North Beach trail ready for walkers | Down At The Port | December

Finally, after a long but successful project, the trail to Kingston’s North Beach is open. Sealevel Bulkhead Builders did a great job of replacing the rock revetment and creating a new and attractive trail for our residents and guests to access this inviting stretch of sandy beach.

I hope you get a chance to stroll down there and enjoy some of these brisk winter days when the sun is out. I just returned from my annual visit to ports far away and this time I went back to Key West Florida to join with some friends and enjoy the hospitality of the Conch Republic.

While I was there, I visited with the harbormaster in the Port of Key West. Interestingly they are also on the tail end of repairing some storm damage which occurred when Hurricane Wilma blasted through there in 2005. Their project was much the same as ours except it dealt with millions of dollars and three years of construction repair to the waterfront dock and cruise ship facilities. Just like in Kingston, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was there to help them out as well.

The holidays are upon us and as I have been telling you, the staff has been working on some neat lighting creations that will be placed around the port area for you to come down and enjoy.

Every place I look down at the port office I see another sculpture made out of holiday lights. We should be getting our Christmas tree delivered soon and this will be an interesting project. We have installed a four-foot deep vault in the park and the theory is that the trunk of the tree will just “pop” right in there. Everything should be ready for the big town holiday celebration on Dec. 12. This year we will de-emphasize all of those inflatables and set it up a little differently.

Foot ferry search goes on

The update on our passenger ferry project is that at this point we are still exploring the value differences between new construction and purchasing an existing used vessel.

Commissioner Marc Bissonnette will be going to California to check out one that is available there and could suit our purposes well. It is less than two years old and still under warranty. There is also a suitable one available on the east coast but there is a pending offer on that one.

By the time you are reading this though, we will have met with the shipyard that bid on the new construction project to look at what they have to offer. By January we should be making the big decision on where we are headed with vessel acquisition.

We are still looking everywhere for operational funding to help us start the service. Last month Congressman Jay Inslee sent a senior staff member to meet with us and get updated on the project.

Now all three members of our congressional delegation have now sent staff members to Kingston and offered their support for passenger ferries between here and Seattle.

As I have written in the past, if you are in favor of this service becoming a reality for our town, it couldn’t hurt to shoot off an email or a letter to Sen. Patty Murray, Sen. Maria Cantwell or Rep. Inslee (or all three!) thanking them for their support of this program. Perhaps a nice Christmas card would do the trick.

I am still collecting data from potential riders so if you haven’t gotten that to me please send it along. So far I have only received about thirty responses to my request in the October issue of Kingston Community News. If you didn’t get that, please email me and I will send you the details.

That’s it for this month. I hope to see you around town over the holidays. It’s time for some turkey.

As always, thank you for taking time to read this stuff. I hope you found something interesting here.

Pete DeBoer is a newly reelected Port of Kingston Commissioner. Contact him at pete@petedeboer.com.

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