PORT ANGELES – Port Angeles City Manager Nathan West has decided to take on an issue that few municipalities have dared to tackle: a total rewrite of the City’s municipal code.

It’s a Herculean task that will likely be measured in years instead of months. But West, who stopped by the Todd Ortloff Show on Wednesday, says it’s a job that he believes is necessary and overdue.

“Well, there’s a couple of challenges that have been created over time. I mean, one is; it’s a historic piece and how old the municipal code is itself, and it dates pretty far back. But a second one is, you have had so many piecemeal changes over time that, what you find is inconsistencies. Because, maybe when those piecemeal changes were made it wasn’t recognized, the ripple effect that could occur, because there’s other sections of code in different chapters or different titles that reference the same subject. And then you have inconsistencies where you’ve got one chapter saying one thing and you got a direct conflict to it and a following chapter.”

West says there are still some pretty archaic sections in the codebook, such as dance ordinances, that no longer apply to modern life.

He adds that before the City hires a contractor to do the actual rewrite, the process begins with a thorough audit of the entire municipal code, and he’s thinking creatively about how to get it done.

“I am very hopeful that this Spring we’ll have…we’ll be up and running on that project. Really be able to start engaging in the public process. We’re going to do our best to involve some students from both Washington State University and the University of Washington. They’re not going to be writing the code but there’s a lot of ways that they can help with looking at things and maybe doing case studies where we might need to, to inform how that code gets built into the future.”

The City Council this week approved moving forward with a Request For Qualifications to begin the process.

Staff photo: Nathan West live on KONP.