by Jim Scarantino | Mar 16, 2025 | General
From being a proactive, bold step to address the affordable housing crisis… to “waiting for the stars to align,” the once-vaunted Evans Vista Project has been left in the hands of astrologers.
Millions of dollars have been spent to acquire property and prepare and approve a Final Master Plan for the development we have been told would add 300-400 housing units. But at City Manager John Mauro and Mayor David Faber’s March 5 State of the City address, there was not a single mention of Evans Vista. That is, not until some members of the audience asked about it.
When confronted, Faber tried to dodge any responsibility for the failure of the project.
Evans Vista was supposed to be the city’s grand assault on the affordable housing crisis. In 2021, the city with state funding purchased 14.4 acres at the city’s entrance by the first traffic circle. As reported here, what started as an attempt to create much needed low-cost housing morphed into a grandiose master plan approved by city council 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 simply too expensive to build.
I am in the process of writing up an alternative approach in which the city would completely ditch their absurd fantasy and get real about what can be done with what is probably the most undesirable plot of land within city limits.
In the meantime, Mayor Faber has put out several falsehoods about why the project is all but dead. This article addresses his dissembling.
State of the City Address
The annual State of the City address was billed as a review of “2024 Successes… Challenges & Lessons Learned… Aspirations for 2025.” The presentation was delivered in the Port of Port Townsend’s Point Hudson Pavilion, with the first hour broadcast by KPTZ.
Despite an anticipated $6.37 million outlay as itemized in the city’s 2025 budget ($2.15 million spent to date), the stalled-out Evans Vista Project was not mentioned once in the 37 pages of State of the City materials.
One slide declared: “Housing is a basic need and it has risen to the top as one of the most pressing issues our community is facing.” [city’s emphasis] Yet not one photograph among the scores displayed showed either the current state of the Evans Vista property or any future vision for the 14.4 acres the city took off tax rolls to build its affordable village of the future.
City Manager Mauro led the presentation with a list of “major highlights” for 2024. Unsurprisingly the Evans Vista Project was not among the highlights. However it was also not included among the challenges facing the city, or among the “lessons learned.” It was not addressed at all until after Mauro’s presentation when Faber and Mauro fielded questions from the audience.
“Waiting For the Stars to Align”
Following Mauro’s prepared address, a couple of people asked about Evans Vista. Faber had to admit:
“We can’t actually get it built right now because we can’t afford it and developers won’t build it because you’d have to charge sky-high rents to make it actually pencil.” [Editor’s note: meaning, make it economically feasible]
Faber blamed lack of actual progress on the ground (as opposed to drawing pretty pictures) solely on interest rates. He said that when the city got started in 2021, the interest rate environment was very favorable. Indeed, it was about 0%. But now, as anyone who had passed Econ 101 would have expected, interest rates are much higher. Going back to the city council meeting when it voted to acquire Evans Vista and take on the project, not one second whatsoever was spent discussing the impact of interest rates on the project’s likelihood of success.
Did Faber and the rest of city council really believe that interest rates would stay at zero for years to come? Did they really base their decision to launch the city into what then-Mayor Michelle Sandoval predicted would be “an incredibly expensive” project based on such economic naivete?
Maybe. Let’s not forget this was the same city council, on which Mayor Faber and current Deputy Mayor Amy Howard served, that got the city deeply in debt to build the fiasco formerly known as the Cherry Street Project. This is also the city council that, with only one exception, voted to approve the mega-bucks Taj Mahal aquatic center to replace the Mountain View pool, another fantasy that never stood a chance of being built.
There was absolutely no consideration given by city council to economics when it jumped into the Evans Vista Project. None whatsoever beyond Sandoval’s dire prediction that it would be “incredibly expensive.”
Faber now says the city is “waiting” for interest rates to decline, and that they are “waiting for the stars to align.” He suggested the problem lies with the federal government, where things are, as he said, “spicy.”
Evans Vista has fallen far from what Faber lauded as a “proactive” effort by the city to create affordable housing. It has become a long-term, drawn out morass… at the mercy of the stars.
The Half-Million Dollar “Concept”
Another attendee asked about our recent report on city council spending half a million dollars soliciting and adopting a Final Master Plan that can’t be built. The questioner asked whether we had accurately reported what council paid for and approved.
Faber then lied.
He told the live and radio audiences that while he had not read our report, there was in it “something about a claim that the plan adopted by city council was a final plan. In fact, it was a conceptual plan.”
They paid $500,000 for a concept?
The record speaks for itself.
Table of budget and expenses for Evans Vista Project, from the city’s 2025 final budget. Right-hand column are expenditures to date.
As my recent article reported, in August 2022, Jefferson County gave the city $500,000 of federal COVID money to fund “the Evans Vista Master Plan.” The city then put out a request for architects. Interested architects were informed that:
“the project is to develop a master plan and land use entitlement applications [e.g. plats] to develop Evans Vista into an affordable workforce housing development.”
On November 7, 2022, the city approved a contract with Thomas Architecture Studios (TAS) to develop that master plan. On November 20, 2023, the action item under “New Business–D” on council’s agenda was “move to approve Exhibit A, the final site design for the Evans Vista Master Plan so the Project Team can apply for subdivision entitlements.” [emphasis mine]
Exhibit A showed the overall layout of the final site plan:
Evans Vista Master Plan adopted by city council
After the architect presented the site plan, the economists told city council that the design was too expensive to build. Construction costs would start at $111 to $126 million. Those were 2023 dollars. The cost today would be higher due to inflation.
Much higher rents would have to be charged than currently prevail in Port Townsend’s already unaffordable rental market. Interest rates would have to drop significantly and the economy would have to return to conditions resembling those in 2013. And construction costs would also have to be reduced significantly, which was not possible if the kinds of buildings in the Final Master Plan were used.
After hearing that the plan was economically unfeasible, city council nonetheless unanimously approved this Final Master Plan for Evans Vista.
My article also reported that the city has not moved forward with platting the project based on the Final Master Plan… because it is unfeasible and no builder will touch it. Instead, the city is pivoting and trying to interest developers in taking on smaller pieces, without being tied down in any way to the grandiose plan approved by city council. In other words, the $500,000 Final Master Plan adopted by council has in fact been demoted to a mere “concept” that is now being cast aside because it cannot be built.
Meth Meadows
What is the actual “State of the City” at Evans Vista? We have provided some photos.
The featured photo at top shows a sample of the garbage left behind nightly by transients taking up residence at what would be the entrance to the proposed development. The city has provided a dumpster to encourage transients to be tidy. I have observed people going in the dumpster and coming out with the trash that soon again surrounds their camps.
The photos below show the growing transient camp on the city’s property near the DSHS building.
This camp, according to law enforcement sources, has become a violent place. Heavy methamphetamine use makes matters worse. While taking these photos a man emerged quickly from one of the tents and came straight at me quite aggressively. I got in my truck and drove off, watching him glare at me from my rear-view mirror.
We might want to call Evans Vista “Meth Meadows” to reflect the reality on the ground for the foreseeable future. In 2022, I had named the wooded part of Evans Vista “Port Townsend’s Fentanyl Forest,” as that was the drug of choice for its residents. But the city cleared them out. Now a sprawling camp of addicts has taken over the meadows on the northern part of the property.
Few Hard Facts, an Exercise in Political Theater
A lot of time and expense went into the preparation of the State of the City address. None of Faber’s predecessors staged such political theater. Nor did Mauro’s predecessor expend resources and staff time in producing such a show.
We got a lot of glib phrases and self-congratulatory sentiments. We got adjectives. We did not get data.
One key metric not reported by Mauro and Faber is the only meaningful measurement of progress against the affordable housing crisis declared to be an emergency by local governments in 2017. Though the mayor and city manager did not report that statistic, we can confidently give the precise number of affordable housing units added in response to the city’s costly forays into the housing market, from the Cherry Street Project to the Evans Vista Project. That number is zero. And it will remain zero, as Mayor Faber rationalized in an act of surrender, until “the stars align.”
Or we can search a different universe of possibilities. That will be the topic of my next article on the Evans Vista Project.
by Stephen Schumacher | Mar 11, 2025 | General
[Author’s 2025 update: The following article is a snapshot in time reporting what I learned and loved about the Port Townsend Food Co-op after a decade of intense involvement. It was originally published nationally in the 1994 Loompanics book catalog, but never appeared locally until now.
The concluding section makes clear how reality doesn’t always live up to ideals, noting the dual dangers that growing co-ops face of either imploding due to misguided idealism or getting “co-opted” into becoming a corporate supermarket clone. So it’s interesting looking at how today’s Co-op compares to this view forward from 30 years in the past.
This historical perspective might be especially timely as our Co-op has been targeted for half a year by a politically-motivated smear campaign, which amid personal attacks has also raised claims about management style, workplace safety, wage inequality, microaggressions, need for unionization, etc. These claims are hard to sort out given their weaponization by the ongoing pressure campaign.
Whatever legitimate issues remain may be illumined by this article’s exploration of the unique mission of food co-ops, what makes them special, and how ours has changed over the years, for better or worse. What qualities are vital for our Co-op to preserve, and is anything that’s been lost worth restoring?]
