Ambiguous word sinks project to demolish nearly 100-year-old Gig Harbor pier

The ambiguity of a single word led the Gig Harbor City Council to reject an agreement with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to begin the demolition of a dilapidated waterfront pier.

The word was “consider.”

Did it mean: “We’ll think about it?” Or did it mean: “We deem it to be so?”

At issue was whether the city could depend upon a WDFW promise to apply credit for the demolition of the old Jerkovich Pier to the “mitigation” required for a planned fishermen’s commercial dock.

State law requires mitigation — that is, some kind of trade-off — for new construction over water. One form of mitigation is the demolition of an existing structure of equal impact.

The nearly 100-year-old Jerkovich Pier juts into the harbor on the southern side of Ancich Waterfront Park. Its removal is part of a deal that will allow the city to build a floating kayak-and-paddleboard dock in waters formerly leased by the Jerkovich family. Later, the city wants to build floating docks for commercial fishermen, referred to as the Homeport project, on the north side of the park.

The Jerkovich pier is a danger to the environment, Jeff Langhelm, the city’s public works director, told the council Monday. Its wooden pilings are soaked in creosote and chunks of concrete and asphalt are falling off the deck, he said.

The city wants to spend $127,883 to demolish the pier, and then bank the mitigation credits for the Homeport project.

In a memorandum of agreement with the city, the WDFW said that “the demolition and removal of the Jerkovich Pier will be considered for use as part of the mitigation proposal package” for the commercial fishing pier.

Council members seized on the word “considered.”

“‘Consider’ is not a guarantee,” said Councilmember Jeni Woock. “We’re taking $130,000 of our citizens’ money and rolling the dice. It seems like only common sense that we should wait until we get a ‘shall.’”

Councilmember Spencer Abersold suggested that “deem” would have been a better word.

Councilmembers Jim Franich, Robyn Denson, and Le Rodenberg had similar concerns. In the end, the council voted 6-1, with Councilmember Bob Himes dissenting, to reject the memorandum of agreement. Then they voted to reject a contract with Quigg Brothers of Aberdeen to tear down the pier.

Dismay from city staff

The decision was met with audible anguish from city staff.

“We spent four months negotiating this memorandum with the state, and we were pulling teeth,” said Tony Piasecki, the city administrator. “They told us: ‘This is the wording, we’re done. Don’t bring back any kind of changes.’”

Piasecki argued that “consider” in the context of the memorandum meant “to regard as,” one of its dictionary meanings.

“It doesn’t mean: ‘We’re thinking about it,’” he said. “It means: ‘You’ve done everything you need to do.’”

Mayor Kit Kuhn accused the council majority of wasting an opportunity.

“It is crumbling into our bay, and if it keeps crumbling, there won’t be anything left to mitigate,” he said. It would be embarrassing for the city, he said, if it has to dedicate the new paddler’s dock next to “a liability and an eyesore everyone has to walk by.”

But Rodenberg, Denson and others on the council argued that it would be better to wait until the Homeport construction and the demolition can be wrapped together in the same permitting process.

“That way, the mitigation is locked in and guaranteed,” Rodenberg explained in an interview after the council session.

“You can’t really ‘bank’ mitigation,” he said, and he doesn’t trust the state to remember for two years a promise made by a bureaucrat who may be gone by then.

“The wording is quite ambiguous, and quite often personnel in those state departments change, so who knows what the next person might say,” Rodenberg said.

An 18-month wait

Langhelm agreed that doing the construction and demolition in the same project would lock in the mitigation credits, but he said the permitting process probably won’t be complete until January or February of 2023, with construction in 2024. That will keep the old pier standing for another 18 months.

In the face of the council’s decision, the city will have to reject all bids for the Jerkovich demolition and rebid it later as part of the Homeport project, he said.

Plans are ultimately for two separate systems of floating docks in Ancich Park: the so-called Paddler’s Dock, and a separate dock for the use of commercial fishing vessels, the so-called Homeport.

The floating kayak dock is to be built first. The city committed to an agreement with the Jerkovich family in August of last year to design, obtain permits for and construct the dock, which will replace a portion of the existing Jerkovich Pier float system. Construction is expected to begin in the spring.

The dock, which will rise and fall with the tide, will be used by kayaks and other paddle-craft, such as paddleboards, and will be open to the public.

The Homeport dock, at the north end of the park, would have a number of floating finger piers to accommodate vessels of various sizes. It is that project for which the Jerkovich demolition would provide mitigation.

Other council business

In other business at the Dec. 13 meeting, the Gig Harbor City Council:

▪ Swore in Councilmember Tracie Markley as mayor. Markley, who ran unopposed, will take office Jan. 1. Mayor Kit Kuhn joined the applause and later thanked departing Councilmembers Himes, Franich and Abersold for their service. The council will choose a candidate in January to serve the remaining two years of Markley’s term.

▪ Watched a half-hour slide presentation by Mayor Kuhn recapping accomplishments during his four-year term. The mayor leaves office after a tumultuous year that included a report from a consulting firm that found the city to have “a troubled workplace environment.” He cited improvements at Ancich Waterfront Park, purchase of the Soundview Forest park, beginning of the City-YMCA sports complex, a project honoring indigenous peoples at Donkey Creek Park, acquisition of the 11-acre North Creek Heritage site, and a host of street projects completed during his term.

▪ Adopted, after much grumbling, a rezone for Phase III of the McCormick Creek residential development, from R-1 to PRD (Planned Residential Development). The PRD designation, which allows higher-density development in return for certain amenities, was eliminated by the council in 2019, but the McCormick project had already been vested by that time. Residents, including Councilmember Tracie Markley, have complained about being saddled with maintenance of two public parking lots, built over the top of rainwater-retention ponds, that were part of the deal.

▪ Amended the city’s Comprehensive Plan to include elements encouraging public art and culture in future planning.

▪ Adopted a sister-city policy that tweaks city code to allow Gig Harbor Rotary an advisory role in selecting potential sister cities. Currently, the club is working with the city of Bodø in Norway and the cities of Milna and Selce on the island of Brač in Croatia.

▪ Adopted a plan for upgrading city streets, sidewalks and official buildings to conform with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

▪ Approved the purchase of an improved anti-backflow device for the city Stormwater Treatment Plant. The $43,465 device, called an air gap break tank system, is needed for greater capacity, said Public Works Director Jeff Langhelm. The vendor is PumpTech LLC of Bellevue.

This story was originally published December 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM.