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| June 7, 2012 Shelton Mason County Journal |  |
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lanned Parenthood
II~'J of ~he Great Northwest
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By NATALIE JOHNSON
natalie@masoncounty.corn
After years of speculating about
the future of the local fairgrounds, the
Port of Shelton voted Tuesday to take
action to find a solution.
"I want to save the fairgrounds,"
commission Chair Dick Taylor said.
"I want the community to have a fair-
grounds. Where it is, I don't know."
The Federal Aviation Administra-
tion (FAA) has mandated that the port
revert the land that the fairgrounds
now sits on to airport use by the end of
2013. The FAA has stated that land is
designated for airport use, and is too
close to an active runway to support
use as a fairground.
On Tuesday, Commissioner Jay
Hupp introduced a draft fairgrounds
"Future Use Plan" that he wrote.
Hupp argues that the port should
continue holding the fair at the
grounds regardless of the FAA rul-
ing and guarantee leases of the fair-
grounds until 2017.
While Hupp said he believed the
FAA would not stop the port from
continuing to use the land, Wallitner
disagreed.
"I think 2013 is in cement," he said.
"We'd have to end up in court fighting
the FAA."
Port Executive Director John Dob-
son said the FAA has threatened to
cut off grants and other funding if the
port doesn't stop obey the mandate by
the end of 2013.
"The only hammer the FAA has is
to threaten to take away funds," Hupp
said.
However, Dobson said that could be
a big hammer.
In the best-case scenario, he said,
that could mean a few hundred thou-
sand dollars a year. However, sever-
al years ago, the FAA gave the port
about $6 million to repave its main
runway.
"You don't know how strongly the
FAA feels about this. I do," Dobson
said to Hupp.
Meanwhile, Dobson has been work-
ing on a completely different solution
to the same problem.
He has suggested moving the fair
to a similarly sized piece of port prop-
erty farther from the runway on Air-
port Way.
"I think that's viable," he said.
Dobson said the removal of the
timber on the land could pay for in-
frastructure for a fairgrounds facility.
The commission had a spirited
discussion during the meeting about
what role the port really has in main-
taining the facility.
"Everyone overlooks the fact that
mrpo
this is not a port problem," Commis-
sioner Tom Wallitner said. "This is a
county problem.!'
- Mason County stopped running the
fair in 2009. In 2010 the Mason Area
Fair Board was formed and along with
Northwest Event Organizers contin-
ues to run the fair. In the beginning
of 2012, Northwest Event Organizers
signed a lease for the fairgrounds end-
ing in late 2013.
This summer, the Mason Area Fair
and several other festivals will come
to the site, including weekly "Sawdust
Days," or weekend festivals filled with
music, food, and community events
designed to raise money for the fair.
"I don't want to be in the fair busi-
ness," Wallitner said. "I don't think
the taxpayers of the port should sup-
port the fair for the whole county."
Many of the buildings at the fair-
grounds property were never built to
code, and others have simply fallen
into a state of disrepair.
Dobson said the port would have to
pay an estimated $1.8 million to fix all
of the infrastructure problems at the
fairgrounds.
"This community put a lot of blood,
sweat and tears into what we've got
now," Hupp said. "Junk as it is, it's
the best we've got."
However, Hupp said the port is re-
sponsible, because it invited Mason
County to move the fair to the port as
its permanent location 50 years ago.
"This community does not trust
this port," Hupp said. "I think the
port needs to do whatever it can to
heal that."
The port commission voted to dis-
tribute Hupp's draft plan and accept
comments from the community.
Mayor
admits to
mer's
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being 'rude' to
public speaker
By KEVIN SPRADLIN
ke~,in@fft(~8oncountv.com
A Busey Road resident
has taken issue with how
She!ton Mayor Gary Cronce
stopped a speaker from
talking during the public
comment period of a recent
city meeting.
Tom Davis addressed
Cronce and his fellow com-
missioners on Monday dur-
ing the public comment pe-
riod.
Davis, Cronce noted, was
limited to three minutes
and provided his name,
address and phone num-
ber. It was the same pro-
cess Cronce recounts at the
beginning of each public
meeting.
On May 29, Father Joe
Mikel of St. David of Wales
talked about the efforts
of a local consortium of
churches and civic agencies
hoping to help and address
the homeless issue. Mikel
appeared to be nearing the
end of his informal presen-
tation when Cronce told
him his time was up. Mikel
returned to his seat.
Davis attended that
meeting and said Monday
he wanted to hear the rest
of what Mikel had to say.
Davis said that people
who come to address the
elected commissioners
aren't professional speak-
ers and should be given
more latitude during their
time at the podium.
Cronce's approach to
Mike] -- stopping him in
mid-sentence -- was "rude"
and "inappropriate," Davis
said.
Cronce agreed with Da-
vis.
"I think I was rude,"
Cronce said. "I really didn't
want to cut him off."
