Commissioners ready budgets, offer comment on hatchery program

As Wahkiakum County officials prepare for the final phase of their budget preparation for 2011, they realize all could change next spring.

The state legislature will have to deal with another significant revenue shortfall, and that could significantly change the county's revenue outlook.

"We're up in the air till we see what the legislature does," said Commissioner Blair Brady, who spent the past week at the meeting of the Washington Association of Counties and had budget discussions with state officials.

"We're in a holding pattern until we hear something different," said Treasurer Paula Holloway on Tuesday.

At the treasurer's finance committee meeting, Holloway said the county's 2010 revenues should be very close to what officials budgeted a year ago.

Commissioners have finished preparing proposed budgets for 2011, and copies of the document should be available in the auditor's office.

The Current Expense Fund budget, which finances most court house services, could increase from $4.09 million in 2010 to $4.23 million in 2011. Commissioners Brady and Lisa Marsyla said they'll shift $200,000 of the County Road Levy to the Current Expense Fund, which has a separate levy. This is the second year for such a shift, but it's a practice that isn't sustainable for the good of the road department, Brady said.

In other business this week:

--Commissioners have joined with colleagues in Pacific, Clatsop and Columbia counties to say a draft federal plan for managing lower Columbia River fish hatcheries is "flawed and "inadequate."

The comments came in a letter written last week to the National Marine Fisheries Service regarding how the federally funded hatcheries will be managed.

The agency's draft environmental statement spells out five potential operating scenarios for the hatcheries funded with money under the Mitchell Act, the law that provides federal dollars for conservation of Columbia River basin salmon and steelhead.

The counties said the document is divisive and assumes that fish production will not increase. It does not acknowledge basin-by-basin efforts to restore fish runs, county officials said, that they claim they were not consulted in the process. They requested that it be withdrawn.

"The history of working together and the values we share for future abundance are too important to leave to this flawed and inadequate document," the letter said.

For 10 years, funding has ranged from $11 million to $16 million for annual hatchery operation funding of 62 programs. They have produced more than 71 million fish each year. Congress has not appropriated the money to operate the hatcheries next year.

The five operating and funding scenarios included in the draft consider multiple options but none include increasing fish production.

One scenario discontinues Mitchell Act funding and others cut back the number of fish caught by up to nearly 50 percent. Four options close hatcheries and cut production.

--Commissioners also committed to spend $3,000 each on the Cathlamet and Johnson Park libraries.

The board modified an interlocal agreement already approved by the Cathlamet Town Council for $3,000 to go to the town library.

Commissioner Marsyla asked that the board change language saying the money could be spent on "books, periodicals, shelving and office supplies" to "books, periodicals, shelving and library specific equipment." The new language will have to be approved by the town council.

Brady said the money for the appropriation will come from tax money collected for improvements at the Julia Butler Hansen Memorial Swimming Pool.

(Portions of Associated Press article about hatcheries were included in this article).