PORT TOWNSEND — With his second two-year term coming to a close, Port Townsend Mayor David Faber reflected on his time in the position and discussed the work he and his fellow council members hope to engage next year.
“Serving as the mayor of my hometown has been the honor of my lifetime, and though the last four years have certainly had their share of difficulties, I am deeply grateful to have had this opportunity,” Faber wrote in a letter to the residents of Port Townsend.
While he has not made any claims about refusing the potential for a third term, Faber said his preference would be that one of his fellow council members step into the leadership role, he wrote via text message.
“With a 2-year-old at home and having spent four years in the job, I would like a break from leadership,” he continued.
When Faber ran for city council in 2015 and joined the council in 2016, his twin priorities were addressing deferred maintenance to city infrastructure and the city’s housing crisis.
The priorities are inseparable, two sides to the same coin, Faber said on the phone. Faber often has expressed in council chambers that the housing crisis in Port Townsend is personal to him. He has seen many of his friends leave the area due to the limited housing stock and expensive costs for available housing.
Faber, who is also thinking of his young daughter Mira, said his focus is on the future.
“One, I want us to make space for her to live in the community in which she was raised,” Faber said. “Two, I don’t want to basically rob her for a little bit of short-term comfort that she’s going to have to pay for down the road.”
Faber’s interest in the city’s infrastructure began years before he joined the council. His brother, Matt Klontz, is the Port of Port Townsend’s capital projects director and port engineer.
“He was working for the county at the time, and every time we got together, he was like, ‘Man, Port Townsend roads are in terrible shape,’” Faber said.
As a civil engineer, Klontz would point things out to his brother.
“That got me looking at the built environment to be like, ‘Oh, this is decaying, we are letting this completely fall apart,’ ” Faber said.
If that decay was allowed to persist, future generations would feel the repercussions.
“They are going to pay way more than we would pay now if we just take responsibility for our own reality and start doing the work that we should have been doing for the last 20 years,” Faber said.
In his letter, Faber reflected on a few of the successes he, his fellow council members and city staff have had in recent years.
In 2023, the voters passed a Transportation Benefit District, which has created a revenue stream of about $1 million annually to address road maintenance for the city’s 88-mile road system.
The city also has been awarded tens of millions of dollars in state and federal infrastructure grants in recent years, Faber wrote.
In an effort to address the city deferred maintenance on the city’s sewer systems, the council made a tough decision to raise sewer rates while implementing a novel income-based model which would allow for utility discounts for low- and middle-income residents, he wrote.
“Our city is now on a more sustainable path, one that prioritizes preventative maintenance and smart investment rather than costly emergency fixes,” he added.
In December, the city council passed a 20-year comprehensive plan, which included a housing element that allowed for increased density in the city’s main residential zones.
While the plan did not immediately address affordable housing and was criticized for its lack of requirements for affordable housing, Faber said the plan laid the groundwork for addressing the difficult problem.
As a technical term, affordable housing refers to housing that is affordable and limited to those who make 80 percent or less of area median income (AMI). In Port Townsend, AMI is about $60,000, making 80 percent AMI about $48,000, Faber said.
“There is a huge need in Port Townsend,” Faber said. “But then, that requires a massive subsidy.”
As a rule, someone making 80 percent AMI could pay a $170,000 mortgage, Faber said.
“You can’t build a house for that,” he added.
Faber referenced a December meeting, when Public Works Director Steve King said the city would need about $17 million annually in subsidy to meet the needs of building 80-something affordable houses a year. That’s a need the city cannot meet, Faber said.
In addressing the criticism around the absence of an exploration of inclusionary zoning or affordable housing requirements, Faber said the city had to remove exclusionary zoning first.
Faber said that, in 2026, he hopes and expects the council and city staff will take on the work of assessing what the market would bear in terms of affordability requirements.
“Like whether or not five ‘market rate units’ could subsidize that one, or four subsidize two affordable units,” Faber said. “My sense is probably that it’s going to be an emphatic, ‘No, it won’t.’”
Faber also is concerned that those sorts of subsidies would corrupt the middle of the market, with the cost of the units subsidizing the affordable units being driven up.
“On the 2026 docket, I’m very interested in getting into the technical details of what would it look like to do an inclusionary zoning policy that has — you have to deliver X number of units per six, 32, whatever the threshold would be,” Faber said. “How do you harvest the cream without spoiling the milk?”
A feel-good policy which prevents anything from being built won’t ultimately budge the needle. Faber said the explorations the city needs to make are to identify policies that actually result in the broad base of housing that the city needs.
The council’s 2026 work docket will be finalized in the first or second meeting in February, Faber said.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com
