POULSBO — The Port of Poulsbo discussed its phased-in reopening at a commissioner’s meeting last Thursday, which would see the port follow along with the governor’s phased approach to reopening the state.

Port manager Carol Tripp laid out the four phases for commissioners and said the port would introduce the new phases following cues from Gov. Jay Inslee as he does the same for the state as a whole.

Currently, the port is in phase one and will keep its current social distancing guidelines in place, marking off berths, discouraging use of transient docks, keeping the office, laundry room and bathroom closed to the public and not accepting cash transactions.

The only change in phase two is that the port would begin accepting cash payments again. Commissioner Mark DeSalvo asked about the possibility of staff using rubber gloves to handle money in order to ease the inconvenience of not being able to accept cash, but the port is currently short on supplies and DeSalvo then agreed that it shouldn’t be pursued.

Cash can be left in the dropbox, where it is sprayed with Lysol and left to dry before removing it in order to protect staff from any possible virus transmission.

“We need to be very careful to protect what staff we have,” Tripp said.

Tripp said the estimate on moving into phase two would be sometime around Memorial Day weekend, but again would depend on the actions taken by the governor’s office.

In phase three, the window on the dock would be reopened to do guest moorage transactions. The window already has guards in place in case of an emergency in which the window needs to be opened before reaching phase three. Restrooms would be reopened for day use for the public in phase three and in the evening would be restricted to people with key cards.

If the rest of the state reopens smoothly, phase three could happen sometime around the end of June.

Phase four would see a complete reopening of the port, including taking reservations again and reopening the office building. Tripp didn’t have a timetable for the full reopen as it would depend largely on how the rest of the state is moving along through the phases.

“It will be very dependent on what reports we get from Gov. Inslee,” Tripp said.