POULSBO — After more than 1,800 people voted to keep Little Norway’s city hall downtown, Mayor Kathryn Quade and the city council quickly affirmed the decision.

Now comes the hard part: deciding the best way to proceed to make that choice a reality.

Quade cautioned that it will take time for city officials to develop the plan for the downtown city hall.

“I didn’t do it before the election, because I didn’t know which way it would go,” she said.

The council and city staff are beginning to grasp the entire issue and explore all of the options, Quade said.

The road to the 10th Avenue city hall location — which was downed by voters Nov. 7 — began in November 2004 and it wasn’t presented to the public until August 2005. So residents need to be patient, said Planning Director Barry Berezowsky.

“Members of the community will be involved. We’re going to make this as transparent of a process as possible,” Berezowsky said.

However, Quade and the council must provide city staff guidance as the building blocks for the new city hall are set in place, he said.

“There are a couple of things that need to be answered before we can move ahead,” Berezowsky said.

The first of many questions concern whether or not the city wants to construct the new building itself or if city officials want to pursue a partnership with the private sector that could involve just a new city hall or a larger redevelopment opportunity for downtown, Berezowsky said.

The public/private partnership idea has great appeal, but making such an arrangement work could prove challenging, said Councilman Dale Rudolph.

“With that we would possibly be able to leverage our 10th Avenue property, city hall and the historical society property into the best combination,” Rudolph said.

Even so, evaluating and ranking any such proposals will be difficult, because the council will have to carefully decide on that evaluation criteria, he said.

“Getting the proposals is easy, it’s evaluating them that’s hard,” Rudolph said.

Another question the council must answer is what the new building’s usage will actually entail, he said.

“Are we still including the municipal court, administration from public works?” Rudolph asked. “Are we including parks and recreation’s administrative functions?”

Then there’s the actual siting of the downtown city hall that has yet to be determined, he said.

“Are we going to consider building on King Olaf (Parkway), which would allow us to stay in place and replace it with parking on the existing footprint?” Rudolph asked.

Or will the existing city hall building be demolished and the new building be built on its footprint, he asked.

Those questions must be answered by the mayor and council instead of staff, but staff will be asking those types of questions and reaffirming those answers along the way, he said.

“Staff’s goal is bring questions to the council, so they can discuss, debate their merits and provide staff guidance,” Berezowsky said. “We want to do that in as transparent a way as possible, so the community can follow along.”