BREAKING: Governor rejects San Juan County funding proposal for expanded walk-on ferry services during WSF inter-island outages

ORIGINAL: Wednesday, August 21, 2024 @ 12:50 p.m.

Asked and answered.
And the answer is no.

CNL2 has learned that a representative for Governor Jay Inslee have told leaders of San Juan County government that the State will not agree to the proposal made by the County for special supplemental passenger ferry and small barge services when inter-island sailings are canceled.

San Juan County Council Chair Jane Fuller received the news late last week that the Governor had decided he would not meet the County’s request. The rejection of the County’s proposal was conveyed verbally by a staffer for the Governor, over a phone call, not in writing.

The Governor has, however, scheduled a brief meeting in San Juan County in coming days, which will include leaders of San Juan County and Town of Friday Harbor governments. The meeting will be brief, 15 to 30 minutes in length, and will not be open to the public or press.

Earlier in August, the San Juan County Council made an appeal to the Governor for funds to stand up supplemental services for passengers and critical delivery trucks during times when WSF’s inter-island service is canceled. This proposal, crafted with input from WSF Ferry Advisory Committee Chair Justin Paulsen (also a co-leader of Community Water Taxi, as well as a candidate for San Juan County Council) was the tangible request after Fuller went public on Monday, July 22 with a stunning proposal to ask the Governor to declare the San Juans’ service to be in a state of emergency. The Council voted unanimously with Fuller on the move.

Accompanying the written proposal to the Governor was a County-prepared fact sheet summarizing many negative impacts caused by canceled sailings experienced by multiple departments of San Juan County government. The fact sheet included a top-line summary of canceled WSF sailings in the San Juans for the first 3-1/2 weeks in July:

• In just 3-1/2 weeks in July (July 1 through 24), WSF canceled 171 sailings.
• Eighty percent of those cancelations were on the inter-island route.

For details of that fact sheet, see CNL2’s August 14 article here.

San Juan County government is preparing a public statement, which is expected to release key features of the proposal made to the Governor. This will be first time the public has had access to that proposal.