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Do you know anything about food co-ops? I love food co-ops! Holdovers from the 60s and 70s, these hippie-born hangouts have grown up a bit over the years but still retain much of their savor. When I visit a new city I always try to check out the local co-ops.
Food co-ops are practical, too. They started from the practical reality that the pure, simple bulk foods the hippies wanted weren’t for sale anywhere on the market. So the hippies became grocers, and eventually business people, of sorts. Not because they wanted to be, but because they had to be, or go hungry for basic foods.
But because they were hippies and were idealistic, they didn’t set up run-of-the-mill capitalist businesses. They had ideals about cooperation and consensus and egalitarianism and lack of hierarchy and workplace democracy and not being focused on profits. Heads stuffed with ideals, they also valued hands-on work and invited as many people as possible to share the work of running the store.
Did I say work? More like productive play, when it comes down to you as a co-op member taking a break from the work-a-day world to bag raisins or run the register for a few hours a week as your friends and neighbors stream through. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came … more like checking in at Cheers than punching in at the assembly line!
It’s also a bit like joining a fraternal society, because co-ops do their best to cooperate with other co-ops around the world. Though separate legally, most food co-ops welcome visiting members from other co-ops and let them shop at reduced member prices. Your home-away-from-home in your community extends to connect you to home bases throughout North America and the world.
The Big News
So that’s the big news: the 60s aren’t dead, for co-ops are still alive and they’re even growing. Their doors are open and you can come in and get great food and save money and have fun and maybe even get involved in something radical!
I’m going to go into some more detail about the points I’ve breezed through above. I’ve been ardently involved with co-ops heavily for the past decade, and I’m still trying to figure out what it is about them that so attracts me. The word “cooperative” is awfully vague — at their core, what exactly are food co-ops?
It’s the Food!
First of all, there’s what food co-ops sell, which is food. Not just any kind of food, but high-quality, lightly-processed, low-pesticide, nutritious food. ”Natural” food. Most of this food isn’t exotic — it’s just the kind of basic food your grandparents enjoyed. Back in those days, before DDT, preservatives, bovine growth hormones, chlorination, fluoridation, irradiation, etc., etc., nobody made a big deal about natural, whole, unadulterated food, because that’s all there was.
There was also a lot less chronic disease; for instance, heart attacks and clogged arteries were rare until the turn of the century. Cancer rates remain much lower in countries with less meat and more fiber in their diets. The low-fat, low-salt, low-sugar, low-processing, low-poison food for sale in food co-ops is the model of good nutrition.
Co-ops Are Selective
It’s true, you can’t find everything in a co-op. Coca Cola pretends to “add life” and be “the real thing,” but since these claims are hogwash, co-ops don’t carry Coke. Co-ops have product selection guidelines, supplying goods that are whole, organic, fresh, local, low-cost, earth-friendly, politically-correct, and/or hard to find. Glop like Coke doesn’t make the grade.
But that doesn’t mean co-ops sell only brown rice and tofu! It’s amazing the variety of natural foods available nowadays, many of them healthier alternatives for standard American favorites. Natural sodas, turkey dogs, veggie burgers, wheat-meat sausages, soy-cheese pizzas, etc. make upgrading one’s diet pretty painless
You can also get cookies, chips, frozen dinners, bagels, ice cream, corn flakes, and most other popular foods at co-ops. The difference is in the ingredients: whole-wheat flour, low or no salt, or maybe fruit-juice sweetening instead of refined sugar. They’re more nutritious than the famous name brands and usually taste at least as good.
Of course, no matter how many times the word “natural” appears on the label, I doubt the nutritional value of most of the sweets and frozen treats co-ops carry. Members (and their kids) want these sweets, and they’re better than the standard “unnatural” versions, so co-ops provide them. Sometimes I hear members say things like, “If the co-op carries it, it must be OK,” as they stock up on natural junk food!
Be Smart – Bulk Up
Quaker Oats sells for about two and a half bucks for 18 ounces of rolled oats. I’m used to paying $.49/pound for organically-grown oats at my co-op, which also sells non-organic oats as good as Quaker’s for $.25/pound. It’s amazing how much money consumers waste paying for packaging, advertising, shelf-space kickbacks, and corporate profits.
You can save a lot of money buying cereal, flour, rice, nuts, beans, chips, oil, mustard, maple syrup, pasta, herbs, salsa, honey, raisins, olives, dog food, soap, etc., etc. out of bulk bins at food co-ops. All that’s missing is mountains of landfill-bound packaging, the brand name, and most of the price.
Bulk is the smart way to shop. You can buy as much or as little as you want, so you can sample without committing to a boxful. You’re getting whole foods without the frills. And you can save even more money at co-ops by placing bulk orders in advance — just be sure you like wild rice before you order 25 pounds of it!
Only at Co-ops
There’s an entire world of products you can’t find in supermarkets, only in food co-ops and other natural foods stores: organically grown produce, exotic cheeses, therapeutic herbs, sea vegetables, macrobiotic foods, special diet supplements, natural body care products, and the list goes on.
Organic produce is grown without synthetic fertilizers or pesticides using sustainable agriculture which builds up rather than depletes the soil. Farm workers aren’t being poisoned in the growing, and you won’t be poisoned in the eating. Richer soil can also mean more minerals in your produce, as well as better taste.
Many co-ops cultivate relations with local farmers so they can offer produce that’s extra fresh. Vegetables like broccoli are sometimes trucked from coast to coast before they appear on supermarket shelves, wasting both fuel and nutrition. It’s better to have a strong sustainable agriculture base in one’s community.
Be Your Own Doctor
A real showpiece of my co-op is our great herb section. We have hundreds of hard-to-find botanicals alphabetically arranged in air-tight bottles. Prices like $17.06/pound may seem forbidding, until you get to the counter and find your pouch of fluffy powder costs only 23 cents!
Many knowledgeable people prefer to treat themselves with time-tested herbs, which are usually gentler and less expensive than the latest patent drugs from the chemical/vivisection/medical fraternity. Few have ever been harmed by misusing herbs, while untold thousands die each year from the side effects of FDA-approved drugs (even aspirin kills hundreds a year).
Nevertheless, the FDA is continually trying to get the power to classify traditional herbs as drugs or “untested food additives,” in order to get them off the market or into the exclusive control of “approved” multinational corporations. Who benefits? Certainly not the consumer. The extensive herb sections in food co-ops are treasure troves of self-care options.
The Same Old Story
It’s hilarious and sobering checking out an old book like Omar Garrison’s The Dictocrats from 1970 to see how off-base the FDA has been through the years. During the ’60s the FDA seized yeast and honey off the shelves of health food stores — the agency preferred sugar and cyclamates.
They derided as false advertising and prosecuted discussions of the connection between dietary fat and heart disease, or between Vitamin C and healing. The FDA banned books on alternative medicine (literally burned Wilhelm Reich’s) under the pretext of being “an extension of the label” of unidentified food supplements.
With the perspective of years we can see that the FDA was on the wrong side of almost every one of its disputes with the health food industry. What was persecuted as “food faddism” is now reported as fact by Time magazine. The lighter, fresher diet advanced by old-time “health nuts” is now the common wisdom, while the heavy, fatty, sugary slop the FDA promoted is only defended anymore by vested interests like the beef industry.
More Monopoly Medicine
Unchastened, the FDA is at it again with another assault. Calcium’s role in preventing osteoporosis is the only supplement health claim the FDA presently accepts, and it’s trying to ban everything else, the first amendment be damned. The FDA is threatening to keep stores from selling therapeutic herbs, amino acids, bee products, and all vitamins and minerals more nutritious than the Recommended Daily Allowances!
The health food industry and its customers are not rolling over and playing dead — instead, Congress received more letters in 1992 demanding health freedom than about any other issue besides the economy. The result was a one-year moratorium on the FDA’s oppressive new regulations.
A year later, on Friday, August 13, 1993, my co-op draped itself black as part of a nationwide Blackout Day, a wake-up call to political action. Threatened products were marked with black dots for the duration to warn customers these products may disappear if the FDA isn’t stopped. Action booths were set up with full information and pre-addressed postcards to encourage grass-roots support for passing protective Dietary Supplement Health and Education Acts (S. 784 in the Senate and H.R. 1709 in the House).
As of this writing, the outcome is still in doubt. This is a crucial fight, for the FDA’s new rules are a prescription for disaster. The health care crisis in this country is caused by monopoly medicine and won’t be solved by more of it!
The Co-op Difference
Most everything said above applies equally to privately-owned natural food stores and to co-ops. They carry the same great products and are equally protective of your right to make your own health choices. Some natural food stores look almost indistinguishable from co-ops.
But there are differences, mainly of culture and orientation. Food co-ops came out of the hippie culture, so their staples are back-to-basics natural foods like fresh fruits and vegetables along with bulk grains, beans, nuts, and herbs. Private stores tend to emphasize “nutritious” over “natural,” with shelves full of megavitamins, pump-you-up bodybuilding supplements, and alternative health books.
