ISLAND COUNTY: Port’s request met with demand for letter

Kira Erickson reports from the Island County Commissioners’ work session of Wed., Mar. 5, 2025, for the Whidbey News-Times. Read the whole story.

The Port of South Whidbey has encountered another roadblock on its journey to pursue workforce housing.

During a work session this week, Port of South Whidbey Executive Director Angi Mozer approached the commissioners with a request for the South Whidbey School District’s property to be part of a feasibility study. In 2022, the port received $150,000 in funds from Island County to assess the possibility of building workforce housing on top of new concession stands on the Whidbey Island Fairgrounds.

Since then, many things have come to light, including the knowledge that a portion of the fairgrounds’ food booths may actually be located on property belonging to the city of Langley. The fairgrounds’ location adjacent to school district property sparked an idea.

Port commissioners met with the school board last November to ask if the school district would be interested in being included in the port’s feasibility study. The board members agreed that getting more data on the topic would be useful, especially in a way that minimizes expenses; they did not commit to providing staff time or monetary aid.

But county commissioners were not satisfied with the school board’s nod of approval and asked for a letter outlining their support.

They Said It

Commissioner Melanie Bacon pointed to a public comment from Freeland resident Carl Chaney, who spoke to the county commissioners at the regular session earlier this week about the issue. Brook Willeford, the school board’s president, said in a Jan. 22 meeting that the board has no current plans to sell off any of the school district’s property. Willeford did not, however, say the school district would not consider housing as a use of its property, which is what Chaney told the commissioners.

In response to Bacon, Mozer said the school district is open to receiving information on what could be possible with the property, which includes 60 feet of the southern portion of the baseball field along the boundary line. Port Commissioner Greg Easton also weighed in on the matter to say that members of the school board said they would not sell unused property but would consider a lease.

Bacon and Commissioner Jill Johnson expressed interest in receiving a letter from the school district with their intentions. Johnson said it would be a fool’s errand to continue otherwise. She was also concerned about the boundary line issue of the food booths and said she wasn’t sure if the port should be the sole entity paying to figure out who owns that portion of land. She spoke about the importance of having the city and school district as willing partners.

“I don’t want to hear one letter to the editor,” Johnson said. “I don’t want to hear one ‘Our teachers aren’t paid well enough to support housing.’ I don’t want to hear it. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

Commissioner Janet St. Clair agreed that there needed to be more clarity from the school district. She said that the project’s feasibility study, which the commissioners have been trying to be supportive of for a long time, is seeing a lot of “scope creep” and wondered if it’s beyond what was originally intended for the funding.

“It’s next door, but it’s a different project we’re talking about than the one we originally were working on,” St. Clair said.

Bacon said she thought the project was the same and that it was more about trying to establish the feasibility of the space for building housing. St. Clair resisted.

“If we’re now adding a project that has three property owners coming together to find a housing solution, that’s a new project, and I would be supportive of it, but it is a new project,” St. Clair said.

Mozer said initially the scope was for architectural and engineering assessment for infrastructure, but was scaled back when the port was asked to focus on zoning, which needs to be changed to allow for housing on the fairgrounds. The city of Langley has been supportive of that effort and provided the county with a letter.

Johnson pointed to the aging food booths, which would benefit from being reconstructed since they are not the most electrically or structurally safe.

“We want it to happen at the fairgrounds because food is my favorite part,” she said, bringing some levity to the conversation. “I mean, I get that the animals are great, but I’m really going for the fact that someone figured out how to deep fry a Snickers.”

People are fearful of losing the culture at the fairgrounds, and the fastest way to lose that culture, she said, is to have the whole thing burn down because of an electrical shortage.