PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles can reach its “tremendous potential” if citizens and community leaders can develop a common vision, City Manager Dan McKeen told business leaders Wednesday.
“It’s not just the city, it’s all of us,” McKeen said in his annual “State of the City” address to the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce.
“And together, if we get community engagement and we bring people together, there’s a chance that we can reach our potential at some time.”
McKeen, a former city fire chief, operates as the city’s chief executive officer with direction from the seven-member City Council.
His 45-minute presentation at the Port Angeles Red Lion Hotel was based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a psychological theory with a five-level pyramid rooted in basic needs such as food and water progressing to safety, love and belonging, self- esteem and self-actualization.
McKeen’s pyramid for the city began with basic infrastructure and transportation rising to public safety and financial security, quality of life, civic engagement and community actualization.
There was no time for questions and answers at the end of the presentation.
Marc Abshire, Port Angles Regional Chamber of Commerce executive director, said the chamber also is focused on helping the city reach its potential.
“We think we have a big role in helping the community engage and get together and go after that potential,” Abshire said.
McKeen used examples of recent city projects to discuss each tier in the city’s hierarchy of needs.
Here are some of those examples:
• Basic needs
New infrastructure for sewer and stormwater was installed around Olympic Medical Center before the hospital district built a medical office building at 907 E. Georgiana St., benefiting the surrounding area, McKeen said.
The voter-approved Transportation Benefit District allowed the city to secure state funding for such projects as the asphalt overlay and widening of West 10th Street between South I and M streets, which will occur later this year, he added.
“We can’t get to the next level until we take care of those basic needs,” McKeen told a group of about 70 chamber members.
• Financial security
The city has achieved financial security with a structurally balanced budget and a healthy reserve in the general fund, McKeen said.
Utility rates were raised just 1.3 percent this year with no change in electric rates despite a 9.25 percent increase in Bonneville Power Administration wholesale rates, McKeen said.
The fire department added four paid firefighter/paramedic positions. The police department introduced an automated external defibrillator, or AED, program that has already saved three lives, McKeen said.
• Quality of life
The city’s landfill bluff stabilization project at the Port Angeles Regional Transfer Station removed 25,300 truckloads of municipal waste and 7,836 cubic yards of asbestos, McKeen said.
Since the city completed its combined sewer overflow, or CSO, project in 2016, no raw sewage has entered Port Angeles Harbor during periods of heavy rain, McKeen said.
The West End park on the city’s waterfront opened in 2017.
Substantial improvements have been made to Civic Field, home of the second-year Port Angles Lefties baseball team, McKeen said.
Future projects include a potential waterfront hotel, performing arts center and new Boys & Girls Club, McKeen said.
• Civic Engagement
The City Council will revise its comprehensive plan with public input.
“It starts with a vision, but that vision isn’t generated by the City Council or city staff,” McKeen said.
“The process in which that vision gets generated in that comprehensive plan involves community participation.
“The comprehensive plan is an outcrop of civic engagement because it’s about where we want the city to go,” McKeen added.
“There are a lot of things — zoning — a lot of things that influence where we want to go.”
The City Council, which includes four freshmen members, will develop a set of priorities in an upcoming retreat, McKeen said.
• Reaching potential
The top of McKeen’s pyramid is actualization, or reaching full potential.
“We’re not there yet because we haven’t come close to reaching our potential,” McKeen said.
“We have a tremendous amount of potential. We have a geographic setting that is unbelievable. We have a community that steps up that’s incredible.
“We have people who really care, but we haven’t got there,” McKeen added.
“If we’re ever going to reach our full potential and deal with civic engagement and actualization, it’s going to need to involve all of us working together.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
