July 2026 Message from City Manager John Mauro

July 1, 2026

Now is a great time to enjoy the extra light this time of year brings – whether it’s taking in one of our peninsula’s exhilarating festivals, catching up with friends and enjoying (and supporting) our unique local businesses, exploring our unparalleled outdoor environments, making progress on those house or garden projects, or whatever fuels and inspires you.

Halfway into the year, now is also a great time to take stock, reflect, and shine some light on what the City of Port Townsend has been up to these last six months.  I’m going to skip over the ongoing services the City and City team provide that make up about 90% of our efforts – like delivering water, library books, permits, or public safety – and into the strategic projects that aim to up our game.

Grounding the Vision and Building Community.

A major achievement this month was the completion of our Parks, Recreation, and Open Space (PROS) Plan, adopted by City Council. It’s a dynamic, readable, and inspiring plan that represents broad community engagement, implements our Comprehensive Plan, and demonstrates our collective love for our parks and open spaces.

Speaking of parks, we received proposals from 17 local artists to our request for proposals issued earlier this year to create new artwork on the walls of the Seamus Sims Skate Park. Funded by the Washington State Arts Commission, the artist selected by a local stakeholder panel will begin work this month.

We also put on a successful Soundcheck Art and Music Festival, a weekend of participatory, artist-driven events and experiences that reached 1500-2000 participants, and supported other crowd-pleasers like Rhody Festival and Pride, with many more events on the way.  Add to that our biggest ever Community Read and our participation in the Connectivity Summit in March, our Comprehensive Plan celebration at the Golf Park in April, a new approach to City Council Workshops at Salish Coast Elementary School in May, and you can tell we’ve been out convening, connecting, and celebrating community.

Delivering Projects and Bringing in Funding for More.

While the bulk of the construction season is ahead of us still, we’ve already seen some projects over the line. For instance, we re-opened the Kah Tai restrooms after a nearly 20-year closure. We’ve successfully received state approval to raise the Lords Lake reservoir an extra 3 feet, securing an additional 54 million gallons of water in advance of an expected drought.  Of course, as soon as the weather is reliably dry, we’ll be putting our streets crews and equipment to work on our expanded street chipsealing program, aiming to push past the 5 miles we did last year.

Speaking of streets, we’ve recently secured an additional $2.7 million for our Lawerence Street Restoration project, which augments over $3 million of existing state grants, to get Lawrence street stormwater and street improvements completed. The grant funding so far this year has been diverse, including $349,000 in state funding for native planting and invasive species removal, $62,500 for cybersecurity, and $4,700 for universal play equipment to be installed in Chetzemoka Park.  Finally, we also launched our request for expressions of interest for the development of the Evans Vista Neighborhood, a project intending to deliver 321 units of mixed-income housing, and held site visits and meetings with potentially interested developers for the project.

Empowering our Teams and Raising the Bar.

Getting the most from our team and delivering the best value for our community also means ensuring we support those who put their talents and time to work.  We’ve completed our third year of measuring and taking action on employee engagement, making notable progress and helping us take collective responsibility for improvements and enhancing our high-performing organizational culture. We’ve also launched our first Advisory Board Handbook, doing so at a gathering and celebration of our dozens of volunteers who provide advice to City Council and staff.  We won our first-ever Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for our 2026 budget document, which complements a previous national award for our Financial Sustainability Initiative.  Finally, after more than a decade of aiming for Police accreditation, the Port Townsend Police Team was awarded our first-ever accreditation in May.

There’s More!

You can learn more about our recent work by reading our e-news here: https://cityofpt.us/administration/page/city-newsletter-archive.  Or you can catch our quarterly magazine in your mailbox (if you live in 98368) or find them at the same link above. 

You can also watch our videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@cityofporttownsend. Or you can catch our short videos as they pop up weekly on our website homepage: www.cityofpt.us.  

None of the work our City team does – including the examples I’ve shared above from the past 6 months – would be possible without community volunteers, partner organizations, and our City Council. We share the work and achievements, as we will for the second half of the year and into the future. Thanks to those of you who help shine your light to ensure our collective path forward as a community and region is clearer, fairer, and better for all.