PORT TOWNSEND — Amy Howard is Port Townsend’s newly elected mayor.
“Port Townsend saved my life,” Howard said. “It took good care of me, so my goal is to take good care of it.”
The process took place at Monday’s city council meeting during which she was the sole nominee for the position. Howard was nominated by former Mayor David Faber. Owen Rowe was elected deputy mayor.
On the top of her list in the new role is to do what she can to shift the tenor of public discourse in Port Townsend. Trust has been broken in every part of government from the federal government down, Howard said.
Howard admitted to not knowing what the solution is and recognized that she will only play a role in finding it.
“We are incredibly passionate in Port Townsend,” Howard said.
Genuine disagreement is OK, Howard said, but people need to have all of the necessary information for the disagreement to be functional.
“That means that the city needs to do as good a job as possible of making sure that information is easily accessible and that council meetings are run efficiently.”
Howard wants to pursue more effective strategies of bringing important information to the public where they are, she said.
The responsibility of civic engagement also falls on individuals to self-educate, she added.
“How do we make it so that people will want to engage with the information?” she asked.
Also, a democratic system of government means placing faith in elected officials, whose responsibility it is to spend more time with the materials, she said.
Priorities for near-term work will be set in the year’s docketing process, planned to happen in February, Howard said.
Infrastructure is always a priority, she added.
In reflecting on his four years of being mayor, Faber said he left the role considerably less joyful as a person, Howard said.
“I intend to be an absolutely fierce protector of my joy,” she said. “I am not interested in being worn down by a death of a thousand cuts.”
Howard’s ability to be an effective mayor is contingent upon maintaining the income from her day job, something she also plans to protect fiercely.
“I am not an affluent person,” she said.
Howard works as the manager of volunteer engagement for Habitat for Humanity of East Jefferson County.
Previous to her new position, Howard sat on the council as deputy mayor. She was asked to run for city council and was elected in 2015. A big year, Howard was also married in 2015.
“I was incredibly reticent at that time,” she said. “I had a good-sized bout of imposter syndrome. I said, ‘Why me? And do I have the time and space to do this? And do I have anything valuable to add?’”
Howard realized that being a young woman who had lived experience with homelessness, substance use and abuse and who was at the time low-income, a renter and still working, allowed her to bring representation to the council for demographics that would not otherwise be represented.
“I don’t see those things always having a front-row seat at the table,” she said.
In 2016, Howard commenced her time on the council.
When she first came to Port Townsend, it was as a wayward youth, she said.
At 17, she left her hometown of Tonasket to stay with a friend in Seattle.
“That did not end up working out and I ended up being homeless in Seattle for some months before I ended up in Port Townsend,” she said.
After a period of living unsheltered in Port Townsend, Howard moved in with Julia Cochrane, founder of the Winter Welcoming Center, soon after turning 19.
Howard became involved with the now-closed Boiler Room in 2000.
The youth-run social services hub, job-training program and coffee house was essentially the precursor of The Nest, she said.
“The Nest, the (Winter Welcoming Center) and the Recovery Cafe all bundled into one place,” she added. “When it closed, it took several different organizations to pick up the pieces.”
Howard started her time with the organization as a volunteer, then as an employee, and eventually, by the time the Boiler Room closed in 2018, she was its executive director.
Howard already had developed relationships with many in the community in her public-facing role at the Boiler Room. She said her time as executive director also prepared her for the structure of council-manager government, which Port Townsend uses.
“The structure of the job is remarkably similar to a nonprofit board of directors,” she said. “That was the experience that I laid over it that made a lot of sense to me.”
Becoming a council member still came with a very steep learning curve, she said. In her first year, the city was going through a comprehensive plan update.
Having now moved through two comp plan updates, Howard recognizes the value of the knowledge accumulated in her time on the council.
“Being able to have the time on council to say, ‘Here are the things that I wish I had done,’ and effect those later, that is a privilege and not something that I intend to waste,” she said.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
