Time marches on. Spring is just around the corner and I am thinking a lot of the bulbs in the gardens down at the port will be beginning to sprout by the time I sit down to write this piece next month.

Aside from getting the gardens ready for the spring, the port staff has been pretty busy through the winter. Of course, there were the holiday lights and Christmas tree that kept everyone occupied before and over the holidays. Then of course like all the rest of us, they had to put everything away for use next year.

I hope you were able to come down and experience the light show at least once or twice. I would like to thank our outdoor staff, Kori, Ed, Ray, Bob and Willis ,for all the hard work that goes into the production. There is also a group of volunteers from town who came to the office once or twice a month to construct the light sculptures. What a wonderful job everyone did. A major project that was completed in our marina around Thanksgiving was a complete replacement of all of the wood in the moorings on all of our docks. The project called for removing and replacing over five miles of lineal lumber in sizes of 2 by 8s and 3 by 8s connected to each float with a series of through bolts about every 18 inches.

Each float was dismantled and reconstructed, new cleats and other dock fittings were installed and the water and electrical system were also completely replaced. This project was scheduled as major maintenance work and will effectively extend the useful life of our marina by at least 25 years. Even though the project was advertised state wide, the two best bids came from local companies and we are happy to have been able to have the work done by folks from the North Kitsap area.

You may have noticed that the big tent is gone. It is in storage for the winter and the firm that is storing it will also be doing a major clean up on it and repairing a few of the little tears and pulled stitches that we found. It should be back up in plenty of time for our spring and summer activities. Speaking of activities, at the January commission meeting, we once again reviewed the agreement with our local Kingston Farmers Market. It will be great to have them back at the port in a couple of months.

OK, I can’t stop without a little update on the SoundRunner passenger ferry service. On Jan. 19, we created a citizens advisory committee to help the commissioners work out the details on restarting the service. We need to make sure that when it does start back up that it will be sustainable. There are a ton of issues surrounding the sustainable and reliable piece of this service.

We will be looking at scheduling, the business plan, the budget and various ways to market this unique service. Hopefully by next month I will be able to get you a full report on the progress and announce a re-start date, if that hasn’t been done by then. Meanwhile we did run the Spirit to Seattle for two exciting Seahawks football games. Those who rode will tell you that the experience was first class. Our only regret was the way the Chicago game ended which prevented us from running a third such run.

Looks like I am once again running out of space so for now, I will sign off and start making notes for the March edition of the Community News. I kind of like this little paper, I hope you do too.

At any rate, thanks as always for taking time to read this stuff. I hope you found something here that was interesting.

Pete DeBoer is a Port of Kingston commissioner. Reach him at pete@petedeboer.com