Thursday, April 11, 4:30 p.m., Airport Conference Room

— from Katie Wilkins, Orcas Issues reporter —

The Port of Orcas will be holding its regular meeting this Thursday, April 11th at 4:30 p.m. in the airport conference room.

You can read the published meeting agenda HERE.

The agenda includes several items of note, including an update on DOWL’s progress with the Airport Master Plan. DOWL is the contractor hired by the port to guide the Airport Master Plan from draft format through final submission to the FAA, including providing opportunities for public input along the way.

After this week’s update, there is a meeting tentatively scheduled for next Thursday, April 18 to make a final review of the Airport Layout Plan (essentially equivalent to the Airport Master Plan) and to give DOWL permission to submit it to the FAA.

This Thursday, port commissioners also plan to evaluate and then appoint a replacement commissioner to fill the last remaining vacant seat on the board. There are currently three candidates under consideration: Greg Ayers, Pierrette Guimond, and a third individual yet to be announced. This will be the third new commissioner since the beginning of the year. It means that there will be four seats up for election this November: three seats belonging to replacement commissioners, and Greg Sawyer’s seat; his current term expires in December 2019.

Another noteworthy item on Thursday’s agenda is a discussion of staffing structure and the hiring process for a permanent airport manager. At present, Dwight Guss is employed until August 31st, 2019 as interim manager at 25 hours per week, and Tony Simpson as “consultant/trainer/planner” for approximately 25-30 hours per week. As of the end of February 2019, Simpson had about 200 hours of vacation and compensatory time to use up, and the port intends to have him work through that remaining time as a port employee. After that, the port could create a new personal services contract with Simpson, allowing more flexibility to terminate the agreement when a permanent airport manager
is found. A recurring topic of port discussion has been whether to expand staffing to three employees: a maintenance person and two managers with different duties. This may come up in Thursday’s meeting as well.

If you are interested in learning about Airport Master Plan updates, or who the new port commissioner will be, all regular port meetings are open to the public, and this week’s meeting will include public access time.

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