Co-ops have a special kind of internal structure, neither socialist nor capitalist, that was pioneered in 1844 by a 28-member weavers’ co-op in Rochdale, England. “Capital is necessary for any enterprise, but while capitalists rent labor and earn profits, cooperatives rent capital and the members earn profits through their participation” (Kaswan, Whole Earth Review, Spring 1989). Important co-op decisions are made by members actively involved in and affected by co-op operations, not by investors or speculators.
Each co-op is organized to fulfill a specific need of its voluntary members, so it has a mission in life beyond the standard corporate imperatives to maximize growth, profits, and executive pay. Because a food co-op is a consumer cooperative, its owner/members are food consumers. Providing them with the best deal on the best whole foods is a food co-op’s bottom line.
The International Co-op Conspiracy
100,000,000 Americans are members of over 45,000 cooperatives, including credit union, group health care, agriculture, rural electric, housing, insurance, and worker co-ops. When the state capitalist economy leaves some people out in the cold, when consumerism built on invented demand doesn’t supply everyone’s desires, mutual-aid co-ops can be a satisfying solution.
In Central America, India, Indonesia, Eastern Europe, and around the world, co-ops are one of the few means available for people to help themselves out of oppressive circumstances. The outstanding example is the Mondragon system of cooperatives tucked away in the Basque region of northwestern Spain — probably the most successful social experiment in the history of the planet!
The Mondragon Miracle
Can you believe it? Founded in 1956 by the passionate Padre Arizmendi after 15 years of solitary spadework, his 5 member stove co-op has grown into a multi-billion-dollar network of 173 cooperatives employing 20,000 people. Mondragon co-ops include Spain’s fastest growing bank, hundreds of K-Mart style consumer stores, health care, insurance companies, pension management, entrepreneur development, robotics research, heavy equipment manufacture, and just about everything else under the sun.
And all this was accomplished through a sophisticated, self-adjusting system emphasizing workplace democracy, ownership gained by participation, self-financing from the local co-op bank, continuous cultivation of new co-ops, and a cultural commitment to solidarity: *all acts must, at the same time, benefit and respect the needs and concerns of everyone affected — individuals, their cooperative, other cooperatives in the system, and the larger community” (Jaques and Ruth Kaswan, “The Mondragon Cooperatives,” Whole Earth Review, Spring 1989, pp. 8-17).
A central co-op principle is cooperation among co-ops; Mondragon does it in spades! No other co-ops have ever come close to its interlocking, diversified system, but all cooperatives aspire to this ideal and have a conscious commitment to mutual support. Taken together the world’s co-ops are a global conspiracy — an open conspiracy with 700 million members at large.
The Great Good Place
Getting back to home. I’ve got to admit that such world-girdling considerations are only a very small part of why I love co-ops. Mostly it’s the day-to-day joy I experience walking into my own local co-op and immersing myself into its soul-soothing ambiance.
Today my fingers played over the keys of a musical cash register while I enjoyed the vista of chatting member-workers bustling backstock to the retail shelves amidst chatting member-shoppers carelessly selecting groceries. The business at hand seemed to be conversation first, food second. One shopper confided to me, “I have to come here to get some social interaction. I work at home and don’t even get to talk to people. I come to the Co-op to catch up.”
Ray Oldenburg’s book The Great Good Place rhapsodizes about “third places [that] exist on neutral ground and serve to level their guests to a condition of social equality [that’s] remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends. … a source of news along with the opportunity to question, protest, sound out, supplement, and form opinion locally and collectively. …
“The activity that goes on in third places is largely unplanned, unscheduled, unorganized, and unstructured. Here, however, is the charm. It is just these deviations from the middle-class penchant for organization that give the third place much of its character and allure and that allow it to offer a radical departure from the routines of home and work.”
Co-ops are great good places. They are Temporary Autonomous Zones. They are community crossroads, counterculture cynosures, neighborhood news services. They are R & R for overworked psyches, refuges from dog-eat-dog reality, and perhaps the seeds of deeper and more sustaining realities.
The Abolition of Work
Food co-ops have this feel of the “third place,” while trying to integrate it with the business of providing good food and service. At their best, they seem like real-world exercises of the vision that Bob Black broadcasts in his essay, “The Abolition of Work“:
“A ‘job’ that might engage the energies of some people, for a reasonably limited time, for the fun of it, is just a burden on those who have to do it for forty hours a week with no say in how it should be done, for the profit of owners who contribute nothing to the project, and with no opportunity for sharing tasks or spreading the work among those who actually have to do it. …
“Such is ‘work’. Play is just the opposite. Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it’s forced. …The player gets something out of playing; that’s why he plays. But the core reward is the experience of the activity itself …some things that are unsatisfying if done by yourself or in unpleasant surroundings or at the orders of an overlord are enjoyable, at least for a while, if these circumstances are changed.”
Much of the work at many co-ops is done by members part-time in exchange for food discounts or other benefits — not as a requirement of membership but as a welcome option that satisfies Black’s standards for play. In a convivial, ego-free environment, professionals and working stiffs and assorted unemployables can break up their lives with some hands-on cheese cutting or clerking or cleaning — as one CPA/discount worker remarked, “I can do anything for 4 hours a week!”
Whither Food Co-ops?
I have been describing the ideal situation; co-ops often find themselves stretched between apparently opposite commitments to cooperative purism and efficient operations. The Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley, at one time America’s largest food co-op with 12 stores and 100,000 members and $83.6 million in annual sales, failed in 1988 partly due to this conflict. The board factionalized into progressive versus economic camps, the staff collected inflated paychecks while co-op assets were sold off, and the membership defected in dismay over infighting and the disappearance of politically-taboo products from the shelves.
Berkeley is an extreme case, and remember that for 50 years it was a pioneering and successful co-op. Did cooperativism fail at Berkeley, or is this an example of what can happen when co-ops neglect their underlying principles? Many employees hadn’t been educated about co-ops, didn’t bother to become members, and felt alienated from their co-op bosses. A weak board literally gave away the store in contract negotiations, putting reflexive sympathy for union causes ahead of the membership’s interests (source: “What Happened to the Berkeley Co-op?”, excerpted in Cooperative Grocer, January, 1992).
As food co-ops grow and find themselves directly competing with huge corporate supermarket chains, they start discovering every incentive to become more like supermarkets and less like co-ops. Member involvement in store operations gets phased out, replacing the energy of enthusiastic part-timers with the professionalism of stressed-out staff. Whether at McDonald’s or Mondragon, full-time service work within a power structure can be a stupefying experience that makes cooperative ideals seem pretty hollow. When a co-op looks like Safeway and works like Safeway, why should its shoppers and workers care that it isn’t Safeway?
One answer is that supermarket co-ops remain excellent natural food stores with top-quality products and a benign corporate outlook which plows profits back into the co-op and its community. But those who prefer small-fry co-ops do feel that something intangible gets lost as co-ops grow into increased hierarchy and organization. As a co-op gets less fun to work in, it gets less fun to shop in and less like a great good place to hang out in. Play time is over — it’s back to work. Where’s the co-op difference?
Original article sources from 1994
I hope that food co-ops will someday crack the nut of how to grow without losing what makes them great. I wonder whether co-ops will prove to be just the wave of the past, or whether the Mondragon model will eventually take over the earth. What I do know is that right now many magic co-ops survive and thrive for you to enjoy — there may be one in your home town. Check it out!
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Illustrations by Barbara Williams and Shaun Hayes-Holgate
by Jim Scarantino | Mar 7, 2025 | General
How is Port Townsend doing financially? City Manager John Mauro tells us pretty much all is well.
Here he is in his City Manager’s preface to the city’s 2025 budget:
“If you take the time to review the previous years’ budgets – or even just the budget messages from me – you’ll see them evolve into something increasingly clear-eyed, strategic, and honest. This year we attempt to keep moving forward in a similar fashion, with a balanced, smart, and forward-thinking budget that reflects our community’s values and sets us up for enduring success.”
In an email exchange with the Leader, he deflected concern about the city’s budget actually being a deficit budget (keep reading). He insisted the city’s budget was instead “a structurally balanced budget.” That phrase does mean something. Indeed, a structurally balanced budget is a good thing. The Government Finance Officers Association provides this explanation:
Most state and local governments are subject to a requirement to pass a balanced budget. However, a budget that may fit the statutory definition of a “balanced budget” may not, in fact, be financially sustainable. For example, a budget that is balanced by such standards could include the use of non-recurring resources, such as asset sales or reserves, to fund ongoing expenditures, and thus not be in structural balance. A true structurally balanced budget is one that supports financial sustainability for multiple years into the future. A government needs to make sure that it is aware of the distinction between satisfying the statutory definition and achieving a true structurally balanced budget.
So is Port Townsend’s 2025 budget a structurally balanced budget? Should we not be concerned about the fact that the city’s budget is only balanced by spending reserves? Is the city being set up for success, as Mr. Mauro tells it, or something else?
The “Fiscal Cliff”
At the end of 2023, I wrote an article entitled, “Port Townsend is in Trouble.” It copied the graph featured at the top of this article directly from the report of the city’s Sustainability Task Force (on which I have also reported).
