Port Townsend’s grandiose, extravagantly expensive vision for Evans Vista contravenes the wisdom of the Strong Towns and Smart Growth movements. The project has hit a brick wall of economic reality, which provides an opportunity to get things right.
Manufactured housing is the only practical way to create affordable housing. Pre-engineered, pre-fabricated housing offers a path forward at Evans Vista. Other communities are embracing this answer to their housing crisis. It is time Port Townsend got real and embraced a solution right in front of us.
In my article, “Evans Vista Doesn’t Pencil Out, No Affordable Housing Coming Soon,” I discussed why the city’s $111-126 million (and counting) master plan for its 14.4 acre Evans Vista property is unfeasible. It is just too expensive to build. In this article I will discuss alternatives to the city racking up another affordable housing flop.
Ignoring Low-Hanging Fruit
Before the city purchased the Evans Vista property, it had already installed sewer and water infrastructure in that area adequate to serve 100 homes. At its 12/6/2021 briefing on the project, City Public Works Director Steve King told city council that no off-site street improvements would be required. There was “good water supply — no problem with fire flow or access to water.” And a two-inch sewer line already had been extended to the area.
This briefing occurred before council approved the purchase. The primary objective driving the acquisition and subsequent development was, according to the subtitle of King’s presentation, “Supply of Affordable Housing with Land and Architecture.” Fifty affordable units (meaning affordable to households making 80% of the area median income) were foreseeable, with another 50-100 workforce housing units. In other words, most of the goals of the proposed project could be attained with the existing infrastructure.
This pragmatic goal was jettisoned a few years later after the city paid an architectural firm nearly $500,000. What started as an attempt to create much needed low-cost housing morphed into a grandiose master site plan to develop a village of multi-story apartment buildings, townhomes, retail shops and other structures, complete with a daycare center, dog park, amphitheater and other amenities. Economists hired by the city to judge the feasibility of the plan told the council it was too expensive to build. City council voted unanimously to approve the plan anyway.
The stated purpose of approving that plan was to allow city staff to apply for land use amenities, such as platting. But city staff have not done that. Late last year, council authorized the city manager to spend another $160,000 in an attempt to interest developers in maybe biting off smaller pieces which were not in any way tied to the unfeasible grandiose half-million dollar master site plan. There’s been no word on response to that marketing pitch.
The city’s most ambitious foray into the housing market was not even mentioned at the 2025 State of the City address until audience members asked about it. See our article: “Correcting Mayor Faber on Evans Vista, PT’s ‘Meth Meadows,'” PTFP 3/16/25.
Nothing on the ground has happened except for (1) clearing homeless addicts and their debris from the forested area and (2) the emergence of an even larger, more dangerous homeless addicts’ encampment in the Evans Vista meadow. That camp has grown in the few weeks since my last article on this topic.
Unburdened of what has been, the city can start afresh. A manufactured housing community at Evans Vista could restore the original intent of the project and possibly deliver a 100% affordable housing project.
The featured photo above shows what a 100-unit community of manufactured trailer-style homes might look like. There is a chance of getting that built, but not the design below for which the city shelled out half a million bucks:
Be Strong and Smart
Let’s go back ten months before council voted to approve the purchase of Evans Vista, to a February 2, 2021 meeting of the Intergovernmental Collaborative Group (ICG). The ICG is comprised of the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners, the City of Port Townsend, Port of Port Townsend, and Jefferson County Public Utility District. The purpose of the meeting, broadcast live on KPTZ, was to hear from Charles Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns, and author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity.
Strong Towns works to help urban leaders and activists “learn why your city is going broke, gain the knowledge needed to stop bad development practices, have a plan to make your neighborhood stronger and more prosperous, and take control of your community’s future.”
Marohn’s presentation can be boiled down to a couple of points:
- Strong, prosperous, resilient, sustainable and financially-strong communities do not emerge from complicated top-down planning. They arise from incremental adaptation.
- What looks like chaos is evolution in process. “Order emerges from complex adaptation,” he emphasized. “What doesn’t necessarily pass the eye test” — meaning, buildings or streets that don’t look tidy, perfect, planned and coordinated — “actually profit the community” and pay positive returns.
Marohn advocated emulating poorer communities that focus on “getting it done” instead of the drawn-out, sometimes exhausting public engagement culture of western Washington. He encouraged chasing “the next level of density” at every opportunity and treating incremental growth “with the least amount of regulatory friction.”
