Clallam County, Port Angeles agree on jail services
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, October 20, 2026
PORT ANGELES — Clallam County commissioners and the city of Port Angeles have hammered out the final details of a new jail services contract.
The last revision was updated at 3:13 p.m. Friday and reflects a few changes, County Administrator Todd Mielke told commissioners Monday during their work session.
“There was a lot of back and forth last week,” Mielke said. “I think it occupied about 80 percent of both (Port Angeles city attorney) Sheida (Sahandy’s) and my time and Dee (Boughton’s) time, going back and forth.”
The jail services is one of four criminal justice contracts the county is negotiating with the cities of Port Angeles and Sequim.
The county and the cities had a 10-year contract for criminal justice services which expired Dec. 31, 2025. They then extended the contracts to the end of June for continued negotiations and are now in a 120-day period wherein the cities have pre-purchased services.
While the now-expired contract covered all criminal justice services the county provides to the cities, it has been broken up into four categories: prosecution, public defense, the courts and jails.
After this latest revision, the county commissioners are scheduled to approve the jail services contract during their meeting today while the Port Angeles City Council is set to approve it during their meeting tonight.
Mielke highlighted one section of the jail services contract which is about extraordinary medical care.
“As part of the jail confinement services contract, you have typical charges which include room, board and what I would say is ordinary medical while we’re in the custody of the facility,” Mielke said. “When I say ordinary medical, it’s basically everything that we can handle inside the facility.”
Occasionally, the jail houses people who need to have care from providers outside of the facility. The contract explains how the jail would work with the county and the cities for that inmate.
Another revised section of the contract addresses the cost methodology.
“There is a calculation that looks backward to determine what your daily bed rate is for jail services,” Mielke said. “Those ordinary services that I just mentioned of room, board and ordinary medical and so I think it goes up and down a little bit.”
The daily bed rate is $177.47, according to the contract.
“What we are going to do under the previous model is take a look at the most recent past number of bed days times the daily bed rate to determine the annual cost,” Mielke said. “The idea was you would take that total annualized cost and then you’d split it into 12 equal payments.”
An alternative method involves calculating the daily bed rate and then issuing a bill monthly based on the actual utilization.
“The city of Port Angeles has said they would prefer the monthly billing piece,” Mielke said. “At the end of the day, you’re looking at your actual utilization on a month-to-month basis and being billed accordingly.”
That will allow the city to more easily track jail services and see if there are any trends in the data.
The monthly reporting will require a lot of manual work from jail staff, Chief Civil Deputy Beth Biasell said.
“So monthly reporting and billing is definitely a lot more burdensome than a flat rate divided across the year,” she said. “I’m hopeful that our new correction software and then our new accounting software will help that in the future so hopefully this is a temporary burden that we’re going to bare.”
Another additional piece is a shared legislative priority.
“The city of Port Angeles and Clallam County will jointly prioritize through communication to the Legislature that all Washington state agencies, including but not limited to the Department of Corrections, Department of Natural Resources, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and Washington State Patrol pay the actual cost bed rate for confinement services when using local county and city facilities,” the contract states.
This is in reference to the fact that state agencies set what daily bed rate they are willing to pay, regardless of what the jail’s daily bed rate is, and the state often does not pay for medical care.
The legislative priority recognizes that the county and cities are working together, Port Angeles City Manager Nathan West said.
“We are all collectively paying some pretty high rates and it’s only right that the state also pay the same local rates that we’re paying and make sure that we’re seeing the state treat all of the local governments fairly,” West said.
Moving forward, the county will continue to try to be innovative with jail services in an effort to keep costs low, Mielke said.
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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.