Squander public dollars
Port Townsend City Manager David Timmons has recently unwrapped a going-away present before retiring from the position he has held for too many years — an “informal park plaza,” as it’s called.
A descriptive as bland as himself.
His more-or-less rubber stamps on the council continue to squander dollars in the follow-up to a recent move of Visitors Center from Jefferson Transit’s Park and Ride facility to a backlot location well down the road.
About $800,000 is about to be spent in the vicinity of the same the setting to include a donated work of art, typically abstract and uninspired (“Port Townsend Arts Commission studies public art,” PDN, June 7).
A Visitors Center has long been of interest to me.
Having years ago purchased a home in Port Townsend, I early on attended a meeting of Port Townsend’s Transportation Committee, listening intently as committee members talked of parking problems downtown.
Quiet until somone suggested hiring a consultant — my cue to enter the fray.
I suggested they don’t need a consultant. They should match Port Townsend’s visitor center with Transit’s Park & Ride, get people out of their cars and onto the sidewalk. Provide free public transit to and from downtown Port Townsend.
I later imagined a small fleet of 1970 Volkswagon buses running downtown and back and brought my idea to transit officials who — in years to come — would buy and install a cheesy pre-manufactured structure on their park and ride site.
My own thoughts focused upon a variation of a three-story tower designed by Thomas Jefferson — a newly minted landmark — well back from the shoreline overlooking Tai Kai Lagoon.
Todd Wexman,
Port Townsend