Marohn’s presentation was warmly received. Some of the official audience, you could say, were gaga over the guru of urban policy. His emphasis on proceeding incrementally, with a light hand, with minimal top-down control, was applauded. Many of the officials claimed they were strong adherents to the Strong Towns approach and had been following the group’s work for years.
Strong Towns has many success stories. Its wisdom is being adopted across the country. But not in Port Townsend. Everything Marohn had to say went out the window in less than a year.
Not Smart Growth, Either
The city has been pursuing sprawl under the cover of adding affordable housing. We have been told that any construction at Evans Vista must wait until a sewer pump station is built at Mill Road. This would bring infrastructure to the Mill Road permanent homeless camp and beyond to Glen Cove, where the city would promote even more expansion and development. It is no secret that City Manager John Mauro wants the city to annex those areas.
Not only does this vision contravene the teachings of Strong Towns, it is not Smart Growth. The Smart Growth school of urban planning shares some of the same goals as Strong Towns. It also wants to keep cities from going broke and not repeating the mistakes of the Suburban Experiment.
“[D]eveloping within existing communities — rather than building on previously undeveloped land — makes the most of the investments we’ve already made in roads, bridges, water pipes, and other infrastructure, while strengthening local tax bases and protecting open space,” insists Smart Growth America. (By way of full disclosure, I was one of the early members of 1,000 Friends of New Mexico, that state’s smart growth organization).
The city has many, many acres of buildable land within its existing infrastructure boundaries. The city itself owns many parcels, including the still-empty site of the former Cherry Street affordable housing project, where infill could occur and take advantage of in-place streets, sewers, water lines and stormwater measures. One of those buildable areas already served by city infrastructure are the level acres at Evans Vista.
9-1-1? We Have An Emergency!
Disaster strikes. Homes are destroyed. What do emergency response agencies do to address the resulting housing emergency? They use manufactured homes. But in Port Townsend, the town leaders opt for fantastically expensive, impractical and rather snooty solutions, none of which they have managed yet to build.
Chalk it up to snobbishness? Does Port Townsend want affordable housing only so long as it does not look too affordable? Is it the grip of realtors on local government, realtors who don’t want to see a “trailer park” at the city’s entrance, even though it would make a huge impact on the city’s affordable housing crisis? Or is it simply that city leaders are stuck in the past and uninformed — self-proclaimed progressives who are actually resisting progress?
With the Cherry Street “affordable” housing project the city tried barging a 70-year old small apartment building from Victoria, B.C. You could say this was the city’s version of pre-engineered, pre-fabricated housing. I remember glowing talk of the hardwood accents inside and the building’s “bottle-dash” style of stucco application. After millions of dollars down the drain and years lost, only rats and raccoons found housing. The city eventually gave up and tore the building down.
Then the city promptly shelled out nearly $500,000 for architects to come up with a design supposed to bring affordable housing to Evans Vista. They got a utopian dream too expensive to build. Hey, but it had art plinths and an amphitheater!
Mayor David Faber has said the city is now “waiting for the stars to align” to move forward at Evans Vista. In addition to cursing the cosmos, he blames interest rates and a “spicy” situation in Washington, D.C.
Instead of surrender, I suggest the obvious: Rely on affordable structures that can be delivered and installed quickly.
Embrace the incremental approach city leaders claimed to admire when they applauded the teachings of Strong Towns. Take advantage of the ability that exists now to get a significant number of residential units at Evans Vista. And take the fastest, least expensive, most immediately impactful route — just as first responders do when responding to an emergency.
Instead of throwing money at architects, open the doors to those who are already providing affordable housing at scale across the country. That is the manufactured housing industry — the greatest source of unsubsidized housing in America. About 22 million Americans live in manufactured housing. Most of those live on less than $40,000 annually.
The industry is exploding and constantly innovating to meet growing demand. Manufactured housing communities — including mobile home parks — are “strong” communities, says Strong Towns. Some Habitat for Humanity groups have acquired mobile home properties and become licensed manufactured home dealers, allowing them to sell directly without any middle-man markup.
“We see manufactured housing as an important component to addressing the larger U.S. affordable housing crisis,” says Jim Gray, senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. The Lincoln Institute sponsors the Innovations in Manufactured Homes (I’m HOME) Network. It brings together nonprofits, the private sector, and government agencies “to solve problems that are keeping manufactured housing from reaching its potential in the market,” says Gray, who led the Duty to Serve program at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) before joining the Lincoln Institute.
