Identity of Candidate A: The Countdown…

The envelope please…

Sometime later today, all of you taxpaying Port Angeles residents might actually find out the name of the new VIP ($144,000 a year) whom your tax dollars will be financing.

“Candidate A” of course is the code name for the mystery person who will become the Executive Director of the Port Angeles Harbor-Works Public Development Authority.

Board Chairman Orville Campbell said: “We just don't want to reveal his identity until we have a signed contract.”

Ah, transparency.

UPDATE: The unanimous choice is Jeff Lincoln, currently the Engineering Director of the Port of Olympia. He will finish out this month at his current job before taking over as Executive Director of the Port Angeles Harbor-Works Public Development Authority.

Purchase of Rayonier Mill Site

The Harbor-Works Public Development Authority might soon be purchasing the 75-acre site of the former Rayonier Mill.

Orville Campbell, board chairman of Harbor-Works, said a sale agreement with Rayonier Inc. would allow Harbor-Works to begin the due diligence process before they acquire the property. PCBs, dioxin, arsenic and other contaminants have accumulated during Rayonier Mill’s 68 years of operation.

Harbor-Works was created by the City of Port Angeles and the Port of Port Angeles to help direct the cleanup process and the future use of the site. Orville Campbell said he couldn’t estimate how long this process will take. “We'll have a decision point at the end of that about whether or not we go ahead with the acquisition and control of the property.”

According to Rayonier’s vice president of corporate affairs, Charles Hood, there's nothing definite about the sale; it was only discussed in “very general terms.” He said: “In my mind so far, acquisition of the property is nothing more than hypothetical at this point.”

If the Rayonier site is purchased and cleaned up, it would have great potential for some combination of retail-residential-office-industrial use. But in today’s PDN there was a letter warning that trying to develop the Rayonier site would be nothing but a “money pit.”

What do you think?