Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Wednesday, September 2, 2026Official site

The Board of County Commissioners held a work session to review midterm budget presentations from the Emergency Services Department, Information Technology and Central Services, Human Resources, and Countywide Services. Commissioners also voted to direct the county manager to engage regional partner agencies regarding potential reductions or at least no increases in membership fees.

About this meeting

Government Body
Board of County Commissioners
Meeting Type
Board Of County Commissioners
Location
Thurston County, WA
Meeting Date
September 2, 2026

Published excerpts

Only published remarks appear here. The full transcript is not published.

19 sections (from 20 segments)

13:19•Wayne Fournier

So, then those, those reductions that you propose that the generators and things like that, those are grant funded.

18:27•Wayne Fournier

I like that you're talking about redundancy means resiliency, because in emergency management, redundancy doesn't mean extra. It means you're prepared.

29:58•Wayne Fournier

It looks different for law enforcement than it does for officers.

33:02•Wayne Fournier

I had questions about this one. How much do we spend on these contracts?

33:17•Wayne Fournier

Yeah, I was hoping we'd dig into this one. I had some questions.

33:51 – 34:12•Wayne Fournier

I understand that like in some cases we use our employees to do some of the landscaping and some of our different, like, you know, out of Tamashan, we may pay public works overtime to go out and take care of that. And so like, there's some cases where we use our employees to manage our landscape. And then there's some scenarios where we're using a private contractor to do these things.

36:23•Wayne Fournier

We're tax exempt from some of the fuel costs, right?

38:03 – 38:37•Wayne Fournier

I'm really curious about our total real estate portfolio. And I know that we've done some value assessments of various buildings. I haven't heard the entirety of what we've assessed. And I'm really curious of like what, like everything that we own and what the plans are. There are lots of things that we own that are kind of legacy items that don't necessarily fit into our programming or vision or like where are those things.

40:21•Wayne Fournier

I'M GIVING THIS PRESENTATION A GOLD STAR. THANK YOU.

49:29•Wayne Fournier

Civil service testing, is that like contracts for public safety testing? Correct.

49:40•Wayne Fournier

Yeah, so that's a contract we have with a third-party agency, and they handle all the...

55:35•Wayne Fournier

And do we participate in that? Yes. Okay, that's what you were just saying.

1:17:15 – 1:17:30•Wayne Fournier

groups that are, you know, the five that are listed, it's not, you know, I'm curious where the numbers, the red number comes from. It's not proportionate. It's, you know, like, why is it, where did you come up with 10,000 for TRPC? Those are just starting points, Commissioners.

1:17:47 – 1:18:02•Wayne Fournier

Under discretionary miscellaneous supplies, $209,000. That's a huge reduction. What would that look like? Does that mean people are having to go out and buy their own pens and pencils? Is it? Yeah, we can't bring your paper clips to work.

1:18:47 – 1:19:18•Wayne Fournier

And then the top one, under one, we had all the departments, we said, hey, propose a reduction. You know, I don't... I know we can't force any of these organizations to propose cuts, but we can't to offices either. Has there been any outreach to them and communication to any of them to say the position that we're in, what we would need them to give us info on?

1:23:28•Wayne Fournier

Which effort do we put into reviewing these franchise agreements? Because sometimes like they'll sit stagnant for years, and then you take a look at them, and there's all kinds of money that's left on the table that isn't.

1:23:57 – 1:24:09•Wayne Fournier

It's, I don't know, I don't know. So like there's a contract with Comcast for having some like easement through the area. On the right of way, yeah. And then it comes up, we review the contract and get more money.

1:34:29 – 1:34:41•Wayne Fournier

It should always be okay to ask questions and I think we owe it to the community and we owe it to our staff to ensure that we're leaving no stone unturned. So this is just going and doing the job.

1:36:36•Wayne Fournier

I do it every week already. I do that every week already.

These excerpts are remarks by officials whose identity a person confirmed, from a transcript generated automatically from the official public meeting video and presented unedited. Accuracy may vary; view the original recording for reference.