Lorna Smith and Heidi Eisenhour made their respective cases to the working tradespeople of the Port Townsend waterfront and how their interests would be represented should they be elected as county commissioner.

During the Sept. 9 forum, the candidates weighed in on a few key issues outlined by members of the Port Townsend Marine Trades Association. The forum was moderated by PTMTA board member John Simpson. The Port of Port Townsend’s District 1 Commissioner Pam Petranek kicked off the virtual event by outlining the historic and economic significance of the marine trades to Port Townsend and Jefferson County. 

“Jefferson County is home to a world-class university of marine trades, representing 20 percent of our workforce, paying living wage jobs and generating $12.6 million in tax revenues to our city, county and state,” Petranek said. “These industries have been built throughout Jefferson County’s history and the majority have been viable throughout this global pandemic. Our biggest threats are from gentrification, environmental risks and lack of citizen participation and leadership.”

Speaking to that last point, Petranek called upon those viewing to go beyond simply supporting a candidate and get involved in supporting their community on the ground level as well.

“It’s vital for our citizens and local government leadership to communicate and work together,” Petranek added. “Let’s be willing to challenge educating ourselves to do better, beyond supporting a campaign or casting a vote, to be an active participant in the ongoing work of serving and creating quality of life here in Jefferson County.” 

A little background

In introducing herself, Eisenhour pointed to her lengthy history in the area and her close ties to the waterfront trades.

“My family moved here in 1981, a few years after the first Wooden Boat Festival,” Eisenhour began. “Downtown was one-third boarded up; we rented a slip in the commercial basin and bought a small house in Irondale where my mom still lives. We followed the promise of a southeast Alaska troll permit.”

“I still consider the troll fleet my family,” she said. “This is what community is about for me. Some of you worked alongside my dad, who has now passed, in the yard — replanking and caulking our hull, putting in our freezer system, selling us bottom paint — I consider many of you my family and whether we agree or not, the rest of you my community.”

Eisenhour also cited her experience working with state and local governments and her endorsement by some 400 residents, many of whom, she said, were current and retired shipwrights.

“I am ready to represent the working families of our county for decades to come,” Eisenhour said. “I have the right experience and relationships to be an effective advocate for the marine trades and to protect the marine waters around us.”

Smith pointed to her work in government and environmental activism and her patronage of the Port of Port Townsend’s boatyard as influences in her ability to represent the area’s marine tradespeople.   

“I believe in our remarkable county and the remarkable amazing people who live and work here,” Smith said. “I want to see that we maintain our rural lifestyle and pristine environment while promoting a healthy sustainable economy.”

“I want to see that our waterfront and our businesses don’t just survive but thrive into the future,” she continued. “I believe that my experience as a community and environmental activist, as well as my work as a professional land-use manager for Snohomish County for many years, gives me the credentials and experience that I can use to make sound governance decisions in Jefferson County.”

Smith added that she currently serves on the Planning Commission and Conservation Futures Committee for Jefferson County and was recently named to the county shoreline advisory task force.

“I particularly care about our marine environment and protection of our shorelines … I’ve received national recognition for my volunteer work to save Protection Island — along with Eleanor Stopps — and to halt the ill-conceived Northern Tier Pipeline Project. I also worked with Rep. Mike Chapman to ban Atlantic salmon net pens in our marine waters.”

Smith also noted that for many years she and her husband owned and operated a 42-foot wooden troller, which was regularly hauled out in Port Townsend. 

“Taking advantage of the talented craftsmen and tradespeople with small businesses throughout the port, we spent a lot of money up there,” Smith laughed, “I think you all know what that’s like.”

Influence of the trades

For the first question put to the candidates, Simpson asked: “What is your view of the significance of the marine trades to the economic and cultural life of Jefferson County?”

Before Eisenhour could respond, the question prompted a quietly muttered “softball” from an unmuted member in the Zoom audience.

“I think the marine trades [are] the backbone of our community,” Eisenhour responded. “As I’ve said earlier, the marine trades make up 20 percent of our local economy through direct and indirect jobs, so it’s a huge part of our local economy. It’s integral to who we are and how we thrive as a community.”

“I think we should do whatever we can to promote the marine trades and — as I’ve said earlier, and as David King has said before — keep the Port in Port Townsend,” Eisenhour said. “I feel fiercely attached to that and look forward to working on that full-time.”

Smith followed suit by lauding the economic and cultural significance of the marine industry, but went beyond Port Townsend.

“The marine trades are critical; they’re part of our vibrant history and our economy, both Jefferson County and Port Townsend. Part of the culture has always been tied to the sea. The marine trades provide living wage jobs and apprenticeship opportunities for people entering the workforce or making a career change.”

“These skilled craftsmen make good wages and they can afford to buy homes in the community,” Smith said. “We need to keep a vibrant working waterfront and the marine trades are of course the major part of that whole culture and business in the waterfront.” 

Affordable housing

On the pressing issue of affordable housing, the candidates were asked how they would support affordable and alternative housing for maritime education and apprentice students, and for those just entering the marine trades workforce.

Smith said the issues of homelessness, substance abuse and affordable housing are closely tied and pointed to the lack of available rentals throughout Jefferson County, as a considerable issue facing residents.

“We have almost zero rent vacancies in Jefferson County right now; it’s just almost impossible to find housing,” Smith said. “Families that are making minimum wage, or slightly above, certainly can’t afford to get into houses, so we need to look at some very creative solutions.”

