April 2026 Message from City Manager John Mauro

April 3, 2026

I struggle to find anyone in the City of Port Townsend or Jefferson County who doesn’t use, appreciate, or care for our incredible array of parks, recreation opportunities, and open spaces. 

The other struggle: how we fund and maintain them over the long term.

With our colleagues and friends at Jefferson County currently working hard through budget stresses, and the wider community increasingly engaged and alarmed with what that might mean for parks and recreation, now seems like an important time to weigh in with a few perspectives on how we got here, how we can work together, and where we may want to go.

Common Persistent Challenges

In the big picture, all counties and cities like Jefferson County and Port Townsend face common challenges: perennial pressures of funding and operating wide-ranging government services with limited tools, the continuous quandary of meeting community needs and expectations for services while balancing residents’ ability to pay, and a general inability to keep pace with inflation.  When these pressures increase and force difficult decisions, it’s often things like parks and recreation – while deeply important to quality of life, but not legally required functions like others are – that are most vulnerable. 

Falling Back, then Getting Ahead

We’ve been here before.  In 2020, the Covid pandemic forced a difficult decision for the City to pull back on Parks and its removal as a City department, sliding the functions into the Public Works team, and focusing more on catching up on seemingly out-of-control facilities repairs and replacements.  We also stopped directly operating the Mountain View Pool, entering into an agreement and contract with the YMCA that greatly reduced costs, but still requires significant subsidy (over $300,000 annually).

In 2021, we attempted to get more on the front foot.  The Financial Sustainability Initiative launched as a deliberate, multi-year effort to consider a holistic picture and the distant future for parks, streets, housing, and core services.  This transitioned in 2022-2023 to City investment in partnerships for the operation and enhancement of the municipal golf course, and a partnership approach and recommendation to the County for how best to address the eventual closure of the Mountain View Pool. Just last year, the City received its first state Recreation Conservation Office (RCO) grant in 20 years; just last month the City received a state arts grant for the skatepark; and just last week, the City’s PROS (Parks, Recreation, Open Space) Plan is off for state review before coming to City Council for adoption. (Note the “regionalization” section in the forthcoming draft PROS plan). The City is investing approximately $2m in parks and facilities in the 2026 budget.  We’re still catching our breath, but we’re back on our feet.

These efforts echoed decades of previous attempts to bolster both the quality and the sustainability of treasured City parks assets, which, besides the Mountain View Pool and Golf Park, also include 140 acres of publicly owned land, a skate park, 30 miles of public trails, playfields, playgrounds, courts, and a dozen other public parks. Residents may remember voter approval of Prop 1 in 2010.  While city residents are county residents and pay both city and county taxes, Prop 1 was a collaborative effort in which the City and County levied an increased 0.3% in sales tax toward, among other things, youth programs, community centers, and some associated capital projects, some of which are being talked about today.  At the time, while meaningful, it was a temporary fix to allow time to identify a “joint strategy for providing long-term funding and administration of parks and recreation in Jefferson County and Port Townsend.” 

I and many of those now working hard to find solutions were not part of those efforts, so it’s hard to know why those efforts stalled out. That said, I’m getting perspectives and will continue to do so in order not to cast blame, but to learn from our history and refine our approach.  Regardless, as I note above, that leads me to how we can work together and where we may want to go.

The Underlying Core Issue

Like parks and recreation itself, working together isn’t a “nice to have”: it’s a necessity.  Without it, not only will the County be pushed beyond its limits to sustain current services, but so will the City.  Our approach to financial sustainability put us on the front-foot, but that didn’t solve an underlying core issue – a limited tax base with a large parks, trails, and open space portfolio and no dedicated funding source.  In essence, without a dedicated source and increased revenues, service cuts are inevitable.

Per capita parks spending vs. acres of parks. For more, see our Parks video here.

Now What?

With a renewed and robust relationship between City and County, we are well-positioned to meet the moment. While City and County leaders and staff talk and partner almost every single day, we have been in direct discussions about the current budget situation since November 2025.  With residents who care about parks and recreation using their voices and leveraging their resources to meet the immediate need, and the County actively pursuing near-term options, now is the time to think about how to keep this from being an on-again, off-again cycle for us all. 

What that might be is yet to be determined, as there are many possible pathways forward for long-range planning together. At the very least, most of them include:

• A holistic comparison of City and County parks, recreation, and open space assets, resources, and budget line items with an eye for removing duplication in administrative and staffing costs, reducing overhead, and creating efficiencies.
• An inventory and assessment of available dedicated funding options.
• Collation of feedback on community attitudes and preferences related to City and County parks and recreation systems (including, for instance, recent feedback on the refresh of the City’s PROS plan).
• Discussions and engagement with a diversity of community members on those items above.
• Discussions between City and County on common goals, and development of an Interlocal Agreement (ILA) in advance of any potential ballot measure.

My family and I, like many of you, are here in this amazing community partly because of the extraordinary array of parks, recreation, and open space amenities – and the wider community’s potential.  If we stick together, work hard, and look forward, let’s struggle no more: we can do this.