PORT TOWNSEND — A capacity crowd Tuesday night heard former Mayor Kees Kolff discuss his role leading up to a shipbuilder’s rejection of the Port for a job-generating shipyard.
Then fingers were pointed around the room as citizens debated whose fault it was that Santa Maria Shipping LLC chose the Pacific County town of Raymond over Port Townsend to construct cargo ships.
“While I do take full responsibility for my mistake in having met with Santa Maria alone and for having responded honestly to their interest in Port Townsend political issues,” Kolff read from a statement, “I will not take responsibility for their choosing yet another city on their search for a ‘free ride.”‘
The “free ride” reference refers to a statement Santa Maria president Stas Margaronis made last week about his expectations from Port Townsend before his company decided on Raymond.
Margaronis said the decision to reject Port Townsend was based on a November meeting in a Port Townsend restaurant he had with Kolff, who was mayor at the time.
Santa Maria was sizing up the Port of Port Townsend for a shipyard to assemble 300-foot-long cargo ships. As many as 100 industrial-wage jobs were promised.
Eight days after Santa Maria chose Raymond, many residents showed up to address the City Council following Kolff’s statement.
Fire Chief Ed Edwards blocked the doors to the City Hall council chambers, which is rated to safely hold 49 people at a time.
The crowd overflowed into a foyer area and down a flight of stairs, waiting for a turn to comment on a shipbuilder’s snub of Port Townsend.
Many of the fingers pointed at Kolff, who has been the target of criticism by Port of Port Townsend officials and others for what they said were driving the company away with his bluntness.
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The rest of the story appears in Wednesday’s Peninsula Daily News.