That graphic shows the city heading over a “fiscal cliff,” to use the words of the Sustainability Task Force, and certainly does not reflect a structurally balanced budget that delivers sustainability. To stave off that deep dive, the city has been doing some quite smart things, such as paying down debt and setting aside funds for future debt payments.
The 2025 budget shows just over $2 million being banked for paying debt coming due next year. Likewise, funding for streets is up significantly from taxing through the Transportation Benefit District, and the budget shows large expenditures on capital projects needing attention. Further, a rainy day fund had about $248,000 at the start of the year, not a huge amount, but at least something positive.
On the other hand, both the general capital and street capital funds show large deficits. Expenditures of almost $4 million on streets will leave less than $35,000 in that account by year end. Expenditures of almost $1.4 million from the general capital budget will pull that account into the red and leave under $200,000 by year’s end. That leaves very little for next year’s needs.
Despite some accounts doing well, there is a lot of red ink, spending in excess of income, throughout the city’s budget. The result is an overall deficit of $1,826,888.
Some kinds of municipal expenses can benefit from federal and state grants, and money from such sources is funding a good deal of Port Townsend’s infrastructure work. The general fund that pays for City Hall’s operations and staffing is another matter.
Burning General Fund Reserves
There is no more federal COVID money, aka American Rescue Plan Act funds, to supplement Port Townsend’s general fund. The city booked about $2.755 million in COVID funds in 2022. The city’s general fund peaked that year at almost $7 million (see the graph heading this article). The COVID money is now gone. These emergency funds were supposed to be spent on public health, infrastructure, supporting local businesses impacted by government-mandated shutdowns and supporting “essential” workers.
These federal funds bought two police vehicles ($356,000), contract legal services ($300,000), a roof repair for the pool ($91,500) and a Bobcat excavator and mini-excavator ($98,725). More questionable expenditures show in the city’s final reporting on how it used these one-time emergency funds: remodeling City Hall ($546,000), an “engagement survey” ($50,000), expanding payroll by adding a “Long Range Planner” ($240,000) and various outlays (about $500,000) in salaries and consultants for the failed golf-course revisioning as Central Park and the megabucks Taj Mahal aquatic center proposal.
With ARPA funds now showing a zero balance, 2025 will mark the third straight year of overspending out of the general fund. At the same time, the cost of City Hall salaries and operations has increased. Some line items have more than doubled.
By the end of this year, the general fund reserve will have been drawn down almost 43% from its 2022 level. From almost $7 million in 2022, general fund reserves will be reduced to less than $4 million by year’s end.
In 2025, the city is projected to pull about another $1 million from its general fund reserves to compensate for general fund deficit spending. There is no reason to believe that on the current trajectory this account won’t be pulled down further in coming years.
Spending on the Mayor and Council grew from $122,362 in 2022 to $291,434 last year, but has been cut back to $237,581 for 2025, still a 94% increase over 2022. The City Attorney account grew from $483,504 in 2022 to $826,288 last year, a 71% increase. Some money has been shaved off the City Attorney budget for 2025, coming in at $762,723, still a huge increase since 2022.
Many other City Hall line items have also grown significantly since 2022:
- Communications, from $0 to $187,736
- Human Resources, from $340,690 to $495,865
- Planning & Development, from $1,108,492 to $2,140,316 ($2,510,257 in 2024)
- Finance, more than doubling, from $465,764 to $1,055,130
- Police Administration, more than doubling, from $552,993 to $1,219,402
- Police Operations, from $2,791,357 to $3,753,359
Even in the face of persistent deficits, the city continues to expand payroll.
It will be hiring three seasonal workers in 2025 for streets, parks, storm and waste water, and water distribution tasks. It is also adding four full-time positions: water maintenance worker, park maintenance worker, community services director and arts and culture coordinator.
Washington’s rising minimum wage will drive up labor costs for seasonal works and entry level library workers. It pushes higher all the wages above it by increasing the base wages on which the rest of the pay scale is built, called “wage compression.” Further, as the Leader has been reporting, raises will be coming to City Hall that are not in the 2025 budget, adding to the red ink already requiring spending reserves to create a “balanced” budget.
Worrying Signs
To avoid falling off the fast-approaching fiscal cliff, substantial real growth in the city’s economy is required. That was the message from City Engineer Steve King back in 2023. He was refreshingly frank about the approaching crisis. “Our tax structure absolutely requires growth,” he said. To avoid crisis, a “radical” change is needed to achieve a high rate of growth not seen in recent memory.
So how is the city’s real economy doing in providing the growth required by our tax structure?
The retail sales tax brought in an estimated $3,397,900 in 2024. This is up from not only pandemic years, but also higher than 2018, when the city netted $2,529,757. That may look like a much better year, except one must adjust for inflation. The 2018 revenue, adjusted for inflation, would be worth just under $3.2 million today. That means the city’s retail and other sectors that pay the retail sales tax have barely expanded in seven years. That is stagnation.
Property values, though, are not stagnating. Owners can expect to be paying more, with some of that increase heading towards the city’s accounts. The city can also increase the tax by the permitted 1% annual bump (count on it).
But the stagnation in the underlying economy can’t be ignored. Revenue from the Business and Occupation and Real Estate Excise Taxes are actually predicted to decline in 2025.
Port Townsend’s tourism economy is not experiencing any real growth. Lodging tax revenue is a fairly good barometer of how robust the tourist economy is. 2024 saw $528,096 in lodging tax revenue. That is below pre-pandemic 2018 when lodging tax revenue was $551,080. Adjusting that figure for inflation, in today’s dollars the 2018 lodging tax revenue would be $638,597. This means that in real terms the city’s tourism industry has shrunk considerably. Troubles at Fort Worden, a major driver of local tourism, does not mean good news for the city’s future lodging tax revenues.
And the costs of running a city continue to rise. Inflation is hanging around, not dropping as much as had been anticipated a couple years ago.
Structurally Balanced? Nope.
The question is not whether the city’s 2025 budget manages to balance out on paper. The question is whether the city’s budget, judged by the standards articulated by the Government Finance Officers Association in defining a “structurally balanced” budget, “supports financial sustainability for multiple years.”
A budget that uses reserves to cover ongoing expenditures, by definition, does not meet that criteria. The city’s 2025 budget, as in the preceding two years, uses reserves to cover ongoing expenditures. It is, therefore, not “structurally balanced” as Mr. Mauro claims. It continues on course over the financial cliff predicted by the city’s Financial Sustainability Task Force.
Mauro, as in his recent comments to the Leader about the city’s deficits, assures taxpayers not to worry about the red ink. “It’s not a coincidence.” he wrote in an email to the Leader, “that we won a national [International City/County Management] award for the work done by community members, staff, and Council – and something that should provide some assurance to our community that the City, through City Council action on budgets and related policy, is making sound financial decisions over multiple years.”
That award (self-nominated, by the way) was for work showing the city falling off a fiscal cliff three years from now. It was not an award for continued payroll expansion and deficit spending that will confirm that grim prediction.
by Jim Scarantino | Mar 2, 2025 | General
The City of Port Townsend paid architects almost $500,000 to draw up a plan for Evans Vista that is too costly to build. The city purchased the 14.4 acre Evans Vista property in 2021 to address the city’s affordable housing crisis. The architect’s pictures, like the rendering above, are very nice. But the bottom line is that all that money produced a project that can’t be built.
Total costs would start at $111-126 million (2023 dollars) and go up from there. The economic analysis performed only after the drawings were done shows that the market value of the Evans Vista Project would be $55.1 million below the costs of development.
Despite being confronted with a pro forma showing the project was not economically feasible, the Port Townsend City Council on November 20, 2023, voted to approve the plan so that it could move forward. Since then, nothing much has happened on the ground. There is no contractor, no investor pouring tens of millions of dollars into building a costly, hip neighborhood by the pulp mill in the middle of large homeless camps.
As things stand, the Evans Project is a failure. Over $2.1 million has been spent thus far. The project was supposed to address the immediate and crushing shortage of affordable housing in our community. More than three years have passed and not a single unit of affordable housing has been added.
I asked the city when we could expect to see the first affordable housing available at Evans Vista. City Engineer Steve King provided this answer: “These projects by their very nature move slowly as we expected…” There are many excuses for the project moving slowly, everything from holding back until a sewer lift station is built to the more intractable problem of finding a private developer who will risk their money on a seriously losing proposition.
But this was not supposed to be a long, drawn-out morass. Nobody told city council up front this project would stall out. It was supposed to be a fix for the city’s crushing shortage of affordable housing… yesterday, today, tomorrow, not untold years in the future, if ever.
We’ve seen this before: the debacle of the Cherry Street Project, the “revisioning” of the golf course as a Central Park, and plans for a Taj Mahal aquatic center to replace the Mountain View pool. Millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on lots of drawings, scores of meetings and listening sessions, and thick books of reports, with little else to show for it.
