available with the pandemic.”
The childcare center at the Port Townsend High School campus is coming to fruition through successes in capturing federal money, Dean said.
“I was our point person for that,” Dean said. “I’m very pleased to see more childcare being built. I raised kids here and had a hard time finding childcare to be a working single parent.”
The new childcare center, set to break ground this year, will be operated by the YMCA, but Jefferson County did most of the fundraising, Dean said.
Dean admitted she made some mistakes during her time in office. Notably, when the work of planning a public pool began, relying on a study from a previous pool planning effort, Dean assumed the pool should be located in Port Townsend.
After time and resources were devoted to planning the pool, she heard loudly from the public that it wasn’t what they wanted.
Dean saw a lot of conflict in her time on board and learned to see it as an important part of the work. She described working on a shooting range ordinance. There was a proposal for a new range at Tarboo Lake.
“I remember being shaky and sweaty and struggling with all of the strong emotions in disagreement and feeling like we were never going to come to any solution. It was just going to be one side or the other would win,” she said.
When you really listen to people in the public process, compromise does arise, Dean said. In the case of the ordinance, new shooting ranges were allowed, but they needed to be indoors.
Dean said she learned how to self-regulate and allow for strong feelings and opinions without becoming reactionary. Now she finds herself excited when she enters into discourse where people might be passionate. It shows they care, she said.
Dean said she sees Jefferson County as a rare rural county where things can be done differently. While many rural communities are seeing large corporate interests extracting value, Jefferson County has and can continue to capture the value that it produces, she said.
“Kate Dean showed me how to lead with moral integrity while representing a diverse constituency,” county commissioner Greg Brotherton said. “She modeled grace under fire and determination. She is compassionate while understanding the nuance behind complex issues.”
Brotherton said he looks up to Dean as mentor, in spite of being the older of the two.
Dean is leaving big shoes to fill, county commissioner Heidi Eisenhour said.
“She was our most senior commissioner and was our lead on state and federal legislative matters,” Eisenhour said. “She will be missed for these reasons and as our colleague in the Jefferson County family. She was great to work with and always addressed answering questions with depth and insight.”
Dean will continue to live in Port Townsend with her husband, Rico Quirindongo.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
