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San Juan County council calls for incident tracking and coordinated outreach after ferry disruptions
Summary
Following recent service outages, the council directed the Ferry Advisory Committee to begin incident tracking and discussed coordinated messaging, legislative fixes (priority loading and FAC RCW changes) and a joint county–town task force to prepare for a meeting with LD 40.
Council members spent a substantial portion of the April 21 meeting discussing recent Washington State Ferries (WSF) service disruptions and potential county responses.
Public commenter Ken Burtness opened the topic during reopened public comment and warned that failing interisland vessels and maintenance problems threaten island connectivity: "The fragility of Washington State Ferries is the fragility of San Juan County," Burtness said, urging earlier advocacy for replacement interisland boats.
Council members described last week’s outages as severe and said one or two missed sailings can cripple island travel despite high aggregate reliability percentages. Members reported difficulty obtaining persistent records from WSF; one council member said a prior public-records request drew threats of FAC removal. In response, the council favored a locally controlled, monthly incident-tracking system: a simple, date-based log maintained by the Ferry Advisory Committee (FAC) that records when disruptions occurred, the vessels involved and a high-level characterization of the outage.
Councilor Fuller suggested incident tracking for a month before launching public messaging, and members discussed crafting a careful public notice with the visitors bureau and chambers: a "plan accordingly" advisory that alerts residents and businesses about likely summer disruptions without a doomsday tone. The council also agreed to pursue legislative work — clarifying priority loading rules, considering statutory changes to FAC authorities, and evaluating past 'Mosquito Fleet' ideas — and to prepare concrete proposals supported by FAC-collected incident data before meeting LD 40 legislative staff.
Council directed staff to coordinate next steps: have the FAC begin incident tracking, draft a measured advisory with the visitors bureau for council review after one month of FAC tracking, and form (with the town) a task force to prepare materials for the LD 40 visit. Council members emphasized two parallel outreach strategies: personalized contacts to legislators and broader documentation to demonstrate the county's systemic ferry impacts.
Representative quotes above come from recorded public comment and council discussion during the meeting. The council did not adopt new statutory language at this session but recorded direction to pursue incident tracking and legislative preparation.
