By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – Clallam County officials are not waiting around to see if the practice field adjacent to the Volunteer baseball diamonds in Port Angeles is going to work out as the location for the Joint Public Safety Facility. Undersheriff Ron Cameron says the County is going to pursue working out a lease deal with Port of Port Angeles for the previously proposed property at 19th and O Streets near the airport.
“What we’re going to do is, we’re going to proceed looking at that property in the Port while the City continues to work with Volunteer Field. It has been and still is our goal, Pepper, to try to marry up the Emergency Operations Center with the Communication Center, but we’ll just see how this this moves on, and go from there.”
From the day the City announced their intention to look seriously at the practice field property, residents have objected to the idea of taking away a highly-valued asset for young athletes and their parents. City officials say if they are going to spend millions building a facility, they’d prefer to own the property it’s sitting on over spending taxpayer funds on an expensive lease.
The County and City have gone as far as to agree to split the $90,000 cost of getting geotechnical testing and an environmental assessment. That agreement is still in place. The Port property would have to have a similar assessment before they could build there.
But Cameron says the controversy over the playfield is, to some degree, playing into their decision to pursue a deal with the Port. There’s also the question of whether or not the Bureau of Land Management will issue the City a variance on the playfield. That property was given to the City by the BLM with the stipulation that it only be used for recreational purposes. The City has applied for a variance, but there’s no guarantee they’ll get it.
And then there’s the issue of the approximately $1.5 million the County has received from the State for the project.
“Representative Tharinger has been very helpful, and has sent some money our way that is kind of sitting there, but we can’t we can’t use much of it until we decide where we’re going to put the building. And that money has been sitting there since last year, and we continue to try to find the place to put this.”
That money has a “use-it-or-lose-it” deadline, and County Commissioner Randy Johnson told us they have asked for an extension in order to hold onto it. In the meantime, it appears the County is distancing themselves from the practice field controversy and covering their bases.
“The City has some plans that they need to look at and discuss and, like I say, I can’t speak for the City, but we’ll just have to see how this goes. And we need an alternative. You always got to have a backup, and that’s kind of what we’re looking at right now.”