PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend City Council doesn’t want a street to be permanently closed by accident.
So far, without much of a public process, council members believe that has happened with Adams Street.
Faced with six options that offered expenditures ranging between zero and $15,000, council voted 4-2 Monday night to keep Adams Street temporarily closed as it is and to open a public process to help determine its next steps.
The rough three-month timeline will include a set of criteria that will be assigned to the city’s Transportation Committee to help determine future steps if a road closure is considered, interim Public Works director Dave Peterson said.
“We recognize there are some deficiencies in the process along the way,” he said about the Adams Street closure on Monday.
Shut since March
The street, one of four that connect downtown Port Townsend with uptown, has been closed since last March.
Initially, the one-block stretch between Jefferson and Franklin streets served as a staging area for a contractor that installed sidewalks on Jefferson last spring.
But it remained closed after the sidewalks were installed, and the city asked the contractor to clean up asphalt along both edges of the road that were broken before the contractor arrived, Peterson said.
“We didn’t arrive here the way any of us would want to arrive at the potential of a permanently closed street,” Deputy Mayor David Faber said.
“We backed our way into public engagement here.”
Council member Monica MickHager argued that residents expect council to follow its rules.
“We open this street, we have the public process, decide and create the policy to close the street,” she said. “That is what’s missing from the beginning on this.”
Peterson’s options showed a minimum $3,000 expenditure to patch the corners with temporary paving, $8,000 to pave the corners in conjunction with other city projects, and $15,000 to both pave and restore the corners and reopen the street with parking on both shoulders.
Council members Amy Howard and Owen Rowe agreed with both Faber and MickHager, and Howard pointed to current city policy that supports closing Adams Street permanently.
“I do not want to spend any of our money on this street,” Howard said. “It is not a useful street.
“But going backwards into a public process isn’t really the way you want to do it at all.”
Peterson’s report to council answered several questions posed in December, when the council had three failed motions before it directed staff to go out for bids on a range of options.
Adams Street does not provide access to any driveways, and a traffic count on the adjacent Taylor Street suggests volumes are less than 100 vehicles per day, Peterson said.
In the case of an emergency such as a tsunami evacuation, Peterson cited the fire marshal’s suggestion that the best course of action would be to leave on foot.
The state Department of Natural Resources has a Port Townsend evacuation map available for download at https://tinyurl.com/PDN-tsunamiwalkingmap.
Scott Walker of Port Townsend, a former member of the city’s non-motorized transportation advisory board, said there’s nothing in the city’s comprehensive plan that supports reopening the street.
However, former City Council member Bob Gray argued it should be reopened based on a loss of parking for festivals and events, and for those who work downtown.
Rick Jahnke of Port Townsend, a Planning Commission member, asked council members not to close it without a public process. He cited former Public Works director Greg Lanning’s pavement management report that evaluated the segment at 58 out of 100 with six years of service life remaining.
“Fifty-eight is considered Fair,” Jahnke said. “There are four categories below that.
“If you turn that logic around, we’re allowing our residents to knowingly drive on unsafe streets all over this city, and it points to a double standard.”
As council leaned toward spending $3,000 to temporarily reopen the street, Faber argued the city shouldn’t spend additional funds.
“We have vetted this street to death at this point, and we’ve spent a lot of staff time and money on this already,” he said. “We’re in a position where we can make good policy at this moment. We can take the mistakes here as a lesson for the future.
“It seems to be a really poor waste of public money.”
Mayor Michelle Sandoval said it jumped ahead of other projects because of the potential closure, and she argued the Jefferson Street project shouldn’t be finished without a resolution to Adams Street.
Faber proposed a compromise to keep the street closed as it is and gather more public input on a final course of action. The motion carried with Sandoval and MickHager opposed. Council member Pam Adams was excused.
“We need to get this right,” Sandoval said. “We need to make policy that’s directed and considered through a full public process.”
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Jefferson County Managing Editor Brian McLean can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 6, or at bmclean@peninsuladailynews.com.