An “Incredibly Expensive” Idea
On December 6, 2021, city council voted to purchase the 14.4 acre Evans Vista property, located east of the highway before the first traffic circle upon entering town. $1.3 million from the Washington Department of Commerce paid for the land, on the condition that at least 25% of housing units in any future development would be “affordable.”
The Evans Vista property is outlined in red.
These acres had long been the place of last resort for addicts who lived in appalling conditions among the trees. I covered that story in my article on what was then being called Port Townsend’s fentanyl forest. During the term of the late former Mayor Brent Shirley an effort to add about 200 housing units in that area had made some progress until the developer determined the project was not feasible due to the location.
As explained by City Engineer Steve King, the new plan was to create at least 100 affordable housing units. He said that number of residences could be served by the water and sewer infrastructure already in place. The “due diligence” conducted before purchase looked for signs of Indian use (none found at the cost of $36,491) and reviewed zoning codes. No economic feasibility analysis of any kind was conducted.
City council and staff quickly leaped from focusing on affordable housing to imagining an entirely new neighborhood with a mix of affordable and market-rate housing, complete with a central plaza and various amenities. Then Mayor Michelle Sandoval predicted it would be an “incredibly expensive” project.
Cherry Street Project demolition
Current Mayor David Faber, Deputy Mayor at the time, said, “I am nervous” about “again'” getting “the city significantly involved in a project that doesn’t necessarily have a clear end project yet — given the status of the Cherry Street Project and so forth.” He did not want another “long-term, dragged-out morass.”
The Cherry Street Project, as most readers know, was the city’s failed effort at creating affordable housing by purchasing in 2017 and barging from Victoria, B.C. a 60-year old 4-unit apartment building and moving it to city-owned land on a hillside above the golf course. The cost of the project was never determined up front and continued to explode. The building sat empty, a vandalized eyesore. Eventually, the city gave up and tore the building down in late 2023. The land sits empty and has not been sold. Taxpayers are still paying off the debt incurred to rehabilitate the building and grounds.
Though he did not want another “long-term, dragged-out morass,” Faber stated quite clearly regarding the embarrassment of the failed Cherry Street Project, “I wouldn’t change a single thing about what we did.” Sadly, the Evans Vista Project has played out along similar lines that led to the failure of the Cherry Street Project.
Ignoring Hard Numbers
In early 2018 it became apparent that much more money would be needed for the Cherry Street Project. The initial hopes of quickly adding affordable housing in the Fall of 2017 for a couple hundred grand had evaporated. This would be a much more involved, more time-consuming and more expensive project, i.e., “a long-term, dragged-out morass.”
City council voted to approve a bond that saddled taxpayers with debt and interest of about $1.4 million. Before the vote, council was informed of a pessimistic pro forma, an economic projection and analysis, showing the project defaulting within two years. City council, which then included Faber and current Deputy Mayor Amy Howard, voted to issue the bond anyway. As council had been forewarned, the project cratered. Taxpayers got burned and years of effort were wasted without adding a single unit of affordable housing.
Fast forward to 2021, when the city acquired the Evans Vista property. The city obtained $3.1 million from the state to help with acquisition and infrastructure costs. In August 2022 the county gave $500,000 of Federal COVID money to fund “the Evans Vista Master Plan.” A couple months later the city issued a “request for qualifications” from architects who could prepare a master plan and applications for land use permits for “an affordable and mixed-use housing development.”
Time was of the essence:
“The development of a mix of 100-150 workforce housing units is meant to deliver urgently-needed supply and to activate the Evans Vista neighborhood as part of the area’s emerging commercial and business environment.” (Emphasis added.)
On November 7, 2022, city council approved a $500,000 contract with Thomas Architecture Studios (TAS) of Olympia. City Councilor Ben Thomas abstained on grounds he lacked enough information to vote on such a large contract.
A year later, November 20, 2023, city council approved the “final master plan design.” The project had grown to 319 units with multi-story apartments — walk-ups and “podiums” with parking under the building. There would be 16 townhomes, 8,500 square feet of retail space, a 2,000 square-foot daycare center and 3,000 square feet of other structures, such as pavilions and meeting spaces. Only nine acres of the 14.4 acres would be developed due to the steep slopes and preservation of a wetland area. The entirely new neighborhood would come with plazas, a dog park, an auditorium and stage, a “madrona picnic grove” and multiple “art plinths.”
City Manager John Mauro said he was “very excited” about the TAS design.
An air of unreality reigned. City Planning Director Emma Bolin penned a fanciful Google review from May 2030:
A Google Review from the Future
Evans Vista Neighborhood in the Year 2030
I moved to Evans Vista years ago and watched my new neighborhood blossom. It’s a homecoming. Many of my friends returned to Port Townsend due to the increased amount of affordable housing. The on-site daycare is a relief for working families. Affordable townhomes empowered struggling friends to become homeowners. This is a place where people succeed. The demand for the 321 available units led to a waiting list of current and former Port Townsendites, all yearning for a backyard where you can take tai chi lessons followed by garden-to-table kombucha workshops, and later a Chautauqua band finished out with late-night open-air movies….
Evans Vista personifies our local vibe. Diverse and affordable housing options cater to all. The abundance of open spaces, trails, community gardens, and gathering spaces promote individual and community health, fostering connections among residents. The mix of market-rate and affordable housing boast Port Townsend’s commitment to diversity and inclusivity….
Evans Vista is not merely a neighborhood; it’s a testament to what Port Townsend life should be. It’s a portal to the future where sustainable and inclusive havens thrive.
– Evans Vista Resident, May 1, 2030
The reality check that followed the nice pictures brought spirits down fast. You could see the faces of city councilors drop (especially Mayor Faber, who may have been seeing that Cherry Street Project repeat he dreaded). According to economic analysts with ECONorthwest, there was no likely scenario in which the master plan could work. “A combination of factors need to change for the entire site to be feasible.”
Slide from ECONorthwest presentation
Those factors would be a deep cut in construction costs, much higher rents throughout the city so that higher rents could be charged at Evans Vista, and a return to pre-pandemic interest rates and market conditions like those in 2013. Failing a dramatic change in all those factors, the project does not “pencil out.” It is unfeasible even without any “affordable” units and with all units rented at highest market rates.
City council did not tell the architect to come back with a design that stood a chance of being built sometime soon. Instead, the council gave its unanimous approval to a plan that can’t be built.
To date, $2,149,942 has been spent on the project (right-hand column in table below) with millions more in the budget (left hand column).
Table of budget and expenses for Evans Vista project, from the city’s 2025 final budget
Three Strikes
Since the city acquired the Evans Vista property, dozens of people who had once found affordable (free) housing under the trees have been evicted. It cost about $100,000 to clear out their camps and cart away their refuse, with city staff providing the labor. A large chain link fence and “no trespassing” signs threatening criminal prosecution surround much of the land.
The people who used to live there moved not very far away. Some were accepted into the Mill Road homeless camp, officially named the Caswell-Brown Village after two homeless individuals who died from substance abuse. Many others have pitched tents in the woods and meadows north of the DSHS building on a city right-of-way and private property behind the Les Schwab store. I have been told by people who do outreach to the homeless that about 50 people could be living in that area.
Homeless encampment on north side of Evans Vista
Homeless camp on north side of Evans Vista, behind Les Schwab
Mill Road (Caswell-Brown) homeless camp
Blue marking at bottom left indicates approximate area of Mill Road camp; blue line at bottom right shows boundary of area occupied by homeless camps near DSHS building; Evans Vista property delineated by dashed red line.
The large Mill Road camp lies on the south side of the Evans Vista property. Every day some of its residents cross the Evans Vista property to get into town. I have been told of, but not seen for myself, another sizable encampment very near Evans Vista along a power line right-of-way.
Several years ago I wrote about the frequent law enforcement call-outs to the Mill Road camp due to drug dealing, substance abuse, thefts and assaults. Law enforcement sources speaking off the record inform me that the camp is being better managed now, with fewer calls to law enforcement. Drug use inside the dwelling units, however, continues and there have been several overdoses and other complications from substance abuse.
The camps at the other end of the Evans Vista property, near the DSHS building, and in the surrounding woods have seen a sharp rise in methamphetamine abuse. Those camps have become increasingly violent — so violent, according to law enforcement sources, that people have fled and set up camps along nearby power lines.
Moreover, immediately to the east of Evans Vista and the homeless camps is the odiferous paper mill.
Evans Vista is not exactly prime real estate, yet the analysts used rental rates at the fairly new West Harbor Apartments as a lodestar. Rents at Evans Vista would have to be higher than what is charged at a fairly up-scale complex in a desirable location.
Even an all-market rate project with NO subsidized “affordable” units would be unfeasible, according to ECONorthwest’s analysts, unless the city’s rental rates across the board go higher. How ironic, that in order to provide a limited amount of affordable housing at Evans Vista, housing would have to become less affordable for everyone else.
Higher rents alone would not make the project feasible. Interest rates would also have to drop very significantly. But rates have declined less than the predictions ECONorthwest presented to council in 2023. Thus far in 2025, the Federal Reserve has not cut interest rates. According to the minutes of the most recent Fed meeting, any cuts are on hold indefinitely while inflation persists.
