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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2012
VOL. 18, NO. 8
Corrections Seeding the future officer funded in new budget By Nathan Whalen Staff Reporter
Sheriff Mark Brown has to look for a new corrections officer who would be willing to work for one year. The Board of Island County Commissioners approved a $67 million budget after a public hearing Monday night. That approval included funding for the single position, but Brown said it could be difficult to find someone willing to go through the academy before starting his work at the jail for a position that will last a single year. “I just don’t know how practical it will be,” Brown said in an interview after the public hearing. He had originally submitted a budget request asking funding for three corrections officers and 10 deputies; however, that number got pared down to the one corrections officer. Commissioner Angie Homola said in a Tuesday morning interview, that funding for the corrections officer provides flexibility should the county ask the voters to approve either a sales tax or a property tax initiative sometime in the future. She doesn’t want to allocate dollars from the general fund when another funding source would come available. That money could serve other needs in the county’s general fund. She wouldn’t say whether a sales tax or property tax proposal would be offered or a timeline as to when that would happen. The commissioners approved the Island County budget, along with a 1 percent property tax increase to the county’s current expense levy, roads levy and Conservation Futures Fund. They voted 2 to 1 with Commissioners Homola and Helen Price Johnson supporting the budget and tax increases and Commissioner Kelly Emerson voting against the proposals. Budget director Elaine Marlow described the document as a “status quo” budget. The commissioners did hash out some issues about current funding. The Island County museum had originally asked for $15,000. That money had been originally slashed to $5,000, before the commissioners settled on $8,000. The remaining money will be made up from tourism dollars with the understanding that the Trust Board of Ebey’s Landing will ask for less when 2 percent tourism dollars are awarded, Price Johnson said. “I want to thank you for really trying to hammer this out,” Island County Museum director Rick Castellano said during the meeting. The commissioners also approved the See BUDGET, page 7
Elisabeth Murray photo
Ian Jefferds, general manager of Penn Cove Shellfish, and employee Sam Smith pull up seed lines aboard one of 43 mussel platforms operated by the Jefferds family’s Penn Cove Shellfish.
Penn Cove still battling June loses By Harry Anderson For the Examiner
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an Jefferds steps carefully from the skiff onto one of the mussel farm platforms his family has operated for 37 years. It’s a sunny, picture-postcard morning in August on Penn Cove, with Mount Baker shimmering in the distance and baby seals lazily reclining on platforms nearby. But Jefferds isn’t smiling. He’s worried. He pulls one of the hundreds of platform lines out of the water. By now, those lines are usually crowded with seed mussels that have attached themselves to the lines during the first spawning season in June. But that initial seeding didn’t happen this year. The Deep Sea disaster in mid-May seems to have disturbed the natural process. Jefferds knows that if the “second seed” that normally occurs in late summer doesn’t happen, his business might lose some or all of its 2013 harvest of Penn Cove mussels, worth tens of millions of dollars. He holds the line in his hand; dozens of tiny seed mussels are vis-
Tiny mussels from larvae spawned in open Penn Cove waters are visible on Ian Jefferds’ hand as he inspects a seed line on a Penn Cove Shellfish mussel platform. ible and seem to be attaching themselves to the line. “It looks pretty good,” he says, with a look of relief. “I’m cautiously optimistic.” That optimism paid off. A few days ago
Jefferds said he’s now satisfied that a decent “second seed” has occurred, which assures a good crop of Penn Cove mussels next summer. But he said the loss of the first seed means that next summer’s harvesting will be delayed by three months – meaning that the company must stretch its 2012 crop until then. The company also still has not recovered the loss of some business from large customers who ordered mussels from other suppliers last summer when the local harvest was disrupted. Disrupted harvests this summer and concerns over next year’s crop are understandable, given what Jefferds and his Penn Cove See MUSSELS, page 6