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New commissioners have their work cut out

By Meg Olson

At their first official meeting Point Roberts’ new hospital district commissioners carved up a sizeable pie, each taking on a third of the substantial research and planning needed to get the district running.
Margery Biery volunteered to take on the thorny task of sorting out the district’s existing and potential sources of income so they can come up with a budget to run the Aydon Wellness Clinic. “We can do a lot of background work but it’s going to all come down to finances,” she said at the March 19 meeting. “We’re kind of dead in the water without any money.”

Fellow commissioner Vic Riley wanted a clearer picture of how much tax the district could levy. In approving the district in a February 8 special election voters gave their approval to a new tax of up to 50 cents per thousand dollars of assessed valuation, plus a potential 25 cents more if the combined property taxes for the Point don’t start nudging up against constitutional limits. “I’m wondering how much taxing authority we really have before we hit that ceiling and start competing with the fire district,” Riley said.

County assessor Keith Wilnauer said the greater risk might be nudging out the parks and recreation service area meant to eventually pay for maintenance of a pier, or the parks and recreation district. Looking at the state’s two constitutional property tax provisions, Wilnauer said the adjusted consolidated levy for the Point is more than two dollars away from the cap by one standard, but only 79 cents away from the other. “Above that limit you have to start lopping levy rates,” he said, and it isn’t a matter of who was there first – the state has a ranking system and districts at the bottom can lost part of their levy capacity if districts higher up push levy rates over constitutional caps. “The first to go would be the park service area and/or the parks and recreation district,” Wilnauer said.

While there is room for the hospital district to take the full 75 cents and still be four cents away from the ceiling, Wilnauer said it might be too close for comfort. “You’ve got a low levying fire district and at some point they may want to come up,” he said. “When you start piling rates on you run up against these limits,” he said. “They are meant to keep property taxes from getting out of control.”

Aside from getting their finances in order, hospital district commissioners need to draft bylaws, hire a superintendent, negotiate service contracts and learn from the current clinic committee how to run the operation. Riley took the legal piece of the pie and Barbara Bradstock said she would handle administrative concerns. In the election of officers Biery was chosen to chair the commission.

While Bradstock said she would attend Pioneer and Wellness clinic board meetings to learn more about the current clinic operation, the commissioners also discussed how best to learn about running a public district, perhaps by asking other commissioners from local districts to come to a work session. “I’m particularly interested in lessons learned,” Riley said. Biery figured they were better off on their own. “Sometimes lessons learned turn into ‘ain’t life tough’,” she said. “Since we’re new and we’re unusually bright I say that we plod on ahead and not get caught up in any ‘ain’t life tough in Point Roberts’ business. I think we’re going to pick it up on our own.”

The hospital district commissioners will meet twice a month to try and chew through the work ahead of them, with their next meetings March 28, April 11 and 25. Riley suggested they also look into a website that would both take input from the public and keep them up to date on the work commissioners were doing by posting meeting minutes and even emails sent between commissioners.

“We might be able to make a lot more progress working over email without worrying about violating open meeting laws,” he said. “It would be like a virtual continual open meeting,” though no action would be taken outside of regular meetings. Bradstock worried they would get flooded with email. “We might get inundated by input but that might be a good thing,” Riley said. “We’d get a good cross section of views.”