“I wouldn’t change a thing about what we did.” Mayor David Faber said that about the Cherry Street Project at a December city council meeting. The topic of that meeting was whether Port Townsend should purchase 14.4 acres on the edge of town, the Evans Vista project, to build the equivalent of a separate village of affordable and low-income housing. It would be a massive project that Michelle Sandoval, mayor at the time, predicted would be “incredibly expensive.”
The Cherry Street Project will be five years old on May 10, 2022, yet remains unfinished. Windows facing the street are boarded up; windows at the rear are broken out, the result of vandalism. The city is paying off a 20-year bond with a principal and interest obligation of around $1.4 million. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent. Valuable land is tied up with a derelict building. The last estimate was that another $1.8 million would be required to rehab the old building.
In preparation for an article on the Cherry Street Project’s fifth anniversary, I emailed Mayor Faber regarding his “I wouldn’t change a thing about what we did” assessment of the Cherry Street Project. I asked him,
“What would you say was done correctly in the inception and execution of the Cherry Street Project? Were no mistakes made, since you “wouldn’t change a single thing” in retrospect?”
A fair question, particularly since the Mayor has insisted that he and others have learned from the Cherry Street Project and the Evans Vista Project won’t be a repeat. It is our policy to print in full and verbatim all written responses and statements we receive to our inquiries.
Mayor Faber did respond. But he had conditions. He first wanted an off-the-record “chat” to “set some ground rules.” Here is his complete and verbatim response:
I’m happy to have a conversation with you, provided we first have an off-the-record chat to set some ground rules. If you can’t agree to do that, then please, by all means, continue misconstruing my comments without my involvement as is your right, even if you are needlessly creating division for clicks.
Give me a call whenever you want: (360) 821-9374.
Best,
David J. Faber
At first I thought this would be a great idea and agreed. (Golly, a chat with the mayor!). But then I realized that agreeing to an “off-the-record chat” to “set some ground rules” was problematic. Why should anything the Mayor has to say about a housing project be off the record? Why did we need ground rules for a Q&A on the Cherry Street Project? I had never had a request like this in fifteen years of writing for a major newspaper or my own investigative news sites.
Mayor Faber,
Upon further reflection, it would be better if you wrote out the ground rules you want for an interview. If they are to govern any future exchange and what goes into a published article, it does no good to have them “off the record.” So, please just send the ground rules you want and we can proceed from there if they are agreeable. I can’t remember any public official ever insisting on an off the record conversation to set ground rules. I don’t seek a free running conversation, just answer to a question but I will fairly consider your proposed ground rules.
I send out written questions and publish the entire answers so that nothing gets misquoted or left out. My written question to you is still open and your response will be published verbatim and in full. A written exchange requires no ground rules. And, if you would like to say more on the Cherry Street Project than my question covers, please add that to your response and it will also be published verbatim and in full.
Awaiting your proposed ground rules and written answer and expanded statement, if you choose to respond. I think this is the best way to proceed to avoid any misunderstanding or accusations following publication.
I am keeping my editors informed of this exchange, by the way.
Sincerely,
Jim Scarantino
Mayor Faber responded the next morning:
Best,
David J. Faber
I let Mayor Faber know that I was awaiting instructions from my editors and would get back to him. We talked about it and jointly made a decision to reject his pre-condition of an “off-the-record chat” to “set some ground rules.” Here’s the response of Port Townsend Free Press to Mayor Faber’s unusual request:
Mayor Faber,
My editors and I appreciate your invitation to have a conversation with you on the Cherry Street Project. We cannot, however, agree to keeping from the public any statements made by the Mayor of the City of Port Townsend, and, therefore, do not agree to any off-the-record preconditions. (That is why I have not called you, because you seem to have set the condition that that conversation would be off-the-record). Everything said in the interview or any telephone calls is public information and subject to publication.
To ensure there are no misquotes or misinterpretations in any article resulting from the conversation, I will tape our exchange and you are certainly welcome to do the same.
Our invitation to you to publish on our site any statement you wish to make on the Cherry Street Project remains open.This gives you the opportunity to put your best case to the readers directly, without going through a reporter relating what you have to say or not putting it as you would want. As I have stated several times in our exchanges, any written responses to our questions or submitted statements are published verbatim and in full. We recently did this with County Prosecutor Kennedy, by way of example. And we still invite you, if you choose, to provide a written answer to the questions that initiated this back-and-forth: What would you say was done correctly in the inception and execution of the Cherry Street Project? Were no mistakes made, since you “wouldn’t change a single thing” in retrospect?
