Notes from your City Manager — March 29, 2017

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Editor’s note: City of Sequim manager Charlie Bush provides weekly updates to City of Sequim Councilors and the community at large on the city’s website. The updates include various topics that Bush and the City Manager’s Office personnel are involved with week to week. See more weekly updates at wa-sequim.civicplus.com/index.aspx?nid=758. — MD

Week Ending March 3

Emergency Management Meeting

We convened our emergency management partners for our monthly meeting this past week. Progress continues on all fronts, including updating our emergency response plan, outfitting the communications equipment in our emergency operations center, enhancing relationships and partnerships, developing new interlocal agreements between agencies, enhancing business resiliency, pre-positioning equipment/supplies/contracts, enhancing public preparedness and even working with KSQM on pre-recorded disaster messages.

A number of us are planning to travel to a wildfire this summer, along with Fire District 3, to shadow an incident management team for 24-48 hours so that we are better prepared should an incident of large magnitude impact Sequim in the future.

Week Ending March 10

Pickleball Project

We think we’ve worked our way through the pickleball court sizing issues we described to you in last week’s update. Special thanks go to our engineering staff for working through all the court design issues, after their footprint expanded.

Business Resource Meeting

We had a fantastic meeting with state officials, the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce and local businesses on Monday (March 6) morning to talk about resources available at the state level for businesses. It was a great launching point for our Business Retention Expansion Program.

News from Police Department

We solved an auto theft two weeks ago. The suspect was a transient passing through Sequim. He lived out of the county. He found a car with the keys in it and drove to Poulsbo, where he committed a theft and was arrested by Poulsbo Police after a brief struggle. They found the stolen car in the parking lot. We were able to link our case and theirs together because the night the car was stolen, Sequim Officer Tony Bush saw the male at the Transit Center at 1 a.m. and visited with him. The male gave Tony a false name, which happened to be the same fake name he gave to Poulsbo Police. Poulsbo did a great job documenting in their report so we were able to use several details to make the connection. We later interviewed the suspect while he was incarcerated at Kitsap County jail and got a confession.

Transition of Facility Rentals

Facility rentals, as planned through the budget process, have now transitioned from the City Clerk’s Office to our new Administrative Pool. Kathie Ann Sukert, located in the second floor lobby, is our new lead person on rentals.

Spring Clean-Up Update

We talked with Habitat for Humanity on Monday (March 6) and have worked out an arrangement to increase marketing of future Rally in the Alley events. While we’ve never turned anyone away, we’ll now increase the reach of these events. We’ll be making additional dumpsters available at the first one to deal with potential additional tonnage and then will go from there.

We did not hear from enough councilors to place the item on the agenda for Monday night but it could come up under Good of the Order. The next Rally in the Alley will have its epicenter in the downtown area east of Sequim Avenue and North of Washington Street (we did south previously). It is now confirmed for June 2.

We also are working on a calendar for future Rallies in the Alley, with at least two more planned for 2017. Through the program, we are now able to offer not one community-wide clean up per year, but four. With volunteers, we are able to work directly in neighborhoods to maximize the impact of these events within the city limits. Given the design of the events, they are far more cost effective than the prior spring clean-up. With that said, if we want to revisit the Spring Clean-Up, or do it in addition to the four rallies planned for this year, we have enough budget to do it.

Alliance for Innovation Case Study

We’ve been published by the Alliance for Innovation and will be presenting a case study at its upcoming conference! Thanks to David Garlington and Ann Soule for this great piece on the pilot project we performed in 2015 to provide reclaimed water to a local dairy farmer.

Off Dungeness Channel Reservoir Video

A video supporting the Off Dungeness Channel Reservoir has been released and a link is on our website. Here is a link for you if you want to view it: www.washingtonwatertrust.org/off-channel-reservoir-proposal.

Week Ending March 17

Federal Appropriations Requests

We received a notice regarding appropriations requests from US Representative Kilmer nine days ago and had five days to respond. After reviewing options available to us in the request process, we submitted three projects: the off-channel reservoir, the Simdars interchange and building an electrical vehicle charging network on the peninsula.

Week Ending March 24

Sequim Museum &Arts Center Building Permit

The Sequim Museum &Arts Center is close to receiving a building permit for its planned expansion on North Sequim Avenue.

Department of Revenue Audit

We received $53,000 back from the State’s Department of Revenue (DOR), mostly for overpayment of sewer excise taxes.

Charlie Bush is the city manager for the City of Sequim. Reach him at 681-3440 or cbush@sequimwa.gov.