Sports
Trojans steam rolled by FH juggernaut; Cooper-West tosses 2-hit shutout PAGE 9
Island Scene
Quilts, Quarters, Quirky Tales; history blossoms in month of May PAGE 11
Guest Column
Threats, hidden agendas, closed meetings... what in the world is the OPALCO Board up to? PAGE 7
Journal
The 75¢ Wednesday, April 23, 2014 Vol. 107 Issue 17
of the San Juan Islands
County boss nets 7 percent first year pay raise
www.sanjuanjournal.com
Fate of orcas? Depends on fish By Libby Baldwin Special to the Journal
Journal staff report
The first-year performance of county Manager Mike Thomas has evidently been top-notch. So much so that the San Juan County Council on March 10 unanimously approved giving the first-year c o u n t y manager a 7 percent pay raise, Mike Thomas three percent of which is retroactive to Jan. 1. The former Enumclaw city administrator was hired a year ago in May and began his tenure at the top of the county administrative department in late June. The new compensation package totals $134,820 and will become effective June 24, the first anniversary of Thomas’ first day on the job. He was hired a year ago at a salary of $120,000, plus 5 percent in deferred compensation. Thomas joined the county following a three-year tenure as Enumclaw’s top administrator. He had previously been director of the city’s Department of Community and Economic Development, for five years. A graduate of University of Washington, he has a master’s degree in public administration from Seattle University, and is See RAISE, Page 3
Contributed photo
Two members of the Southern Resident killer whales ply the waters off the west side of San Juan Island, in Haro Strait, near False Bay.
Town, county strike deal at Sutton Road
See FISH, Page 4 From left; Bob Jarman, Mike Thomas, Carrie Lacher, Duncan Wilson commemorate a ‘New Era’ of cooperation at Sutton Road. Journal photo / Steve Wehrly
By Steve Wehrly Journal reporter
After years of failure to work together and sometimes even hostility, San Juan County and the Town of Friday Harbor buried the hatchet over the lease of the Sutton Road garbage and recycling station owned by the town. The deal was sealed with “new era of cooperation” T-shirts handed to town and county officials by county Community Development and Planning Director Sam
Saving the whales doesn’t allow for time off. With whale-watching season just around the corner and salmon recovery efforts heating up around the state, summer vacation is the furthest thing from the minds of a small group of concerned wildlife stewards. The Salish Sea Association of Marine Naturalists was formed in Friday Harbor in 2007. The group met this past November with one question on its mind – “Where were the whales this summer?” To answer that question, retired engineer Jane Cogan spent months on a report that combined Southern Resident orca (J, K, and L pods) sightings data with Chinook salmon data from the Albion test fishery in the Fraser River area, which she presented at the SSAMN meeting. It demonstrates a decline of Southern Resident orcas in the Salish Sea over the past decade, and shows a plausible connection with a rapid drop in Fraser River Chinook salmon. Chinook account for 95 percent of the orcas’ diet, and the lack of the fish is one factor cited as a contributor to their dangerously low current population. Others include high amounts
Gibboney at a April 17 joint meeting of the two councils. Negotiations among the town, the county and Lautenbach Recyling have been ongoing for nearly two years after a towncounty selection committee used a “proposal approach” under state law, rather than the usual bidding process, to choose Lautenbach to make a $400,000 investment in equipment and construction costs
to turn the Sutton Road drop box into a full-scale commercial tipping floor to unload the town’s garbage trucks. The long-running saga of what to do with San Juan County garbage moved forward at a county council meeting two days earlier when Gibboney, Public Works Director Frank Mulcahy and the county’s private attorney, James See ROAD, Page 5
2011 Special Award; Second Place: General Excellence from the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association
‘Egg-static’ Check out sanjuanjournal.com for photos, slideshow the Easter egg hunt at Jackson’s Beach.