Lastly, in your emails you have implied that I have been “misconstruing [your] comments without [your] involvement” and that I have been publishing “half-truths without [your] involvement.” You are invited to include in a statement to be published your explanation of what has been reported at the Port Townsend Free Press that misconstrued your comments or constituted half-truths regarding the Cherry Street Project. Of course, I would hope that in our conversation you will also explain those statements further.
Please let me know how you wish to proceed.
Jim Scarantino, Contributor, Port Townsend Free Press
Mayor Faber has not responded.
Mayor David Faber presiding at the April 4 meeting
There has been no substantive discussion in City Council of the reasons for the abject failure of the Cherry Street Project… ever. It would be useful on the fifth anniversary of the Cherry Street Project for the mayor to offer a few words on why he insists he would do things the same again. Insiders have known, as we have reported previously, that this thing was headed for a train wreck from the beginning. None of our reporting, based on what we have learned from public records requests and documented with photographs, has ever been disputed by Mayor Faber or any other city official. Keeping taxpayers in the dark is not why we publish the Port Townsend Free Press and we won’t participate with Mayor Faber in holding anything back from the people who are footing the bill for City Hall’s mistakes.
Our offer to Mayor Faber to publish his answer to our questions and any other statement his wishes to make about the Cherry Street Project remains open.
Jim Scarantino was the editor and founder of Port Townsend Free Press. He is happy in his new role as just a contributor writing on topics of concern to him. He spent the first 25 years of his professional life as a trial attorney, then launched an online investigative news website that broke several national stories. He is also the author of three crime novels. He resides in Jefferson County. See our “About” page for more information.
Ground rules? Just fess up to a pretty big fail.
Well I remember when I too was in my young 30’s. I was contracting in LA California. I made some big mistakes. Ouch did they hurt. I was not able to recover from my mistakes until I was able to admit that I made a mistake. Then I needed to correct it. Only then was I able to say that I had learned from my mistakes. I became a bigger person in the eyes of the people that watched me. We all make mistakes but not all of us are big enough to admit to it. Please note…. it was my money that I was working with, when I made my mistakes. Not someone else’s.
Pride goes before a fall.
Hucksters, just doing the simple math they could have build a nice place for the 3 million plus on this debauchery. We need all new officials I’m Jefferson county, just like they let the encampment take over the fairgrounds and just looked the other way, until all the PEOPLE stood up and bamb right away its moved….
Great to see two local attorneys attempt communication.
Beautifully put Michael McCutcheon.
Perhaps Appointed Mayor Faber could address why public comment submitted via email is not read for the record at Council meetings.
It is also troubling if the person below who contacted me is correct that my public comments are not available in the archives.
Is this standard? Open Government? Public input?
Below was sent to me along with concerns regarding elderly low-income folks and parking. A manufactured can of worms festering for years. Faber helped.
I was also thanked for my efforts as a public advocate. Not by Faber. The Appointed Mayor should be a public advocate as well.
Nothing to hide. right? Here is one person’s observations.
“Dear Harvey,
I found it interesting at the last City Council meeting, that you had submitted comments they chose not to read into the public record.
I realize this is not new for you; but it’s stunning to see it happen in real time. They also have not included your comments with the archived meeting. I am certain this is not how a democracy is supposed to work”.
Wouldn’t it be great if members of the public converged and asked many questions at 3-minute intervals of the Mayor on the record May 2nd at the next full council meeting to approve a fast track streaterie conversion of parking? Or. not.
Probably not. And so, he will continue to learn nothing at great expense to others.
THIS JUST IN…..
Harvey,
I thought you would appreciate knowing that the other public comments (including yours,) which had not previously appeared with the last City Council meeting, finally showed up!
It seems they were added sometime late in the day on Friday. INTERESTING.
https://cityofpt.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=4&event_id=1699
Best,
Kirin
Anything you do or say can and will be used against you . . .