Slide from ECONorthwest presentation
Two of the three factors necessary for any chance of the TAS design being feasible are not attainable. As ECONorthwest also discussed, assuming the TAS design remains the basic plan, there is little that can be done meaningfully to reduce construction costs. That makes three strikes against the Evans Vista Project.
How Could This Happen… Again?
In a few years time, Port Townsend has seen four big-vision, costly public works efforts flop: The Cherry Street Project. The golf course “revisioning” as P.T.’s Central Park. The mega-bucks Taj Mahal aquatic center. And now Evans Vista.
These projects share several attributes. First and foremost is that none of them are core municipal services, such as providing infrastructure and law enforcement — the fundamental reasons why municipal corporations are formed. Millions of dollars have been wasted that could have gone towards fixing the city’s streets and deteriorating sewer and water systems went to consultants or staff hired principally to drive home the golf course and pool projects.
The amount wasted is not insignificant. Recently, the century-old pipeline that brings water to Port Townsend suffered two major breaks. As the Leader reported, the 2025 repair budget for this critical infrastructure — P.T. can’t exist without it — was only $63,672. A single January water line break cost $150,000 to repair.
In contrast, the city staffer brought on board with federal COVID dollars, whose primary job was strategizing and realizing the golf course revisioning and the aquatic center planning and design, was getting paid $130,000 annually, plus benefits. City Manager Mauro has said the city spent $500,000 on the “Healthier Together” pool design process. The architectural firm that drew up the grandiose and unaffordable $43-53 million pool design was paid about $200,000. The contract with TAS for Evans Vista was almost half a million dollars.
Ironically, the unfeasible Evans Vista Master Plan was one of the reasons the Washington City Manager’s Association gave Port Townsend City Manager John Mauro its 2024 award for Management Excellence. Off topic, but along similar lines, his work on the city’s financial sustainability was another reason for the award — yet the city is now in its third year straight of operating in the red and continues drawing down dwindling reserves.
And remember that, like the Cherry Street Project, the Evans Vista Project was intended to address and help alleviate the city’s dire, emergency-level affordable housing crisis. So many years like so many tax dollars have been lost, and the problem has only gotten worse.
Recently a plumber came to our home to fix a faucet. Poor us, we couldn’t get hot water the exact second we wanted it. He told us that he lives in “a shack in the woods” without indoor plumbing. He uses an outhouse. He says has not been able to find any other accommodation that he can afford.
In deciding to go big and build an entirely new neighborhood, in one of the least desirable areas of the city, then handing that vision off to an architectural firm without giving them a budget as to what could feasibly be built, the city set itself on the same path as with its other recent out-sized housing and amenities projects.
Infrastructure already existed to add 100 residences. But instead of building incrementally, picking the low-hanging fruit, the city and TAS put up a Christmas tree then asked “stakeholders” what presents they wanted around the tree. The project metastasized until affordable housing became a “condition” of funding that had to be met, instead of the primary objective.
A city that desperately needs affordable housing immediately paid a lot of money for a plan that is not only unfeasible on a large scale, but absurd in its details. Where needed housing units could have been added, TAS instead dedicated buildable land to an amphitheater.
Other buildable land would showcase “art plinths.” Port Townsend knows all about “art plinths.”
A Wise Pivot
Not all has been wasted. The civil engineering work performed for the TAS design would be useful to any developer. And we now know what we can’t possibly afford.
On November 4, 2024, city council authorized the city manager to execute a contract for about $160,000 to see if there might be a way to entice a developer and investors to bite off smaller pieces of the project. Further, the developer would not be tied to the unfeasible design from TAS. City Engineer King and Planning Director Bolin deserve credit for this pivot.
I suggest the redirection be more audacious and boldly innovative. We can’t keep following the same path to failure over and over again. We have an emergency, so let’s act accordingly. This will be the topic of my next article on the Evans Vista Project.
by Musa Jaman | Feb 24, 2025 | General
Parking, especially in downtown Port Townsend, remains a contentious issue. The popularity of our quaint seaport community sees tourists flocking who, for better or worse, have become the main source of revenue for most of the businesses. But accommodating this near constant influx of visitors leaves locals, business owners and employees — as well as those who live downtown — scrambling to find a parking space.
Further exacerbating the issue is our public transit system which in some respects remains a frustration for its lack of adequately frequent service downtown. Averaging about once every hour, its operating schedule is also not conducive to those whose jobs require hours past 8 pm.
Adding to this dilemma is the city’s recent action to do away with off-street parking requirements for new developments. An example of this can be found in the new hotel planned between Ichikawa and the Pizza Factory. This Motel 6-looking box will have a 50-room occupancy, but only 11 off-street parking spaces.
The City’s $20,000 Proposal: Parking Fee Pilot Program
The city is now considering a paid parking pilot program. If pursued, it would run for 18 months and cost taxpayers approximately $20,000 to implement. At the February 10th city council meeting, Police Chief Tom Olson presented the details of this initiative.
Originally, what the council approved was a small scale pilot program that was only one block long. However, Olson’s presentation showed a much larger, full scale “parking plan” (see illustration at top) because, Olson relayed, the meter company couldn’t accommodate the “smaller” pilot plan.
Large or small, the plan appeared to lack some important considerations. For instance, it relies heavily on the assumption that everyone has access to a smartphone in order to use the parking software being considered. One must, at the very least, have access to a phone of some sort to enter a code and payment details in order to park.
In addition, while the current cost of a parking infraction is $15, this program would see it increased to $65. It was implied that the projected revenue generated by the increased fines would fund a parking enforcement position.
Finally, there is no provision that makes exceptions for those who work or reside downtown to have free parking. (Further details on this proposal can be found here.)
Council member Ben Thomas was concerned about the significant increase in the scope of the project — that it now appeared to be more than a pilot and could have broader overall impacts. Council member Libby Wennstrom commented that if all parking spaces were 24-hour, people would just keep feeding the meter (a figure of speech — no meters are involved) and not move their cars, thereby defeating one of the objectives to have more traffic/visitor circulation.
Mayor David Faber seemed disappointed that the pilot area wasn’t larger and didn’t cover all of downtown, adding that he definitely wanted Madison Street added to the pilot area. A public comment from Scott Walker, a long time Transportation Lab member, suggested that the hours of paid parking should be increased to run from 10 am to 7 pm thereby capturing more revenue from people going out for dinner or a movie.
Social Media Erupts
On February 12th, The Leader reported on the parking pilot. I also posted the details of this plan on February 14th to a couple of social media platforms including NextDoor. The response was immediate and robust (4,200 views on one site), with most people strongly against the idea for obvious reasons. Comments focused strongly on the adverse effects of the pilot program, but also included mention of collateral issues that have become a familiar refrain over the last couple of years.
One comment included the relationship of budget deficits and the city manager’s salary in a reply:
“I read the Leader article and noted that all that was discussed was the financial benefits to the city. Now we find that the city is budgeting for a $1.8 million deficit, while they have a city manager that gets paid more than the governor. No mention of the chilling effect on downtown business which is commonly the result of paid parking.”
Another included the lack of adequate public transit considerations in relation to the paid parking idea:
“The paid parking ‘pilot’ program will adversely affect those who work and live downtown. These fees have a minimal impact on tourists but will have a profound impact on residents and workers. We live downtown and are not wealthy. We do drive neighbors, who are in need, to appointments, grocery stores, etc whenever possible. These people have difficulties navigating the public bus system (which has not been expanded to meet the needs of this endeavor). I would like to see the environmental impact assessment of this pilot. As you know EIAs include the potential impact on members of the community. I cannot imagine that anyone would implement this system without regard for workers, business owners or residents.”
Still another noted that many are not so much attached to their cars as dependent on them, and that the cost of living in PT has a substantial impact on most households:
“Some of us would love to be biking and walking around a lot more. I know I used to. Ah how I remember it, having time, because I had more money and didn’t have to spend all my time working carrying tools around to pay for the high cost of living here. I don’t see any large tool carting racks on buses, I can’t get to my jobs by bus on time. I’m not car loving, I am car dependent, and yes gas costs but I try to plan my trips carefully. I can’t afford an electric vehicle. And, having been a caregiver as well for years, there are lots of mobility issues which affect what kind of transport and what kind of disability placard you can get. The issue isn’t really are we so much in love with our cars as what kind of transport those of us who work trade jobs here but can barely afford to be here need. I can’t see paid parking helping me with any of that. It certainly won’t help downtown.”
Some expressed concerns about the smartphone app required:
“What about the people who do not have a smart phone? Are they just not going to be able to park?”
“…or left it at home, or let the battery run out, or lost it, or dropped and broke it getting it out to scan the damn QR code…”
And a few which considered specific businesses that would be adversely impacted also spilled over into comments in a Feb. 22nd NextDoor post:
“Off-street parking appears ‘not’ to be in the plan, so the Quimper Merc plaza and other publicly available lot parking will be jammed by fee avoiders. ‘Customers Only’ signs will need to be enforced to be effective, a new cost for businesses who are already paying a premium to have convenient customer parking.”