Preserving manufactured housing communities is one of the 2025 legislative priorities of the Association of Washington Cities. The City of Port Townsend “actively supports” the Association’s agenda. Port Townsend has a chance to do more than cheer from the sidelines. It has a chance at Evans Vista, right now, to create the very kind of affordable, strong, resilient manufactured housing community acknowledged as a proven strategy for providing affordable housing.
Follow the recommendations of Strong Towns. Emulate less privileged communities to “get things done.” Scrap the interminable, exhausting public meeting process — playing Santa Claus to “the stakeholders” — that wastes time and resources. Reduce regulatory friction to a bare minimum.
Throw the doors wide open to manufactured home community developers and operators with this simple request:
“Tell us what you can do to provide manufactured housing at Evans Vista in the fastest, least costly manner. We will provide the land. What can you do, at what cost and how fast?“
With almost all infrastructure in place, the fastest, least expensive route is probably installing pads and hook-ups for mobile and manufactured homes. Concrete pads might be unnecessary for certain types of manufactured housing (see below). With the city providing the land on a minimal payment, long-term lease or via a land trust model, companies that create and manage manufactured home communities would have a hard time not considering the opportunity.
The city could ensure long-term affordability by stipulations in the agreement covering use of the land. Individuals could bring their own homes to the pads. Entrepreneurs could provide the structures and then lease them at affordable rates. There should be no aesthetic requirements, no exclusion of manufactured housing types, and no prohibitions against previously used structures.
Let the community grow organically, to apply an overused term. Let it adapt and evolve over time as strong towns do. First, maybe twenty manufactured homes of various types. Then another twenty, and so on — the development growing in response to the market and to individual wants and needs. Being pragmatic about Evans Vista, which is far from the most desirable parcel in the city, this approach may be the only way forward.
As for those looking down their noses at “a trailer park,” there should be no objection to a manufactured housing community since the city has permitted the use of manufactured housing as ADUs in upscale Uptown. Anyone keeping up with the industry knows that today’s manufactured homes are in many ways superior to stick-built housing.
Manufactured home companies and the lending industry have made it easier to finance manufactured homes. First Fed bank in Port Townsend, for example, praises manufactured housing as an alternative for those priced out of the traditional market. It backs up that conviction with a strong financing program. Some of the larger manufacturers, like industry leader Cavco, have their own financing programs.
No Alternative But Manufactured Housing
In addressing our housing crisis, the city should actively support the efforts of the Building Industries Association of Washington to roll back the onerous building code and other regulatory obstacles that make new construction unaffordable. According to the BIAW, almost 30% of the cost of new home construction comes from government regulations.
The adverse impacts of onerous regulations are magnified up and down the chain. “Climate change” regulations add greatly and unnecessarily to this price inflation, such as the requirement for EV chargers in newly constructed homes. The city has to decide whether it wants to get serious about a crisis impacting lives and depressing its economy now — the affordable housing crisis — or sacrifice affordable housing on the altar of woke ideology.
That said, the prospect of any real, substantial relaxation of Washington’s onerous regulations on new home construction is not very hopeful. Until a sea change occurs in the state’s and city’s political and ideological culture to get government off the backs of home builders and home buyers, the only way to provide affordable housing will be with manufactured housing.
The numbers don’t lie. BIAW reports that the average cost in Washington for a new single home is $309/sq.ft. This results in a median sales price in the Puget Sound of almost $700,000 — far above the national average. The cost for a new townhome — the supposed affordable option — is $404/sq.ft. The costs for multi-story apartment buildings such as those in the grandiose Evans Vista Master Site Plan go even higher.
The average cost of a manufactured home nationally is less than $150,000. BOXABL, a Las Vegas, Nevada manufacturer, is driving the cost even lower, offering a 361/sq.ft. Casita model for $60,000 (excluding land, utility hookups and shipping). These homes come standard with full kitchen and bathroom, as well as 9’6″ ceilings. At $166/sq.ft., the Casita provides high-quality structures at nearly half the average cost per square foot for a new single home in Washington state. Upon delivery, using standard flatbed trucks which can carry several folded-up future homes at once, they can set up in a few hours.
Interior of BOXABL Casita
A developer in Desert Hot Springs, California is using BOXABL Casitas along with other small options like tiny homes on wheels to build out a 90-home affordable community. Lots are 50 feet long by 25 feet wide, resulting in significantly greater housing density than in most areas of Port Townsend. Many mobile home parks have lots of 50 feet by 100 feet, requiring an acre for 9 units. An acre could accommodate 35 BOXABL Casitas, increasing density almost fourfold with just single-story structures.
BOXABL also produces larger structures, even apartment buildings. At the other end of the spectrum, it offers a “Baby Box” at an introductory price of $19,999. This tiny home is built to high standards and can be set up by one person in an hour. It is anticipated to require little to no permitting, little site preparation and no foundation. It comes standard with equipped kitchen, bathroom, dining area, pull-out bed, AC and heating system, and storage. It has water and waste storage tanks for off-grid living.
Why not allow off-grid living at Evans Vista in safe, warm structures? Do we have a housing emergency or not? Besides, dozens of people are already living there, off the grid, in soggy tents and unhealthy conditions, rather than in comfortable, state-of-the-art quarters.
BOXABL is but one example of the rapid innovation in manufactured housing that is driving prices lower while increasing quality. The manufactured and prefab home shows around the country unveil new designs and advances constantly.
One important advance is the ability to build multi-story prefab, pre-engineered homes, such as Wolf Industries of Battle Ground, Washington is doing. The ease of their approach can be seen in this video of their project in Aberdeen, Washington.
Some architects don’t like these companies. They and others professionals don’t make money on “soft costs” when pre-engineered, pre-fabricated structures are used. At times they will actively steer clients away from and keep them ignorant of less-expensive, less time-consuming alternatives. That’s something I learned serving on the county’s pool task force when we evaluated “pre-fab, pre-engineered” aquatic pools and buildings that could produce savings of more than 50% over the city’s big bucks Taj Mahal architectural design.
At the “Evans Vista master plan kickoff” (2/21/23) the city’s architect, responding to questions from council member Ben Thomas about the possibility of using manufactured housing to achieve a quick, less expensive delivery of housing, promised to consider going that route. No one should be surprised that promise was not fulfilled.
The city should take this opportunity to embrace a disruptive technology that makes housing more accessible and affordable. Evans Vista is a perfect site for the city to showcase itself as a pragmatic innovator. The first thing the city should do is change the zoning at Evans Vista to allow detached single-family manufactured homes. As things stand, the city is zoning out the best chance for affordable housing that land may see for many years to come.
The next thing the city should do — itself, not through anyone associated with an architect — is get on the phone to manufacturers of pre-fab, pre-engineered housing and the companies that develop and manage manufactured housing communities. That should have been done years ago. Do it now.
Remember, this is an emergency.
Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, with a specialty in litigating complex construction disputes, involving everything from massive electrical power generation plants in Puerto Rico to ethanol production and interstate highway projects in New Mexico. For his second career, he launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our "About" page for more information.
There is often a negative connotation to manufactured housing. People should be aware that the initial section of the Hamilton Heights neighborhood at Howard and Hastings – the section north of Crest is manufactured housing. South of Crest is stick-built housing sponsored by the Kitsap Housing Authority as self-help housing. Unless you knew that I am not sure you could really tell the difference between the two sections (other than many of the stick-built have second floors).
Manufactured can be attractive.
This is one of the manufactured homes at Hamilton Heights:
Yes, Hamilton Heights has manufactured housing. As does Towne Point, some of it nearing 50 years old and still providing, by PT standards, affordable housing.
Stop making sense!! lol
“If You Build it, They Will Come…” The negative connotation of manufactured homes has long since passed, except for in the minds of the liberal elite class.
Jim, you hit a home run with this proposal!
I will restrain my comments about how the liberal elite class in town will poo-poo this very viable solution for the Blue Collar Working Class, and the Young Families endeavoring to be new home owners. A fantastic leg-up and not a hand out!
Thanks for your public service and details regarding viable options Jim. Seems that if Steve King or a similar professional were city manager working for a competent, honest mayor and council, PT would have more success and not just self-promoting career building narratives. Handing any project or idea over to the clique that is PT city government with the list of near 5 million dollars in squandered “visions” under Mauro/Faber has little chance of being competently managed.
I learned years ago that for repair to take place damage needs to be assessed and admitted. Denial takes the form of blaming the stars in the sky and ignoring those who bring up obvious problems. And offer solutions. Like the offer to buy out Cherry Street and develop it. Ignored. Why?
