Clallam County’s lone Republican commissioner praised county government efficiency on Monday and called county services “a pretty good bargain for 200 bucks” in yearly property taxes.
Mike Chapman, R-Port Angeles, said the county has coped with shrinking timber taxes while hiking the property tax just 1 percent for 2005, which will produce only $75,000 in new revenue.
Overall, the property tax produces less than a third of the county’s income, he said
Chapman and his Democratic colleagues, Mike Doherty of Port Angeles and Steve Tharinger of Dungeness, spoke at the Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce weekly luncheon meeting at the Port Angeles CrabHouse Restaurant.
If there were political differences among them, they were hard to find.
Chapman, who attributed the $200-per-year figure to his own tax bill, noted that county courts are fully funded, as is the sheriff’s office, and more deputies actually are on patrol now than in the past.
“This is my fourth budget,” he said of the years he’s been commissioner, “and it’s gone down four years in a row. I guess I’m sort of a lucky charm for people who want to see smaller budgets.”
Lower revenues
Chapman, though, didn’t claim sole responsibility for the fiscal frugality.
Instead, he spoke of how all county employees, including the commissioners, had made do with timber tax revenues that have shrunk from $900,000 in 2001 to $300,000 in 2004.
In the meantime, he said, the county’s return on its investments has dropped from $1.9 million to $600,000.
The commissioners covered a wide range of county issues, including Tharinger’s treatment for lymphatic cancer.
Tharinger thanked the audience for what he called “tremendous support,” and said his doctor had told him his chemotherapy was going well. He is halfway through treatment.
Tharinger addressed a controversy facing the commissioners, the Elwha-Dungeness Watershed Plan that will, as he put it, “establish some sort of a water budget” for Clallam County.
The state, he explained, owns all of Washington’s underground water. Clallam County must pass its own plan to balance water use for humans, fish, and wildlife.
Otherwise, the state Department of Ecology will do it.
“We need a way to figure out how much water we have, how much water do we use, and what’s left for fish and wildlife,” Tharinger said.
