PORT TOWNSEND — Gossip and rumors about city government provide fodder for online comment boards, so City Manager David Timmons faced the Chamber of Commerce on Monday so, he said, the public would have a chance to hear the truth.
“I try not to read those blogs, but some of the misinformation of the statements on there are just incredible,” he said. “So I wonder where do people go to get their questions answered?”
Normally when Timmons addresses the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce membership — as he did at Monday’s weekly luncheon meeting — he usually has a message to get across and a presentation to support it. But he immediately opened up the meeting to questions from the approximately 80 in the audience at the Port Townsend Elks Lodge.
Question stretches
“I have been always told there are no stupid questions, but I have seen that stretched,” he said. “But I thought I’d open this up here to answer any questions you may have, or kill any rumors that you may have heard.”
He first wanted to clear up the recent misconceptions from a specific blog thread:
He has not received any recent raise in salary, the city is not broke and the city did not help the Rhody Festival initially because it was not asked to do so — although there is a meeting this week to discuss any help that it can offer.
The audience questions ranged from whether the city can keep the winter shelter open longer in severe weather (it can) and whether it plans to renew the lease on the former Mountain View School (it does).
“We just found out about a new hazard mitigation grant that we can use to retrofit those facilities,” he said.
“We will try to ask the [Port Townsend] School District for a 25- to 30-year lease or even a property transfer so we can look forward to making some of those improvements.”
More vital
Timmons said the facility has become more essential, housing the Police Department, the Jefferson County Family YMCA and the new nonprofit radio station, KPTZ.
“We’ve clustered a lot of community services, and it’s working out quite well,” he said. “But the problem in making any long-term renovations in the facility is that we don’t have any equity interest, and we want to do that before we make any kind of decision.”
Timmons said the city has a good working relationship with Jefferson County government.
“Cities and counties always have a tension because there is always an overlapping of responsibilities,” he said. “We have to look at where these areas overlap and how we can best work together, and one of those areas is our long-term investment in parks and community services.”
In this case, Timmons suggested parks be addressed with more of a regional model than a jurisdictional one.
“Kids don’t care about political boundaries, and part of the reason we affiliated with the YMCA is to provide a neutral party to provide the services so they don’t become a part of a political agenda.”
One questioner challenged Timmons intention to provide the “truth” at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, where most of the public wasn’t there to hear it.
“It’s always an issue how to get information out,” he said. “But we’ve had a lot of public forums about all our projects and have invited the public downtown to see what we are doing.”
City website
Timmons said anyone who wants to know what the city is doing should visit its website, www.cityofpt.us, where the public can search videos of meetings for topics and speakers.
“I used to like how we did it in New England because whenever we issued a public notice, we called it a warning,” he said. “It warned the public that we were going to make a decision, so they better pay attention.”
________
Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
