PORT ANGELES — Clallam County Treasurer Selinda Barkhuis has said she will settle her dispute with Clallam County commissioners over $1.3 million in Opportunity Fund grants to the city and Port of Port Angeles if the board will place the grants in the 2016 budget.
The proposal from Special Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Alvarez, representing Barkhuis, was contained in a two-page letter to commissioners titled “offer of settlement” dated Tuesday and obtained by the Peninsula Daily News.
Alvarez said Thursday the offer precedes a possible Superior Court challenge if commissioners do not accept the plan.
The commissioners’ acceptance of the offer “prevents litigation that is discussed” in the letter, Alvarez said.
Commissioner Mike Chapman said Wednesday he favors the proposal.
He and Commissioners Jim McEntire and Bill Peach delayed a decision on the grants Tuesday after two lengthy public hearings that commissioners and Prosecuting Attorney Mark Nichols have said is not required by law but were conducted in light of Barkhuis’ objections.
Commissioners plan to discuss the grants again — along with, possibly, Barkhuis’ offer — at a Monday work session before considering action Tuesday.
“I did not take it as an ultimatum,” Chapman said. “I took it as an elected official through her legal counsel offering a way forward so the city and port can get funded for their projects.
“Why go to court?
“Why not go through the budget process?
“She will not release the warrants, so at that point, someone has to take her to court to release the warrants.”
McEntire said the commissioners’ discussion of Barkhuis’ proposal Monday may be in executive session, which is closed to the public, as a matter of legal strategy.
Alvarez made the offer subject to court rules of evidence.
“That seals my lips,” McEntire said of commenting on her proposal.
Peach also would not comment on the offer.
“I can say I’m following the direction of our prosecuting attorney [Nichols],” he added.
In his Aug. 3 letter, Alvarez starts out by taking issue with the commissioners’ reducing the county’s ending fund balance by $1.3 million for the two grants and another $1.7 million for “undesignated projects.”
The $3 million total was originally targeted for the Carlsborg sewer project.
In his second sentence, he says the scope of his representation of Barkhuis “extends all the way to possible litigation in Superior Court between the county commission(ers) and my client.”
Saying litigation leaves no winners, “in that spirit, the treasurer would like to propose a different way to resolve this intramural dispute,” Alvarez wrote.
Under Barkhuis’ proposal, “the grants to the city of Port Angeles and the Port of Port Angeles would be approved and enacted in the 2016 budget,” allowing the merits of those grants to be exposed to the budget process and to ensure transparency.
“If one of those grants needs to be approved in 2015 in order to be matching funds for federal money, then I would propose executing a letter from the county commission(ers) stating their intent to place that grant expenditure in their 2016 budget to cure the problem,” Alvarez writes.
“This letter would basically be a letter of support that the grants are a good idea,” Alvarez said Thursday.
“It doesn’t guarantee anything.
“They’ve already adopted it twice. It seems like they would be behind these grants.”
Barkhuis, a licensed attorney, has been haggling with the commissioners and other county officials over what she has said is a lack of transparency in the board’s award of Opportunity Fund infrastructure grants of $1 million to the port and $285,952 to the city.
Barkhuis has said, as a treasurer whose duty is to uphold the law, that the process is subject to hearings as “debatable budget emergencies.”
She has said the awards must be sealed with contracts signed by Nichols, who along with the state Auditor’s Office has said the commissioners acted properly.
The state Attorney General’s Office has refused Barkhuis’ request to examine the issue absent a finding from the state Auditor’s Office.
The port grant would help complete a building for the planned Composite Recycling Technology Center as part of a $4 million project, while the city grant would pay for improvements included in an ongoing waterfront improvement project that includes creation of a park off Railroad Avenue and is slated for completion this fall.
Officials from the port and city said this week that delaying the grant disbursements until 2016 would create hardships for those projects.
Karen Goschen, port deputy executive director-finance director, said the $1 million Opportunity Fund grant was intended to be used to help match a $2 million federal grant awarded for 2015 and that a delay could force port officials to tap an $8.5 million capital reserve fund in 2016 that already is dedicated to other projects.
“We haven’t studied that to understand how can the county make a 100 percent commitment for budget expenditures for the following year when the budget expenditures have to go through a public hearing,” Goschen said.
Nathan West, city community and economic development director, said landscaping improvements for the waterfront project would be delayed if the grant does not come through this year and that the contractor could be forced to demobilize and then have to return in 2016 to complete the job.
“For the most part, we really needed to know yesterday as to whether or not this funding was going to come in,” West said.
Barkhuis rejected the warrants for the sales-tax-funded grant awards to the port and the city May 11.
“This money could have been paid months ago,” Barkhuis said Thursday.
“Why are [the commissioners] so opposed to doing what everyone else does as a matter of routine?
“There is this money being spent that hasn’t seen the proper public process and the creation of proper public documents.
“For me to release those funds, that’s what there has to be.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.