After a close primary race, incumbent Phil Bannan and challenger Valerie Steel have been working hard to win over a whole new set of voters in their battle for the District 1 seat on the Port of Everett commission.
For the primary, only voters in the first of the port’s three districts got to cast ballots. That district includes north Everett and portions of Marysville and the Tulalip Tribes Reservation.
For the Nov. 4 general election, all voters within the larger port district will get their say. That means residents of the rest of Everett and of part of Mukilteo will also get to vote.
Both candidates said they’ve been visiting neighborhood organizations, hosting meetings and knocking on doors to introduce themselves to voters. The port is governed by three commissioners who set general policies for the agency.
Bannan, who was unopposed in his run for his first, six-year term, said he’s continued to stress prudent fiscal management as well as a balance between the public’s demand for waterfront access and the port’s mandate to create jobs.
"I continue to push on the theme of balance," Bannan said. "We have to do the revenue generating activities so we can pay for the nice things that people want."
Steel, who was within 100 votes of Bannan in the primary, has continued to stress the importance of public access on the waterfront and of public involvement in port decisions.
"I think a big problem with our waterfront is (the commissioners) just kind of decide, ‘We’re going to do this here.’ Then they get the community involved."
Steel noted that port officials had talked privately with Boeing Co. officials for nearly a year before letting the public know that they planned to build a new pier for the company near Mukilteo to handle jet parts shipped from overseas.
"I think people feel so disenfranchised," she said. "To me, it’s important to get everybody at the table up front. It doesn’t happen that way."
Steel, an Everett real estate agent, has long been involved in neighborhood issues in north Everett and has followed port activities closely for the several years.
She said she’d push to put minutes of the port commission’s meetings on the agency’s Web site and to look for additional ways to keep the public involved.
"The port has to de-demonize the neighborhoods and the neighborhoods have to de-demonize the port," she said.
Bannan, co-owner and operator of Scuttlebutt’s, a family brew pub on the waterfront, is a former executive director of the port. He has long stressed sound money management by the agency and said he wants to see the property tax it now charges eliminated.
He said it’s clear from his meetings with individual voters and with neighborhood groups that people want a bigger say in what goes on at the waterfront. But he said that in their concern about specific projects such as the Boeing pier, voters shouldn’t lose sight of broader issues.
"We’re trying to do something for the whole community — to keep Boeing in town," Bannan said of the pier project. "I don’t think there is a more important thing than that."
As a sitting commissioner, Bannan has also taken some heat for the port’s plans for including hundreds of condos in its redevelopment of the north marina area.
"A lot of people want more (public) amenities on Everett’s waterfront," he said. "Somehow we have to earn the money to do that. That takes successful commercial operations that will generate the traffic and the revenue to make these things happen."
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com.
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