You’ll read no tearful eulogies to the Port of Bremerton’s Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) project in this space if it’s truly on the verge of a long-overdue plug-pulling.

As we reported last week, the port’s chief financial officer has handed the board of directors some sobering — though not at all surprising — numbers about the proposed green technology incubator the agency has long coveted.

With a conservative estimate of the construction cost for SEED’s first building at just under $9.5 million, the port faces a $4.3 million shortfall after a $2.5 million federal Economic Development Administration grant and the required matching funds from the port — already accounted for in the budget — are subtracted.

“We need to find some funds out there to finish the project,” Becky Swanson explained, adding that she believed the cost of the project would actually be even higher — by $2 million — because of the need to build a manufacturing building as well.

“There is no question (SEED) would put this company in financial jeopardy,” conceded Cary Bozeman, the port’s newly appointed CEO. “I need another 30 days, then I will bring back a recommendation of whether we go forward (with the project).”

By coincidence, that 30-day window will close two weeks before the Aug. 18 primary election, during which the field of candidates to replace outgoing port commissioner Cheryl Kincer will be narrowed from three to two.

Since Kincer’s fingerprints, like those of fellow commissioner Bill Mahan, are all over SEED’s corpse, one assumes the candidates would like nothing better than to see Bozeman come back and state the obvious — that the project never has penciled out and should be abandoned immediately.

It’s bad enough the new commissioner will have to help pull the port out of the hole Kincer and Mahan dug for it, but it would be even worse if the recovery also required their being handed a shovel and told to keep digging.