The Port of Bremerton commissioners must make realistic choices about spending public funds to spur economic development — especially the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) project.
The new chief executive, Cary Bozeman, seems ready and willing to reassess the viability of SEED.
Investing in a building for the SEED business “incubator” is one aspect of the problem, since the port doesn’t have the clear ability to handle the cost.
Making a commitment for the long haul to pay the operating costs of about $400,000 a year for an indeterminate period is another part of the puzzle, since those costs would have to be paid from the port’s funds absent another source.
A key point made by the consultants who did an economic analysis of the SEED concept is the necessity of a true commitment by the port commissioners to make the idea work.
People might have different opinions about the meaning of commitment, but it surely means making a firm decision to sacrifice other potential projects if need be after deciding that the port can afford the costs of SEED.
Port commissioner Bill Mahan would apparently rather hope that the operating costs will come from some other source of funding.
Mahan called the apparent need to pay the incubator’s operating costs a “red herring.” But when there is no other identified source of those funds, going forward anyway could properly be called “wishful thinking.”
If the port commissioners make a commitment to the SEED incubator, it must be based on a realistic presumption that the operating costs have to be paid from the port’s revenue.
When public officials go ahead with a project in the hope that the obvious costs will not have to be paid from available public funds, they can put the public in an uncomfortable situation.
Ask former Kitsap County commissioners Chris Endresen, Jan Angel, and Patty Lent how things worked out after they guaranteed payment of the construction debts for the Harborside condominium project in Bremerton.
They didn’t think the probability that the county would have to make good on the promise was significant, and they went ahead without an exit strategy to handle the situation if the condominiums couldn’t be sold for enough to pay the debts.
Now the county’s taxpayers face the likelihood that some of their taxes will be used to pay the debts rather than provide government services to county residents.
It’s true that the Port of Bremerton has a responsibility to generate economic development, and SEED might be an appropriate way to carry out that responsibility.
The Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority had a similar responsibility in the role of community renewal agency for Bremerton when it built those condominiums, but it will be a long time before KCCHA ever again takes on this role.
If the Port of Bremerton commissioners go ahead with construction of a new building for the incubator with little more than a hope that someone else will come up with the money for operating costs, the taxpayers could be left with debts to pay and little or no return on their investment.
Sure, we would have a building and whatever infrastructure accompanied construction of the building, but we already have one of those.
The port is already paying roughly a quarter million dollars a year to lease an empty building constructed in the expectation that a tenant could be found.
Yet another building would be an asset, but the question is whether it would be a productive asset.
It might be, if the port commissioners can make a realistic commitment to provide funding for a SEED incubator for however long it takes to make it a success or know for certain that it cannot succeed.
To make such a commitment, they must know with reasonable certainty that the needed funds will be available.
Wishing and hoping won’t make it so.
Hobbling the port district with debt and unproductive investments based on a hope that things will work out is the opposite of the good judgment taxpayers should expect from their elected officials.
Bob Meadows is a Port Orchard resident.
