PORT TOWNSEND — Port Townsend City Council members will consider furthering efforts to address a lack of affordable housing at its next council meeting by discussing whether to back a countywide Nov. 7 property tax levy that Mayor Deborah Stinson said Tuesday she supports.
City council members also will discuss at the Monday meeting having either an ad hoc committee or the City Council study changing the municipal code and creating financing options to help generate construction of affordable housing.
For about an hour at their work session Monday night, council members reviewed a resolution under which an ad hoc committee or the council, with support from City Manager Dave Timmons, would formulate recommendations on housing-related issues.
They would range from updating the city inventory of surplus property to modifying land use, building permit and utility-system fees, according to the resolution.
They also would include developing “a set of recommendations for changes to the city’s municipal code related to barriers to, or incentives for, either temporary or perpetually affordable housing.
“Those recommendations would be reviewed and recommended for implementation by the Planning Commission to the City Council,” according to the resolution.
Stinson said Tuesday she supports the property-tax-levy option that would generate nearly $14 million to create a county Home Opportunity Fund to entice affordable housing developers to come to Jefferson County.
Jefferson County commissioners unanimously decided to put the measure before voters in the Nov. 7 election.
It would require a simple majority for passage.
“I personally back it at this point,” Stinson said. “I think it’s critical, one of the pieces of the puzzle, one piece but a critical piece of the puzzle to getting at this problem.
“We all realize it’s a very important issue.”
Timmons said at the work session Monday that the existence of a funding source such as a Home Opportunity Fund could draw builders to the area to construct affordable housing projects, Stinson recalled Tuesday.
“They want to know, is there a fund there, that they could come in and propose a project and say, ‘You would need to put up this kind of money this way to make it work out.’
“Then there is a pot of money that they could make a request to.”
The fund says as much.
“[The fund] will be used as matching money to leverage other private and public funding to create and preserve affordable housing,” county commissioners said in their resolution approving the ballot measure.
The levy would increase property taxes by 36 cents for each $1,000 of valuation for property owners countywide.
The median value of homes in Port Townsend and Jefferson County is $334,900, according to Zillow, an online real estate database company.
The median price of homes in Port Townsend is $391,000 and in Jefferson County $425,000, according to Zillow.
If approved, the levy would add $121 annually in taxes to median-value homes, or about $12 a month.
The seven-year levy — collected in 2018 through 2024 — would be expected to raise $13 million to $13.9 million in local funding throughout seven years, according to the resolution.
Tasks that would be fulfilled by the City Council also include preparing recommendations on options for public-private partnerships for developing affordable housing.
Council members also would “conduct public outreach to obtain broad support and public input,” according to the resolution.
The resolution notes the city has taken “concrete steps to address affordable housing,” which Councilwoman Michelle Sandoval alluded to Tuesday when she said that she, too, supports the Home Opportunity Fund levy.
“The devil is in the details, as they say,” Sandoval said.
City and county officials participated in a housing study some years ago that resulted in suggested policy changes that the city implemented and the county did not, she said.
The city also has taken the step of conducting an analysis of city-owned land and earmarked land for affordable housing, Sandoval added.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
