The Island County administrator announced this week that he will be resigning from the position, effective Feb. 7.

Michael Jones, the former city manager in Blaine, was hired as the first person in the newly created position in the summer of 2022. He wrote in an email to county staff that he and his wife are taking a one-year sabbatical to focus on their family, health and personal goals.

“I’m glad to have spent the last couple of years working with the commissioners and team to develop the county administrator position,” he said. “Working with the dedicated people here in Island County has been a rewarding experience.”

Commissioners said they are sad to see Jones go and are planning on hiring someone new to fill the position, but they are first going to take a step back and reassess the job description and role.

“We are going to look at what we would do different, what we would do the same,” Commissioner Melanie Bacon said.

Bacon said it was valuable to have someone who can take over many of the administrative functions of the board so that commissioners could spend more time focusing on policy decisions. She said previous boards were kept busy dealing with run-of-the-mill contracts, but Jones was able to take on that responsibility.

“We are really blessed, really lucky that we were able to spend so much time concentrating on policy issues,” she said.

Commissioner Jill Johnson said Jones walked into a new and “relatively thankless job” but proved to be a valuable asset to the board.

“I was probably his greatest challenge,” she said. “I’m not going to lie about that.”

Since it was a new position, Johnson said, the commissioners didn’t always agree about what his role should be, which sometimes led to tension. She said she was reluctant to cede some of the board’s administrative authority to Jones, but the other commissioners were more comfortable with giving him increasingly greater responsibilities.

In an email, Jones said that the benefits of having a county administrator are many. The board of commissioners has executive, administrative and legislative functions, which can make quick decisions difficult because of the limitations imposed by the Open Public Meetings Act. In other words, the board of commissioners as a whole can’t make decisions outside of a public meeting.

“An administrator can be quicker and more responsive to developing situations in so much as the board has authorized the administrator to act,” Jones wrote. “It’s not a situation of the administrator usurping the board’s authority, but executing their authority more efficiently.”

In addition, the administrator’s office provides “a place out of which to run special projects and initiatives that cross over many departments and require a lot of coordination across the organization,” he wrote.

In fact, the city administrator’s office and its responsibilities grew in the short two and a half years of his tenure as he took over projects and managed contractors who were previously reporting to the board directly. The budget for the department went from $652,000 in 2023 to a budgeted $906,000 next year.

In addition, Jones said an administrator can provide stability when an election changes the makeup of the board.

“In fact,” he wrote, “the timing of my decision took that into account, if the election had resulted in one or more new commissioner coming on the board in January I had decided I’d stay until mid-year to help with transition. That didn’t happen, so I feel more comfortable that now is a less disruptive time for me to make my transition.”

Not everyone in the county understands the need for a county administrator. Assessor Kelly Mauck said he was elected when the commissioners created the position so he’s not fully aware of the reasons they thought it was necessary.

“From my experience as assessor over the past two years, my office did not see a significant direct benefit from the position,” he wrote in an email. “There was minimal communication between my office and the county administrator, and my staff’s day-to-day operations remained largely unaffected by the position’s existence. While this is my perspective, I want to acknowledge that other independently elected officials or department heads may have different experiences or viewpoints based on their specific responsibilities.”

According to the original job posting, the salary for the position is $135,000 to $155,000 a year.

Commissioner Janet St. Clair did not immediately respond to a request for comment.