Steve Roberts shot this pho­to on First Street last night. It sure is a thing of beau­ty, but if you don’t need to go out, con­sid­er stay­ing home. Now’s a good time to binge on Net­flix or read that book you keep putting off. Also a good time to avoid giv­ing EMS and the ER  Con­tin­ue Reading

Snow is cur­rent­ly in the fore­cast for this week­end. If you would like to learn more about how the Coun­ty pri­or­i­tizes and responds to snow events on Coun­ty Roads please vis­it Map Gallery | San Juan Coun­ty, WA see where you can view our pri­or­i­ty maps and plans for snow removal. Please remem­ber, win­ter weath­er  Con­tin­ue Reading

This just in from WSF… Vehi­cle reser­va­tions for trav­el on the San Juan Islands and Port Townsend/Coupeville routes after New Year’s Day are sched­uled to open next week should the cur­rent four-boat ser­vice remain sus­tain­able. Win­ter sea­son reser­va­tions will be avail­able at 7 a.m. PST on Fri­day, Dec. 17. The win­ter sched­ule runs from Jan. 2  Con­tin­ue Reading

UPDATE — Kille­brew Lake Road on Orcas Island is now open. Pub­lic Works com­plet­ed their assess­ment Thurs­day morn­ing and have deter­mined that the road is safe to open. Laporte Road remains closed just past the inter­sec­tion with John Jones Road.

A blocked cul­vert has cre­at­ed a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion on Laporte Road on Orcas Island. A large amount of water has built up on the uphill side of the road, and the road­way is in dan­ger of fail­ure, in par­tic­u­lar with more rain in the fore­cast. The clo­sure is on Laporte Road, just up from the  Con­tin­ue Reading

Mar­guerite Place and Nash Street will under­go major improve­ments in the next two years thanks to $1,469,783 in grant fund­ing award­ed to the Town by the state’s Trans­porta­tion Improve­ment Board (TIB).  Both projects are expect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of 2023. In addi­tion to rebuild­ing the exist­ing road­way, side­walks will be added to one  Con­tin­ue Reading

This is from the SJC Dept. of Emer­gency Man­age­ment… Things are look­ing good for a poten­tial open­ing tomor­row (Tues­day — knock on wood). Pub­lic Works is await­ing deliv­ery of bar­ri­ers for the road edge that are due to arrive on the 5:30am fer­ry on Tues­day from Ana­cortes. Once those are placed and final site work  Con­tin­ue Reading

Due to ero­sion hav­ing caused cav­i­ties beneath the roadbed, Crow Val­ley Road on Orcas Island will be closed to west-bound traf­fic (traf­fic head­ing away from East­sound towards Island Hard­ware) between Orcas Road (Fowler’s Cor­ner) and West Beach Road (Island Hard­ware). East-bound traf­fic is not impact­ed at this time. The clo­sure will last at least into ear­ly  Con­tin­ue Reading

This just in from WSF… The Anacortes/San Juan Islands route will return to four-boat ser­vice and oper­ate on its usu­al Fall Sched­ule start­ing Fri­day, Nov. 19. Cus­tomers are encour­aged to check the four-boat “Anacortes/San Juan Islands” sail­ing sched­ule, which will be list­ed as inac­tive until it takes effect on Nov. 19.  Reser­va­tions will remain sus­pend­ed on the route  Con­tin­ue Reading

The fol­low­ing announce­ment is from Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries… Ini­tial Plans to Restore Ser­vice We know and under­stand that our reduced ser­vice sched­ules are caus­ing many chal­lenges for thou­sands of rid­ers across our sys­tem. Again, last month’s dif­fi­cult deci­sion to cut back sail­ings was only done when it became clear we didn’t have the crew­ing nec­es­sary  Con­tin­ue Reading

The EDC recent­ly launched a sur­vey to deter­mine eco­nom­ic and social impacts to San Juan Coun­ty res­i­dents, from recent Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries ser­vice dis­rup­tions.  Ini­tial find­ings show that most res­i­dents respond­ing to the sur­vey report­ed neg­a­tive impacts. Key find­ings from the sur­vey: 447 par­tic­i­pants from San Juan Coun­ty respond­ed to the sur­vey.  Of those, 94%  Con­tin­ue Reading

This just in from WSF… Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries will tem­porar­i­ly oper­ate reduced sail­ing sched­ules on most routes begin­ning this Sat­ur­day, Oct. 16. The change will help offer more pre­dictable and reli­able ser­vice sys­temwide in the face of crew­ing short­ages due to a glob­al short­age mariners that has been wors­ened by the pan­dem­ic. There­fore the fol­low­ing changes  Con­tin­ue Reading

Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion shares this alert… EVERETT – Trav­el­ers who fre­quent­ly use rest areas along Inter­state 5 between Everett and the Cana­di­an bor­der will need to plan for long-term clo­sures, begin­ning Fri­day, Oct. 15. The Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion closed the south­bound I‑5 Sil­ver Lake Rest Area, locat­ed at mile­post 188 in Everett, for  Con­tin­ue Reading

This just in from Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries… Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries will reduce the total num­ber of reser­va­tions avail­able dur­ing the two-week and two-day releas­es for the rest of the cur­rent sea­son begin­ning Fri­day, Oct. 8. Start­ing Fri­day, only 20% of a sailing’s total capac­i­ty will open for each release rather than the usu­al 30%. The adjust­ment  Con­tin­ue Reading

In the Update mail­bag this morn­ing we have this let­ter from San Juan Coun­ty Coun­cil mem­ber Cindy Wolf… Hel­lo Edi­tor, Cen­sus num­bers are in and the pro­posed redis­trict­ing maps are out. You can see them at https://www.redistricting.wa.gov/commissioner-proposed-maps. In my opin­ion, the strongest move we can make this week for the future of our fer­ry sys­tem is  Con­tin­ue Reading

“Local Access on Har­ri­son Street from Gen­este Street to Turn Point Road will be impact­ed while Con­trac­tors replace sew­er mains and repave,” said Admin­is­tra­tor Wil­son. “We ask the neigh­bor­hood for patience as we work through this nec­es­sary dis­rup­tion.” Traf­fic on Har­ri­son Street will be dis­rupt­ed in Octo­ber while the Con­trac­tor replaces the sew­er main and  Con­tin­ue Reading