||| FROM THE OFFICE OF GOVERNOR JAY INSLEE |||
During a meeting with San Juan Island leaders, residents and businesses today, Gov. Jay Inslee announced he is issuing $1.5 million in emergency and short-term funding to restore critical ferry transportation networks throughout the San Juan Islands. Due to crewing challenges, the Interisland route has been the least reliable in the system, causing serious life and safety issues for San Juan Islands’ residents and service providers.
The most recent data shows that Washington State Ferries only completed 81% of its scheduled inter-island sailings with an average on-time performance of 41%. Cancellations are primarily due to crew shortages.
WSF routinely completes 95% or more of its scheduled sailings throughout the rest of its system.
“We have been making steady progress on restoring service throughout our ferry system, but that progress has yet to reach these islands,” Inslee said. “The unique challenges facing the Interisland route are simply untenable and create real risks for residents. Medical emergencies don’t wait until Monday. Parents need to know their children won’t be stranded on another island after school. This funding can serve as a bridge until legislators come up with longer-term funding.”
The Department of Commerce’s Emergency Rapid Response program is providing $1 million. The funding will allow the county to contract with local water taxi providers, charter businesses and barge services when the interisland ferry is out of service.
The governor also authorized $500,000 from the Governor’s Emergency Fund. WSF will use the funding to increase winter season weekend Interisland service. This will improve workforce availability and overall service levels by making it more possible for crew for the extra watches to live in the San Juan Islands year-round.
Among those who spoke about the urgency for new funding at Tuesday’s meeting were the principal of Friday Harbor High School, sanitation and public works employees, a resident who travels weekly for cancer treatment, and a local hospice nurse. Steve Nevey, assistant secretary for Washington State Ferries Division, noted WSF’s appreciation for the ideas community members brought forth.
“We appreciate the community’s engagement and willingness to help brainstorm solutions, and of course we appreciate the governor’s willingness to turn these ideas into actions,” Nevey said. “WSF is ready to put these new tools to work so we can alleviate the dire service challenges on this route.”
The funding is available immediately and WSF anticipates the funding will support the supplemental services through next spring. Continuation will depend on legislators supporting new funding during the 2025 legislative session.
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Yeah! Governor Inslee finally steps up!
It’s too bad that some of that $1.5 million cannot go to the overworked, underpaid Orcas ferry terminal workers, one of whom is a man in his eighties now in St Joe’s hospital. They have minimal health benefits and no retirement despite working there for decades, which is why some of them continue working there well into old age. How about it, Jay?
The four day a week county work force will now have the responsibility for arranging contract ferry services of different vessels depending on who needs the short notice service when the inter island ferry is delayed?
Really?
Meanwhile the County is short employees … they are already causing mild chaos with an Auditor decision to no longer perform payroll services for San Juan County smaller public agencies.
Frustrating is WSF does not explain anything beyond their usual “crew shortage” alert. Every WSF sailing has a full crew (or in some cases more than one crew) assigned to every sailing. There are occasions when a scheduled crew member is legitimately delayed getting to the vessel and a WSF dispatcher or the union labor hall cannot provide a relief crew member, but is it just a coincidence the crew shortage issues increase at the same time when contract negotiations for higher pay and more benefits are being negotiated, and the crew unions (which can’t strike by state law) are publicly expressing their demand for substantial pay increases?
Will see how this plays out, but the big picture solution is to have consistently reliable WSF service. Then, San Juan County residents can decide if they want to pay taxes for additional water transportation services.
It would be more useful if the funds were directed towards added crew members and the other arrangements that WSF made for the county fair. Better to keep the Tillikum in service on its regular schedule rather than throw money at a scatter-shot approach to ad hoc service fill-ins.
I have a better idea. Repeal every Tim Eyman initiative ever passed by the idiotic voters who couldn’t imagine how – for starters – $30 tabs for all could bankrupt the state – starting with I-696 (go back to some form of graduated tabs fees by ‘value’ of the car) – then get rid of the charging by weight – which punished people with older, steel, low value cars and had us paying $80 for tabs while the fancy car owners paid $30 for their pieces of plastic. And on an on it goes; that guy is still bankrupting the state with our having to PAY to have everything pass through the voters – thus hamstringing the state legislature to get NOTHING done at taxpayers’ expense.
Then jail Tim Eyman for embezzling over $200K for just ONE of his campaigns; who knows how much else the guy has embezzled? Return all that money to Wa state transportation and other state programs that his initiatives have hurt or destroyed, retroactively. Transportation issues solved immediately.
To be fair I would like to see Inslee move many of his illegal migrants from Seattle and Tacoma to San Juan, Orcas and even Lopez Island. Even Shaw could use a couple of them. Of course they could have color coordinated tarps in Friday Harbor. And perhaps Rosario could put a few up in nice suites. Point being the 1,500,000 dollars belongs to all of us in this state.