Planning scars from the San Juans: Looking back to 2024

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 10, 2026

By Marc Santos

Former SJC Department of Community Development employee

Three months after my office burned down in the Friday Harbor arson fire that took the Windermere offices, the Crow’s Nest and a handful of other businesses back in 2022, I voluntarily left remote GIS work in order to accept my first local government job as a Planner II in San Juan County. I went from drowning in technical support cases to drowning in 10 years of backlogged permit reviews, and I was excited to really make a difference. Contention over land use challenges in the public sphere is a given I picked up on in graduate school, and it did not scare me off the tasks at hand.

Fast forward to December of 2023, and DCD department productivity had nearly doubled. In the absence of official management metrics, workflow steps became the backbone of documenting productivity in the department, and current use planning staff went from completing 1,506 workflow steps in 2022 to completing as many as 2,540 workflow steps in 2023. Under the 32-hour work week model initially proposed by management and put into effect on Oct. 1, 2023, our team union staff averaged 40.3 workflow steps per week.

On July 9, 2024, Mark Tompkins effectuated a “restructure” of DCD that resulted in a union grievance being filed against the County. The work of the unionized staff was replaced by one new middle manager (currently without any employees working under her) and a $1 million contract with the Oregon-based firm, David Evans and Associates.

For the first six months of contracting work, DEA averaged 8 steps per week and averaged a cost of $8,834 per week, or nearly $1,100 per workflow step accomplished in that time by their team. Between November 2024 and November 2025, DEA’s invoices never fell below $40K per month and averaged over $13,600 per week, and the County had been invoiced for a total of $831,466.785.

As of the Council meeting held Dec. 9, 2025, the County Council agreed with the current DCD Department head and part-time islander, Sev Jones, to expand the DEA contract from an additional $350K to $450K going into 2026 in the midst of a budget deficit.

In the end, I am hopeful for a healing outcome out of all this. The absence of that outcome does not need to further delay sharing a perspective that our community’s taxpayers and the community at large may wish to hear. The arbitration’s hearing proceedings have closed with a decision that may come within the next several months. The County is about to tackle another round of budget cuts regardless of the timing of the arbitrator’s decision. Here’s to hoping this next round doesn’t leave any additional scars.

References:

1 REF_Workflow steps and cost averages by time period in DCD For 2022-March 11 2025.xlsx

2 Local 1849 Collective Bargaining Agreement 2023-2025

3 REF_P008187-071824-001-014.pdf

4 REF_Workflow steps and cost averages by time period in DCD For 2022-March 11 2025.xlsx

5 REF_P009529-111925-0001-0045.pdf

6 County Council Agenda Packet, December 9, 2025 (see page 271 line for “Prof Services – Current Planning”).