PORT TOWNSEND — The city of Port Townsend is expecting to spend about $18 million in capital improvements next year.
Public Works Director Steve King, who led a city council workshop on Tuesday, also presented the Capital Facilities Plan (CFP), a six-year outlook for investment spanning 2025-2030.
“This is where I get very nerdy, because this is the intersection between planning and public works,” King said. “This is where we put plans to work. It’s phenomenal because you kind of know what’s going to go into this when you start the project of developing a capital facilities plan, but then you’re surprised at the end when it all comes together, because it’s the culmination of all of the capital work of the whole city.”
King said the city has received or is slated to receive $73,402,000 in funding, to be spent over the next six years. Further, the draft CFP notes that an additional $133,474,000 in unfunded plans have been made.
Categories for funding are streets, water, sewer and stormwater, as well as a general fund.
“The city of Port Townsend has an asset of infrastructure worth about a billion dollars, maybe even more,” King said. “Those assets are what we use every day in a city, whether it’s the streets, sewer, water, whatever. Facilities are the asset of the community.
“The takeaway from the Capital Facility Plan is that it’s a list of the work that needs to be done on these assets in the next six years.”
There are two reasons why the city needs to do the work, King said. One is that assets wear out and need to be replaced, and the other is to keep up with growth.
In an ideal world, infrastructural assets would be upsized at the same time they’re wearing out, King said.
“You maximize the use of it, they wear out, you replace it, you make it a little bit bigger for the next round,” he said. “It doesn’t always happen that way, but that’s the goal.”
Port Townsend has a lot of aging infrastructure, King said.
“If the work doesn’t happen, there are bad outcomes,” he said. “Our Water Street sewer replacement project, we’ve seen evidence of failure of our system this year when we were digging down in front of the ferry terminal. That asset life was both undersized and worn out, and we didn’t stay on top of it. That one caught us by surprise.”
Being proactive and avoiding such surprises is one of the objectives of the CFP, King said.
Projects and funds
The 2025 capital spending budget notes more than 50 projects.
In a category marked general funds, 11 projects, from updates on city hall to a new downtown restroom, account for more than $2.5 million in spending.
The city has outlined 14 streets projects for 2025 and expects to spend about $4 million.
“Streets are easy because you can see them,” King said. “The sewer system is halfway easy and half hard.”
The city has a clear idea of what it needs to do at the sewer plant to replace aging infrastructure, to prepare for upsizing and to meet new standards for clean water, King said. The challenge is assessing the underground infrastructure.
“This year we invested in a new video camera system to crawl up the pipes and inspect the pipes from the inside out,” King said. “We know we have a lot of old pipes in town that need work.”
The city is investing about $380,000 annually into maintaining the sewer pipe system, King said.
Wastewater reflects the largest category in the 2025 budget, with 15 projects listed and more than $9 million planned in spending for the year. Many of the projects are multiyear and will ultimately cost the city more than $31 million, according to the budget.
Available funding ebbs and flows, King said.
“Right now we’re being very aggressive about applying for grant funding and low-interest loan funding for wastewater projects, because the funding is there,” he said.
King said the water system is less dire.
“The pipes are in better shape,” he said. “We still have a lot of work to be done, but we’re not seeing as big of an imminent failure risk.”
Among the 11 water projects on the 2025 budget, the city will include a pipeline assessment of the main waterline coming from Quilcene, which provides water to all of Port Townsend.
The city is still paying off the debt for the water treatment plant built in 2017, King said.
The Port Townsend stormwater system was designed more around roadside ditches than pipes, he added. The pipes that the city does have aren’t in great shape.
“Our stormwater is more about what are we doing to address drainage that doesn’t have any control right now,” King said.
That involves rehabilitating ditches and installing rain gardens, he said. Stormwater is expected to receive $350,000 next year, the least of the categories laid out in the budget.
“Stormwater is the biggest factor of street failure,” King said. “We have to pay attention to stormwater, but we’re doing a lot of that as a part of the road maintenance program.”
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
