The Thurston County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to approve $15.29 million in homeless services contracts for the 2026-27 fiscal year.
The approval of funding to 17 organizations through 49 contracts comes one week after the board decided to delay a vote in order for the City of Tumwater to ask further questions to the Regional Housing Council, which regularly recommends homeless service contracts for the Thurston County Board of Commissioners to approve.
Those contracts are intended to cover homeless services across Thurston County and the cities of Olympia, Lacey, Yelm and Tumwater.
The Regional Housing Council was able to convene for a special meeting on Monday, June 22, allowing the contracts to return to the Board of County Commissioners for its own special meeting the following day.
With the Board of County Commissioners approving the contracts before July 1, there will be no funding interruptions for the contracted service providers.
While county commissioners thanked staff and regional partners for their work in organizing and engaging in discussions regarding the service contracts over the last week and getting Tumwater’s questions answered, Clouse and her seatmates continued to disagree about the decision not to approve the contracts last week.
“I don’t really understand what all of this was for,” said Thurston County Commissioner Emily Clouse, who raised the alarm last week that delaying approval of the contracts past July 1 would be a “death sentence” for Thurston County’s homeless.
While several community members gave public comments on Tuesday supporting Clouse and her concerns about funding delays, Commissioner Wayne Fournier said that Clouse wrongly caused public panic with her statements the week prior.
“Harm and uncertainty were caused not because a jurisdiction came in and said we have some questions and we said ‘ok that will take a couple days, it’s not going to threaten any funding.’ Harm and uncertainty and panic were caused when a commissioner yelled ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” Fournier said.
Fournier said that Tumwater asking for a pause to ask questions was a simple and common request for a partner jurisdiction to ask amid a funding process, and was relatively easy to accommodate.
“That could have been it. But instead, it was alleged that people are going to die and that none of us care, and that’s irresponsible and that’s what causes harm. Here we are, a couple days later. Nothing happened, no funding was hurt, no nonprofits were hurt, but there was language that was used that was inflammatory and that caused harm,” Fournier said.
The City of Tumwater and Clouse’s seatmates on the Board of County Commissioners were all committed to getting the funding approved as quickly as possible while still allowing Tumwater time to get its questions answered, Fournier said.
“This is important to all of us, not just one commissioner. This is important to every single one of us,” Fournier said.
Clouse had pushed her seatmates on Tuesday, June 16, to deny the City of Tumwater’s request for more time to ask questions of the Regional Housing Council and to approve the $15.29 million in contracts that day.
Clouse’s reasoning for approving the contracts June 16 was that the Thurston County Board of Commissioners was about to go on a three week summer recess, and did not have another regular meeting scheduled until after the start of the fiscal year on July 1.
Not having the contracts approved by that July 1 deadline would mean a funding delay for the organizations waiting on the contracts’ approval, which would likely cause service interruptions.
However, the June 16 meeting was the first time that the Board of County Commissioners saw the recommended homeless services contracts, leaving them no time in their premade schedule to get more information.
When Clouse made her objections during the June 16 meeting, Tumwater Mayor Leatta Dahlhoff responded that the Thurston County Board of Commissioners and the Regional Housing Council were well within their rights to schedule special meetings before July 1 to hear this item.
“I don't want to hold anything up, but I need clarification, because we're seeing things escalate in Tumwater, and we're having to adapt and modify. So, how are the nonprofits getting these funds? How are they contributing to Tumwater? Those are the unanswered questions,” Dahlhoff said June 16.
The Regional Housing Council was ultimately able to schedule a special meeting for June 22 and answer Tumwater’s remaining questions.
Clouse and those who gave public comment on Tuesday argued that there was no indication last week that that special meeting was feasible. The only timeline assurance they had at the time, they said, was from Commission Chair Tye Menser, who said he would push for the contracts to be passed no later than the Board of County Commissioners’ next scheduled regular meeting on July 21.
Clouse’s seatmates claimed her attitude towards this item was hypocritical given the frequency she has delayed other agenda items during her first term to get more information.
Specifically Menser and fellow Commissioner Carolina Mejia brought up a delay to approval of mental health and substance use treatment service contracts that Clouse caused in late 2023.
“Those were very important service contracts, but I felt that it was very reasonable for you to exercise your discretion as commissioner to bring that forward,” Menser said.
For those contracts, the Board of County Commissioners ended up holding several work sessions between December 2023 and January 2024, ultimately leading to the contract awards being reworked.
Mejia and then-Commissioner Gary Edwards both opposed the contract revisions, though Mejia voted in favor of approving the service contracts to prevent further funding delays.
“The vote that we took was to harm children, basically, so if we’re talking about acknowledging harm — there’s different criteria,” Mejia said to Clouse, calling for a vote and an end to the discussion.
The commissioners all agreed that the process for approving the homeless services contracts needs to be amended so that a situation like this does not happen again.
“We’re accountable to our constituents … there has to be the ability from the board for legitimate reasons to not just approve this magnitude of funding,” Menser said.
The Regional Housing Council has been working on improving its processes, partly due to a recent influx of new members, according to Thurston County Manager Leonard Hernandez.
“The process is being engineered and staff are working hard to accommodate the different needs of the different members of the jurisdictions,” Hernandez said.
He added that it’s “not unusual” for a jurisdiction in a situation like Tumwater’s, which has a new mayor, new city council member on the Regional Housing Council and new city administrator, to ask for more time on these service contracts.
“I think this is a great learning opportunity for us to say ‘we’ll make sure that we’ll work backwards so that before the start of a contract, we have at least a meeting or two for the board to make sure there’s time in case there are questions,’” Hernandez said.
