Island County Updates
Some changes are in store with the Board of Commissioners to bring more citizen engagement to local government .
Our regular meeting date is moving in February from Monday to Tuesday. This will improve both public access and internal efficiencies. I have taken the Chair this year and increased public comments, extending each speaker's time at the podium to 3 minutes. This will promote more input from constituents.
Coming into 2015 with a new Commissioner on our Board and local elections for many jurisdictions, this is a good time for the County to host public official trainings so all governing bodies in our area can best handle the public's business. Parliamentary procedure and process improvement will be my first two topics of focus.
Finally, I am working with the Washington State Association of Counties advocating for legislative change so Commissioner meetings can occasionally be held outside of Coupeville. The Board is often asked to bring meetings to Camano and South Whidbey so more people can attend and participate, but state law prohibits us in most cases. Contrast that with San Juan County who has this flexibility, as they are organized under a charter. This underscores this as an equity issue for our communities. Please join me in asking our legislators to support HB 1013 so we can bring local government closer to the community.
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Conservation Futures Funds
The Board is working on improving this program and have identified much common ground. Last week we agreed to streamline the approval process by combining the review committees, restructuring the scoring criteria and bringing the program more in line with existing County efforts. We also acknowledged the need to define an appearance of fairness policy for all citizen committee members. There was agreement that there would not be a set regional allocation, but there would be an open application cycle this year. However, the timeline has not yet been established. Finally the Board will meet this Wednesday to have a discussion about our vision or priorities for these funds. We have received a significant number of emails on this topic already. In my view, the extensive public outreach done during other County planning efforts provides a solid basis for our community's priorities, such as preservation of natural resource lands, protecting agricultural view corridors, creating more trails and improving public beach access. I think we should use the publically vetted priorities of existing County planning efforts to direct the CFF program. Do you agree? Share your thoughts with us.
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