Commissioners approve variety of agreements

Wahkiakum County's Board of Commissioners began a busy week of budget workshops with a bit of their usual business on Tuesday.

Sheriff Mark Howie said that a power outage on Monday was caused by a backhoe, not the rumored attempted hack he had heard about.

The commission approved an amendment to an existing interlocal cooperative agreement with Pacific County in which Wahkiakum will continue to provide engineering services until February 14, 2021.

They approved an amendment to an interlocal agreement between the Lower Columbia Fish Recovery Board and Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Skamania, and Wahkiakum Counties, to extend the duration of the agreement through December 31, 2025.

They also approved a memorandum of agreement to provide $15,000 in funding for the WSU Extension Office for 2021, which is the county’s portion of Director Carrie Backman’s salary.

Commissioner Mike Backman abstained.

Wahkiakum Health and Human Services Director Chris Bischoff said that they had hired a new person for their environmental specialist position, and while she receives training, they would like to work with a consultant to take advantage of “technical experience that is local for our county, and can help us through a lot of issues.”

The commissioners approved a professional services agreement for up to $30,000 with the consultant, Urban Soils LLC, for implementation and enforcement of environmental health programs.

Bischoff believed they would only need a portion of that money, and said that WHHS had funding available “through a couple different sources in the health department.”

Commissioners also approved an amendment to a contract between WHHS and the Washington State Department of Commerce which changed the deadline of when the money in an Emergency Solutions Grant needed to be spent. The grant was approved in July and provides resources to support additional homeless assistance and homeless prevention activities to mitigate the impacts of covid-19.

After commissioner’s reports, they recessed before returning to a series of budget workshops with different departments throughout the day.