County Commissioners celebrate 2025 accomplishments

​Despite the challenges of inflation and funding shortfalls during the year just passed, Clallam County’s Democratic Commissioners highlighted their most significant “wins” from last year in their own words, below:

District 3 County Commissioner Mike French:

​For Clallam County, 2025 was “Infrastructure Year”! Over $6 million was invested by our Opportunity Fund, supporting basic infrastructure throughout the County, like water and sewer systems, and supporting economic development in the Port Angeles Marine Trades Center and the Forks Industrial Park. 

Additionally, Clallam County and the City of Port Angeles partnered on a new Joint Public Safety Facility to co-locate our regional 911 center and our Emergency Management staff. In 2025, design of the facility was completed and a contractor selected; construction will be completed in 2026.  

Another form of basic infrastructure is affordable housing – and Clallam County is investing millions of dollars to ensure our residents have access to safe, quality housing. Our first project, led by Peninsula Behavioral Health, is a 36-unit apartment building near downtown Port Angeles that is under construction right now, scheduled to be open by summer of 2026.

Clallam County also made significant investments in its workforce, negotiating several agreements with our public sector unions so that we have fairly paid professional staff, while also ensuring that we can attract talent to our area to fill open positions. We also completed an external recruitment for our Human Resources Director and promoted from within to fill our Information Technology (IT) Director position. 

Out in the community, Clallam County continues to coordinate the regional Recompete effort, which is investing over $35 million into our local workforce to help create good jobs and connect our residents to those good jobs, while supporting them along their workforce development journey.

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District 1 County Commissioner Mark Ozias: 

​2025 was a busy year for the Clallam County Commissioners! We continually strive to be more efficient and more effective. Last year, one of our major efforts was to create a "Combined Clinical Services" health care team to provide health care services in both the adult jail and the juvenile detention facility rather than having two separate and independent teams. Driving this change was our new ability to bill Medicaid for some of the health care services we provide to those in our custody, which we expect to offset about $800,000 worth of cost that otherwise would be borne by local taxpayers. The benefits will go far beyond the financial, as those exiting our custody will be much better positioned to continue their care, already connected to community partners who can help them improve their health and reduce recidivism.
 
We also made significant progress on the Joint Public Safety Facility project, which, when complete, will create a safe new home for our county emergency operations center as well as a modern facility for Pencom, our 911 service. After years of negotiations between the City of Port Angeles and Clallam County, an exhaustive process to find appropriate land, and a complex design process, we have finally awarded bids both for project management and for construction. Once contracts are completed with the winning bidders, we hope to break ground as soon as weather permits. When complete, this facility will provide a significant step forward in our county's ability to prepare for and manage any emergency that comes our way.
 
A final example among many - it is hard to choose where to focus - is our continued support for the county's Harm Reduction effort. The primary goal of our Harm Reduction Health Center is to reduce overdose deaths, reduce overdose incidents, and promote public health. We want to provide a welcoming environment where those in need can build trusting relationships with community providers who can help them meet their needs, be [those needs] housing or health care. After seeing a 33% reduction in overdose deaths from 2023 to 2024, I am happy to report that our county saw an additional reduction of 35% in our overdose death rate from 2024 to 2025. Even one death is too many, but it is heartening to see the progress our community is making.

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