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THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014
VOL. 19, NO. 25
Council paves way on police options By Megan Hansen Editor
While the Town of Coupeville has yet to decide if it will contract with Island County Sheriff for law enforcement services or maintain a marshal’s office, town council continues to lay the groundwork for both options. Coupeville Town Council unanimously approved last week a Conard collective bargaining agreement with the Coupeville Deputy Marshal’s Association for 2014-2017 which includes a decrease of one position and a 20 percent pay increase for remaining positions. Mayor Nancy Conard said the Brown agreement reflects one of the options the town has been looking at to make law enforcement wages more competitive in an attempt to decrease turnover in the department. “We started looking (at options) because we were in a vulnerable position when we lost staff,” she said. That agreement will remain in effect unless council goes with the other option it is looking at: contracting for services with the county. During the council’s regular Jan. 14 meeting, Conard shared an overview of a draft contract the town is working on with the sheriff’s office. If the town decides to contract with the sheriff’s office, the marshal’s office would be disbanded and the county would assume administrative authority over Coupeville’s police coverage. A Coupeville “marshal” would be appointed to oversee coverage in the town and an additional deputy would be
See MARSHAL, page 16
Nathan Whalen photo
Chad Michael, deputy chief for Central Whidbey Fire and Rescue, talks with Bret Holmes and Ralph Young about a fire that destroyed a home Sunday evening on Driftwood Way in the Ledgewood area.
Fire destroys condemned home Access concerns near Ledgwood landslide raised By Nathan Whalen Staff Reporter
A Driftwood Way home that had been abandoned since a massive landslide made national headlines in early 2013 burned to the ground Sunday night. The home, a double-wide manufactured home, had been red-tagged by Island County since the landslide, meaning that it was unsafe to enter. The house had been pushed toward the shoreline during the landslide and part of it teetered over the edge of a mound. The landslide destroyed a section of Driftwood Way and left firefighters with several challenges to overcome before they could extinguish the blaze. With a portion of the road gone, the only
access to the neighborhood is provided by a small, barely one-lane wide road. Because of the road’s width and a hairpin turn, the large fire engines weren’t able to maneuver down to the neighborhood. Rather, three smaller brush trucks responded to the Sunday evening conflagration, said Chad Michael, deputy chief for Central Whidbey Fire and Rescue. The fire was reported by Ralph Young, who lives in a house atop of the bluff overlooking the manufactured home. He said he was just getting ready for bed after celebrating the Seahawks victory when he spotted the fire. “It was quite an inferno,” Young said. Michael said the fire had engulfed the home by the time firefighters arrived, approximately 10 minutes after getting the report. Firefighters accessed the fire from a neigh-
boring house. They had to string fire hose approximately 500 feet down a ravine created by last year’s landslide and up a hill where the abandoned house was resting. A brush apparatus holds 250 gallons of water. While one was used to fight the blaze, the other two were used to ferry water to the site, Michael said. In all, 20 firefighters from Central Whidbey Fire and Rescue, North Whidbey Fire and Rescue, Naval Air Station Whidbey and South Whidbey Fire/EMS assisted in dousing the blaze. The blaze was extinguished around 1:50 a.m. Monday and a small number of
See FIRE, page 16