Making money for the port, boosting employment and keeping port facilities properly maintained are what Keith Beck would like to do if elected as Port of Port Townsend commissioner for District 3.

Beck, 43, of Brinnon said his family has lived in Jefferson County for five generations.

He retired from a 19-year career aboard tugboats and now lives on the family farm begun by his great-grandfather.

“My family has lived at the same address for four generations now,” he said.

His uncle Herb Beck, a former port commissioner, even had the Herb Beck Marina in Quilcene named after him. Beck’s great-uncle Pete Beck also served as a port commissioner, Beck said.

“I’m looking at the long term. I’m looking for 20 years of representing the county,” he said.

“The port needs to make money, and it needs to hopefully increase employment,” Beck said. “And keep the maintenance up. It’s better for the whole community and Jefferson County.”

Beck said he wants to make the port’s operations stabler, and for the port to better represent the whole county and not just a portion of the county.

The smaller ports have “been kind of forgotten about,” he said.

In regard to deferred maintenance and failing jetties at Point Hudson, Beck said being a port commissioner would put him in a position to ask questions.

”I think it’s a lack of people actually maintaining and up-keeping,” he said.

The port has been aware of some of the problems for years, he said, and the lack of maintenance isn’t just at Point Hudson, he said.

“I’ve been around the county, and it’s been the same thing,” he said, citing Herb Beck Marina as one example of where work was needed.

“Look at the condition of that place; look at the jetties that are sticking out there. They are in my judgment … bad condition.

“It has been sorely overlooked,” he said.

Beck is a political newcomer, but he said his work experience includes 19 years of working in the maritime industry, mostly aboard tugboats. Beck said he started working as a deckhand and worked his way up to captain.

“Kind of fell in love with the sea,” he said of his tugboat work.

“It was just my perfect fit.”

He hauled fuel and houses from places as far north as the Yukon River in Alaska down south to San Francisco. He said he’s also helped build marinas, dikes and breakwaters in Alaska, specifically at False Pass, Alaska.

He runs two small businesses in Jefferson County: McKay Shrimp and Crab Gear, which makes crab pots, and Brinnon Liquor Outlet, which he co-owns, he said.

“I’m a small-business person. I know all small businesses have a hard time in the state of Washington,” and it doesn’t need to be that way in Jefferson County.

Beck said he went to high school in both Chimacum and Quilcene . He graduated from Quilcene High School.

He served in the Army for three years, attended college for two years and then began his maritime career.

As for endorsements, “I have a lot of support in Quilcene and Brinnon and that area,” he said.

He said he also is involved with the improvement committee for Quilcene’s school.

“We’re trying to improve the school, and if we’re going to go for levies or bonds, and what are we going to do with that money,” be it for baseball fields, security or buildings.

He also participates in the Linger Longer improvement committee.