One thing many locals have hated since forever, is the adversarial hostility coming from our elected public officials. We are perceived as the enemy, we can’t be trusted, so there must be this defensive stance and all these ground rules. It’s tragic because we’re supposed to have a government of the people, and for the people. So, many of us have just thrown in the towel because it is virtually impossible to try to make things better when the deck is stacked and the game is rigged like that.
“I’m happy to have a conversation with you, provided we first have an off-the-record chat to set some ground rules. If you can’t agree to do that, then please, by all means, continue misconstruing my comments without my involvement as is your right, even if you are needlessly creating division for clicks.” Mayor Faber.
Does one need ground rules if you are being transparent and presenting public information to a reporter? What might be another word for “ground rules”, censorship or obfuscation? It also begs the question does holding public office mean that you serve your personal interests, special interests or do you serve the interests of all the people you represent? Transparency in public office is a RESPONSIBILITY to the people that you serve not something that is couched as an occasional publicly vetted statement.
The second sentence of the mayor’s statement illustrates a classic way of avoiding transparency. The mayor is blaming the reporter for asking questions that he is frightened to answer. Blame is a classic way of shirking responsibility. It puts the spotlight on the reporter’s integrity rather the mayor’s integrity. The reporter, Jim, is asking for the mayor’s “involvement” but the mayor is putting rules on what the reporter prints and then blames the reporter for “misconstruing” past comments without giving examples. He is simply projecting his fear of answering tough questions by questioning the reporters assumed intentions. A very familiar ploy.
When does this community stand up to elected politicians who are more concerned with their voting “clicks” than truthfully representing the public they have been given the right to represent? We, the public, are not children that need to be shielded from the truth. It is OUR money that is being used and wasted on a project that has been an economic disaster. When the people lead the politicians will follow.
I really appreciate reading everyone’s comments. This story and the comments reflect how government now taunts and bullies us, how they hide their corruption by obfuscating meaningful interaction from the public and demand our money for ‘public’ projects which they then proceed to channel into a black hole. I’m missing some background on the project and am hoping someone can provide me with information on what companies did the construction and what, if any, NGOs facilitated the project. Thanks.
A.M. We have been covering this story since 2018. We have done numerous public records requests to uncover what happened. This 1950s building was bought without inspection and barged over from Victoria, B.C. without any plans on what do with it. Turns out it contained asbestos and lead paint on all the walls. The city tried to create a non-profit, Homeward Bound Community Land Trust, to do the job. It floated a bond costing around $1.4 million in principal and interest loaned them nearly a million dollars to be repaid over 40 years, as well as giving them land worth $600K and tens of thousands of dollars in other grants and benefits. The taxpayers would eat a $400000 interest subsidy. The city knew they would default, but made the loan anyway. They defaulted in 2020, and the city took the project back. Our most recent report is https://www.porttownsendfreepress.com/2022/03/16/fabers-folly-howards-hovel-cherry-st-project-worse-than-it-looks/ Enter “Cherry Street Project” in the search box on our home page and you will get a couple dozen reports. Hope that’s helpful, Jim Scarantino for PTFP.
A complete and total boondoggle. Thank you for your response. It is jaw-dropping.
I am so relieved to see people coming together to discuss these matters of civic importance! Well done, everyone.
There were some discussions like this in the comments at the Leader for a while, but the Leader makes it impossible for everyone to be part of the discussions because only subscribers may comment. I have never been a subscriber of the Leader and I do not intend to be, because I feel The Leader has aided, abetted, and assisted much of this dereliction of duty by the council.
If there’s one thing Port Townsend needs, it is a truly unbiased newspaper. I miss the days when a newspaper tried their darndest to report the verifiable facts of events that happened, and put opinion pieces on the opinion page and advertisements in the adverts section. My biggest irritation with the news these days including the Leader, is that it’s harder and harder to tell the news stories from the advertisements. And there’s hardly a straight fact to be found among them, anywhere. Investigative reporting? Yes, we need some. A lot of it, actually. Jim is doing a great job so far, but we need about 10 more Jims.
If the council feels this blog is misrepresenting them, perhaps the council might meditate on the frustration of feeling misrepresented. And then perhaps council members could understand that the citizens of this city are also feeling misrepresented, under represented, and not represented at all. We wonder; might we be able to set some ground rules for the council before we proceed? Just off the top of my head, I suggest council members not attacking and arrogantly dismissing citizens of the city, during council meetings.
