This is the first in a series of stories about how Port Townsend city officials spend money.

The City of Port Townsend has spent at least $1.89 million on consultants over the last five years for everything from developing land for affordable housing to gaining expertise on water and sewage issues, seismic assessment, and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and training.

The Leader filed open records requests on April 10 to look at the process, types of consultants and experts hired, and the results of those expenditures. 

It isn’t unusual for small municipalities to hire consultants to cover areas where it lacks expertise, which for Port Townsend includes a century-old water system to augment its Department of Public Works, among other things.

The city paid $472,000 to Thomas Architecture Studio Inc. in 2023 for architecture services for the Evans Vista affordable housing project, which to date lies vacant. Thomas’ services included information gathering and site studies, project vision and schematic design, financial analysis, preliminary engineering and refinement of alternatives, selection of preferred alternatives, entitlement applications and support for the request for proposal draft.  Another part of the tab included $2,400 to Mud Bay Consulting Services in 2022 for writing services to draft a request for qualifications for the project.

Instead of multi-story, affordable housing units with pedestrian pathways and raised bed gardens — as depicted in planning sketches — the land is dotted with the tents and tarps of the homeless living there. The property is bordered on three sides by an area dubbed by some locals the “Fentanyl Forest.”

The last update on the Evans Vista Project, according to the city’s website, was the allocation of American Rescue Plan Act funding to the Evans Vista Master Plan in August of 2022. 

The second largest expense was $376,799 paid to SCJ Alliance Consulting Services in 2024 for planning services described in records as helping the city comply with Growth Management Act requirements, facilitate the development of middle housing, review and amend policy to take into account climate change and update its non-motorized transportation plan. SCJ’s website trumpets its work on the Discovery Road Two Way Cycle Track and Sidewalk Improvements included environmental services, permitting and entitlements, civil engineering and site development, transportation, stormwater, and “complete streets” which is streetscape design.

The city paid RH2 Engineering $244,000 in 2021 for consulting services tied to water supply metering improvements and the city’s general sewer plan update.

Berk Consulting was paid $137,902 over three years for its help on several projects including the Parks, Recreation and Open Space Plan Update, the Port Townsend Public Library Strategic Plan and financial sustainability outreach.  

GeoEngineers was paid $144,000 in 2023 for a seismic investigation of Lords Lake. 

The city also paid Gallup, a global analytics and advisory firm, $55,950 for employee engagement consulting and an employee engagement survey in 2023. On city documents, two Gallup line items are listed as: “Building a Culture of Engagement” for $49,450 and “Building a Culture of Strengths for $6,500.

This year the city has pent $11,100 on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training, with a consulting firm called Potential Unleashed. City leadership closed city hall and the library to hold a staff training with the firm on April 23.

“The decision to hire a consultant is often made by the city’s leadership team after analyzing all scenarios, and then the contract and budget need to be approved by council prior to us working with the consultant,” Jodi Adams, the city’s finance director since April 2024, wrote in an email explaining process. “There are state laws and requirements, as well as our own purchasing policy, that we use to as guidelines when going out for a professional services contract.”

“We utilize consultants strategically to provide the maximum benefit to the community for the lowest possible cost over time,” Adams wrote.

She provided a list of scenarios noting it wasn’t comprehensive. “It would include having vacancies in staff where we require coverage while going through the hiring process, we may need expertise on a project that we don’t have in house, or we may have a very large project that is term limited so it doesn’t make sense to hire full time employees for the project if we can’t continue employment after the project ends.”

The Leader requested a copy of every contract the city entered into with a consultant or consulting firm, experts or outside agencies hired to improve city practices from January 2019 through March 2025 but it is possible that some consultants were left out of the published records. In response to the request, the city public records office pulled contracts that included “consulting” or “consultant” in the file name or contract description, going back to 2019.