County still confused on pocket gopher

I am the trustee for Faith Lutheran Church and I have been working with the Thurston County permit office to get approval to place a portable building on our campus for our school.

One of the big hurdles is the “pocket gopher inspection.” We just paid for our inspection and was told that due to the high volume of requests it would probably be next year (after June 2017) before we could get an inspection.

After the recent article in The Olympian on how our commissioners were easing the process I received four emails, one telling me to hire a biologist and three saying it looked as though we might be able to get our permit sometime this year.

I immediately called the Thurston County permit office and asked how this “new” process would help us to speed up our request. I was told that the personnel in the permit office were caught unaware of the information printed in the newspaper, and they had just had a meeting to try to figure out what was actually going to change. I was then told the article was “misleading” and nothing had changed! We still needed a gopher inspection to put a classroom on our campus.

Appears the commissioners are up to their old tricks — put out information that confuses the facts and continue status quo!

This story was originally published August 17, 2016 at 11:20 AM with the headline "County still confused on pocket gopher."