Letter to Editor | New terminal agent to receive $725,000 annual fee

||| FROM MICHAEL RIORDAN |||

The next Orcas Island terminal agent, Madrona Pacific Landing Company, LLC, will be receiving an annual fee of $725,000 for the fiscal year beginning July 1, according to the contract just signed last week with Washington State Ferries. That’s $148,431 — or over 25 percent — more than what WSF has been paying the existing terminal agent Russells at Orcas, Inc., during the current fiscal year ending June 30.

Properly managed and overseen by WSF, such a large increase could go a long way toward alleviating the great disparity in wages and benefits between Orcas Island terminal workers and their comparable mainland counterparts — an important subject I raised earlier this year. This is an encouraging development. Second-year ticket sellers in Anacortes, for example, now earn about $10 per hour more than island staffers doing equivalent work.

This increase would eliminate most of what I have dubbed a “financial vise” on the Orcas Island terminal agent, which also led to staffing shortages during peak hours as well as poor upkeep of terminal facilities. This relentless crunch occurred because of a clause in the agents’ contract limiting its annual fee increases to just 50 percent of the growth in the national consumer price index — as compared to using the full CPI growth before 2013. Between 2013 and 2025, the fee consequently dropped from about $676,000 to $576,569 in 2025 dollars, and Orcas terminal workers suffered most of the adverse consequences.

 “The terminal agents on the various San Juan Islands are vital to the successful operations of WSF,” says County Commissioner Justin Paulsen. “Without their efforts, our transportation system falls apart. I hope that their employee compensation and work conditions would at least be consistent with those across the entire regional system.”

Thus I sincerely hope that the principals of Madrona Pacific Landing Company — James and Gina Anderson — take these concerns seriously and devote much of the fee increase toward ameliorating the working conditions and staff compensation at Orcas Landing.