Another example, it’s a pattern, the idiocy of the new paid parking plan. There was no base line regarding the actual need because of defunded enforcement/education for over 13 years resulting in dozens of lost spaces daily to cultivated law breakers. Year after year after year. A rotating council ignored losses. Hard to explain. Unseen forces. The black hole that logic and critical thinking disappear into. How to fix it without admitting you trashed it. Impossible.
Perhaps we are dealing with a talented PT government that knew selling the idea of a manufactured home park next to the odiferous paper mill had problems. Solution? Waste money on an impossible dream and let someone else propose the manufactured option that still has real problems with air quality. Quality of life.
The manufactured housing idea has more merit than stick built, and affordable quality. Where located is as important as what is allowed. I was told this week by a local contractor of other city property that could fulfill the need. Ask yourself, would I want to live and raise a family inside a home that perpetually smelled? Would you live there? Probably not popular questions, but more wasted money on what most would consider an unbuildable parcel is par for the course. Is there another location for manufactured housing?
Perhaps someone will float the idea of houseboats on the mill settling pond. Plenty of time to study that. There is no emergency in the world of Faber/Maruo. Just more raises for the expensive failure that is Mauro.
This is all very intelligent and a good write-up/think-thru by Jim.
Now let’s see the complementary piece: what are PT City Council’s plans to attract/create well-paying productive jobs that supply better income opportunities for residents?
“Affordability” regresses to a mean of poverty very rapidly when the economy is based on robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Where has all the money REALLY gone?
Should we call in DOGE??
My wife and I lived five years full time in a nice motor home, 8.5×39 feet of highway space, say 325 sq. ft.. It was fully self-contained, sat. TV, queen bed, great shower, some “basement” storage space. We had a great time, were very comfortable. Not really very affordable housing, but then most houses don’t need a diesel engine, air brakes, and a generator, and a hitch to tow a car. It was built in a factory and drove off the lot. Bring on the manufactured housing!
Thanks Jim for pushing our imaginations about the city’s lemon, Evans Vista. “Snooty” seems apropos. Why is it that people choose to live in this small town at the end of the road? What is it we love about the character of this place that does not sport big box storefronts and freeways?
Don’t be stuck on the trailer court photo. Builders should be encouraged to customize in small ways that reflect this town’s orientation to the natural surroundings and habitats; an array of prefab styles with a variety of layouts – not just lines of boxes; spaces for playgrounds with splash pads, kitchen gardens, benches and courtyards and informal landscaping at the perimeters with native trees and shrubs.
The most urgent need according to Olycap is for low and moderate income, multi unit and centrally located housing such as could be readily built at the corner of Blaine and Kearney, the old Mt. View tennis courts, already designated for housing: think workforce, high school graduates, handicapped, singles and seniors; think existing infrastructure, access to schools, shopping, downtown, recreation and appropriate in the already designated multi use neighborhood. Such a project would bring together nonprofits, the private sector, and government agencies as called for in the current Comp Plan.
Economists hired by the city to judge the feasibility of the Evans Vista plan told the council it was too expensive to build. City council voted unanimously to approve the plan anyway. The council is also unanimous in support of their city manager; paid parking; remember the $40M Taj Mahal pool. He is now in charge of deciding about ethics complaints and may soon control the community’s guiding Comprehensive Plan currently being edited by his staff. Much of the planning appears geared to increase city income (salaries) and local governance looks more like ambitious autocracy.
Yes, realtors are very influential in the city chambers. The appointed planning commissioners have expressed personal ideas/opinions that view the small town atmosphere, a key component of the Plan, as reflecting stagnation; questioning what small town atmosphere means; that natural environment and habitat do not fit into dense urban areas thus trees have become an unwelcome feature as have open spaces, farms and gardens, all intended to make way for development.
This description from Strong Towns is soooo prescient:”What looks like chaos is evolution in process. “Order emerges from complex adaptation,” he emphasized. “What doesn’t necessarily pass the eye test” — meaning, buildings or streets that don’t look tidy, perfect, planned and coordinated — “actually profit the community” and pay positive returns.”
This is exactly what the city administration is trying to prevent through rewriting the comp plan and using engineering standards that are not sized for a small town or its esthetics, growing at about 60 people a year.
The architecture (Victorian as well as imaginative), vistas, sea port, culture and beauty of this small town embraced in a semi-arid and natural environment are the identity of this homeplace where the land meets the sea.
