Port Townsend Mayor David Faber spoke with The Leader about lessons learned in his first two years in office, and the challenges he now faces.

“I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions because they don’t bring lasting change. We need long term solutions and a short term goal goal cannot bring lasting gain,” he said, adding that the council should be constantly work on improving what needs improving.

Port Townsend’s council, which elected him mayor, is not the one to which he was elected eight years ago, he said in a reference to the recent razing a building.

“That was really a sad state of affairs. We got to an end result but it was not what we were hoping for. Virtually no one on council or staff is the same as when that building was barged over here. The only council members that were here are Amy Howard and myself. People should understand, there’s been some pretty big shifts in personnel,” he said and indicated the persistent challenge of getting people to recognize when shifts happen.

“We’re fighting a lot of headwinds on building public trust. Some of that is the shape of national discourse and the way social media functions but there’s a lot of baggage here, where people don’t realize it has shifted,” he said, adding that he is quite happy with his fellow council members, who often disagree but through civil debate frequently have consensus-based decision making.

“I think everyone on the council is quite responsible and respectful. We generally have a very thoughtful council,” he said.

Faber is proud of the city’s accomplishments under his leadership.

“Both years had plenty of complicated issues that sometimes ended up being explosive. This last year in particular is rife with fantastic successes. We signed a 22-year lease for the future of the golf course which, while still serving the golfing community, vastly expands on public access and amenities. There was a lot of frustration to get here but the end result is very positive.” Other successes include the transportation benefit district, which won a point-three percent sales tax.

“That will provide money for numerous things including fixing our potholes - we’ve been trying to put something together for eight years to address that issue. We’ve also had some changes to housing policy, allowing for a second ADU and flexibility for building. I’ve had a bunch of friends who I grew up with, who had to leave Port Townsend because they couldn’t find a place to live. That’s a failure to sufficiently build housing units.”

In the year ahead the council will begin its state-mandated redraft of its comprehensive plan, which Faber said deals with everything from ecology, the local economy, to transportation, housing and other topics.

“It’s essentially a 20-year planning document and it will address zoning and land use reforms - which means a potential change to the built environment.

“The set of rules we currently have are not working. We have seen an extraordinary increase in housing costs over the past 10 years and we haven’t been producing housing units to keep up.” Faber said.