Smith suggested examining ways in which the county could incorporate the use of “tiny homes” that would be constructed by local schools    

“We just finished up revision of our Comprehensive Plan last year,” She added. “In that we included policies for looking at exploring pilot projects and how we can address putting smaller homes on smaller footprints [and] how we can address this septic issue. Again, it’s a community problem, it’s going to take all of us working together and a lot of people like the Housing Solutions Network are working on this problem; they’ve got a proposal to look at zoning in the city of Port Townsend. We’ll need to do that in the county as well.”

Smith also proposed the possibility of starting an “adopt an apprentice” program within the community, in which community members with spare rooms or accessory dwelling units could offer their space to house apprentices within the marine trades.”

“We’re all seeing that demand for housing locally is increasing,” Eisenhour began her response.

“We need to create opportunities for people with houses that sit empty a large part of the year, to convert a portion of those homes to ADU’s,” she added. “We need to create more housing; we’ve got it, but a lot of it sits vacant year-round. We need to network, do a lot of outreach to landowners.”

“I think it’s just using the resources that exist within the community and getting creative with outreach and recruiting opportunities for student housing and apprentice housing,” Eisenhour said.

Eisenhour suggested partnering with organizations in the area such as the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding and Centrum to develop their contacts for temporary housing.

“They have long lists of people who are willing to do this and I think we just need to grow that and start to get people thinking more creatively about what they’re willing to do in terms of opening their home to sharing it with people,” Eisenhour said.

“Lorna and I were both on a call earlier and one of the women on the call was saying, ‘There are five houses that I basically can see from my front door that are sitting empty right now.’ So what do we do about that? A lot of the people in our community are community-minded — the people that are attracted to living here — so I think it’s reaching out and asking people if they’re willing to share,” she said.     

working with the tribes

On the topic of how the candidates would intend to foster a working relationship with local tribes, Eisenhour said she would like to see continued collaboration on projects.

“I think there are lots of ways to interact with the tribe and engage the tribe in our community and I was the lead staff person for the [Northwest Maritime Center] on getting that totem pole stood up at the end of Water Street,” Eisenhour said. “Working with the tribe, going to the carving shed, taking groups to the carving shed, coming onsite with the carvers, going to the city four times a day to talk about the 17 permits that we needed to put that thing up.”

Eisenhour also noted her experience with the tribal community through her work with the Jefferson Land Trust to secure protection for Chimacum’s Tamanowas Rock.   

“I worked closely with the tribe to get that piece of land protected and then to come up with a stewardship plan for the rock and the surrounding areas including the state parks,” she explained. “I think it’s just being open to active collaboration — everyone I know is — so I think we just need to do the work of coming up with projects that we can do together and making them happen.”

In her work with Snohomish County, Smith said she frequently worked closely with several tribes and emphasized the continued cultivation of relationships with the indigenous community. 

“In my past work at Snohomish County, I worked on a daily basis with a number of tribes — the Stillaguamish Tribe, the Skagit Tribe and the Tulalip Tribes — because I worked on watershed and habitat issues and salmon recovery issues and, of course, those were all issues that affected the tribe. I have a lot of experience in that area and in that arena. We look to the tribes as an important part of the partnership in what we were doing in all of those projects.”

“The tribes have been great partners on those issues and certainly the tribes here on the peninsula [it is] the same story,” Smith said. “When you are dealing with tribal people, relationships are very important, listening is very important, so I would build that into any relationship I was establishing with the tribes.

“I think that we should embrace our relationship with the tribes on the peninsula, incorporate them really more fully into what we do as governments at the county level, at the port level, in the city level,” she added.

“That whole cultural experience and background adds so much more to our community; it’s such a richness and we need to remember this was their land, they literally lived where the Port is right now. They have history there for thousands of years, we need to respect that.”

A little conclusion

At the close of the forum, each candidate had an opportunity to share some parting words with the audience.

“This is my community, you guys are my community,” Eisenhour said after noting that she had not prepared a summary statement. “I don’t agree with everything that you guys believe or think and you don’t agree with every choice I’ve made over the last 40 years.”

“Many of you I have been in the yard with since I was a 10-year-old kid and that means the world to me,” Eisenhour continued. “More than any forum I’m going to do in this entire bid to be your county commissioner, this is the one that means the most to me. You are the community that means the most to me. You are my people.”

“I feel very proud of who we are as a marine trades community,” she added. “It’s the thing I’m going to fight for until the end. It’s why I’m here and it’s why I work at the maritime center and it’s the thing that keeps me coming back every single time,” Eisenhour said.

Smith called back to her experience living on the Everett waterfront and her desire to see the port continue in perpetuity.    

“I also feel very strongly and very fondly about our whole port and the environment and the maritime trades,” Smith said. “I felt like the time that I lived at the Port of Everett, in a boathouse, I really became part of that community and I was there to see it all disintegrate when they got the boot. I definitely don’t want to see that happen in our community.”

“I think working together, the Port, the county, and the marine trades and businesses, we’re facing a future that’s going to be impacted increasingly by climate change and rising sea levels and we need to work together to cooperate and collaborate with wide public involvement,” she continued. “How are we going to respond to these changes that we know are coming? We need to band together, plan together, seek infrastructure funding assistance together, to respond to these impacts in ways that are responsive and sustainable.”

“I want to be that county commissioner that works with the Port that brings my many years of experience working in the permitting and environmental arena and the land-use arena to help advise and guide the Port, county and city, as well, through these times ahead.”