San Juan County’s Planning Dept. cost over six times more to run in 2025 by outsourcing as compared to early 2024.
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The county’s tax levy attempt last April failed less than a year since the county’s first $1 million contract to outsource land use jobs was signed on July 10, 2024 by county officials. No one in management seems to be crunching numbers on how the outsourcing is going. The contract that replaced five union-represented employee positions living on the island full-time was not subject to competitive bidding and was never debated in public. Third-party contractors cost $1,099 for every workflow step they completed in late 2024 and early 2025, which is over six times the cost of union-represented workers who averaged $180/step even under a 32-hour work week just prior. The county’s outsourcing contract is a serious burden that needs to be addressed before management decides to get rid of more hard-working islanders and throw taxpayer dollars off island.
By comparing the average cost per “workflow step,” which is the best methodology available for tracking productivity in the department, taxpayers can get the most straightforward “apples-to-apples” analysis. Period I calculations are based on the 32-hour work week period and the 2023-2025 Collective Bargaining Agreement for the union workers that were laid off after filing whistleblower complaints in 2024. Period II calculations are based on actual third-party invoicing records collected from July 10, 2024 to March 11, 2025. The table does not show how union workers continued to answer phones and handle in-office appointments, which the third-party was not tasked with at that time. Nor does the table show how management re-tasked middle manager Kyle Dodd from the Health Department and added a new Department of Community Development middle manager position, Darcie Nielsen, to try and make up the difference in lower third-party productivity levels. The arrangement was set up under Mark Tompkins in 2024, less than one week before County Manager Jessica Hudson began her term. The contracting arrangement continues under part-time island resident, Sev Jones, who started as the department head for Community Development mid-2025.
Some history for added context: currently labeled as the Department of Community Development, the department was also known as Community Planning & Development. Famed urban planner William Whyte documented the department’s early days back in 1976. It was initially structured at the behest of several thousand island residents to get a handle on runaway subdivisions and shoreline health, the latter of which was prompted by the Shoreline Management Act of 1971. Under the Growth Management Act of 1990, San Juan County’s Board of County Commissioners voluntarily opted into being a fully planning jurisdiction two years later under Ordinance 221-1992. It took many years of delay and legal dispute until most major portions of the county’s land use development codes were finally adopted in 1998 to look like how they mostly do today. Outside of the firing of at-will department heads every handful of years since the 90’s, there has never been a documented timeliness lawsuit decision that resulted in the firing or disciplinary action of a staff person in the union/bargaining unit.
While the department has never operated 100% popularity in the county, there’s no planning jurisdiction that ever has. Firing and hiring a new department head every few years might be a relevant consideration in San Juan County’s case. Regardless of such challenges, the reckless spending of taxpayer funding to a non-competitive, hidden $1 million+ contract needs to be corrected before the next levy or budget cuts are effectuated.
—By Marc Santos
Marc Santos is a planning and Geographic Information Systems solutions professional with a Master of Science in Environmental Science and Policy. Born to Portuguese immigrant parents in New Jersey, Marc has lived and worked in upstate New York, New Orleans, southern Georgia, western North Carolina and central Florida. Marc has been joyously married to Jessa Madosky, Ph.D., for 14 years and committed to a life on San Juan Island in 2020 supporting their local Grange, agricultural and DIY communities.