Elimination of Stewardship director position, other moves seen by some as concerning pattern
Updated Sept. 25, 2026
As the San Juan County council continues to discuss the 2027 budget, the elimination of the Environmental Stewardship Department director remains the hot-button issue.
Former county employees consider the direction reminiscent of others in recent years which appeared to de-prioritize environmental stewardship. This summer, an arbitration decision sided with a former environmental planner over claims that the county violated a bargaining agreement by laying her off.
Budget woes
In the wake of a failed property tax measure in April and projections of a $3.7 million budget deficit — 12% of the county’s operating revenue — for 2027, the county council spent this summer going department-by-department looking for cuts. Discussions will continue on Sept. 22, and the first public hearing is scheduled for Oct. 5.
According to Councilmember Justin Paulsen, the tough decisions made this year will not solve the long-term problem. Paulsen anticipates an equal challenge in the next two years to balance the budget.
“They turned ‘The Lord of the Rings’ into a trilogy; we’re going to turn the budget into one,” he said at a Sept. 8 meeting.
Many members of the public have been outspoken about the decision to eliminate the Environmental Stewardship director position.
“It’s of course an age-old debate and should be an outdated way of thinking governmentally that whenever a budget crisis hits, the first thing that’s on the chopping block is the environment,” former County Councilmember Cindy Wolf said in an interview.
Environmental Stewardship Director Kendra Smith took three months of medical leave beginning in March due to an autoimmune disease, she said. Before returning, County Manager Jessica Hudson presented the budget on her behalf, recommending the department restructuring.
“I was actually quite pleased with my progress and came back to work on (July 1), ready to get back to work,” Smith said, “and then I watched some video before returning and realized that they had done the restructuring, so that was that.”
When Smith’s medical leave was up, she was immediately put on administrative leave, she said. According to Smith, she could have presented the budget in the second week of July, per the normal schedule and as asked by Councilmember Jane Fuller. Instead, she remained on leave per Hudson’s directive and was not permitted to participate.
“In the instance of the Department of Environmental Stewardship, the director is out on leave right now and has been for a bit of time, and so both myself and our deputy county manager have been directly overseeing that department since April,” Hudson said. “What we tried to do was find a path forward that maintained all the services, all the programs, all the grants, all the frontline staff and all the boards and committees and commissions. The only thing that we have offered up as part of this is the elimination of the director position and then shifting the functional units to other areas of the county and the reduction of $124,000 in current expense funding to the department, but everything else is maintained.”
Smith said had she been there, she would have had different recommendations for the council.
The Environmental Stewardship Department’s capital projects and the director position are funded through utilities, Smith said, and do not impact the general fund deficit.
The department restructuring will save money that comes from the general environmental stewardship budget that pays for training, office supplies and rentals, Hudson said.
Smith’s recommendation would have been to combine the department with the San Juan County Land Bank, she said, because both organizations share conservation and stewardship ethic and work through that process with the community.
Hudson said it was a tough decision to make, as the current expense levy lid lift on the April ballot failed. The council had directed all departments to find 10% in cuts, and while some — such as the Health and Community Services Department — were able to cut more, many were not able to identify 10%.
County officials have repeatedly said that the only change is that of the director, and none of the department’s services would be diminished. Smith said she hopes this is true.
“Leadership does matter, and presence matters,” she said. “I don’t necessarily think that this is the most professional or supportive approach, but it is an approach. Maybe the sense was that because I had been out for a period of three months, that it would be easier to not have me come back. But I personally think I could have offered some support at a really critical time because I know those budgets inside and out.”
Environmental stewardship: A priority?
“We have a moral responsibility to (care for the environment) as the people who happen to be in the beating heart of the Salish Sea,” Wolf said. “We are arguably the most important ecology in the Puget Sound. There are people who would argue with you, but 413 miles of nearshore habitat, that’s kelp, that’s eelgrass, that’s all the small species, all of the forage fish species. Everything comes here to eat. It’s one of the reasons why we are so rich or have been in the past, so rich with marine mammals. And we’re seeing such a steep decline, because we don’t have a healthy system here anymore, and we have to be working to help our system find a healthy, productive balance.”
Smith said the community skepticism toward this change may be what she interprets as a history of silencing environmental leadership in San Juan County.
In July 2024, county council agreed in an executive session to support Administration Director Mark Tompkin’s proposal to restructure the Department of Community Development, laying off five planners including environmental planner Brooke Sullivan.
A June 2026 arbitration decision provided to Salish Current states that the decision was made behind closed doors with no paper trail and without notice to the employees’ union.
