Down at the Port

Big bucks for passenger ferries

Kingston Community News - October 1, 2007

Pete DeBoer

I suppose that you have heard from one source or another that the Port of Kingston was awarded a $3.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. If you haven’t, you just did.

Last spring, at the encouragement of former Kitsap County Commissioner Chris Endresen, we applied for the grant, not too sure that we would be considered on our first attempt but feeling that we needed to begin such applications and perhaps one day be chosen. Nels Sultan, who heads the Kingston Express Association, acted as our agent and submitted the application for the port. These funds are part of a larger pot of revenue used by the Washington State Department of Transportation to help start up or continue ferry service in many communities around the country. There are some pretty strict conditions that guide the use of these funds, which may be dedicated only to the construction or acquisition or ferryboats and/or shore-side docking facilities. I feel that one of the reasons we were picked was that there is no duplicate route connecting Kingston and Seattle at this time.

The timing on when we will receive the funding is up in the air but will most likely be during fiscal year 2008, which begins Oct. 1, 2007.

Fellow Port Commissioner Marc Bissonnette, you may know, is a skipper on the Victoria Clipper boats and has extensive experience in managing and working in the passenger-only ferry arena. At a special meeting early in September, we tasked him with overseeing a working group to establish a plan and timeline for administering the grant funds.

As of mid-September, we still had not received much more than a couple of e-mails concerning the grant. I expect that we will know much more about what happens next within a couple of months. Keep reading here and in the North Kitsap Herald and we will keep you up to date.

Our projects such as the kayak facility and redesign of the area where the old fuel tanks were (and one still is) and other items in our master plan continue to progress. We are excitedly working with a local master of the trade to design and build a very interesting water feature that will greet visitors and commuters as they arrive in Mike Wallace Park, either from the walk-on ferry ramp or the guest dock. The design will be reviewed at the port general meeting Sept. 26.

Port Manager Mike Bookey has been busy with a few projects of his own, too. Our e-mail management has been switched over so that it is info@portofkingston.org, replacing our old AOL address. There are several tourism magazines that carry information concerning Kingston and Mike has been making sure that all of the information published over the winter will be accurate. He also spearheaded the decision to come up with a new logo for the Port of Kingston. It is a pretty neat design. Jana Kramberger at S&J Graphics in Kingston helped Mike with the project. You should be seeing it on a few things down at the port pretty soon.

I was contacted by Norwesting magazine a couple of weeks ago and they are planning to do a feature article on the Port of Kingston. That should appear in the November or December issue.

Speaking of logos and such, isn’t it great to see all of those Buccaneer shirts, hats and bumper stickers all over town? The opening of the new Kingston High School has got to be one of the coolest events that this community has ever experienced.

While on the subject of learning and knowledge, here comes the October 2007 Nautical Term of the Month: STORIS – Large drift ice, more than two years old, that passes down the southeast coast of Greenland. In winter steaming in the North Atlantic, you have to watch out for the Storis. The Coast Guard has an icebreaker located in Alaska use for local inland service. The name of that ship is U.S. Coast Guard Cutter STORIS.

Well, I have arrived at the bottom edge of the paper so that’s all the stuff I have for this month. Thanks for reading it. This is an exciting time to be living in Kingston! Enjoy the first weeks of fall.

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