YEAR IN REVIEW 2023 - MARCH

MARCH 2023

Shelton City Manager Jeff Niten will leave his position to be the new city manager of Mountlake Terrace. Niten made the announcement March 7 at the Shelton City Council meeting. His last day is March 31.

Niten prefaced his remarks by saying his departure was in "the rumor mill."

"It's bittersweet," he said. "I really enjoyed my time here and I can't tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity to work with council to address the issues we wanted to address."

Niten said he will set up appointments to talk to council members and staff and make recommendations on what should be addressed in the coming months.

Niten was hired in January 2019. He replaced Ryan Wheaton, a Shelton native who resigned after 11/2 years. In the interim, three people had filled the position on an interim basis, including former Shelton City Manager Mike McCarty, and for three weeks, then-Shelton Police Chief Darrin Moody.

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Mark Ziegler, director of the City of Shelton's parks and facilities department, was named the city's interim city manager as the search began to replace Jeff Niten.

The Shelton City Council voted 7-0 March 21 to name Ziegler to the interim position until a replacement is found. The Shelton native has worked for the city for 30 years.

At the meeting, Shelton City Council member Deidre Peterson nominated Ziegler to serve in the interim position, with Mayor Onisko seconding the motion. The unanimous vote followed. Onisko called Ziegler "the perfect choice."

"I can't think of a better person to keep this ball rolling we've started, we have a lot of projects," Onisko said. "I think Mark is the perfect person, he has a lot of experience in the city."

Ziegler addressed the council.

"I just want to thank the council, I want to thank Jeff, I want to thank city staff as well," he said. "This is a great opportunity to help in the transition here at the City of Shelton," he said. "I want to be a resource to the community, the staff and our partners.

"This is my hometown, it's where I grew up. It's an honor to serve this community and continue what we're doing here and leading the way in bringing the vital resources that are necessary to the City of Shelton, so I'm just honored to have this opportunity to serve the council and the community."

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A 30-year-old Shelton woman was found dead March 18 at the High Steel Bridge in Mason County.

Mason County Coroner Jaime Taylor confirmed to the Journal that the deceased woman was Chantel Dawn Peterson, who was charged with domestic violence assault in the first degree for the Feb. 12 shooting of Elijah Gossett in Shelton.

The cause of death was ruled suicide.

At the time of her death, Peterson was free on $5,000 bail following her initial arraignment on Feb. 27.

According to Shelton police reports, Peterson shot Gossett multiple times before Gossett was able to flee the scene and call police. Police arrived to find Gossett with gunshot wounds to his chest, face and arm and told police that his girlfriend, Peterson, had shot him. Peterson surrendered to police after they were able to contact her.

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Mason County ranked 25th out of 39 counties in the 2023 county health outcomes overall rankings released by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

At the Mason County Board of Health meeting March 28, Director of Community Serivces Dave Windom talked about the rankings prior to their release, stating he wanted to make the point that because the county moves up or down in the rankings doesn't mean it is better or worse.

"Also, I saw the measures changed, so they're not measuring things the way they were last time," Windom said. "Some of the measures didn't change so we're able to track trends over time, but with those measures that did change, we have to start that process over, and it just becomes a snapshot in time. Some of the measures aren't exactly fair to the small, rural jurisdictions. For example, if you look at Ferry County, it rates them very low in recreational opportunities even though you can go hunting, fishing, skiing. There's a bike trail that goes to Canada and back but they don't have access to a Gold's Gym so they don't have recreational opportunities, according to the way the survey is written. There are a number of things like that we get penalized for in particular, and that's the number of people per physician and the number of people per patient because a lot of our medical traffic moves out of county, it shows as having a very high ratio of physicians per patient when really you take into account the overall picture, we're not that high."

The top three counties in the health outcomes category are San Juan, King and Douglas counties. The three worst counties are Ferry, Pend Oreille and Grays Harbor counties.

Mason County ranks 27 among length of life among counties with an expected lifespan of 79.2 years.