The City of Port Townsend is the no-term-limit city council and mayor they appoint from within. Their sole employee is the city manager, just retired after around 20 years and $2.5 million without any current plan to deal with parking.

No enforcement was the answer approved by the city council. Any new city manager will have the same bosses.

There is simply not enough parking for residents, business owners and employees. Many harm their own community and business by taking limited posted two-hour parking all day.

The job of the city manager and council for the last two decades was to keep ahead of this problem. Failure and denial are easily seen, don’t believe their spin. The solution now means fixing self-entitled no-rules parking, a cultural shift easily traced to city hall.

There has recently been minimal enforcement for the sake of appearance. I have sent over three years of photo and text documentation to the city, stepping it up recently. Customers complain about parking many days. Business owners, employees and residents are abandoned to work parking out among themselves. Thoughtlessness flourishes. Unknowing visitors obeying signage are discriminated against. I meet them daily.

Booster organizations and others turn a blind eye. A perfect storm of complicity.

I now believe the problem is “us,” who blindly allow a no-term-limit council to appoint from within, and ignore cultivated problems.

Parking is a difficult issue anywhere you go. Creating a negative damaging culture has been the answer. We get the government we deserve and enable. The long road back starts with term limits, and an elected mayor. Special interests and incompetence exist in many forms. Self-entitled disrespect needs to end. Conversation need to begin. Term limits. Elected mayor. Who is threatened by that?

Comments?

Harvey Windle
Port Townsend