PORT ANGELES — Dan Gase, a Position 4 Port Angeles City Council member since 2014, will not vote on Lincoln Park tree-cutting, Port Angeles Harbor cleanup and restoration, and other city issues related to the Port of Port Angeles through the end of his term Dec. 31, he said last week.
Gase, 63, said taking part in those votes on the seven-member council would create a conflict of interest with his new job: aerospace business development specialist for the Port of Port Angeles.
He said after Tuesday’s City Council meeting that he began his new job March 27.
“After 40 years, I was looking for a career change,” he said.
Gase retired in December as a longtime real estate broker with Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty, which he owned at one time, and is not running for re-election this November for a second four-year term after winning election in 2013 without opposition.
Gase recusing himself raises the possibility of a 3-3 vote, in which case the motion fails, City Attorney Bill Bloor said Friday.
Port Chief Financial Officer John Nutter said last week Gase will earn $6,250 per month for three months before the position is re-evaluated.
He was hired from among eight applicants as the port tries to bring tenants to the Fairchild International Airport and airport industrial park.
“He was hired to to knock on doors and learn more about the aerospace industry and learn about what we could potentially bring to our airport,” Nutter said.
Depending on timing, Gase also could market a 93,000-square-foot building at the industrial park with airfield access when it becomes available.
It’s being leased by luxury yachtmaker Westport LLC for $250,000 a year for building wood cabinets.
Westport is planning to move those operations, the engineering department and administrative staff to a 130,000-square-foot building that housed the old Walmart building off U.S. Highway 101 east of Port Angeles, the company announced in August 2015.
With his new job in mind Gase, who has a commercial pilot’s license, recused himself Tuesday from a council decision on a Port Angeles Harbor restoration project that the city and port are partners in as members of the Western Port Angeles Harbor Group.
Gase said he also will not participate in upcoming council decisions on an avigation easement, or right of overflight over city-owned Lincoln Park, that the city will be negotiating with the port.
The agreement will address the contentious issue of cutting down park trees that are blocking the sight distance to the flight path of Fairchild International Airport, which is across South L Street from the park.
City Manager Dan McKeen reported to the council members Tuesday that city staff will have a report on the easement by mid-June.
Port and city officials earlier this year negotiated a draft agreement that was written by the port, which then had its consultant create airspace requirements for four options.
Those options are retaining the 5,000-foot runway without a precision approach, keeping the 5,000-foot runway with a precision approach, re-establishing a 6,350-foot runway without a precision approach, and re-establishing the 6,350-foot runway with a precision approach, McKeen said Tuesday in his report.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
