PORT TOWNSEND — A last-minute plan that again would have let visitors park for free at Fort Worden State Park next year was defeated by Jefferson County commissioners Monday.
Saying the county doesn’t have the funds, Commissioners Glen Huntingford, R-Chimacum, and Pat Rodgers, R-Brinnon, voted down a request for $10,000 to the effort to subsidize parking fees at Fort Worden instead of having visitors pay them.
Commissioner Dan Titterness, R-Port Townsend, favored the proposal.
Nora Porter and Port Townsend Mayor Kees Kolff, representing the Fort Worden Advisory Board, conceded that the commissioners’ decision means that metal pay stations known as “iron rangers” will be installed Jan. 1, forcing visitors to pay a $5 parking fee like they do at most other state parks across Washington.
The fees were invoked by cash-strapped Olympia last January, but county, city and other entities combined to offset the $5 daily fees at Fort Worden, considered a top visitor attraction in Jefferson County.
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The rest of the story appears in Tuesday’s Peninsula Daily News.