Sullivan asserted that the layoffs were retaliation for whistleblower complaints about the county operating “outside of common practices related to environmental reviews and laws,” and that there had been “immense pressure on the planning department from elected officials, management and the building association… for staff to approve permits without merit or proper environmental review.”
Arbiter Barbara Diamond wrote that the county violated Article 24 of the union Washington State Council of County and City Employees’ collective bargaining agreement, which states that training, acting and temporary service employees should be laid off before senior employees and that an employee scheduled for layoff may be offered a voluntary reduction.
Sullivan “shall be reinstated to her former position with full back pay and benefits and any other economic relief needed to make her whole,” Diamond wrote.
Despite this, Sullivan said in an interview that the “county still hasn’t made me whole on anything.” [Ed.: Washington State Council of County and City Employees and San Juan County is currently finalizing Sullivan’s remedy]
Sullivan said she feels many of these decisions are made for political and personal reasons, rather than what is best for the department. Pulling environmental stewardship from the Department of Community Development had lasting impacts, she said. One example is reduced oversight on aquifer recharge areas with state mandated regulation.
“It’s a big problem, and the story about environmental stewardship is kind of the latest in the string of attempts to annihilate what we think of… as a national environmental treasure,” she said.
The Environmental Stewardship Department was first proposed by Wolf. Originally part of Public Works in 2016, it became its own department in 2021.
Wolf was heavily involved with shoreline restoration efforts on Jackson Beach, an important forage fish habitat. In May of this year, a committee was tasked with making this effort coexist with a barge landing.
“There’s a huge number of sand lances that live in the strait right there, really close to that beach, and they need a place to lay their eggs in order to make more sand lances,” Wolf said. “That’s really important because they are a lot of what the salmon eat.”
While a soft barge landing already existed, the neighborhood opposed the increased traffic that would come from an enhanced barge landing.
Councilmember Kari McVeigh appointed the committee after public outcry over the council’s cancellation of a shoreline restoration grant and the Public Works Department’s installation of rock armoring to prevent beach erosion. Restoration advocates fear the rock armoring could hurt the shoreline by causing beach scouring and blocking the natural replenishment of sand.
Ultimately, the council cancelled the shoreline restoration that was on the Capital Improvement Plan.
“And then for this council to say to people, we promise that every function of the Environmental Stewardship Department will be maintained, even if the Environmental Stewardship Department is dismantled. How do we know that? And who’s gonna monitor that?” Wolf asked.
According to Hudson, the primary goal is to balance the budget and to do it in a way that is least impactful to community members.
“While we might not have the level of experience in environmental stewardship, all of us are seasoned. managers, leaders and local government professionals who are well-versed in budgeting, human resources, grant applications and monitoring, and many of the other functional areas that are necessary for this,” she said. “We trust our staff who are our subject matter experts and whose positions are all maintained for all of next year.”
The department’s wins
When Smith reflects on the successes of the Environmental Stewardship Department during her time as director, she points to derelict vessel removal, shoreline restoration, fish-passable culverts, Plastic Free Salish Sea and the outreach work to protect Southern Resident Killer Whales. The department has helped inform the community on impacts of sea level rise and related infrastructure improvements. The department adopted the Climate Action Plan into the Comprehensive Plan and developed tribal framework for cultural considerations through county work.
“There’s a lot of great work that’s been done over the years, and I’ve had an excellent team of people working on that and I really hope that they will be able to be supported going forward,” Smith said.
The department raised funds for a sea level rise vulnerability assessment that identified 13 most vulnerable areas of the county, which impacts building and septic permits and how nearshore wells are treated.
“None of that really was anything that could have been accomplished without the Environmental Stewardship Department, in my opinion,” Wolf said, “because there was a way to house and fund people who had enough expertise to be able to administer and work with all of that.”
Wolf said the restructuring to other departments may not be as effective, as other departments have other priorities.
“Parks is parks. I believe in parks, and they’re great at what they do, and that has nothing to do with forage fish habitat restoration in areas with mixed uses that don’t have any parks at all,” she said.
Hudson said these decisions have not been easy.
“Nobody wants to make these types of reductions,” she said. “We tried to balance the budget in other ways. You either find more money or you spend less money. And we tried to find more money and our community said, ‘no, thank you.’ They were pretty clear in that decision, and so now our job is to find ways to spend less money. I hope that people understand that none of this is meant to devalue the work of the Environmental Stewardship Department. In fact, we have done our darnedest to try and balance and sustain as much as possible.”
Smith will be missed, Sullivan said.
“She did really great work,” she said. “She built a program of people who really appreciate her, of people who had brains and have the knowledge and should be respected for what they’re offering that community.”
—By Sam Fletcher