Wahkiakum considers $1 ticket increase after state reduces ferry funds

As a result, fares may be slightly raised, and officials expect a domino effect on the cash-strapped county.

The cuts are not expected to impact operations of the ferry itself — which has been in operation since June 1925, and still attracts tourists and allows locals to make it to mill jobs across the river.

“I can’t repeat what I said,” recounted county commissioner Lee Tischer of the moment he found out. “But basically you got to be kidding me — of all times.”

Compounding the impacts of the roughly 6% funding decrease, the county also recently found out the state won’t cover any of the cost of the ferry’s recent emergency repairs of roughly $300,000, which some commissioners were hoping to be reimbursed by Olympia.

The roughly 12-minute ferry ride between Cathlamet and Westport, Oregon costs $6 for passenger cars, $4 for motorcycles, $3 for bikes and $2 for pedestrians. The county is considering raising fares by a dollar, Tischer said.

The economic blows to Wahkiakum County come just after the ferry’s 100th anniversary. They also come amid broader economic peril for Washington’s third least populous county as costs grow, revenues shrink and the county grapples with the loss of its once-robust commercial fishing and logging industries.

In recent years, Olympia has covered either 85% of the cost of the ferry’s operations or paid $63,583 each month, whichever was less, said Chuck Beyer, who runs the county’s public works department. Now, however, those payouts are capped at a maximum of $57,500.

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. But in April, he said he would review his then-forthcoming budget “line by line“ to trim the state’s budget amid a $16 billion budget shortfall.

County officials expressed frustration that the state would cut a sum equivalent to a rounding error in its $78 billion dollar budget when it’ll have such dramatic impacts in Wahkiakum.

“We’re having mid-year budget talks with every department for the next couple weeks to see what we can do to get us through the year,” said Tischer.

And with costs going up nearly across the board for the county at the same time its timber revenue continues to fall, he said the funding shortfall will force tough decisions.

“Right now, looking at the numbers, unfortunately, each department may have to let one employee go,” he said of the county’s roughly 15 departments, which employ 90-100 people in total.

Government is the county’s biggest employer and a lifeline for preventing talented residents from leaving. Tischer said the situation reminds him of when he was on the school board in 2008 as the great recession hammered the county.

Beyer and Tischer said the cuts will reduce what the county’s public works department can do given its total budget each year is only about $8.7 million.

Beyer said the cuts “may put off some projects that the public works had planned, some road improvement projects — our roads are, like many counties, deteriorating fast.”