Port of Dewatto cancels community event

Kirk Boxleitner | Aug 25, 20220

The Dewatto yard sale, barbecue and potluck scheduled for Saturday has been canceled because not enough people signed up to participate.

During their Aug. 10 meeting, Port of Dewatto commissioners acknowledged the lack of interest in the event, with “only a couple of people” wanting to take part, in spite of the efforts of Port of Dewatto neighbors Rich and Kathy Kroll to stage the gathering.

When Kathy Kroll asked port Manager Jeana Crosby what it would take to stage such an event, Crosby told Kroll the cost to rent the port building for the day would be $200, and Kroll would need to charge $10 a table for yard-sale vendors, and have at least 20 vendors sign up to break even.

The Aug. 27 community event’s cancellation is consistent with the relatively sedate summer so far for the port. Other nonevents have included a one-day Wi-Fi outage Aug. 12 that was resolved and the postponement of work on Tahuya Blacksmith Road. As of press time, another date for the roadwork project hasn’t been released.

Even this summer’s slated redistricting and boundary line changes proved to be a nonevent as the port commissioners determined they would not proceed with the redistricting of any of the port’s three districts.

In the wake of the 2020 Census’ completion and documentation, the populations of the Port of Dewatto’s District 1 at Collins Lake decreased by 4.5%, while District 2 at Haven Lake increased by 2.5% and District 3 at the port itself increased by 5.2%.

Because the port’s district boundary lines are only required to be changed if the increase is more than 10%, the 2020 census did not establish sufficient district percentage changes to reassign or redistrict any boundary lines in any of the port’s three districts.

Crosby reported the campground started to fill in July as weather improved, after a June that was “OK, but not as full as we would have liked.” By July, the port had raised enough revenue to cover its electrical upgrades in April.

Perhaps the most notable event of the summer so far was a group that reserved the campground for a weekend in July, after paying their fee in full, in advance, adding up to more than $2,000. Crosby said they were “very good” at cleaning the campground before they left, even if they were “a bit loud.”

Crosby’s update on the Bonfire online payment system found it working well as of July. Bonfire charges the port 45 cents per reservation, but Crosby suggested passing the fee onto campers, along with a fee of 3.5% per credit card transaction.

By July, the port was already close to making 80% of its reservations online, although Crosby says the port still gets some drive-in campers who pay cash.

Crosby learned from speaking to the owner of AAA Septic that they’re no longer offering insurance on their porta-potties due to the number of companies that rent them and have insurance of their own. Although this could increase the costs of the port’s insurance, the port cannot support the starting cost of roughly $60,000 to build more permanent toilet facilities.