PORT ANGELES — Clallam County officials have saved two popular volunteer-based programs from the budget ax by shuffling support staff and reducing taxpayer support.
Streamkeepers, a well-established water quality monitoring program, and Master Gardeners, an educational program that feeds the needy and teaches county residents how to grow their own food, will not be cut as once proposed, County Administrator Jim Jones said.
Both programs have well more than 100 active members.
Streamkeepers program coordinator Ed Chadd will continue to oversee the program from a new halftime position in the Clallam County Road Department.
“So it’s going out of the general fund, and we’re hoping to hold together all the volunteers,” Jones told commissioners in a work session Monday.
Chadd was formally in the Department of Community Development.
Department Director Sheila Roark Miller cut Streamkeepers in her cost-cutting proposal.
All told, the county cut $2.7 million out of its general fund to balance next year’s budget.
Fifteen people were laid off, and the remaining staffers will take 16 unpaid furlough days in 2012.
County officials have struggled to maintain mandated core services, such as law and justice, while preserving valued nonmandated programs like Streamkeepers and Master Gardeners.
Streamkeepers
Streamkeepers has about 150 trained volunteers who collect and analyze water samples from rivers and streams all over the county.
The information they collect is used by the county, cities and state agencies such as the Department of Ecology.
“In addition to continuing to do the work they’re doing, it was decided that there was a specific value to the road department for our stormwater runoff to make sure that we continue to have that data available showing the degradation, or lack thereof, of all the streams in the county,” Jones said.
“Our roads, as much as anything, are the big impervious surface that heavy rainwaters go down.
“We have our ditches catch that [runoff] into catch basins. So we really felt that the value of Streamkeepers directly to the county to keep that data was more than made up for by the movement of half of the administrative cost into that department.”
Scores of Streamkeepers volunteers have testified to commissioners in recent weeks and months opposing the proposed cut.
Among their concerns was all the scientific data that have been collected but not yet entered into a common database.
Chadd will coordinate the effort to preserve this data with the help of volunteers.
Master Gardeners
As for Master Gardeners, Jones said the program will continue to operate under a “very similar situation.”
The original budget proposal was to eliminate county-funded Washington State University Extension support staff for Master Gardeners.
“The road department determined that they could enter into a memorandum of agreement with WSU Extension for essentially the cost of that position, a little over $11,000, to fund the Master Gardener coordinator position at a little bit of a reduced level,” Jones said.
“There’s a little bit of increased revenue from the Master Gardeners recruitment volunteers, and those people could provide expertise under contract to the road department to identify noxious weeds.”
The road department’s original budget proposal showed a $56,000 cost to spray noxious weeds along county roads to comply with state Department of Ecology.
“Instead of doing a spraying program on all of our roads, the Master Gardener volunteers will go out and specifically identify and mark where the noxious weeds are,” Jones said.
“And they’ll be individually eradicated by the Chain Gang, which the road department also pays for.
“So those costs and expenditures have come out of the general fund, yet we’re able to maintain the programs and significantly benefit the county.”
Camp David Jr.
The 2012 county budget still shows a six-month closure for Camp David Jr.
The popular children’s camp at Lake Crescent will be open from May to September, with two weeks of prep time in April and two weeks of winterizing in October.
The camp has traditionally been open for 10 months.
Commissioner Mike Chapman said some citizens have expressed an interest in making the camp available on the shoulder season at a market rate.
“I’m willing to look at it,” he said.
An earlier idea to allow a concessionaire to operate the camp was scratched in October.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.