“If most downtown parking is paid, it will push people into private parking lots behind downtown buildings (a headache for downtown businesses) and fill up the spaces outside the Mercantile and Don’s Pharmacy, making it harder for local shoppers to dash downtown for a few necessary items. Tourists will happily pay for a spot for a few hours and be unfazed. Locals who work, live and shop downtown will not be happy.”
“I think we have to acknowledge that paid parking will overload the private parking lots behind the Kuhn Building, the Palace Hotel, The Bishop Hotel, and other places, and that will create problems for managers of those lots. People will not pay. They will do almost anything to avoid it.”
Others took a more neutral or supportive tone:
“I’ve used an app for parking in other small towns, it’s pretty easy. Trying to figure out if you’re going to be 2 or 4 hours is usually the hardest. I personally will most time park over in the park and ride or take a bus or just visit more businesses in Uptown.”
“The city/county needs to monetize more of their assets. Property taxes should not be the only avenue for revenue. For those seeking more $ for roads this seems a reasonable first step.”
“I see nothing wrong with this as long as the $$ goes to road improvement. Parking at Haines place is free – so is shuttle. Make it mandatory for city workers/federal/state workers to use it, after all isn’t the current city plan to be more green?! What a shining example this would be!”
Mayor Faber Responds
Many wrote to the mayor and council members directly, expressing their concern for the negative impacts this pilot program would likely cause. In fact, there was so much pushback on this idea, Mayor Faber posted a long-winded response on Facebook which some likened to “word salad.” He also read it in its entirety for the record at the February 18th city council meeting (posted on NextDoor in full, and now close to 200 comments).
To much amazement, the last paragraph of that word salad produced this jewel:
“My question to our community is ‘do you consider the downtown parking problem to be serious enough to warrant the type of solution the city can actually implement (paid parking)?’ It’s okay to say ‘no’, and if that’s the general community sentiment, I would rather council and staff not spend any more effort trying to solve a problem for which no reasonable solution is sufficiently popular to enact. Please reach out to me and/or the rest of council by email at citycouncil@cityofpt.us.“
Mayor Faber’s words give the impression that he is willing to yield on the implementation of a paid parking program if he determines that the general community sentiment is opposed to the plan. In that case, it seems a simple tally of comments received by the city, perhaps including comments from the main social media platforms (NextDoor and Facebook), which are also a collection point for many voices, would provide the clear answer.
A completely transparent process for determining the actual community sentiment would have to occur, of course. And, if indeed the mayor acts with integrity on his words, it would demonstrate a necessary course correction by our electeds for the inclusion of this community’s collective voice as part of implementing sound policies.
In conclusion, while I believe the city’s intent behind the paid parking pilot — to reduce the number of cars on the road — is a positive vision, the comprehensive rollout of this strategy still has a number of “potholes” that need to be addressed.
————————-
Mayor Faber’s missive creatively transformed by ChatGPT into a Haiku format:
Port Townsend’s Parking Dilemma: A Haiku Series
The Problem
Lines of cars wait still,
each space a battleground fought,
who deserves to stay?
Footsteps echo past,
shoppers lost in fleeting time,
while wheels never move.
Conflicting Views
Workers curse the crowds,
tourists linger far too long,
businesses despair.
“Build more space!” they cry,
but steel and stone bring a cost,
one too steep to pay.
“Enforce the old rules!”
but hands to mark time are few,
and fines change nothing.
“Clear the streets of cars!”
but the old and frail still need
paths to walk with ease.
The Proposed Solution
A coin for your stay,
turn the wheel, free up the space,
fairness in motion.
Not a fortress built,
not a rule left unenforced,
but balance through time.
A choice in your hands—
park, or let another claim
the waiting moment.
The Call for Voices
Speak now, shape the streets,
is this change a needed path,
or wind in closed doors?
Tell the council now,
should the meters rise or fall?
Only you can say.
by Mark Grant | Feb 14, 2025 | General
I would like to take this opportunity to review for the citizens of Jefferson County the processes thus far associated with addressing our community-based aquatic facility desires, and to re-evaluate the current plan for the development of a mid-county aquatic facility. I will also consider the options for the decommissioning of the Mountain View Pool, and look at the future and ongoing use of Mountain View Campus as a whole.
The Process Thus Far:
Some Steps Forward, Many Steps Back
There have been many efforts, both performed by the private sector citizenry and public sector elected officials and staff, to maintain and enhance the aquatic opportunities for our community. For the most part, these efforts have been centered on the Mountain View Pool facility in association with the Mountain View Campus.
Through the mostly philanthropic efforts associated with Make Waves, and through the public-private efforts with earlier and current iterations of the Jefferson Aquatic Coalition (JAC) in partnership with the inter-local public agencies (i.e. the City of Port Townsend, Jefferson County, the Port Townsend and Chimacum School Districts, the Port of Port Townsend, the Jefferson County Hospital District, East Jefferson Fire and Rescue), there have been some steps forward.
Unfortunately, many steps backward have mostly neutralized and/or stymied the advancement of bonafide opportunities to develop a reliable community-based aquatic center/pool with its associated programs at the Mountain View Pool facility.
One such effort, performed by the Healthier Together Steering Committee (HTSC), as represented by a mostly inter-local government agency group and with an affiliation with the JAC, was to essentially rebuild the Mountain View Pool facility at a cost to taxpayers of $40-$50 million. This exorbitant project concept was described by many in our community as the “Taj Mahal” version. Due to an apparent lack of public support related to excessive costs and a lack of transparency, this concept fortunately failed, paving the way for more practical and county-wide representative options to be reviewed.
It is important that we, as taxpayers, consider the fiscal impact, let alone the time spent through human effort, that has been invested in the various aquatic facility concepts thus far — especially as it relates to the plans that are currently in motion for the mid-county aquatic facility option. Based on public records made available to me and through my continued involvement with the processes thus far, I have surmised that somewhere in excess of $1 million of taxpayer funding has been invested towards consultants, studies, and overhead (staff time and resources) in pursuit of these concepts.
It is likely that these efforts actually cost the taxpayers quite a bit more than one million dollars, especially if you consider monies that were spent with the earlier iteration of the JAC in association with public agencies during the attempts to locate an aquatic facility on property near the Kah Tai Lagoon. It is my understanding that most of the Make Waves organizational efforts and costs that were associated with refurbishing/rebuilding/improving the existing Mountain View Pool were mostly philanthropic in nature.
The Proposed Port Hadlock Aquatic Facility:
Up a Creek with No Buildable Plans
With the current mid-county aquatic facility plan, through an Inter-Local Agreement (ILA) between Jefferson County and the Chimacum School District, there will likely be an attempt to secure more funding in the form of a state grant (taxpayer money) for approximately $250,000 to be used for pre-design architectural and engineering plans in order to develop and understand the potential true costs for building the currently proposed mid-county aquatic facility. I must emphasize that these will not be buildable plans, and only informative in nature for a potential sales tax increase initiative.
This facility is proposed to be located at the Chimacum Creek Elementary School property, which is owned by the Chimacum School District. This will push the speculative taxpayers’ monies spent thus far to the $1.5 million plus range.
The current project funding methodology being considered is for bond acquisition for construction and for ongoing operations and maintenance funding. This would be facilitated by a potential newly-formed Public Facilities District (PFD) taxing district.
New Public Taxing District Pushes Increase in Sales Tax
The PFD will be the responsible agency for all things related to the new mid-county pool facility, and will draw its funding resources from a potentially voter-approved 0.2% increase to our county sales tax — going up from 9.1% currently to 9.3%.
I have been very vocal in my opinion that I do not believe that raising the sales tax for the construction of a new aquatic facility is the correct mechanism for funding any new development. Sales taxes, by their nature, are a very regressive form of taxation, hurting those who can least afford it.
The last question in the current JAC survey that is circulating asks the survey takers the following question: “Would you support a small 0.2% (20 cents per $100), county-wide sales tax (excluding groceries and prescriptions) that would fund a portion of the cost of constructing a new aquatic and recreation facility in Port Hadlock?”
The JAC survey, found here, minimizes the potential impact of a county-wide increase in sales tax.
Aside from the fact that this is the only question that addresses the fiscal impact that a new mid-county aquatic facility might have on our community, I found the use of the word “small” to be insensitive, disconnected, and manipulative.
Why? For many in our community, there is nothing “small” about a 0.2% increase in local sales taxes. For those who struggle to maintain housing, put food on the table, etc., a 0.2% sales tax increase adds up, and puts family budgets that are already strained closer to a breaking point.
Given that another new taxing district was recently formed, the Transportation Benefit District (TBD), it, too could generate an increase in county sales tax — to 9.4%. So with an allowable 0.2% add by the PFD in the future, the potential net increase could bring Jefferson County-based sales tax to 9.6%. Port Townsend city sales tax would essentially look the same for various and similar reasons.
Neglected Private Option Could Save
Half the Costs with No New Taxes
I have mostly been a proponent of a private/philanthropic funding mechanism for building a new pool and for utilizing a public-private partnership, with a long-term land lease arrangement for land procurement, and for ongoing facility operations and maintenance.
