Port commissioners scrap bold, but disparaged $377 million infrastructure plan

Unanimous vote kills year-long effort to attract new employers and create thousands of jobs, which some critics derided as "pie-in-the-sky" projections

Public opposition has killed the Port of Woodland’s ambitious economic development proposal.

All three port commissioners agreed last week to scrap the agency’s $377 million plan to develop roads, sewers and other public infrastructure in hopes of bringing new employers and thousands of jobs to the Woodland Bottoms area.

The plan was based on use of a strategy known as tax increment financing, which would have diverted millions of dollars in future property tax increases from fire, cemetery, library , county and other taxing districts to pay for the improvements over the next 25 years.

The Legislature authorized tax increment financing in 2021 as an economic development tool to make public infrastructure investments needed to attract new businesses.

About 20 so-called Tax Increment Areas (TIAs) have been established statewide. These include one in Vancouver for waterfront development and another in Ridgefield that led to construction of a new Costco and other retailers off Interstate 5.

However, the Woodland project was far larger. It would have raised an estimated $75 million over 25 years that the port would have used to match grants to cover the full cost of the infrastructure investments, according to the port’s consultant.

The plan attracted widespread opposition from the general public and public agencies, so the Port Commission unanimously killed it at its meeting on April 17, Commissioner Rob Rich said Monday morning.

It’s unlikely the agency will try to revive the effort in a less ambitious form, Rich said, emphasizing he was speaking for himself and not the whole board of commissioners.

He and other commissioners accepted some of the blame for the widespread opposition to the plan, saying they should have brought agencies and the public into the discussion earlier. The plan has been under study and development for about a year. (The port’s costs for consultants and staff time related to the project were not immediately available Monday.)

As it turned out, the port was accused of “stealing” money from other agencies and of other conspiracies, Rich said, though he noted that the tone of public hearings was polite and respectful.

“We lost our first chance to make a good first impression,” he said.

Opposition to the plan arose from the diversion of property taxes from other agencies, and some critics called projections that it would create 5,000 permanent jobs “pie-in-the-sky." Opposition also arose to further industrializing the Woodland Bottoms, which still is largely bucolic farmland despite significant housing expansion in recent decades.

(One needs to ask here: When are Woodlanders ever going to agree on what kind of community they want to become? Growth driven from the Portland Metro area and the abundant availability of flat land is quickly going to decide that question for them.)

Port documents list nine site-specific private commercial and industrial developments that the port projects would have been built in the TIA by 2035. But the port has no formal agreements with those firms and has not disclosed the identities of the prospective developers.

None of those business developments would be built on port property, and none of envisioned infrastructure improvements are on port property. So the agency cannot use its own debt authority to pay for any of them, Port CEO Jennifer Wray-Keene said Monday afternoon.

Despite the extensive work put into the proposal, Wray-Keene sounded philosophical about its demise.

“This is something the commissioners wanted to explore. … This was a fact-finding mission and we appreciate everything our consultant did to bring information back to the commission so it could make a decision. We have lots of other projects on port property that we have been working on and will continue to work on.”

As I’ve written previously, there’s a lot of blame to share about why this initiative failed. But in the end it is just one more botched attempt to make this county a more prosperous place. And it’s further proof of how dysfunctional local decision making often is. I encourage readers to review the previous story about this issue I posted on April 4 titled “Bold port plan to create thousands of jobs in Woodland Bottoms runs into opposition.” That story, like all 240 I have posted to Lower Columbia Currents, is archived and available at andrestepankowsky@substack.com