— from San Juan County Communications —

San Juan County is exploring options to centralize and streamline government operations in an efficient and community-centered Civic Campus located near the courthouse in Friday Harbor. As County services have grown over the past decades, staff and operations have become spread across many buildings around Friday Harbor. Many of these facilities are costly to maintain, poorly suited to their current use, and difficult to renovate to support modern operations. A new Civic Campus would bring departments together, reduce operating costs, provide better service to County residents, and include community space to support public gatherings and events.

The current project is to develop a plan for the new Civic Campus. The plan will detail how County departments and functions are to be incorporated into a new single facility, and include community space to support public gathering and programming. The planning process will include producing two design concepts on two potential building sites and then further developing one preferred alternative on the selected site.

As a member of our community, your input on this survey will help us make sure that these design ideas reflect community priorities in addition to County departmental needs. Individual survey responses will be kept confidential.

We are asking community members to provide input through a public survey by March 23.

Survey linkhttps://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CivicCampus

The survey link will be available until March 23, 2018. Thank you very much for your involvement in this important opportunity to shape your County government services in Friday Harbor.

Additional Information: The County has developed a Civic Campus Plan web page that will be updated with new information as the project progresses. In addition, a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page is also available. The links for both are noted below:

Civic Campus Plan web pagehttps://www.sanjuanco.com/1388/Civic-Campus-Plan

Frequently Asked Questions: https://www.sanjuanco.com/1389/Civic-Campus-Plan-FAQ

**If you are reading theOrcasonian for free, thank your fellow islanders. If you would like to support theOrcasonian CLICK HERE to set your modestly-priced, voluntary subscription. Otherwise, no worries; we’re happy to share with you.**