Julie, the image of the mobile home park is perfect as it is. It makes efficient use of land to support very affordable housing. Requiring expenditures on aesthetics and amenities such as you describe makes the development more expensive. If the city and its people want affordable housing they must accept developments such as in that picture. They can be great communities. They tend to be very stable, as Strong Towns observes in the article linked in my piece. The people who would live there would be very grateful for the chance to have their own place that they can afford. We have an emergency, so nothing other than delivering housing as quickly as possible at the lowest cost should really matter.
Thank you Jim for the good in-depth look at what is likely the only reasonable possibility for Evan’s Vista land. In discussing the manufactured housing option in a comment to your last article, I tossed out three local examples of “manufactured housing” already here in PT. There was the fancy–Towne Point, the medium–Four Corners Olympic Mobile (looks like the park in the photo above), and Evergreen Coho RV park on Anderson Lake Road. This last has restricted availability, but something similar could be open to all comers. In a recent RV trip, I stayed at a number of very nice parks where the population seemed to be long term itinerant workers. They were bringing their own homes and filling a vital need for those communities. I don’t see why a portion of the Evans Visa thing couldn’t serve this need. Construction would be cheap and easy–and easily converted to other options.
Love it Jim. Does our city have a problem with Towne Point? Hollywood celebrities have paid hundreds of thousands for small vintage metal homes in an idyllic park overlooking the ocean in CA. Our culture seems to take a dim view of manufactured homes, unfortunately. There is a segment of our population (older and younger) who are purchasing tiny homes and RV’s of all sizes to live in and/or travel in. Why? Cause its affordable with $$$ not being spent on huge mortgages. A large house just means more maintenance, higher taxes, monthly mortgage, insurance…
I do hope our city leaders and council members will take a good look at what you have presented here.
It makes sense.
Whatever kind of “housing” might eventually end up in this space will be inundated with mill smell, especially nights and mornings in late summer. Any use of this location as a desirable residential neighborhood is delusional. Additionally, narcotic-creeps will come out of the woods at night and menace the property of anyone unfortunate enough to live there. The location is patently unsafe and undesirable, and will remain so. The best option for the site with be a useful retail establishment such as a Bi-Mart.
The evening before this article was published I went to the homeless camp in the Evans Vista meadow behind the DSHS building to photograph how the camp has grown in a few weeks. I drove down there, but did not get out of my truck and turned around. That was the first time I ever really felt unsafe in Port Townsend.
I would invite any and all to go to the Free Press home page and scroll down and at least look at the headlines of dozens of articles. While I can’t speak for any of the folks attacked at the women’s rights rally as police watched, then targeted on social media by a council member as “TERFS”, I would imagine “unsafe” is not new to many.
It’s very educational to look back and see the trajectory in PT.
PUBLIC STREETS AND PUBLIC PROCESS SUBVERTED
MAYORS LAW PARTNER CONDONES ASSAULT , DISORDERLY CONDUCT
“THIS IS NOT OVER” SORTING TRUTH FROM DECEPTION IN THE YMCA BLAME GAME
CITY OFFICIALS LEAD HATE CAMPAIGN AGAINST WOMEN
PUBLIC STREETS AND PUBLIC PROCESS SUBVERTED
FORT WORDEN’S FINANCIAL OVERSIGHT NEVER HAPPENED
WHO IS JOHN MAURO PORT TOWNSEND’S CITY MANAGER
https://www.porttownsendfreepress.com/2020/10/07/who-is-john-mauro-port-townsends-city-manager/
MAYOR DAVID FABER’S SOCIAL MEDIA ROUND UP; THE JOKES ON WHO?
https://www.porttownsendfreepress.com/2023/09/16/mayor-david-fabers-social-media-round-up-the-jokes-on-who/
Just a sampling. There are lots of ways to feel “unsafe”. With one year limits on ethics complaints overseen by Mauro, perhaps the only slim chance for real change is through the courts.
A very slim chance. Seriously, go to the home page and just scroll down. If you have time read some of these articles again with the benefit of hind sight. Great documentation Jim and current editors. Thanks.
Excellent. Thank you. I have for many years liked manufactured housing and now live in a park model which came with new appliances plug and play. Small, really cute and inexpensive. HUD has always inspected these and now I hear they are closing the HUD down…sooo hope quality does not go down.
Here in Jefferson County we do not have nearly enough housing. This means that what is available is expensive. After many years of talk the best our local government can do is raise all our taxes. This has been their answer to the problem for many years. And, we still do not have enough housing!!!! How about a change. Change the land use regulations. Let people subdivide and let people take as long as it takes to build their home. That is the way it used to be here.