But Cronce cited
the city's effort at time
maanagement that limits
speakers to three minutes
each.
He said a precedent
could be set at a long public
meeting at which there are
many speakers if one per-
son gets longer than three
minutes, all of them might
request additional time.
No other commissioner
spoke on the issue. Cronce
suggested that perhaps the
city could "revisit" the pol-
icy.
Page A-2 - Shelton-Mason County Journa -Thursday, June 7, 2012
Port weighs option of, cutting trees
By NATALIE JOHNSON
na~alie@~nca~or~ounty.com
This spring, the Port of Shelton re-
vamped its Forest Management Plan to
prepare for a discussion on harvesting
trees at its Johns Prairie site.
Tuesday, Port engineering technician
Brandon Palmer led a continued discus-
sion on the pros and cons of harvesting
the trees, which sit on approximately a
quarter of the Johns Prairie site's 400
acres.
That 100-acre area has a tree density
of between 75 and 85 trees per acre. The
optimum density for timber production is
110 trees per acre, Palmer said.
Commissioner Jay Hupp was the first
to express concern over harvesting the
trees.
"In my mind, the stand is not nearly
at a level of maturity that would warrant
cutting it," he said.
The port commission considered sev-
eral reasons to harvest, or not to harvest
the trees.
The area has been thinned in the past
to mitigate laminated root rot, a problem
that affects about 20 percent of the trees
on the property.
"It's impossible to eliminate. You can't
really kill it," Palmer said.
The only way to eradicate the root rot
in an area is to clear out affected stands
of trees and plant resistant trees such as
cedar and certain types of pine.
Scotchbroom is also prevalent in the
area and would need to be sprayed with
pesticides if the trees are harvested.
The port also considered problems of
unauthorized usage. The port has found
evidence of people riding off road vehicles,
hunting, cutting down and stealing trees
and dumping garbage, some of it hazard-
ous, on the land in question, Palmer said.
While controlling the root rot and ef-
fectively managing its timber are both
~mportant to the port, the main consider-
ation is for how much, and to whom, can
the port sell the timber.
Because the timber is publicly owned,
it can only be sold domestically. The price
of timber tends to be lower in domestic
rather than foreign markets, Palmer said.
The trees have an average diameter
of about 16 inches, and are suitable for
many applications, including power
poles, he said.
Trees like those at the property, Palm-
er said, could be worth about $575 per
1,000 board feet.
However, the port does not have a con-
crete estimate of how much the timber is
worth. The commission briefly discussed
asking for bids on the timber, but de-
clined to take action at this time.
"¢¢e don't know at this point what the
value of that inventory is," commission
Chair Dick Taylor said.
If the port harvested the trees, it could
use the money for several things, port Ex-
ecutive Director John Dobson said.
Those include fortifying the port's re-
serve fund or paying to connect to and
extend the City of Shelton's Johns Prairie
water line to port businesses.
"It could be used on a half-dozen other
projects," Dobson said.
The port commission expects to vote
• on the timber sale at its next meeting on
June 19.
Chamber questions city's code enforcement
Hanging flower baskets not
the simplest of tasks
By KEVIN SPRADLIN
kevin@masoncoun~y.com
The Shelton Mason County Cham-
ber of Commerce is crying foul over a
city inspector's effort to enforce rules
and regulations regarding hanging
flower baskets.
On May 25, four Hood Canal Com-
munications bucket trucks were dis-
patched to hang approximately 75
hanging flower baskets from tele-
phone polls around downtown Shelton
in an effort to beautify the city before
the 68th annual Forest Festival.
But the annual process didn't go
unquestioned. Drew MacEwen, presi-
dent of the chamber's board of trust-
ees, wrote in a letter to the city com-
missioners that as baskets were being
placed, "a city inspector tried to stop
the project on the basis of there not
being a permit."
The letter was read into the re-
cord during the commissioners' public
meeting on Monday.
"It is my understanding that this
inspector has been employed by the
city for a number of years and there-
fore the flower baskets should not
have been a new concept to the indi-
vidual," MacEwen, who did not attend
the meeting, wrote.
"The chamber has a special variance
for baskets and Christmas lights,"
MacEwen wrote. "However, the fact
that any permit is needed speaks vol-
umes to the general business climate
in the city."
MacEwen's letters went on to ask
the commissioners what other "road-
blocks for growth" were m place.
Commissioner Dawn Pannell, how-
ever, rejected MacEwen's claim that it
had anything to do with a poor busi-
ness climate. She said such a letter
from MacEwen "is doing more harm to
businesses in Shelton than anything
we could ever do."
Pannell said the issue stemmed
from a "breakdown in communication"
between the chamber and the city.
She said there is no cost to the cham-
ber for a permit to place the hanging
baskets but the city "just needed to
know when" it would happen.
At issue, said City Engineer Mi-
chael J. Michael, was that one of the
bucket trucks improperly blocked a
See Baskets on page A-3