Skagit County approves first-quarter 2026 budget amendments including behavioral-health and public-health changes

The Skagit County Board of Commissioners on March 30 approved a package of first-quarter amendments to the county’s 2026 budget that add targeted grant funding and adjust several special-revenue accounts.

Trisha Logue, who presented the amendments at a public hearing, said the package includes a $11,066 administrative-office-of-the-court grant that will convert a district-court position from part time to full time and a roughly $36,000 request to cover salaries and benefits in superior court for a judicial officer covering a medical leave. "Today is our 1st quarterly budget amendment for 2026," Logue said as she outlined the requested changes.

Logue also outlined changes to special-revenue funds. Public Health will add a $10,000 revenue line and a $4,800 expense to pay registration and supplies for a certified food protection manager training program; staffing costs for that program were already included in the adopted budget. She said the county is reducing another public-health line by about $341,000, mostly in salaries, after two positions were eliminated in favor of contractor services.

The county is increasing mental-health and developmental-disability expenses by about $1.5 million to reflect programs and contractors to be funded with the 1/10th behavioral-health sales tax adopted after the 2026 budget was finalized. Logue said the nutrition program and other items were not yet allocated at the time the budget was adopted in December 2025.

Planning and Development Services will add a $770,000 Department of Commerce grant for clean-energy siting and planning; roughly $607,000 of that will be budgeted for 2026, with about $482,000 going to contracts and $125,000 to staff time, Logue said.

Other adjustments include several lake-management district corrections (District 1: about $45,000 in revenue for omitted assessment increases; District 3: a $25,000 carryover with ~$12,000 to be spent in 2026) and two facility projects carried forward from 2025 — the Star Center (~$277,000) and courthouse courtroom improvements (~$27,000). Solid Waste requested $45,000 to cover unanticipated compactor repairs.

Commissioners praised the limited draw on the general fund; one commissioner noted the net general-fund impact was "about $25,000," and Logue said the county’s ending fund balance in the relevant fund was over $8 million. After a brief public-hearing period with no commenters, the board moved, seconded and approved the amendments.

The board said the changes make targeted investments while preserving overall county fund balance and that department heads had answered questions during a prior work session.

What’s next: the amendments take effect as adopted and county staff will implement the line-item changes and report as required by county budget procedures.