If a practical and functional multi-tank design for the potential new mid-county pool is considered — utilizing, as much as possible, existing technology and modular building systems designs — it would be very reasonable to consider that a new, turn-key, approximately 24,000 square foot pool facility could be constructed for around $10 to $15 million, using private/philanthropic funding for construction.
Aquatic facilities historically operate with a funding/budget deficit, so future annual fundraising along with other forms of municipal support will be required to fill the funding gaps for this important public asset. Using private/philanthropic funding as the basis for the construction, a public-private partnership could then be established for the ongoing operation and maintenance between the JAC and the public entities that benefit from the new facility.
A partnership between the JAC and Jefferson County Parks and Recreation Department could share some of the operations and maintenance costs, and also include other public agencies such as the City of Port Townsend, the Port Townsend and Chimacum School Districts, and potentially even Jefferson Healthcare and East Jefferson Fire and Rescue. All of the agencies would benefit by participating with the JAC and would be doing their part to support this community-based asset.
This privately funded option would also eliminate the need for the formation of the PFD, removing the need for yet another taxing district in our county.
This option is, however, in jeopardy of not being considered as a viable solution for building the facility. With the potential acquisition of state grant/public monies, the new construction of the project would have to be considered as a publicly-funded, public works project. Such a designation would increase the cost to build the new facility by approximately 30% to 40% — even as much as 50%, adding the potential for public works project-related inflated soft costs (A&E design services, project management, etc.) including municipal overhead.
The initial 30-40% upcharge would primarily be based on increased labor expenses as the labor rate for public works/taxpayer-funded projects are required to be set at the current prevailing wage rate. All told, an additional $4 to $7.5 million of public/taxpayer money would be needed for the construction of the new facility.
Port Townsend Aero Museum
Demonstrates Benefits of Private Funding
To put this in a frame of reference to make it easier to understand and to demonstrate the local real world applications that privately funding a project can have in our community, I would like to draw your attention to the Port Townsend Aero Museum (PTAM) facility located at the Jefferson County International Airport.
Beginning in 2003 with final completion of facilities expansions in 2023, my company, along with other local contractors, built for the PTAM approximately 32,000 square feet of new buildings. This activity included A&E design, permitting, project management, site work, infrastructure expansion, new buildings, testing, and occupancy approvals, all for just under $7 million (including Washington State Sales Tax) without one dime of taxpayers’ money.
The scope of work for the campus has a 24,000 sf main museum building, a 6,000 sf aircraft maintenance hangar, a 2,016 sf wing and fuselage painting and fabric restoration building, stormwater system with filtration vault, parking, 3 phase power, etc. The Port Townsend Aero Museum built this, again, without taxpayer money and without incurring any debt. They are also operationally sustainable through ongoing donations and through their youth mentorship program related aircraft restorations activities. The PTAM has a long-term lease arrangement for their ground with the Port of Port Townsend.
The PTAM facility and program represents a shining example of how a privately funded option for an amazing community asset can happen for our community when you are completely dedicated to the process.
When the founding directors of the Port Townsend Aero Museum were told by many, back in 2003 when their project was first conceived, that “it will never happen,” they took that as a challenge. Look where they are today.
Comparing Pool Funding Options:
Private, Sales Tax, or Property Tax
One other choice for a publicly-funded option is through the formation of a Municipal Parks District (MPD). An MPD can utilize, as its funding source, an increase in countywide property tax. While still a regressive tax, this is considered by some to be a less onerous approach to representative taxation, as those who have more typically pay more, and those who have less typically pay less.
The idea of an MPD was tabled by the Healthier Together Steering Committee due to pushback from various other taxing districts who stated that diluting the tax base potentially jeopardized their needs to raise our taxes in the future. I have a hard time with this concept as the community asset value of a new aquatic facility is considered by many to be an important addition for our community’s health, safety, and well-being.
Teaching our children how to swim, providing other after-school youth-related aquatic activities/sports activities/competitions, providing general public at-large aquatic physical health activities, providing a source of exercise and rehabilitation for our elders, etc., can be perceived as just as essential as some of the services provided by these other taxing districts.
The school districts would use the pool for sports and other youth programs, the hospital district would use the pool for therapy and rehabilitation services, the fire district would use the pool for training and other public safety activities.
All things considered, I would prefer no new taxes of any kind, whether through a sales tax increase (PFD) or property tax increase (MPD). With the philanthropic wealth that our community holds, there is no reason that any new pool can’t be privately built and funded into the future.
Here is my question about funding a new aquatic facility as we near the edge of point-of-no-return decisions:
Shouldn’t we be sure that we have considered, vetted, honestly and transparently evaluated, and educated the public towards what makes the most sense for our community — allowing them to be well informed in clarifying whether the new mid-county aquatic facility should be privately funded, PFD funded, or funded by an MPD?
What About the Mountain View Pool?
Throughout this new aquatic facility review process, the elephant in the room has always been the ongoing operation and maintenance and reliability of the Mountain View Pool. Based on the need for utmost clarity, transparency, and operation in good faith, going forward I have urged the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) to develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that states if and when the new mid-county pool facility becomes a reality, that the Mountain View Pool facility be immediately closed and decommissioned.
I firmly believe that our community is not capable of supporting two potentially competing community-based aquatic facilities. I believe that it is fair to ask for this MOU due to the previous lack of transparency that has occurred though other aspects of this community pool facility engagement process with the public. This MOU should be entered into between Jefferson County, the City of Port Townsend, the Port Townsend School District, and any other private or public agencies that might see some kind of value in continuing the operations of the Mountain View Pool facility.
Finally, I have been portrayed by some as being “anti-pool” based on my involvement and process recommendations in the past. I find this characterization to be unfair and farthest from the truth.
This characterization may have come based on my comments regarding where I feel a new publicly owned pool currently fits into our community responsibilities and priorities. I do believe that an aquatic facility for our community is an important and essential asset, especially given our aquatic geography.
However, especially on these cold winter days as I hunt-and-peck my way through this writing in my warm home/office, I also think about those who, for whatever reason, have been displaced and struggle with housing.
If we prioritize responsibly and efficiently and think outside of the box, there is no reason that our community can’t accomplish two things at once here — i.e. the building of a new mid-county aquatic facility, and coming up with creative and humane ways of taking care of those who are marginalized in our community.
One possible solution could be right under our noses, that being repurposing of some elements of the Mountain View Campus. Not as market-rate housing as has been suggested in the past, but as a housing and campus facility to provide affordable housing and transitional housing for those in need.
The Mountain View Campus has many amenities already in place, i.e. the food bank, cafeteria, classrooms, bathrooms, showers, public services and security through the resources at the police department, developable infrastructure opportunities for potential new affordable housing construction, easy access to public transportation, the hospital, grocery shopping, etc.
We have an opportunity as a community to fulfill important responsibilities here, if we briefly step back, re-evaluate, and reconsider all of the options that could be on the table.
Rush to Tax Disrespects Taxpayers,
Could Mean Another Failed Attempt at Public Buy-in
We should not rush to a solution of our community-based issues just because we think there is some tool available to move in a direction that is not completely thought through. We need to ask what the primary objectives are of our community as a whole, and develop a practical, fiscally responsible, and sustainable path towards accomplishing those objectives.
The BOCC will be given a staff workshop presentation by the Jefferson County Administrator regarding the possibility of forming a PFD at the regularly scheduled BOCC meeting on February 18th (slated for the afternoon session). I do not believe that action will be taken at this meeting, and subsequent meetings and hearings will be held leading up to a meeting on Monday, March 10th. Please make your concerns about this issue known to the commissioners through public comment either in writing (get written comments in a day or two before any given meeting), or by attending one of the meetings in-person or virtually online.
I encourage you as the citizenry of Jefferson County to urge our elected leaders and officials to make sure we have all of these issues well thought out and resolved before taking any further actions related to aquatic facility development… and before it is too late to turn back.
Most importantly, if we think all of this through, publicly and privately together, coming up with the most optimal plan, our community will undoubtedly respond by supporting the decisions that are made in the future on how to move forward with these objectives, and with everyone’s best interests in mind.
I cannot figure out why there is such a concerted effort to ram the current mid-county aquatic facility concept through on the back of the taxpayers. The reluctance to listen to sound advice regarding the thoughtful and thorough considerations of all funding mechanism options — especially the private option — shows a level of arrogance by those who are facilitating the process, and disrespect towards the taxpayers as well.
The dissemination of any new information that has been presented by the JAC and the BOCC for this current mid-county facility direction, has only trickled out at best, and in forums more representative of those who would unconditionally show their support. In my travels through different parts of Jefferson County, if I bring up anything related to the new aquatic facility, most of the time the reaction is that people don’t know anything about it, and that they thought the pool issue was dead.
If the BOCC, the JAC, and other associated community leaders remain blind to the concerns expressed here, I am afraid that this newly-directed effort will result in yet another failed attempt at public buy-in. That failure will have long-lasting consequences, making it even more difficult in the future to provide a new aquatic facility for our community.
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Please make your concerns about this issue known to the commissioners through public comment either in writing