We are not just a few loudmouths. We are not just a loud minority. We are grown adult human beings with life experiences and opinions. Some members of the council know very well how many of the names that are appearing at this website, have been writing to them for years about these issues. We have always been polite. We have always been respectful. And we have always been summarily ignored.
So now we hear that the mayor is afraid of the blog. Here come the tone police. We wouldn’t be using this tone if the council and the city managers had ever listened to us and had ever treated us like anything but the enemy. We tried politeness. No response. We tried begging. No response. We tried using more forceful language. No response. But when we’ve sharpened our words and honed our questions, now it’s a problem?
What half truths exactly are being told here? As far as I can tell, comparing the comments to the public record, the whole truth is being told here. The half truths are being told to the public by the council. People are not elected to the council to advance their own agendas. We expect the council to work in service of everyone, even the people who did not elect them. Wasn’t that the message writ large across the year 2016? Is it any different now than it was then? No, it is not.
Those of you from the council who are coming here to read what is said, please know that your dismissive arrogance has created this cacophony of discontent. Not just from people on the left. Not just from people on the right. Your dismissive arrogance is creating desperate and powerful alliances. You’re always talking about a vibrant community. Well, it is certainly vibrating.
From the issue of the poplar trees to issues regarding permits for new building projects, issues of waste management, parking, available housing, low-income housing, and homelessness, you won’t listen to us on any of it, but only forge ahead with ideas and ideals that do not serve and do not reflect the needs of the majority of people in this city. The only thing you’ve done well so far, is advance an agenda which few people are even made aware of, let alone made to understand the breadth of the plan. This is not how a democracy works. You are elected to represent us. You are not elected to dictate to us. You are elected to serve. You are not elected to dominate. You are public servants. The single best quality any public servant can ever have, is humility. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of it amongst the loud minority the current city council.
Our next elections should be very interesting, indeed.
Thank you, PT Free Press, for a place to express my opinions where I don’t have to pay for access, and I know my comments won’t be buried and disappeared.
I suggested in another round of comments that “we” organize and actually do something to “change the system”. If volunteers took on documenting Council votes past and present along with damages done in an easy-to-follow and find format, the anonymous “city” might be deconstructed and understood.
Along with that, knowing the past positions of some council and the revolving door onto other positions could shed light on some actions or lack of them. The Council Person that was on the FWPDA advisory committee and other Council would never speak up when FWPDA audits came in that needed action. Insiders abound. Everywhere.
Thou shalt not rocketh the boat.
Understanding that the City Manager is not qualified and was chosen because he would not do specific things and would do specific others following an agenda is key. He now has a track record that illustrates that.
As with Faber his trail is easy to follow. Faber and others count on short memory spans for reelection.
And depend on the Leader to never dig deep. The current streaterie article that misleads is the case in point. It reads as though the vote is done.
Sponsoring replacement Council at election time who are up to speed and know opponents damaging actions could make a difference. Appointed Mayor Stinson did not win reelection. Money was spent on ads highlighting failures and Leader letters to editor were answered consistently with 10 questions regarding Stinson’s damaging policies. No one supporting that candidate could answer. The well known sound of crickets.
Getting the word out is never easy. Personal counter attacks happen by hangers on. Some see their only hope in life is to join in the damaging of neighbors and others for personal gain.
Physical handouts for public and residents regarding issues like streateries and parklets taking limited non enforced parking would change things up.
Change the system or you change nothing. Someone for years has suggested term limits and an elected mayor.
The May 2 streateries and parklets vote will show much, including a City Attorney that ignores the fact that notice to the public was minimal and in bad faith.
Sure you can cheat, Faber, Mauro, Mullen and others. Those that look can easily see.
The emperor clearly has no clothes or humility.
May 2. What will you do? Its a start. Send a message by taking real action.
You had the answer the whole time Dorothy.
Or not.
Kirin White, I so very much agree with what you’re saying here about the importance of democracy. And yes, we are indeed elected to serve, not to dictate.
https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/port-townsend-city-council-to-take-another-look-at-street-dining/
Local mainstream reporters still doing everything they can to subvert public sentiment and opinion. This should not be decided by the council. It should go to ballot and be decided directly by the people.